The Second Republic Nigeria Vice President, Chief Alex Ekwueme has said that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of today is not the PDP he risked his life to help to form in 1998. According to him, the party has been hijacked by people who are not in tune with the original ideal of the party.
“The truth is that the PDP as it is today was not the PDP we founded in 1998; that is the truth, I won’t hide it from anybody. It is not the PDP I risked my life to found in 1998. Now, PDP has been hijacked by people who have no philosophical or spiritual attachment to the precepts that informed formation of the party in 1998,” he said.
Chief Ekwueme who spoke The Sun newspaper in an interview said: “What I envisaged for PDP in 1998 was that it would be a mass movement, satisfying the needs of the masses and having membership from all over the country.”
He said that party has chased the prominent members to seek their political ambitions elsewhere, adding that outside his emotional attachment as the founding member of the party he has no business remaining in the party in its present form.
“People who founded and worked for the party are alienated by poor management of success, and those who do not have the patience, some of us have decided to find new channels to fulfil their political ambitions. I, for instance, the chairman of the party, first chairman of Board of Trustees, first chairman from the civil society to G34 and so on, if I was not myself, I’m not bragging, I am being modest, I have no reason to be in PDP today. All I have received throughout the years is humiliation and neglect.”
He said the party only does the bidding of those he described as “noisemakers” adding that the party has an “unfortunate” habit of neglecting the gentlemen among its members who desire to play by the rules.
“I told you that I have no business being in PDP today because I am not a noisemaker. I am not created to be a noisemaker or to create trouble, they are using it to deny me whatever is due to me,” he said. “Because you are a gentleman, you won’t disturb, rather the people who shout and make noise, they try and accommodate themselves so that they don’t create problems, I think it is an unfortunate approach to life. But those who don’t make noise and don’t create troubles also have feelings as human beings and they should not have been denied what is due to them.”
On President Goodluck Jonathan’s chances in the South East in the forthcoming election, Chief Ekwueme said that the president is taking the support of the region for granted and this may cost him votes as he has alienated some of his supporters in the region.
He doubted if the president would be able to garner block vote in the forthcoming election like he did in 2011, as he feared that many of those who voted for the president then might boycott the election.
“Now, we have election in less than two months, people are disgruntled. At the last election, the state voted overwhelmingly for President Jonathan, we had the highest per cent of all the six geo-political zones for the President. In less than two months when elections are held, many people from South-East may not vote for Muhammadu Buhari for reasons which I will not go into now, but it does not necessarily mean they will vote for Jonathan because of how things have evolved.
“Many will not vote at all. Not casting their votes at all is a minus for the President, so he shouldn’t take the South-East for granted that it will be the same 99 per cent votes that will come from the South- East in 2015. It might not be.”
He noted that PDP is in disarray in the South East and that for it to make headway in the election it must make efforts to reconcile all aggrieved members.
“Well, because the leadership of the PDP in every state in the South-East does not have coherency, well organized PDP structure today. Ebonyi is in disarray, Enugu is abdicated, Abia, Anambra have about six different factions, Imo is not serious at that, so it requires hard work for PDP to bring together the South-East to how it was eight years ago. My worry is that many of them in the leadership of PDP don’t even realize that there is this danger, they think it is business as usual, so they take South-East for granted that they will vote that same way they voted, 90 per cent of vote to President Jonathan, it may not happen.” [myad]
