Let us get this out of the way early: if you have to ask which faction of the PDP is the “real” one, you are not confused — you are complicit. Confusion is innocent. This one is willful. It is the kind of confusion that comes with an agenda, a brief, or at the very least, a prepaid data bundle.
INEC recently convened a meeting with the Peoples Democratic Party and another group parading itself as a faction of the PDP. That sentence alone should have triggered a national alarm. But Nigeria being Nigeria, we clapped politely and waited for the punchline.
INEC’s conclusion? That both parties should “seek amicable resolution” and “obey court orders.”
Classic Pontius Pilate governance.
Hands washed. Responsibility outsourced. Democracy abandoned by the roadside like a broken-down Peugeot 504.
This was not neutrality. This was institutional cowardice masquerading as balance. INEC has clearly developed a crisis of confidence and now operates like an agency under hostage — hostage to state capture, elite intimidation, and judicial musical chairs.
How We Got Here: A Farce in Three Acts
A PDP convention was scheduled and eventually held in Ibadan. Prior to that convention, Nyesom Wike and his political cohorts were fully involved in the preparatory process. Meetings attended. Decisions taken. Hands shaken. Smiles exchanged.
Then suddenly — abracadabra — they disagreed with the process.
Not before. Not during deliberations. Not through internal mechanisms.
No. They disagreed judicially.
Cue the now-familiar Nigerian magic trick: an injunction appears at lightning speed, generously granted to stop the PDP from holding its convention. Almost immediately, another court — also in Ibadan — grants a counter-order allowing the PDP to proceed.
Welcome to Nigerian jurisprudence: where justice is not blind, just cross-eyed.
The PDP, acting within its constitutional powers, proceeded and subsequently expelled Wike and his cohorts. That should have been the end of the story.
But this is Nigeria. Stories never end. They reincarnate.
From Party Member to Political Landlord
Following his expulsion, Wike — now wearing his other hat as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory — prevented the PDP from accessing its national secretariat in Abuja.
Pause. Breathe.
A serving APC minister, expelled from the PDP, used state power to lock out an opposition party from its own office.
If this happened in another country, it would be described as authoritarian drift.
In Nigeria, it barely makes the evening news.
Let’s Stop the Pretence
The Wike group has openly declared its intention to support the APC presidential candidate. That is not hearsay. That is not inference. That is a public political position.
So let us ask a simple question:
How does a group working for the electoral success of the APC qualify as a faction of the PDP?
Answer: It doesn’t.
Unless words no longer mean things.
Unless opposition now means undercover collaboration.
Unless democracy is now a performance art.
To suggest that Wike and his group are a “faction” of the PDP is not political analysis — it is anti-democratic propaganda. It is the deliberate laundering of political sabotage into something respectable.
INEC’s Dangerous Neutrality
INEC’s attempt to sit on the fence is not neutrality. In a democracy under stress, false balance is bias. When one side is clearly acting against the very purpose of a political party, the referee does not ask both teams to “hug it out.”
You don’t mediate a burglary.
You don’t reconcile arsonists with homeowners.
And you don’t pretend a group campaigning for the ruling party is still part of the opposition.
Call It What It Is
This is not a factional dispute.
This is not internal party wrangling.
This is state-enabled political subversion.
And every institution that pretends otherwise is not confused — it has chosen a side.
If you still have to ask which PDP faction is which, then congratulations: you are no longer observing Nigeria’s democratic decline — you are participating in it.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 