‘Godfathers, Garrison Commanders Killed PDP’ - Dokpesi

Chief Raymond Dokpesi is Chairman, PDP National Planning Committee. In this interview, he identifies the problems facing the PDP and the way forward. Excerpts:

You were just crying the other time on behalf of the PDP. You even apologized to the nation that yes, we did things wrong, we didn’t follow our rules. But is it in your place to shed tears when actually, the time these evils were perpetrated you were not an official of the party and perpetrators of these offences had all gone. How did you get this status?

It is so obvious that people must take responsibilities for all the deeds of their predecessors, all those that are involved in leadership and those that are coming after then must also critically analyse where their predecessors have gone wrong. It is very clear that the Ike Ekweremadu report carried out a very incisive examination of the challenges that confronted the party and if you look at where the founding fathers positioned the party, you will see there is a sharp deviation from the objective. So, for those, who still believe in the PDP, for all those that want to rebuild and reconstruct the PDP, it is also important to know where we went wrong and reach out to those who are involved.

Let me also remind you that some years ago, PDP reform was introduced and championed by the likes of Mallam El-Rufai but failed to see the light of the day. My question is; those who left the party are you doing anything to bring them back to the fold?

Definitely we are looking at a very comprehensive reconciliation and first of all, we need to confess our sins and then beg for forgetfulness. Definitely after this conference, a massive effort would start to reconcile past members of the party. We will go ahead to recruit new members of the party and then, move the party forward.

One of the questions that people may want to ask is that is it not bad enough for the PDP as a brand. Can the PDP really rebrand itself? I mean, here is a party that has all the opportunity to endear itself to the people and they neglected, refuse or ignoreto take the ap­propriate step. What if Nigerians don’t even look at the face of the party and say we don’t want to have anything to do again with PDP. Have you not done bad enough that people may not want to look at your face again?

I would say that this assessment is just unfair because, If you look at the 15 years of the PDP ‘s reign, I will envisage that quite a number of Nigerians would agree that there were tremendous steps taken at improving the country. A lot of developmental projects were embarked upon by the party. There are quite a lot of improvements in the standard of life of the people and the PDP did not fail in those areas. The PDP failed in the area of internal democracy, level playing ground within the party. For instance there is no basis why PDP should lost Benue State, Ortom was a minister under Jonathan and went back to APC because the playing ground was not level. If you go back to Kebi, it is the same thing, if you go back to Katsina, same thing. It was internal conflicts. PDP mem­bers voted against PDP for one offence or the other. There was impunity in the party because some people just felt they were the god fathers, they were the garrison commanders and they were in position to determine the fate of every other person. And in that way and manner, we ran into challenges and so on. Look at the much more developed countries, will the Torries in the UK said, because they have lost power they would jettison their name? In the United State the Republican would not go under because they lost an Election, but they would go back to restructure, to identify what they did wrong. The PDP is the only party that still has its root up to the most remote part of the country. It is the only party that has membership across the entire country so, and therefore, all we just need to do is to re-invent ourselves, look at what we are confronted with and move the country forward.

In your effort to rebrand the party, a notable leader in the north, General IBB was stated to have declined to be a part of the rebranding process. Would this not affect your quest in the north?

This is not to my knowledge. I am not aware of the fact that General IBB declined. I personally have met with him and I am very clear that the General was very happy and enthusiastic that efforts are be­ing made to rebuild and rebrand the party to restructure it, identify the challenges and he personally expressed commitment that he would be at the conference.

I have a problem with this; I remem­ber you quoted in an interview I grant­ed you when you were the DG of the IBB Campaign Organization. Let me ask you the question again, You have a PHD in Marine Engineering and I told you then, that much as you can market your PHD, you cannot market an IBB because IBB is a bad product. Why do you want to carry baggages to the PDP continuously.Those whose imag­es are bad are those you are planning to rebrand or repackage. You are still carrying IBB, Ciroma. People who, the youths don’t want to listen to. What are you doing with these baggages that PDP cannot do away with?

I will definitely not agree with you in that perspective. The truth of the matter is that I started by identifying the major challenges that PDP had which was moving away from the vision of the founding fathers and there is no way you can talk about the formation of the PDP without people like Mallam Adamu Ciroma, without people like General Ibrahim Babangi­da, and all the other leaders that formed the G-18, the G-34 and you cannot also do away with the very vibrant youths that we have right now. What do we do? It is to create a symbiotic relation, some sort of synergy with those people to know where we went wrong. For example, Adamu Ciro­ma is not coming in to say he is contesting for a party office today. He is not saying he wants to run for a political office but his very presence would also mean that the la­bour of our heroes past are not be in vain. So, its like; guide us, look at what we are doing. So, what we are looking forward to is to actually get where we have gone wrong with the vision of these founding fathers and the younger ones will be carried along in the rebuilding process.

What is the role PDP will give to the young people? Will the elders take the back sit and allow the young elements to drive the process? Some persons may say, may be, the APC government seems not to have appointed the youths into various position and PDP may try to take the advantage by pushing the young people in the front. What are you to say?

The PDP in its 16 years of existence always recognize the youths and women as they both featured in critical positions and participated in governance, but I belong to a school of thought that says, that is not enough, a lot still needs to be done. For instance, you may say, a certain percentage of positions that we have in the executive, po­sitions that we have in government should be held specifically for the youths to be able to ensure the involvement of the youth. So, the PDP is taking the advantage of the youths, believing in the vibrance and the agility of the youths to propel the economy.

Of course, some of the youth leaders of the PDP are 60 years old in the past, it puts some question marks on this claim that you have for the youths for instance, we have elderly people being the youth leader of the PDP

Cuts in) I am not aware of that. I am aware the present youth leader of the PDP he is around 36.

But the one he took over from was above 60?

Chairman, we are particularly excited that the party is re-inventing itself and we are hoping that the party is going to put itself down now as they would not want to make any deliberate mistakes. Let us see what are the take-aways from the PDP National confer­ence?

Quite a lot. Just know that it is a conference, it is not a convention but we are supposed to be looking at all the issues that affect the party as a whole. We are going to look at the past administrations and see what is wrong whether in our policies, whether in the manifestoes and the constitution of the party, how we should relate to each other with respect, we look at new direction and so on. We would actually understand the fact that since the past 16 years of civil rule, we are in power, we are not used to opposition, so we will have to also adapt and prepare ourselves as the major opposition in the interest of the people that is paramount. The PDP is created to serve the interest of the people, unfortunately, along the way some people hijack the party and that is why we need to continuously make apologies to the people.

Now we have a bridge to be built; a bridge between the young and the old and the PDP is saying we want to open up our flanks to the younger ones so that when people who were leading before now are old and aging. What are the efforts and the lessons impacted on the younger ones. Are you going to introduce subscription on party mem­bers every month, every year so that they can have a say?

Definitely the PDP for the first time, started biometric registration of members and we did a pilot scheme in Edo State. The constitution of the party stated clearly that every member of the party should pay monthly dues to ensure that we are equal joiners. The party belongs to all of us. We are running away from this problem of delegate elections where people are changed overnight.

(Culled from National Mirror)