By Chizoba Ogbeche
Abuja
A chairmanship aspirant in the forthcoming national convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), High Chief Raymond Dokpesi, has declared that the party would break up if internal democracy does not prevail at the convention.
Speaking to journalists on his ambition, Dokpesi said, “The consequence of not allowing internal democracy to prevail in the PDP is the fact that the party will break. The party will disappear into oblivion. So if the PDP does not reform now, it will not survive the current crisis.”
According to him, “there must be internal democracy. One of the first steps is making sure that the landscape is a level playing ground and everyone has the opportunity to come in.
“Let the electorate, let the people decide. Not those of us who are in the boardroom or those of us who say we have the interest of the party or we are the owners of the party. Yes, we represent the interest of the people, but we have to also interact with the people to know what they are saying.”
The aspirant, who is also a PDP pioneer member, further said the party was formed based on the understanding that there was the need to build, “one big umbrella party, an all-encompassing party, in order to limit the divisions, the military bring in at all times taking over government.
“So, the party had, as its major objective, the indivisibility and indissolubility of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That means they believed in one united Nigeria. That means the politicians had to sink their differences and tried to get the interest of the people over and above individual interests.
“These were parts of the reasons it became possible for the north in 1998/1999 to decide that they were not going to put up a candidate to run for the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That is, national interest ought to take precedence over individual interests.”
The chairman emeritus of DAAR Communication, however, lamented that “over the years, after the party won its elections in 1999, 2003 and 2007, it became glaring that the party was becoming over confident.
“Then, they started disconnecting with the electorate; they started moving away from the fundamental principles and ideals that brought about the formation of the party.
“It became very glaring that impunity had set in, over confidence had set in, that imposition of candidates and internal democracy was now something that was not available. It became glaring that even simple zoning principles within the party were abandoned.”
He said: “Quite a lot of the manifesto of the party, the set objectives, the service to humanity, the improvement, the guarantee of these things were in the process thrown overboard.
“So, we started offending each other in the party, we started stepping on each other’s toes and those who were not happy, decided to move out of the party. Those that were able to manage, manage under a lot of pains and so on.”
Speaking further, he said: “We came to a situation where leaders of the party, God fathers, God mothers and the money bags of the party were almost dictating who became a counsellor.
“They wanted to determine who becomes a president, governor, senator and members of the House of Representatives and Assemblies and even determine who the counsellors are.
“There was this attitude of saying the president was the leader of the party while the governors were the leaders of the party at the state level and we threw away the supremacy of the party.”
On why he joined the race: “My mission is to serve the party, to return the party to the vision of the founding fathers, to be able to restructure those visions in line with the developmental changes that have taken place in the political arena in the country.
“It is not going back whole sale as we were in 1999, but to look at the very strong values which we need to deepen democracy, strengthen the party and obviously give a very viral opposition to the present government.
“What we have had since the PDP crisis started is that there is nobody speaking for the ordinary man. We have just gone through 34 states and the FCT, and I know that people are frustrated, whether they are APC or PDP or they belong to any other political party.”
According to him: “There is a lot of hunger in the country, there is a lot of poverty in the country. There are quite a lot of challenges that need to be addressed and you need a contractive body to be able to do that which in this case, ought to be a political party, but the PDP has gone to sleep.
“I want to re-awaken it. I want to reposition it so we can rebrand the party, so that we can reinvent the party, so that we can bring up those ideals that can serve the interest of the country that is why I am in the race.”
Asked whether joining the race was not anti-party given that the position had been zoned to the South-west, he said: “When you say the party, the constitution of the PDP vests the right in the national executive of the party, the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party and the NWC as represented by the Makarfi as the National Caretaker Committee zoned the position of president to the entire north, the three geopolitical zones of the north and zoned the chairmanship to the three geopolitical zones of the south.
“The national zoning committee without equivocation, zoned the chairmanship to the entire south, and that means any person from the zone can contest and I think Senator Makarfi has repeated in all the interviews that what the PDP did was that it zoned the chairmanship to the southern part of Nigeria, that is the three geopolitical zones.
“But some leaders, the governors came in and met at Government House, Port Harcourt, and invited some people to the place and then they said they were micro zoning and then they said they zoned the chairmanship to the South-west.”
Dokpesi, who explained that at the time they were doing that zoning, he had covered 24 states and the reports of the tour were available in the media.
He argued that “the idea of the zoning was to make sure I was stopped but am not as fickle minded as that.
“I have tried to explain continuously that there may have been no malice intended from the side of the governors and the people that had done that. Because I believe they too have a stake in ensuring the success of this party.”
“I said I want to be chairman and I went around to everybody seeking support because I believe that we have moved away from the visions of our founding fathers. I believe that the party is sick because since after the 1999 elections, over confidence came in and things went wrong and we are not addressing them and we need to address them.
“I think that if people are not allowed to contest freely and people are not allowed to emerge according to the will of the people, then we are still dancing in circle. We won’t get any other result other than the one we got in 2015.”
Party screens ex-AIT boss, George, others Monday
Meanwhile , the party has set aside Monday ,August 15 for Dokpesi and other aspirants for all positions ahead of the convention, while it fixed Tuesday for the screening appeal, all in Port Harcourt, Rivers state.
This was contained in a statement issued yesterday by a member of the National Caretaker Committee, Abdul Ningi.
The convention holds on August 17 in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
Other chairmanship aspirants are a former Deputy National Chairman (South), Bode George, a former Minister of Education, Professor Tunde Adeniran, and the party’s governorship candidate in the April 11, 2015 governorship election in Lagos State, Jimi Agbaje.
An unidentified party chieftain from Oyo State was also said to have picked the nomination form sold for N1 million.
It is speculated that a former governor of Ogun state, Gbenga Daniel, and a former Deputy National Chairman of the party, Uche Secondus, would join the chairmanship race.
It further requested all aspirants to present themselves to the Screening Committee with their original certificates, nomination form and a set of photocopy.
Meanwhile, the party has denied reports that the convention had been postponed, saying the August 17 date was sacrosanct.
A statement by another member of the committee, Dayo Adeyeye, said it was not true that the committee chairman, Ahmed Makarfi, had suspended or postponed the event to allow time for more reconciliation on the leadership crisis in the Party.
