By Daniel Kanu
Former National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Kola Ologbondiyan, has taken a critical assessment of his party
He gave reasons the party has failed to provide strong opposition, why it is still in deep crisis and failure of the APC leadership under President Tibubu, among other contending issues. Excerpt:
You recently raised the alarm that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is generating cri¬sis within the main opposition party. Can you throw more light on the allegation?
Of course, the signs are everywhere. If you look at the whole melee, the entire political setting you’ll see that all these things are being generated to make sure that our party, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, does not have its cohesion. Their plan is to ensure that we don’t have unity in the party so that the people who are in government, the party in government will be able to suppress other opposition parties in a manner that they’ll be reduced to the level of just con¬testing election at the sub-nation¬al and they won’t be able to par-ticipate in a national elections. There is a difference in your party merely contesting for an election and having the required capacity to win in such an election.
You can see a lot of external assault from the ruling APC and their principals.
You’ll recall that at every point, at every situation in which we have dis¬cussed PDP, where I have been involved, I have always made the position known that there are attempts to reduce the PDP to a branch or an arm of the APC. The APC is making all frantic efforts to rubbish the PDP and to reduce the party to an arm of the APC.
The involvement of the former presidential aspirant on the platform of the party and the current Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, in the govern¬ment of the APC has created a road that can lead to the collapse of the PDP.
So, what is the pros¬pect for your party considering the numerous issues trailing the PDP?
I think the question is very trou¬bling. Why I am saying it’s troubling is because the way and manner in which the issues are being taken, they’re not in conformity with the precedents, history and the con-stitutionality of the PDP. Take the issue of the acting national chairman, he became acting national chairman by vir¬tue of the fact that Section 47 (6) of the constitution says that you can because there was a vacuum. It also says that when the people bring forth a replacement, you’ll vacate but the whole thing has been so messed up in a manner that you don’t even know where to take off from. Look at the issue of the na¬tional secretary, 85 per cent of the people of the Southeast will tell you that they have nominated Sunday Ude-Okoye and they’ve gotten a court judgment to back it up. But what do you find? Like I said earlier, judicial gymnastics have thrown things anyhow and at the end of the day, these issues are not being resolved.
Is it not unfortunate that the PDP isn’t taking advantage of the present Nigerian condition to mount serious opposition and prepare fully for the next elections?
As I have always noted I think the party is being held down by certain forces and it is being denied the chance to propagate as it ought to have been. I think the contending forces within the PDP as well as external forces are the problems of the party today.
You have always talked about recalibration in your party, what kind are you talking about?
We have said it openly that we need to rejig the party in a manner that it can serve the purpose for which it was formed and at this moment I want to call the leaders of the PDP, particularly the founders who are still here with us – whether you have left the party or not or whether you have retired from politics because I do not expect them to stay away at this moment but to intervene because they laboured during the military system to come this far with the party. We can recall what they went through to bring the PDP alive. So it’s not just a party that any individual, no matter how highly placed, should just come and destroy and then walk away. I think everyone has a responsibility in this regard, particularly if they understand the danger of having a one party system. We should have an opportunity to say ‘look ‘we are in government and we are going about it this way or that way but when we lose such a voice as the opposition, then it becomes a problem. I think this is the time for the founders and leaders of the PDP to do something urgently.
So, it’s part of the problem of the PDP a leadership problem and who is going to take responsibility and take the initiative in the recalibration you are talking about?
When we were in office as the working committee and the party had this kind of challenge, we sat down and discussed among ourselves, that it was a responsibility given to us and that at any point in time we believed that the people who gave us the responsibility believed we could handle the task. We hand over the power to them back and walk away. So when they finally said we should get out, without hesitation, we left, so you cannot have a situation in which agents of the national chairman of the party is in court against the working committee, against the executive committee and against any other committee. The chairman, through agents, is in court against himself as the leader of the National Working Committee, against the NEC of the party, against the Board of the party, in fact against virtually all and you expect that things will work well?
Many people thought after the 2023 election and given many circumstances, PDP would have been more united than this. Also as some of the big guns in the party are dumping PDP, how do you go about recalibrating the party?
This is exactly what I have been saying, it goes back to the issue of leadership. After the 2015 election, we in the executive sat to look at factors that made us lose the election and the party tried to be guided by the outcome of such investigations which we carried out. This is where leadership comes in. Everything, as I said earlier, goes back to leadership and it goes back to those in charge of the party to say we need to take this or that step. I don’t think it will be the wholesome number of party members that should point to the direction for genuine recalibration of the PDP but even if that is the case, it still boils down to leadership for it to be effectively carried out, to start a process, to make recommendations. But where the leadership appears to have been taken over by an individual, you get what we are facing today in the party.
You once said President Bola Tinubu’s administration is overwhelmed. Do you still stand by that?
Are things better now? Things are even getting worse than when I made the statement. I remember I advised the president to seek for help in tackling the country’s enormous challenges. The truth is that the scale of corruption being witnessed under the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) never occurred under the PDP.
As I have always said the Peoples Democratic Party emanates from the people themselves. It is the party that belongs to the people and the party is representational of the views and opinions of the Nigerian people.
This Tinubu’s government is overwhelmed. It needs help. And I have brought out the fact that in time past, that when the country finds herself in a situation like this, the leadership goes out to look for those Nigerians who have the ability and the capacity; the knowledge to make a difference.
You don’t sit in there and say you know it all and throw the country into crisis. The country is in crisis with what we are experiencing.
You can see how the president is being mugged all over the social media for failure of policies of his government.
Look the APC is being dishonest for saying that opposition parties are the ones sponsoring protests over economic hardship in the country.
They are being dishonest. And that is why Nigerians by themselves are coming out to say that nobody is sponsoring anything. Look, do you or anybody need to sponsor hunger?
Can anybody sponsor hunger? Nobody can sponsor hunger. As we are seated here now, if you and I are hungry, does it require the person out of here to tell us that we are hungry. Nigerians are hungry, there is hardship in the land and the government is playing politics with it. Nigerians know that we have never had it bad as this.
