1st April, 2015
The ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has become a minority party following the crushing defeat the party suffered in the just concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections.
Although the Senate President, David Mark, won his election in Benue South Senatorial District, he will return as a floor member because his party, the PDP, is no longer in control of the Senate.
Mark has been in the Senate since 1999 and has been president of the Senate for several years.
PDP party has dominated Nigeria’s politics since 1999 and its leaders have often boasted that it is the largest in Africa and would rule Nigeria for 60 years.
However, that self-delusion dawned on the leaders of the party last Saturday when it was trounced in the election in most parts of the country, except the southeast and southsouth, the strongholds of the outgoing president, Goodluck Jonathan.
Following the widespread victory of the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, in the two key elections last Saturday, PDP is now relegated as a minority party nationwide.
In the National Assembly, the Senate in particular, which comprises 109 senators, PDP lost most of the seats to the APC, which now has the majority seats.
APC now has 64 seats, the same number of seats PDP had before the elections on Saturday. PDP now has 45 seats, while the other parties share the remaining five seats.
Most of the prominent PDP senators such asVictor Ndoma-Egba, Abdul Ningi, Smart Adeyemi, among others are not returning in the next dispensation as they all lost their election to APC candidates.
PDP had long lost its dominance in the lower chamber of the National Assembly, the House of Representatives, following the formation of the APC and the mass defection of PDP members to the new party.
To further underscore the fact that PDP is now a minority party, it only won 15 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, during last Saturday’s election, while APC swept 21 states in the presidential election. In the past PDP controlled over twenty states across the country.
The dominance of APC is reflected in the overwhelming victory of Muhammadu Buhari, the party’s presidential candidate in the Saturday election. He polled a total of 15,424,921 votes to defeat the incumbent PDP president, Goodluck Jonathan, who polled 12,853,162 votes.