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Leadership crisis engulfs Nigeria's leading opposition party

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been engulfed in a leadership crisis for as long as anyone can remember. The cracks have just deepened.

PDP factional Leaders, Ahmed Makarfi and Ali Modu Sheriff

It was a Pyrrhic victory.

Sheriff has been locked in a leadership tussle with Ahmed Makarfi for the soul of the PDP, since May of 2016 when the PDP held parallel conventions in the cities of Abuja and PortHarcourt on the same day.

Governors Nyesom Wike of oil rich Rivers State and Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, lead the powerful Governors clique which opposes Sheriff's reign as PDP Chairman.

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This week, Wike and Fayose called Sheriff a mole in the PDP--one planted by the governing APC.

“I know that he does not mean well for the party. We see that he’s a mole in the party,” Wike said of Sheriff.

Ironically, both Governors supported Sheriff's candidacy in the early days before their relationship tanked.

“That’s one of the worst political decisions I have ever taken,” Wike said of his support for Sheriff a couple of months ago.

In a fiery riposte, Sheriff said he fell out with the powerful Governors because they discovered that they couldn't manipulate him like they had planned.

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Sheriff said: "If I am a mole, Wike was the one sent by the APC to make me a mole in the PDP. I remember very well, Wike was on the front burner for me to be the national chairman of the PDP. Where does the issue of mole come from? Because I didn't bring myself in.

"If he says that, then he knows that I'm not a mole. Probably he invited me, thinking I'll take instructions from him to run the party.

"But at my level...look at me, I was a Governor before any one of them (Governors Wike and Fayose). I have my mind. I look at the Nigerian people, I look at the party".

The Makarfi faction has promised to challenge the ruling of the appellate court at the Supreme Court.

However, the Police flung open the doors of a dusty party secretariat to Sheriff, in obedience to the court judgment.

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Sheriff was accompanied by a retinue of aides and some members of the National Working Committee (NWC), as cakes of dust welcomed them into what was once Nigeria's most powerful political edifice.

“We came to see what renovation and cleaning needs to be done. While that is going on, we will continue with our consultation. We will do everything humanly possible to ensure that nobody is victimised for holding different opinions,” Sheriff said.

Sheriff said he plans to leave as Chairman of the PDP once he's been able to conduct a national convention.

He also promised to return the party to the grassroots.

“It is not enough for some people to sit in Abuja here and say they want to choose party leaders for the people in the village", the beleaguered Chairman said.

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The PDP has fallen on hard times since it lost the center to a Muhammadu Buhari inspired APC in 2015.

Most of its chieftains have since defected to the APC.

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