Chief Olabode George who is the former national Vice Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has expressed fears that the main opposition party may go the way of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) if it does not address the issues that forced the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi to dump the party.
George who spoke during a briefing in Lagos, pointed out that the party has to immediately commence a post-mortem which would include reconciliation efforts across the country and rectify its wrongs. He said the party has to go back to how its founding fathers wanted it to be.
He declared that any attempt to hide the issue within the party would be disastrous and that a committee made up of devoted and faithful party members needed to be formed in order to tour each state in the federation and determine what the issue was. He cautioned that this is not the time for anyone to be plotting to get into the party; instead, the problems the party is experiencing need to be resolved.
‘We have to find out why the likes of Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso left the party and deal with the issues. Imagine if Obi had not left, what would have happened? It would have been a walk over for us. No one owns the PDP, so no one can claim ownership. This is not the time for selfish ambitions. We need to save PDP from collapse.’
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‘It is human to make mistakes. When it happens like this, that we got an uppercut in the struggle for Nigeria, yes, the most sensible thing to do is to go back and do an in-depth analysis of what did we do wrong, and what did we do right, and then clean the Augean table and reposition the party for the future.
‘There should be no short approach, sweeping everything under the carpet is a foolish way to do it. We must set up a committee that will go around the country, state by state, and make inquiries and understand what happened.
‘How were the primaries conducted in each state? Who did what? Otherwise, what I am saying is that the party must conduct a meeting and we must set up a committee of very knowledgeable, loyal, dedicated and committed leaders to visit every state of the federation for their experiences, where they did well, we will know, where they didn’t do well, we will also know. So, they can bring the report and discuss it.
‘We must have a solid opposition to put them (All Progressives Congress (APC)) on their toes, and as long as I live, in the next four years, that will be the role we are going to play. If everybody is telling the APC and the president, what you are doing is fantastic, you know, it is the noise makers who are saying what the president is doing is fine that will be the first to condemn the president when he is out of office.
‘What I owe President Bola Tinubu now, forget about the differences between us, this nation must grow and when we are in the opposition, we must keep them (the APC government) on their toes for the good of our nation. That is the responsibility that I foresee as an opposition party.’
‘If there is no strong opposition the APC government will take this country on a journey ride, but when we give them constructive criticism, they will think twice before doing things, they will say before this party comes and slams us, let us consider all options, not a one-sided option,’ he said.