FROM THE RULING TO THE OPPOSTION PARTY: NIGERIA’S PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE DYNAMICS OF CHANGE

Abstract

Background: Towards the terminal end of military dictatorship, and the epoch of Nigeria‟s Fourth Republic in 1999, the People‟s Democratic Party emerged as Nigeria‟s foremost political platform. Resultantly, the party, for sixteen uninterrupted years bestrode Nigeria‟s political landscape like a colossus; controlling the federal government, dominating the Senate, and House of Representatives, and having the highest number of governors than the other political parties put together at a point in time However the party lost out, and assumed the position of an opposition party after the 2015 general election. Objectives: To examine the rise and fall of Nigeria‟s foremost political party in its Fourth Republic - The People‟s Democratic Party. Methods: To achieve the objectives of this work, direct observation and secondary data were used. Also, interest articulation and interest aggregation; accountability and transparency; democratic consolidation; and conflict management, were used as variables to assess the performance of the PDP. Results: It was found out that the PDP fell short of its objectives, dismally performed, and failed to translate the aspirations of Nigerians into concreteobservable realities. Rather, for sixteen years of its hold onto power, the party was an academy of intrigue, lacking internal cordiality and cohesion. Consequently, massive corruption, insecurity, godfatherism among other socio-political ills, characterized Nigeria‟s political landscape for the period in view. All these (performance-failure of the party and the inevitability of change in particular) contributed to the defeat and the repositioning of the party from the ruling to the opposition position. Conclusion: The ability of the electorates to vote out any political party or individuals for lack of performance (as the case of the PDP in Nigeria) is one of the attractions of democracy