Alex Ekwueme, a former vice president of Nigeria and a founding father of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has expressed hope that PDP would get back to what it was original, if the report of the strategy committee is fully implemented.
Ekwueme stated this at his residence in Enugu when some members of the committee set up by the PDP caretaker committee to re-engineer the party visited him to submit their report as one of the founding fathers of the party.
The former vice president said: “The story of PDP is the one that sometimes makes me weep, the idea of PDP was not that of an ordinary political party, it was intended to be a mass movement of Nigerians, just like African Congress in South Africa and we started that way”.
“Unfortunately, I would not call names, some people who do not know how the party was formed, what informed its philosophy started to enroll in the party and started to convert it into a personnel estate without regards to the principles that informed its formation; so gradually we started to lose grounds at that stage, that is the genesis of our degeneration, coupled with lack of internal democracy. I am happy that after the challenge of 2015 this committee is trying to find out where we went astray and how we can bring back the party to its glory and I am sure if the report is fully implemented PDP would get back to where it started,” Ekwueme recounted.
Earlier, Ambassador Aminu Wali, leader of the committee, who represented the chairman of the review standing committee of the party, said the panel was set up by the national caretaker of the party.
Before handing over the report to Ekwueme, Wali said, the committee was set up to review all aspects of the party “so that we can look at those areas that need to be changed or operated; look at the constitution where amendments can be made; look at past mistakes and see what we can to do to overcome them; particularly, areas of party supremacy, discipline, impunity which of course Your Excellency you are not new to”.
Raymond Dokpesi, a member of the team, said that the founding fathers wanted the party to belong to Nigerians but along the line mistakes were made which resulted in the party’s lost the election in 2015.
He further noted that the lost of the election opened the eyes of the members of the party to the challenges the party has, hence the setting up of a strategy review committee on inter-party relations.
“We have now concluded the work and the committee in its wisdom presented a report, and members of the committee were broken to eleven syndicates that dealt with all aspects including a new manifesto for the PDP, how the party including another committee on good governance and the challenges the party has faced on imposition, lack of internal democracy, among others,” he said.
The party’s new program, Dokpesi said, would be oriented towards getting the youths and the women to play more prominent roles.
Responding to PDP having two factions he said: “Let me correct you, there is no faction in PDP, they are a few dissidents and those dissidents have the right to express themselves. PDP according to its constitutions has clear cut organs. Hundred percent of the board of trustees is the caretaker committee; hundred percent of the governors also, all the senators are with the caretaker committee; all the state chairmen are with the caretaker committee, so where is the faction? Please, do not glorify and also encourage rubbish and nonsense as the present incumbent government is trying to get Nigerians to believe; there is no faction in the PDP.”
“We are certainly determined to make sure that we revive this party and we win power back by 2019,” he further said.
