Why PDP Is Worth Dying For —Tukur. With the swearing in of the special committee on mini national convention, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) now appears set to move on, having been dragged down for some time. Chairman of the party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, speaks on other challenges facing the party in this interview with newsmen in Abuja. IDOWU SAMUEL brings excerpts. The PDP appears embroiled in crises of late, even as efforts by the party to conduct a mini national convention for electing new National Working Committee (NWC) members have been generating controversies. What is happening? I will not be tired of saying that what people call crisis in PDP is an ongoing process of rebirth by the party. The PDP is simply trying to refocus to emerge stronger as the ruling party. For the party to come out stronger, the members must be able to express themselves, unrestrained by anybody. There is freedom of expression in PDP because it is a party that allows different interests to contend. If you study party politics, the first thing you notice is that where there is repression of freedom in a party, there is bound to be an implosion. So, PDP had gone through different turbulent periods, but it survived all. There were times when members would get angry and the next thing for them was to leave and join other parties. But in the end, they came back into the party because it is the only party in Africa that offers succour to political office seekers. PDP is the only party where we have the principle of democracy running meaningfully. PDP cuts across the federation. Its spread across the country is unparalleled. So, when you have a party like PDP with its attractiveness and selling points, you cannot but have a huge crowd. And when you have a crowd, you have different kinds of competing interests and with that, decision making becomes a Herculean task. We are reorganising, we are making reforms and we are trying to reposition. The truth is that it is not everyone who would like a process of reform because reforms mean it is no longer business as usual. When you say PDP must hold election with a high measure of transparency, with every member being carried along, those who do not want that would surely turn around to say, ‘no, Bamanga Tukur is the problem.’ When you say there should be party supremacy and every member must submit to constituted authorities in the party, those who see themselves as bigger than the party would revolt. Then, they begin to accuse the leadership of ulterior motives. Yet, as a party, you must carry on and take decisions capable of infusing a sense of belonging in every member. This is what we have been doing and you, the media, will always say, ‘PDP is fighting,’ ‘Tukur must go…’ and all that. PDP is beyond Tukur because ours is a passing phase. Before Tukur, we had people leading the party. But we want to create the difference this time, especially with the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan. We will continue to do our best so that the crises you people always talk about will not be there again. But there have been hues on the proposed mini convention by the party, especially the controversy over what date the convention should hold. Was it not the resolve by the NWC members to stop the Jerry Gana cmmittee on fixing the date that generated fresh row within PDP? Again, I say the sensations over the convention issue are needless. The media reports on the issue were skewed to create confusion in the party. This is why I always love to appeal to the media to assist the PDP to get its acts right. I have personally made attempts to reach out to the media, calling for understanding that when members demand explanations or put up acts to draw specific reactions from the party, that does not amount to crises. But the media usually go to town to paint the scenarios within the party in a most terrifying manner. Every time they say Bamanga Tukur will resign when, indeed, there was nothing to point towards that. When someone talks in the party, the next headline is: ‘party member calls for head of Bamanga Tukur.’ This is not right. I have been labouring to reposition this party and make it stronger to face more daunting challenges in 2015. At my age, I say it is payback time so that I will be seen to have tried my best to help my country through the PDP before I finally retire from active politicking. We are doing this for the younger generation and I think you should appreciate that. When some members of the NWC resigned in obedience of a court judgment, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party met and set up a committee. With that committee in place, the expectation is that the PDP, as required by the constitution, will be in charge to fulfil the mandate given to the committee on convention. When the issue of the date of convention came up, what we did was to say, okay, let the party be carried along because of certain considerations. I have no problem with Jerry Gana’s committee on the issue of convention. It is a party issue, and you know that any committee set up by the party to carry out an assignment must be answerable to the party. But what we read in the media was that Bamanga Tukur and Jerry Gana are fighting over convention issue. Don’t forget that we are founding members of the party, still fighting to make the party survive. Now that the whole thing has been resolved, what next? That is the question the media should be asking us, and not blowing little issues out of proportion because some extraneous interests are involved. Now, the convention will hold as scheduled, and we will make it more transparent, free and fair. How would you guarantee free and fair conduct of the convention? We will do that by ensuring the transparency of the process. We will ensure that all party stakeholders down to the grassroots are carried along. Once you don’t hold any issue in secret, you will succeed in raising the confidence of every member. To have come this far, I will like to acknowledge the efforts by the pesident. He was fully involved in every process and he has acted like a true leader. We are to use the convention to demonstrate that we are ready for 2015, because once the NWC is in place, actions will continue. The Secretary to the Government of Adamawa State accused you of creating confusion within the party in your home state. How did you feel with such allegation? How did I feel? I am the chairman of the party and I said earlier that every member of the party is guaranteed freedom of expression. I feel that you should take a trip to Adamawa and have a feel of what is happening in the state. Speak with the ordinary man on the street, speak with the elite and speak with party members and draw your own conclusions. It is not enough to ask me how I feel on what someone said, using the media. Get your facts right by going to Adamawa to know what happens. We have been emphasising party supremacy and discipline and that will come with the ongoing reforms within the party. At the nick of time, PDP will take care of undue insurgencies by members against the leadership. What is the state of PDP in Adamawa State? It is not for me to make comments. I am at the centre of it all as the National Chairman, but you need to go Adamawa and find out. Doing that will make you appreciate whether or not we were right with the decisions we had taken in line with requests by stakeholders of the party in the state. Some key functionaries of PDP were reported to have defected to the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in the state. Does that not worry you? Then, ask yourself why they defected. What factors caused them to defect? This is politics and we are best at playing it. Those you said are defecting are not doing so because they did not like the face of Bamanga Tukur; that, I can tell you. They have their reasons, so go and find out. Then, find out the number of the so-called defectors and why they are defecting. Are you in good terms with the state governor? I am in good terms with all our party members. With the way things are going, will the PDP be able to overcome the challenges of winning elections like before, in 2015 There is no party in Nigeria you can compare with PDP. Don’t get carried away by the noise from our opponents. When you talk about opposition, you can find out whether or not they have the kind of stability that the PDP enjoys. I can predict that by the time we put behind all the issues that seems to slow us down now, many members of the opposition will announce their defection to PDP. It happened when we went to Nasarawa State and then, we had defectors showing eagerness to realign with the party to which they once belonged. The defectors said to my hearing that they had no reason to leave the PDP, but due to repression from some party leaders in the state, they had to go. That is why I said when you carry your members along in what you do; there will be no reason for anyone to get disgruntled. This is the reform we have been trying to make in PDP and those who don’t want reform are calling us names. So, PDP does not have any problem about winning. We will win again and again because we do not have anything to stop us. If PDP has been a party without order, if PDP has been a party without stories of successes, do you think Nigerians would have reposed confidence in us for the party to continue to be in power? Even the so-called APC (All Progressives Congress) will be no match for PDP by the time we get set for elections. Will President Jonathan enjoy automatic ticket in 2015? Allow us to cross the bridge first. But I can assure you that preparations by PDP for 2015 congresses and national convention will be transparent. It will be confidence enhancing such that we will leave no member with a reason to grumble. The process has just started. We will follow the good cause of deepening democracy to the letter. We will work hard; we will campaign widely as usual. We will go to the grassroots and mobilise fully for success. We have the support already; all we need to do is increase our support base in all parts of the federation. Has President Jonathan done well to merit the support of the party for re-election? He has done well with impressive performances. You know Nigerians naturally do not appreciate what they have until after some time. President Jonathan has demonstrated good leadership qualities with the manner he has been encouraging the party to toe the line of democracy in all its activities. He has been holding regular meetings with party members with whom he usually take crucial decisions. We have a mid-term report on the transformation agenda of President Jonathan which shows clearly that the PDP government is on course. You can see how the government has been tackling the security challenges across the federation, while showing resilience in fighting terrorism. He has a good working relationship with the National Assembly and that is sort of cushioning our hope and expectations on democracy. There is an ongoing reform in the oil and gas sector and there is the hope that the Petroleum Industry Bill, if passed, will make the oil and gas run effectively. We are glad that in Nigeria, agriculture is getting ready to support the revenue from oil. We should all be glad with this because agriculture alone, if well promoted, has the capacity to reduce the problem of unemployment in the country. The PDP government, to my delight, is bringing changes on transportation. Rail lines are being constructed and refurbished and we have the hope that the construction of major roads across the federation, many of which will be completed by 2015, will enhance the image of the government. We have not talked about the power sector which now has different companies working to end the problem of power supply in the sector. I have been on tour with the president several times and I can see the huge investment the government has been making in the sector. From the look of things, God is set to make President Jonathan emerge as a hero for transforming the energy sector for the good of the country. So, there is no denying the fact that the president has done well for himself to justify his interest in getting re-elected by 2015. How will the PDP surmount the challenge of winning election in the North, given the apparent disillusionment by the political elite against the PDP government? If you want to know whether or not the North is disillusioned against the PDP, you will have to wait till after the 2015 elections. What disillusionment are you talking about when, indeed, the PDP has strong footholds in nearly all northern parts of the country? And that presupposes that the North will not wish away its leadership role in national politics by supporting a political party not likely to win any presidential election, everybody knows this. At the appropriate time, events will prove what I have just told you. The hype by the media on northern opposition to Jonathan will give way to new realities when we approach 2015. There will be talks and consultations and there will be compromises. In the end, PDP will get back its momentum and romp into victory as usual. What will make the difference for PDP this time around are the good effects of the transformation agenda. The agenda is working in all facets and it cuts across all parts of the country. Rest assured that the North, having worked so hard to build PDP, will not ditch the party at the last minute over issues that could be resolved through dialogue. What do you consider the greatest challenge that PDP must surmount as it prepares for 2015? The greatest challenge, for me, is how to get our members to appreciate the need to put up a good reform that will stand the test of time. We want to infuse into PDP the kind sense of discipline that you have in parties like the African National Congress (ANC) in which case authority within the party is centralised and every member just keys in. We have been to South-Africa and met with leaders of the party. We exchange ideas and we want to keep on learning as the biggest party in Africa. We don’t want to condone instability, where a few members would lord it over the party. When we came in, one of the first steps we took was to call for reconciliation. Many members of the party welcomed the idea and they welcomed us everywhere we went. We should have taken several steps ahead from the good outcome of the reconciliation tour. The problem is that some people don’t want a sweeping reconciliation so that they can always be in control. And we say it should no longer be business as usual. Let us come together to build the party and make it stronger and stronger to face tougher challenges of governance. We depend on our governors who control the party at the state level to rise to the occasion in making this to happen. For PDP to succeed, we must bring members to appreciate that individual efforts cannot win a battle. The party is supreme and we must embrace that fact if the reforms we are thinking about are to work. With the troubles you have passed through in the past few weeks in managing the party, would you still say that the PDP is worth dying for? If it is not worth dying for, why am I still here? PDP is worth dying for because it is the ruling party which has the correct experience of running governance. PDP has been in power since 1999 and has continued to win the confidence of everyone. That is the reason it keeps winning elections. The electorate are quite discerning. They know it would amount to a terrible gamble to put an inexperienced party in power. With PDP, you can change the fortune of the country and that is what the present government has been doing. When the chance to be chairman of this great party fell on my laps, I took it because I wanted to use it to further my contributions to national development. Nigeria has been good to me. The country made me who I am today and for me, it is payback time. The struggle that I am in now is for people of your age, the younger generation. What else would I be looking for at my age other than the progress of the country, the well-being of the youth and women as well as the interests of the older generation so that they can depart well? If I take abuses because of this, it is because the party is worth dying for. We are bringing reforms which will retain the PDP on the front seat. The reforms will make us more pragmatic in the way we run our affairs. The reforms will make everyone see the party as their own, and from there, things will begin to normalise. At the moment, we are making efforts to expand our coasts. We shall get there by winning more states come 2015. The PDP governors appear to be perpetually drawn in battle since their forum broke into two. Is the party helpless about resolving issues among them? The governors know what is at stake for the party and they cannot afford to gamble for long. The governors are leaders and cannot be restrained from engaging in power play which will ultimately determine their political future. They are all fighting for the interest of the party. They are fighting to secure the future of the party because they are what they are today on the platform PDP gave them. Yes, situation appears rough among the governors, yet they will come together after addressing pertinent issues of common concern and then, the struggles continue. No governor will leave PDP as we have been reading. Any governor who is interested in doing so would have jumped the ship already so that he can settle in comfortably in his new party before the next round of election. We have been interacting with the governors and so far, none of them has indicated that the party that gave them the platform to be who they are is no longer attractive. The governors will engage in dialogue, talk to themselves and from there, we will begin to move on as a family. How prepared is PDP for Anambra State? The case of Anambra State is special because of the peculiar circumstances and challenges. The stakeholders know what is at stake and all of them have realised that this is not the time to gamble. We have held meetings with top members of the party in the state, while we explored many areas that will make the PDP win the state. During the meeting, everyone asked for the party to be transparent. We assured them that we will offer the same platform to all of them. I believe strongly that once you are open in the way you conduct the affairs of the party, there will be nothing to stop you in winning the heart of all players. I can see genuine interest in party members from Anambra to get the party’s support for a good and successful conduct of the governorship election in the state. They seem to have realised that they all need to work together this time to win the coming election in the state. We will support them to do win. As we are putting emphasis on Anambra, so also are we ensuring that we regain South-West by 2015. The first step for us to take is to hold a wider consultation with the party stakeholders in the region. We will appeal to the aggrieved to bury the hatchet and allow us to move forward. What is putting us on hold in making progress on the South-West issue are the cases that we have in courts. The South-West leaders are committed people who are ready to assist us in making progress in the zone. Don’t forget that we had the entire South-West before now. We will do all in our capacity to bring back the zone to the centre where it belongs. Tribune.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 10:16:36 +0000