A divided house is a defeated house, as PDP broke into three ahead of 2023 Elections: PDP, NNPP, LP - By Karounwi Oladapo

• APC tips to win 2023 Presidential election

By Karounwi Oladapo

August 29, 2022.

If PDP has remained a united party like it was in 2019 Presidential election, APC would have been in serious trouble ahead of 2023 Presidential election for a number of reasons which are not the center piece of this article. However, the fortune of the PDP has nosedived and the Party has broken into three strong Political Parties in the build up to the 2023 Presidential election; the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP led by Atiku Abubakar; the Nigeria National Peoples Party, NNPP, led by Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, and the Labour Party, LP, led by Peter Obi. All the three Presidential Candidates were leaders of the PDP up to the first quarter of this year 2022.

It should be noted that no major or dominant party broke out of the very strong and dominant APC with the incumbency advantage at its disposal.  This means that the APC strong bases of North West and South West where it secured its majority votes in 2015 and 2019 still remain intact and none of the other three major Political Parties mentioned above was able to make incursion into the two zones. 

However, the minority PDP members in the North West Zone have migrated to the NNPP to the disadvantage of PDP.

Apart from the two APC exclusive Zones of NW and SW, APC remains the dominant and foremost Political Party in the North East and North Central. These two Zones remain a battle field between the APC, PDP and LP.

While the North East votes will be shared by APC (Shettima APC Vice Presidential Candidate and APC Governors) and PDP ( Atiku PDP Presidential Candidate and PDP Governors), the North Central will be shared by the Labour Party ( the Christian population,), the APC ( through the APC Governors incumbency factor) and PDP (through the influence of the PDP National Chairman Iyocha Ayu, David Mark and Bukola Saraki structures. The position of the lone PDP Governor Ortom is uncertain)

The South East votes is the exclusive preserve of the Labour Party Peter Obi. APC and PDP will loose their Political deposits in the South East.

In the South South, the Labour Party, APC and PDP will tear the votes apart. The three Parties are neck to neck in the South South as I write but whichever Political Party the swinging Wike decides to work with will have the majority votes in the South South Zone.

It should be noted that the Igbo community in Lagos who have been voting PDP over the years will vote Peter Obi Labour Party to the detriment of the PDP in the South West. PDP will however gather a very minority votes in the South West.

The aggregate of all the votes will throw APC Asiwaju Bola Tinubu up as the winner and the next President of Nigeria in 2023.

Except the PDP move fast to reconcile and rebuild what is left of it, the Labour Party Peter Obi will beat Atiku PDP to a third position.

Again, the aggregate of the votes of the PDP, Labour Party and NNPP will be more than what APC will get. This will make the PDP and their sympathizers come to agree with the headline that a divided Political Party is a defeated Political Party.

One thing is very clear to the discerning, the Nigeria political configuration of two dominant Political Parties has gone. 2003 elections will depict Nigeria as having three dominant Political Parties as will be seeing in the composition of the next National Assembly, Reps and Senate. Majority of the National Assembly members from the South East will be from the Labour Party. Labour Party will have a few other Representatives from a few states in the South South and North Central.

NNPP which is the fourth Party will produce a number of Representatives from Kano and a few other Northern States but their total number will not qualify the Party as a dominant Political Party or the fourth force!

Nigeria will experience something similar to the 1999 episode when the National Assembly was populated and dominated by the three Political Parties of PDP, APP and AD. The current Labour Party in the South East of 2022/23 is akin to the Alliance for Democracy, AD, in the South West of 1998/99; both Parties evolved on strong emotion and passion to fight injustice and marginalization; AD came to fight the annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election won by a Yoruba man Abiola and the incarceration and death of Abiola in detention; Labour Party came to fight the PDP for denying the Igbo Presidency despite their huge Political investment in the party since 1999 and to fight for Nigeria Presidency as the only tribe and zone that hasn't produced a Nigeria elected President since Nigeria's independence in 1960.