February 06, (THEWILL) – The search for President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor is already causing a ripple in the ranks of the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP}. The party’s decision to throw its presidential slot open to all the zones in the country has also made the struggle for the ticket more intense and competitive. In fact, the struggle for the PDP’s presidential ticket is already tearing the party apart.
One of the bigwigs of the party and Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, who appears to lead the leaders of the party in the South in the demand for a southern President, was very vociferous in criticising those who seem to be in favour of the presidential candidate emerging from the North.
Wike was recently rumoured to have accepted an offer to be former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s running mate in the 2023 presidential election, but the Rivers State governor bitterly refuted it.
Speaking in a television programme monitored last week, Wike said he was more qualified than the former Vice President, incumbent Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, APC national leader, Bola Tinubu and others aspiring to be Nigeria’s President in 2023.
He said, “Assuming today I want to run for the office of president, what quality you think I do not have? Why do you think I cannot provide the right leadership for Nigeria to move forward?”
Answering his own question, he asserted, “For somebody of my kind and record, a governor and a minister, I don’t even see anybody who will tell me that he is much more qualified than me. I don’t think that is possible.”
While he has not made a public declaration to run for president, he insisted that “it is not good for anybody to say ‘my aspirant is the best of the aspirants’.”
Also in a statement titled, ‘We’re an asset, not liability to the PDP, Nigeria’ and signed by his Special Assistant on Media, Mr Kelvin Ebiri, Wike warned the Chairman of Daar Communications, Chief Raymond Dokpesi, not to assume the position of the PDP in zoning the 2027 presidential slot.
He declared that nobody can undermine the interest of the people of southern Nigeria in the decision over who flies the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Wike, who was said to have made the statement during a meeting of stakeholders of the PDP in Port Harcourt last Tuesday, frowned at those who claim to be traversing the country in consultation with stakeholders over their interest in the presidential race, whereas they are actually declaring their ambition.
He said the South would make a bold statement at the appropriate time so that other Nigerians will know where they stand.
Wike said, “Please, discountenance anything you’re seeing and hearing, especially all those social media posts. The South will make a statement very soon. The day the South makes a statement Nigerians will know that we are not joking.
“It’s not about coming out to say that you are consulting. You are consulting, yet, you have declared your ambition. Is it not after consultation that you declare? You’ve already declared and you say you’re consulting. What are you consulting again?
“Some people take the South for granted, saying that they are not together. No problem. If we didn’t know yesterday, today we know.”
The governor asserted that southern Nigeria, particularly Rivers State, is an enduring asset to the PDP and cannot be treated with levity.
According to Wike, when the people of the South make up their minds to support any person in their party of choice, everything is mobilised to achieve the intended goal.
“We are assets. We are not liability. When we say we are going to support the party, we support the party with everything we have. We are not in America where you do television campaign.
“When we come out, we will choke them. They know it. So, everybody should relax, let the South do its homework and then make a proper statement,” he said.
The Rivers State governor explained that since PDP is an opposition party, what is most tenable now is for its members to work towards the unity of the party, build a greater team spirit and protect it from those who want to sow seeds of discord.
He said that those who thought they could use money to overwhelm the process of internal democracy and buy off the presidential ticket of the party would be disappointed in the end.
“What is necessary now is how the party will be cohesive and the need to make sure that the party gets it right. Then when you threaten that it must be the North, you’re not trying to make peace. Also, when you threaten that it must be South, you’re not trying to make peace.
“It’s a matter of sitting down and trying to understand the situation. That is the way it is supposed to be.’
Meanwhile, Dokpesi’s statement that Atiku will ensure that an Igbo president emerges in 2027 has come under Wike’s hammer.
The Rivers State governor would not want to hear any of that. He said, “Forget about Chief Dokpesi. With all due respect, Dokpesi is one of the people trying to destroy the party, which is not good. If we follow the kind of statement that Dokpesi is making every day, by now the party would have been destroyed. But we said no.”
He expressed his disappointment over Dokpesi’s claim that Atiku Abubakar would hand over to the Igbo after serving for four years as president.
Wike said the issue of handing over to the Igbo would be decided by the party and not by the President.
“At his level, Dokpesi is going on television to tell the people that there is no zoning. I can’t believe this. Even if somebody were to make such a statement, is he the one to say it?
“And he has arrogated the power of the party to himself by saying that when Atiku wins, he will hand over to the South-East. Is that not supposed to be the decision of the party? So the party cannot decide at all becuse Dokpesi has zoned it,” he said.
It would be recalled that the Southern Governors Forum at their last meeting held in Lagos in July 2021 had insisted that the presidency should be zoned to the South in 2023 after the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari
Also, recently in Enugu, leaders of the PDP in the South-East warned the party against zoning the presidency to the North. They insisted it was the turn of the South-East to produce the next presidential candidate of the party, stressing that both the South-West and South-South had had their turns.
According to them, the South-East deserves to produce the next president because of its people’s “eminent qualifications and overwhelming contributions to the development of all parts of the federation through the years.”
Southern governors had added that zoning the presidential tickets of parties to the South-East would be “the best way to ensure that we build a nation that leaves nobody or group behind.”
Those who spoke at the meeting include former Senate President and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim; Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe; former Abia State governor, Theodore Orji; PDP Vice-National Chairman, South-East, Ali Odefa, and former Imo State chairman, National Population Commission, Duru Iheoma.
According to Abaribe, the Igbo have all it takes to rule Nigeria and make it better.
Anyim describes the South-East as a good market for presidential material and sees no reason why any other region will want to rob the Igbo of the chance of producing the next president of Nigeria.
Part of the communiqué at the end of the meeting read thus: “The people of the South East have earned the right to occupy the office of President in 2023 on account of their eminent qualifications and overwhelming contributions to the development of all parts of the federation through the years.”
But the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Ibrahim Abdullahi, last Wednesday said the six geo-political zones of the country would be given equal opportunity to seek the party’s ticket for the 2023 Presidential election.
Abdullahi, who stated this when he received Northern Advocates of Good Governance (NAFGG) on behalf of the PDP National Chairman, Dr Iyorchia Ayu, at the party’s headquarters in Abuja, hinted that the party’s 2023 presidential ticket would be thrown open.
He said, “The new National Working Committee (NWC) under the leadership of Senator Iyorchia Ayu has already resolved that it will ensure that the six geo-political zones are given equal opportunity to contest for the available offices so as to rescue and rebuild Nigeria.”
Political analysts have noted that Wike’s posture shows that the PDP needs to tread with caution on the issue of where the president will come from.
They are also of the opinion that if care is not taken, the issue of where the presidential candidate will come from may cause a problem that may cost the party the 2023 presidency.
To some analysts, the altercation between Wike and Atiku over the presidential ticket is a sign that the coming months may be a tough one for the leaders of the PDP.
It also means that the South is not ready to play second fiddle to the North in 2023. So care must be taken in arriving at an agreement on the presidential candidate without placing any of the regions in a disadvantaged position.
Speaking with THEWILL, a member of the Board of Trustees of the PDP in the South-West, who craved anonymity, said the National Working Committee, NWC of the PDP should thread softly.
“The party is built on zoning. That is the tradition we inherited from our forefathers. It is one of the pillars on which the party stands. That is what has been sustaining this party since 1999. We have been living on ‘turn-by-turn Nigeria Limited’. You cannot drop the zoning policy now when it is the turn of the South-West. Even if you are going to do that, the way the presidential aspirants from the North are going about it arrogantly will disrupt the peace in the party,” he said.
Also speaking with THEWILL, a Public Affairs analyst based in Abuja, Ojo Adeyinka, said that southerners would not want to be treated as second class citizens in a party they had invested in over the years.
“The NWC should seek Solomon’s wisdom in the handling of the ssue of where the presidential candidate of the party will come from. Dumping zoning may spell doom for the party.
“I am old enough to know that in the PDP, when a region produces the National Chairman of the party, the other produces the presidential candidate. So now that the North, through the North-Central, has produced the national chairman, automatically the South should produce the presidential candidate”.
“PDP needs to be careful. They need to apply wisdom in whatever they are doing. There is the need to appease the South, especially the South-East and South-South, which have remained with the PDP over the years,” Adeyinka said.
‘Ekiti APC Governorship Primary Portrays Fayemi As Non Democrat’
Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State, Adekunle Esan, speaks on the recent APC Governorship Primary election in the state, among other issues, in this interview with AYO ESAN. Excerpts:
How would you describe development in Ekiti State in the last 10 years under the PDP and APC, respectively?
Ekiti State is so compact and culturally homogeneous that one would expect it to develop fast. In the 10 years ago, we expected a dramatic change in the affairs of state in terms of infrastructure, education, good roads, water supply and other amenities that are beneficial to the people. But there is nothing at the moment. The expectations of the people are yet to be fulfilled.
When you go round Ekiti State and you go to a neighbouring state, you will find that Ekiti looks like a village. Ado-Ekiti is the capital of Ekiti State, but when you move from Ado-Ekiti to Akure, the capital of Ondo State, you will discover that there is a clear difference between the two cities.
I went to Akure about two weeks ago and I marveled at what I saw there, compared to Ado Ekiti. Honestly, there is no single good road in Ekiti State. There is no water supply and the school buildings there are appalling. You will begin to wonder if there was ever any government in Ekiti State since it was created. It is a sorry case.
Why is it that people like you are doing nothing about the situation? Why is nobody making efforts to transform the state?
Let me say that in 2018, I was one of those who contested the APC governorship primary in Ekiti alongside Governor Kayode Fayemi. We all know what happened. We know the game they played in favour of Fayemi, but there was nothing we could do. That has been confined to the dustbin of history, anyway. But the winner of that primary is in government now.
I never expected what is happening within the present government in the state. I rated Fayemi quite high, but I was disappointed. I had a programme when I contested in that primary. He took it and all the other aspirants’ manifestoes to integrate them into his agenda for the state. Unfortunately after collecting these laudable programmes, nothing was done with them. Today, Fayemi cannot boast of any tangible programme he has executed in Ekiti State. The only thing he can boasts of is the road from Ado Ekiti to Iyin Ekiti. I think that was done because of the influence of a former Governor of the state, Otunba Niyi Adebayo who hails from Iyin Ekiti. The road is not up to 10 kilometres long.
We, I mean all of us in APC, were abusing Fayose for attempting to build an airport in the state, but it was curious to me when Fayemi came and said he wanted to build a cargo airport. I was baffled and wondered what cargo airport he was talking about. Where are the cargoes? Where is the rail system to feed the cargo airport? There was no single industry in Ekiti and he was talking about building a cargo airport? The fund he was supposed to use to build roads, provide potable water for the people, build hospitals and schools, he diverted into building a cargo airport.
What is your reaction to the conduct of last week’s APC governorship primary in Ekiti?
I have been in Nigeria for over four weeks now and participated in mobilising members of our party for one of the aspirants, Kayode Ojo. Honestly, I discovered that he has a large followership. He was one of the people that contested the APC governorship primary in 2018. Out of 33 of us, Kayode Ojo came second behind Fayemi. He has a lot of admirers in Ekiti State. But the incumbent Governor Fayemi has his own candidate, Biodun Oyebanji, the former Secretary to the State Government.
I was surprised to see the public servants, appointees of the present government, following Oyebanji all over the place to the extent that Fayemi’s Campaign office in 2018 is what he is using as his own campaign office now. Yet Fayemi continues to say that he has no candidate. All government machinery and resources, including vehicles, are being deployed for Oyebanji’s campaign. They are all over the place. That is the method Fayemi adopted since the beginning of his second term. If you want to appoint even a councilor, Fayemi is the decider, even at the local level. He is almost an Emperor in the state.
The last APC Primary is daylight robbery. Eight candidates participated in the primary. Five days to the election, they published the names of those coming to conduct the election from the national body. Somebody alerted me to the fact that the Chairman of the Electoral Committee, who happened to be Governor Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa State, was a close friend of Fayemi and the one rooting for Fayemi to be the next President of Nigeria in 2023.
I also gathered that the secretary to the committee was also a close friend of Fayemi. But there was nothing we could do at that material time. On the eve of the primary election, we didn’t hear anything about how the election was going to be conducted. They kept the whole thing to themselves. They didn’t tell us whether it would be by direct primary or indirect primary. Is it going to be by voters queuing up and be counted or is it going to be through the use of ballot papers? We were in the dark. Only the committee chairman, his cohorts and possibly Fayemi and his candidate knew what they planned to do.
They appointed all Fayemi’s supporters in the local government councils as returning officers. How do you expect fair play in this kind of arrangement? And this was what the aspirants were trying to streamline. The other aspirants were saying, how can you appoint people who are loyal to one aspirant as returning officers? They begged the committee to allow their own people to mingle with them at the polling units. The other contestants requested 30 people per aspirant to be part of the returning officers. They agreed for 25 persons for each aspirant. Tthe committee chairman was expected to bring all these people together as part of the returning officers, but it never happened. They just submitted the names. Nothing was done by the chairman.
You know I said earlier that the aspirants were kept in the dark as to the modalities for the primary election. On the day of the primary election, they counted the number of people queuing up to vote. It turned out that only Oyebanji’s supporters came for the primary. When the results of the election were written by them, you can see the appalling numbers allocated to the other aspirants. Fayemi knows his candidate is not popular. Everybody knows that and Kayode Ojo is the most popular aspirant in the state. The chairman of the electoral committee said that some votes were voided. And we asked how come the committee voided votes where the voters only queued up to be counted. What was wrong with human beings that were voided?
From all this, you should know the primary was a charade. It is a pity. It is an insult on Nigerians that a sitting governor of a state came to conduct an election like that. That one alone has exposed the whole system. I don’t believe Fayemi is a democrat. He is not a democrat. I can attest to that. He is just a pretender.
The option left to the aggrieved aspirants is to go to the Appeal Panel. Have they utilised it?
May be you have not heard that they reported what happened to the committee, but the Appeal Committee threw it out.
You have just described the candidate that emerged from the primary as a weak one. Evidently there is a crack in the APC in Ekiti State. Going forward, what do you think will happen to the APC in the forthcoming June governorship election?
Let me approach this question by letting you know my personal opinion about the APC. APC has a national body headed by Mai Buni. And you know that the Buni Committee came with the sack of former National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole. They fixed a convention for this month and it is already having a K-leg.
Generally APC is not a true political party. I am a member of the APC, but I can say categorically that it is not a party. It is just a gathering of people who think about themselves, who want to have power for power’s sake. They are not interested in the welfare of the people of this country.
Although I don’t want to indict the President, the only thing that almost marred his programme is the killings by herdsmen, bandits and Boko Haram insurgents. He embarked on a programme that I think could have been beneficial to the people of this country. That is the development of infrastructure like the railway system, which we need very badly and good roads.
We also look at the opposition viz-a-viz the ruling party. Democracy does not exist in the two parties. They are full of impunity. And I think why APC is doing this, is because its leaders think they have the power to manipulate anything they want to manipulate.
Oyebanji may not become governor of Ekiti State. I know that APC will do everything possible within its power to make him become governor, but there is going to be a third force in Ekiti State. Fayemi frustrated Chief Segun Oni out of the APC. He frustrated Babafemi Ojudu’s group, he frustrated Dayo Adeyeye. He is now frustrating seven governorship aspirants. Think of this. Who are those backing Fayemi today? May be only his boys and ladies and they don’t have weight. What they are relying on are government machinery. No other thing. And he is using his position as the Chairman of the Governors Forum. That was why he was able to manipulate the Ekiti APC governorship primary That is what he is depending on for the next election with other parties. But I can assure you by the Grace of God that it will not work. It happened in 2014, when Fayemi lost to Fayose because Senator Opeyemi Bamidele saw a lot of things after he contested the primary. They persuaded him but he did not yield. He moved his supporters to join Labour Party. That spelt doom for the APC .Today, there is a repeat of that scenario, but on a larger scale than what happened in 2014. This is because the seven aggrieved aspirants are APC bigwigs in Ekiti State.
We learnt that Senator Bamidele Opeyemi has vowed to court over the primary. What is your take on that?
Well, it is good to go to court, being the final arbiter. But personally, I can’t see anything tangible coming out of the court. The most pragmatic way they can checkmate this government in Ekti is to have a third force. The people of Ekiti are tired of this government and the government is not enjoying the support of the majority of the people of Ekti State.
Does the present situation give the PDP any advantage?
The PDP is in trouble, too, in Ekit State because of the candidate that emerged to fly the party’s flag in the forthcoming governorship election. I don’t know Kolawole‘s strength really but I learnt he has contested some elections in the past and he did well. But he may have some problem because of his sponsor, Ayodele Fayose. Also the conduct of their primary is laughable. No democracy anywhere.
Oyebanji recently said he has reached out to the aggrieved aspirants and reconciliation would be achieved soon. What is your reaction to this?
I don’t know the kind of people he has reached out to. But what I know is that you can’t expect Oyebanji not to say what you said he had just said. It is normal in politics to reach out to those people who did not win. That is the game plan. Let us do what we want to do and at the end of the day we will call them. I learnt they are even trying to woo the aggrieved aspirants with some federal appointments. But the people are not stupid and they are not poor.
About the Author
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
