WHY PDP LOST

Politics Jonathan and Muazu Apart from a culture of impunity, imposition of candidates, indiscipline and the likes, more facts have emerged on why the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in the just concluded general election. Sources told Daily Times that chieftains most especially those from the North, engaged in acts that contributed to the loss of the party at the polls. Some of the allegations were that some of the leaders of the party connived with the opposition APC to ensure that President Jonathan and the party were defeated at the polls. It was learnt that some of the leaders, for reasons best known to them were united in their determination to ensure that Jonathan did not win the election and that was why it was not surprising that strongholds of the PDP in the North such as Kaduna, Plateau, 10Benue, Nasarawa and Kogi states that have large Christian population, could fall to the APC. It was much of a gang up against Jonathan, the source said alleging that it might be due to the fact that the president had allegedly signed an agreement of a one-term president with some powerful forces in the north, but which the president had always denied. Already, the source, said since the outcome of the elections, there have been much distrust amongst leaders of the party across the country while a National Executive Committee meeting has been called for Wednesday to assess what really went wrong. One of the leaders of the party, Senator Ndoma Egba who is the Senate leader and who lost out in the Primaries in his home state of Cross River also spoke about impunity and recklessness on the party of the leaders of the party as being responsible for the party’s loss at the polls. Ndoma Egba, who was reacting to reports that his supporters have left the PDP in droves for the APC, which is a prelude to his planned defection to the party, said in the past three years, he had been shut out from the PDP decision making process because the party took a simplistic approach to the dynamics of the developments without recourse to broad based consultations. “Mental laziness breeds impunity and impunity breeds arrogance and every situation reinforces itself. If you have small impunity today if you don’t do anything about it, the impunity would grow and if you have small arrogance today and you don’t do anything about it, it would re-enforce itself by growing so the PDP is paying a very prize for our own conduct and this is a God sent opportunity for us to wake up and think and I also hope that the APC will learn from what had befallen PDP,” he said. The senate leader who was obviously bitter with developments in the party said he was not planning to defect to the APC as it is being speculated but that some of his supporters defected to the APC. “I am reacting in relation to the claims that my supporters have defected to another party and I am saying that some other people were also there and not only my supporters”. Speaking on his plans after the Senate, Ndoma Egba said he has a thriving legal practice which he has put in 38 years and out of those years, he had only put in 12 years into politics and as such has several options after he exits the Senate in a few weeks.