By NDUBUISI ORJI, Abuja

Penultimate Saturday, former Senate President, Senator Iyorchia Ayu, was elected as the new chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), at the party’s national convention in Abuja.

Ayu, in this interview with select journalists, says his priority is to reposition the opposition party to be able to win the 2023 presidential poll, as well as over 20 governorship seats.

The new PDP chairman also speaks on some of the opposition’s party strategy to regain power.

You were recently elected as the PDP national chairman, at the party’s convention; what are your priorities against the background of the fact that the party is looking to take over power in 2023?

My priority is for the party to take power. Political parties priorities are always to win.

Therefore, I reviewed the reasons why we lost power in 2015 and I am going to work to unite the party; to sharpen the programmes of the party; market the party to the Nigerian electorates in a way that they will be prepared to vote for us.

In a democracy, it is normal for a political party to lose power. If we didn’t lose power, maybe we would have become a dictatorship or become complacent. There must have been something we were doing wrong or must have done wrong that the Nigerian electorate shifted.

But today, if we didn’t lose power, they won’t experience the policies and programmes of the other party. They would think there is something better than us. Thank God we lost power. Today, Nigerian people know better.

And I believe we will re-energize the party and take over power again, not only at the centre. There was time PDP was controlling over 20 states. That has been reduced to 13. We hope and pray and we will work very hard to increase that number from 13 to control over 20 states; possibly, we will win the Federal Government.

So, that is really my vision for this party. We will unite the party as I have said and I believe that very soon, we will have a very united, very focused political party.

Now, one of the planks the PDP has anchored its success on is the zoning formula embedded in its constitution. People are wondering whether the PDP will stick to its zoning principles in the selection of its presidential candidate?

We are a very democratic party. We don’t have problems in resolving our problems within the party. Everybody thought the zoning of party offices will destroy the party.

I think Nigerians were pleasantly surprised that we resolved it without any controversy whatsoever. So, those who are visiting controversies on the party are not getting it right. I believe that when the time comes, because today, we have separated the zoning of party offices and zoning of the executive and legislative offices and it’s very tactical; when the time comes, we will subject ourselves to another democratic exercise and we will come out with a winning candidate.

I believe Nigerians will be very happy with what we will offer them in the next couple of months.

Do you think the ruling party will allow electronic transmission of results to happen in 2023 since there could be fear that it may upstage them?

Nigerians will be ready to defend their votes in all ways possible. It is clear that PDP won the 2019 presidential election, but we had difficulties with the ruling government, because they don’t believe in democracy.

So, they were manipulating things. We have learnt our lessons. We will take necessary measures to ensure that does not repeat itself.

There are many other things they did that were undemocratic, which Nigerians didn’t know; which we are aware of and which we have taken necessary measures to ensure the votes of Nigerians count. If that doesn’t happen, then, it means we are not running a democracy.

The PDP has pockets of crises across the states. How do you hope to address the issue of intra-party crises?

Nigeria is a very diverse country but there is unity in our diversity. Every organization will have some conflict here and there. But we are not a divided people as I will always say.

Nigerians are a united people. What they need is good leadership, justice, fairness. Once you have that in any organization, I think Nigerians will rally round and move forward.

In the party, the previous administration had started processes of reconciling the differences among members.

There was a committee headed by Senator Bukola Saraki to investigate what the problems were and to reconcile the party. So, that process is on. I intend to build on that when they submit their report when I resume.

Necessary reconciliatory processes will be undertaken to reconcile party members and to resolve issues in chapters in various states.

We have already started that by talking to people. I am happy to inform you so many people have already indicated interest to return to the party; those who are aggrieved who have left the party.

If you recall, recently, former governor of Ondo State, Governor Mimiko, returned to the party. My colleague, Senator Ladoja from Ibadan also returned. There are some people who are trooping back. A few months ago, the traffic was one way, we lost about three governors to the APC.

But I believe before the end of the year, you will hear so many people coming back to the PDP, because they now have confidence that the PDP is getting it right. So, we will build on that and work very hard to make sure that the PDP is a unified force to fight the next election.

The governors are the main financiers of your party. ANC in South Africa for instance has pockets of businesses that help to finance the party. Do you have any strategy to ensure financial independence for the PDP?

You are right and wrong. First, when we formed the PDP, there were no governors. In 1998 to 1999, there were no governors.

There were so many financiers of the party. The people who formed the party contributed to stabilise the party. We didn’t have governors.

The governors came after the party was formed. And many of the people who became governors had no money to run the party. Contributions were made.

Even the N1 million form that they had to buy in 1999, it was people who contributed and paid for them. What has happened over the years is that we now had governors, we had the president, the Federal Government.

But people were still contributing to the party. That is one thing that people did.

Comparing us to the ANC; ANC is about a hundred and something years old. So, the party has evolved and they evolved in struggle. ANC is a party that evolved fighting apartheid in South Africa.

Even they didn’t depend on just those businesses you referred to. They had massive contributions from outside. Even the Nigerian government gave a lot of money to the ANC and many other people who supported anti-apartheid struggle. Even I as a student in the 70s participated in anti-apartheid struggle, we contributed, we raised money and donated to ANC.

So, it is not true that they rely entirely on their businesses. But going forward, the PDP will try to look into other sources of funding instead of depending on just a few financiers.

We have contributions from other supporters of the party which normally people don’t know. There is this misconception that only the governors are funding the party. We have only 13 governors. They cannot possibly fund the party in 36 states of the federation including Abuja.

So, we will diversify our funding anyway. It is something we are going to discuss as a party. We will look into it and hopefully, we will come out with ways of strengthening our funding of our own activities. So, rest assured that the PDP will not only be democratic in its politics but it will also be democratic in its funding processes. (Daily Sun)

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