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PDP needs trusted leaders to reengineer it ahead of 2023 –Apena

Chief Ola Apena is a former Deputy Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State. In this interview with ANAYO EZUGWU, he speaks on recent developments in the party and the need to reposition it ahead of the 2023 general election and agitations for self-determination, among other issues

 

Recently, the Lagos High Court declared Adegbola Dominic as the chairman of PDP in Lagos state; do you think that the ruling will resolve the leadership crisis in the party?

 

It should because PDP as a political party is predicated on rules as enshrined in the party’s constitution.

 

And those rules are meant to put the party in good shape for the benefit of all members, party managers, leaders and all stakeholders. It is the job of the court to interpret the constitution whether it is the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria or that of a political party or even a corporate organization.

 

For me, the ruling was explicit and there was no ambiguity about it.

 

Our constitution is very clear. It wasn’t written in Greek and the relevant section of the constitution that was relied upon by the court to give the judgement is so explicit that you will just read it and give literary meaning to it.

 

What is actually happening in the PDP given the recent defection of some of its elected public office holders to the All Progressives Congress (APC); is it a trust issue or due to personal interest?

 

It is a combination of trust issues and inordinate ambition. Trust issue because we have a set of people at the national secretariat, who care about themselves and what comes to them. I’m not missing words about it.

 

They are just doing cash and carry business and they are creating lots of problems in the state chapters of the party. So, you cannot rule out the trust issue because by the time you go into case by case analysis, you will see the trust issue and element of inordinate ambitions.

 

Trust issue in the sense that ordinarily there are certain things that you should not do because whatever you want to do, the constitution is there to be your guide.

 

But the moment you are induced and you are ready to circumvent the constitution; those who are at the receiving end of your actions will react. And some of these defections are reactions to what ordinarily should be.

 

 

Of course, we all know that it is the norm in PDP that governors are expected to be the leaders of the party in the state chapters just like the president is the leader of the party at the national level.

A situation where you do not give the governor of a state what is due to him in terms of control, running the system in his state and you are still deferring to yesteryears men does not augur well for a party.

 

For instance, in Cross River State, let me be frank with you, Governor Ben Ayade has left but what prompted Ayade to leave was that the former governors in the state would not accept him as the leader of the party, whereas when they were governors, nobody challenged them.

But they now see themselves as godfathers and they don’t want anybody to be their godfather.

 

Of course, Ayade is the governor today whether they like it or not. Being a governor of a state makes you the leader of the party but you will still recognize higher leadership. In every state, we have people who the governor still runs to. Probably, Liyel Imoke or Donald Duke could be some of them.

 

But you don’t make him look so stupid and useless to the extent that he doesn’t know what is going on in the party. So, definitely, these are trust issues that the leadership of the party at the national level shouldn’t have allowed.

 

I’m not saying that is the case, I’m just using this to illustrate the situation in the party. Still, on the Ayade issue; there are cases of ambitions too because I have been informed by some people that Ayade wants to be president. So, you now see that it could be a combination of trust issue and ambition.

 

Some people have called on the National Working Committee (NWC) to step aside for a caretaker committee to reorganize and stabilize the party before conventions. Do you support such calls?

 

It is a question of choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. If you allow this crop of people at Wadata House to run the affairs till 2023, you can predict the outcome of the general election because it will be a monumental crisis. If your house is licking, do you wait till after the rainy season to fix the leaking roof?

 

You don’t wait because the more you leave the leakage, the more you get messed up and risk damage to your property    only the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the party can stand up and be firm and all the stakeholders come together and put pressure on Uche Secondus and his cohorts to step aside because they have done serious collateral damage to the party.

 

To have them at the helms of affairs in 2023, the outcome of the election is as predictable as to when you mix water with salt, the taste it will give you.

 

But when you contemplate the caretaker committee, it must be a select group of dedicated, trusted leaders who cannot be compromised; leaders who cannot be bought, leaders who cannot be ordered around and leaders who will adhere strictly to the provisions of the constitution in the management of the party.

 

And when the result comes out from party primaries, it is respected whether it pleases everybody or not.

So, I’m not against the caretaker committee, in fact, I believe the caretaker committee will help, defending on those who are going to be in charge.

 

What is the implication of the rejection of electronic transmission of election results by the National Assembly on Nigeria’s democracy?

 

What that portends is that some individuals are still bent on hanging on to power through rigging because if you look at the voting pattern, it was along party lines.

 

Apart from Senator Ajayi Boroffice who voted in support of electronic transmission of election results, every other APC senator voted against it, while all the PDP senators that were around voted in support of it. If you look at it,

 

28 senators voted yes, while 52 voted no. So, some people did not come, those ones are sitting on the fence. Some of them would have voted yes but because they didn’t want to offend their party, they decided to stay away from the exercise.

 

If you look at the roll call, all the senators from Ogun State did not come. So, they are just playing games but we need a more courageous senate like the one we had under Senator Bukola Saraki; a Senate that will consider the wellbeing  of Nigeria and not the interest of the presidency.

 

Of course, the beauty of it is that whether you do electronic transmission or not anybody could be beaten after all President Goodluck Jonathan was in government when he lost the 2015 presidential election. You will see that in 2023, if APC loses the election and becomes the opposition, they will be the ones clamouring for electronic transmission of election results.

 

But that doesn’t show patriotism. Our democracy needs to be developed and we need to inculcate ideas that will further bring transparency into whatever we are doing.

Let the peoples vote count. If we don’t have anything to cover up, why are we opposed to electronic transmission of election results right from the polling units straight to the national server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)? INEC doesn’t even need a collation official at the local government.

 

Also, it doesn’t need a collation official at the state level because if the election ends at 4.pm, before 5.pm all the election results are already in the server. All INEC needs to do is to tabulate the results based on the senatorial districts. It is as simple as that instead of going to the state secretariats to go and sleep there.

 

But once those results are transmitted to the national server, of course, there will be a display of the results at the local government and state collation centres for people to see.

 

We are not even ready for a country; that is just the implication of what happened at the National Assembly.

 

But by the time most of them will realize the damage they have done not to Nigerians but to themselves, it might be too late for them.

 

What do you make of the agitation for a Yoruba nation?

 

It is not only the call for Yoruba nation but the call for the Biafra Republic and it shows that necessity is the mother of invention. You see, we are in a situation in this country where northern elements would want to put it across that this country belongs to them but the country does not belong to them, it belongs to all of us.

 

We were never a country before 1914; it was the British who unilaterally amalgamated us. But a situation where you have 10 to 15 appointments into sensitive positions and all are from the North does not show that we are a nation.

 

Look at what happened recently in the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) about recruitment as 80 per cent of the recruits were from the North and the issue of drugs is more prevalent in the South. It is in the South that Cannabis Sativa is grown; you don’t grow it in the North.

When you talk about hard drugs, major markets for hard drugs are in the South. That is not even a criterion. NDLEA is a national agency and we have the Federal Character Principle in the constitution.

 

What happened to federal character? Since when have you heard that a non-northerner has headed Nigerian Immigration Service, Nigerian Prisons Service and Nigeria Customs; is it their birthright?

It is not their birthright. Look at the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA); all the waters are located here but they will just bring themselves to head the agencies. It is getting to a level that all these agitations are necessary.

I’m not a prophet of doom but if care is not taken, whether they like it or not, it will happen and they will have themselves to blame.

 

The northerners will have themselves to blame because if they continue living in denial that it will not happen, it will happen. And by the time it happens, no amount of diversion of resources to the North will stop it because resources you cannot manage and cannot multiply because you have made your people be so dependent, will not give you anything.

 

For me, the Yoruba nation agitation is a mother of necessity and I wholeheartedly support it just as I believe the Igbo too should have Biafra. I granted you an interview the last time where I said the next president of this country should come from the South East and I’m still on it.

 

If you don’t want the president of the country to come from the South-East let the easterners go. Why would they be part of a country where they are contributing so much economically and you are now telling them that they are not ripe for the presidency?

 

When are they going to be ripe and who are you to determine that? If we decide on rotation as a means of addressing the problem, why should the North be saying that they have the number? By the time everything breaks up peacefully or violently and it will happen, you can eat your number there.

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