The activities of the Peoples Democratic Party seem to have given credence to a claim by a former National Chairman of the party, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, that the party would rule Nigeria for 60 years.
The way the PDP has been embracing defectors, especially key opposition members into its camp, indicates that the party is set to achieve its desire to rule the country for a long time.
Though they say politics is a game of number, the PDP appears to have adopted what may be described as “workable tactics” and “traps” which involve dangling unavoidable baits before members of the opposition for the purpose of wooing them from their political parties. With the way the PDP has been implementing these schemes since the beginning of the current political dispensation, some social commentators believe that the party may break the rank of the opposition by wooing a sizeable number of its major supporters.
Analysts are of the opinion that the PDP first put this scheme to test in December 2004 when it dangled the bait of higher office before the current Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, who was the senator elected to represent Lagos Central on the platform of the defunct Alliance for Democracy at the National Assembly. Obanikoro, with other former AD chieftains like Adeseye Ogunlewe, dumped the AD for the PDP. To compensate them, the PDP appointed Ogunlewe Minister of Works, while it gave Obanikoro its Lagos State governorship ticket in the 2007 general elections, but Obanikoro lost the poll to Babatunde Fashola, the candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, one of the political parties that transformed to the All Progressives Congress.
The PDP re-launched this method again in 2011 when it wooed a former Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Timi Alaibe, with the promise of giving him its ticket to contest for the Bayelsa State governorship position. Alaibe, who had declared his intention to contest for the governorship election on the platform of the Labour Party, immediately dumped the party for the PDP as a result of the overture.
Not long after the former President’s aide declared his intention to contest for the governorship election, several attempts by suspected assassins were made on his life. One of such attacks occurred at Alaibe’s Opokumoa residence in which six of his supporters were killed.
The attackers stormed his house while he was holding a meeting with political associates in connection with the planned launch of his governorship campaign. The attack came barely a few hours after a bomb explosion was allegedly launched against him and his supporters at the Port Harcourt Airport, but they narrowly escaped.
About 16 of the attackers were later arrested by the military Joint Task Force personnel while trying to escape in two buses loaded with arms.
The President’s aide, who spoke to journalists later, said that he suspected that the attackers were sponsored and that the incident would not deter him from pursuing his ambition.
Having realised that Alaibe was not ready to drop his ambition even in the face of the attacks on him and the killing of some of his supporters, the attackers again stormed his campaign office in Ogbia, headquarters of Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, early in the morning of the day the office was supposed to be inaugurated and bombed it.
The state government accused Alaibe of orchestrating violence, but the former President’s aide, who described the bombing as an unfortunate development, had said, “We were scheduled to open that office today for formal campaign activities. And just before we could do that, we were informed of the ugly incident.http://www.punchng.com/politics/power-contest-pdps-antics-to-woo-the-opposition/