Nigeria's former political giant, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is on the brink of extinction. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
The campaign for January's general election officially kicked off this week. The key question is whether the PDP can survive. A factional struggle that has ended up in the courts could render it irrelevant at the ballot box.
The party, founded in 1998, seemed impregnable after the end of military rule a year later. In 2008, its chairman boasted it would govern for six decades. For 16 years, it controlled the presidency — in the shape of Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, and Goodluck Jonathan — and the vast majority of the country's 36 states.
But the 2015 federal election was a seismic shock. The PDP lost the presidential vote to Muhammadu Buhari and the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC) — a coalition of opposition parties and disgruntled former members.
According to political analyst Ishaq Buhari, this was the beginning of the end. "They were a party that was so used to power, being in opposition was a new challenge they struggled with from the start," he told the BBC.
If 2015 was a major blow, 2025 was the year the party's foundations were left in ruins. It was marked by a dizzying wave of defections and bitter internal conflicts. At the start of that year, the PDP still held eight states. But by December, five state governors — from Delta, Akwa Ibom, Enugu, Bayelsa, and Rivers — had gone over to the ruling APC. They cited the PDP's declining viability and a desire for better co-operation with the federal government as reasons for their departure.
Early this year, the PDP held three states but that is now down to zero — with the Oyo governorship slipping from the party's hands just last month.
Internal power struggles, factionalism, insistence that power rotates through the regions, and disciplinary measures have all added to the sense of disillusionment within the party. The PDP has been robbed of high-profile figures and talent, including the loss of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar last year.
The crisis was intensified by a debilitating leadership tussle. In November 2025, a faction of the party, which observers say represented the majority of members, held a contentious national convention in Ibadan, Oyo state, despite court orders attempting to stop it. The convention expelled Nyesom Wike, a prominent PDP member who is serving in President Bola Tinubu's APC-led government.
Wike, who helped found the party, heads a rival faction creating a political stand-off that has paralysed the PDP. He had controversially helped the APC win Rivers state in the last presidential election leading to accusations that he had betrayed the PDP. But in the eyes of the law the faction that he heads is the legitimate party. This means that it has been able to submit its slate of presidential and parliamentary candidates to the electoral commission leaving the rival faction without any representatives on the ballot.
Despite the chaos, some die-hard loyalists remain optimistic.