Nigerians Voted Change, Not Acts Of Masturbation, Iwuanyanwu Tells President Buhari

Known for his blunt and never compromising attitude to issues in the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Chyna Iwuanyanwu, says for PDP to survive, all its current leadership must resign for a new order to be instilled. He further describes how impunity and lack of internal democracy cost the party the general elections. He spoke to STANLEY NKWOCHA

Your party said they will rule Nigeria for 60 years and suddenly crashed after 16 years on the saddle. What happened?

I speak to you as a genuine patriotic Nigerian, because, Nigeria is more important to me than any political party. And you have to be a Nigerian first before you can be PDP a chieftain or APC chieftain.

The truth of the matter is that PDP had all the opportunities in the world to drive the democratic process and provide Nigeria with purpose -driven leadership, for even 100years. If you check the foundation of the party, a group of genuinely patriotic Nigerians from across the country came together to confront a most vicious military government in order to bring democracy and promote the ideals of unity and progress. Along the line, that vision was derailed or rather corrupted, so the loss from 60 years to 16 years didn’t come to some of us as sudden; we saw it progressively coming.

The cardinal principle upon which PDP was formed is zoning. When Yar’Adua died, some of us felt that the North should be allowed to complete their tenure. Of course we were overuled, called rebels and all sort of names. And you can’t shut down any part of this country from power. We believed that zoning provided opportunity for access, and anything that happened to zoning will scuttle the unity of this country and threaten stability and development.

When Jonathan became president, we thought there was an agreement for one term to complete Yar’Adua’s tenure. But as we were doing that, we were losing people, particularly from one section of the country. That’s why when I hear that there is a conspiracy of the north, I laugh it off as after all, politics is about conspiracy, and it’s a game of interest. So basically, our loss didn’t come to me as a surprise.

We were part of the last national convention. The basic tenets of democracy were not upheld anymore, because there was more impunity, imposition and all that. So it didn’t come as a surprise, what you sow is what you reap, garbage in garbage out.

At a point, PDP was being run like a business enterprise by some board of directors and ownership being played out. Instead of Peoples Democratic Party, we now had the Democratic Party without the people. So the people started looking elsewhere and ran into this ‘changeless change’ we now have. But it was inevitable as some of us saw it coming. It’s only those who perpetrated the atrocities within PDP that should be responsible for what happened to us.

What atrocities specifically?

There was impunity, manipulation and imposition of candidates against the popular will of the people. The people were not allowed to choose. Abuja will sit and decide who is a counsellor, local government chairman. National convention cannot be held, the result is known and people adopted for offices, while others were allowed to run around town and waste their time while their names are excluded in phony manners. Internally, there was no democracy and Nigerians saw it.

Democracy is about the people and once the people feel that you are not carrying them along but moving against their interest, of course they will go for a change, whatever that means.

Can the party redeem itself now?

Well, yes! What we need now is not just the cosmetic or symbolic removal of national chairman or the BoT but what we need is a total re-engineering, overhaul and re-branding of the party, to inject new people, so that they can bring new ideas. But as long as it is these same people who have held the party hostage and brought the party on its knees (they are the ones reviewing the party and want to hold congress), then it will not work. We need to bring on board a lot of people who are disconnected and completely eliminated. Amongst 170 million people, you can’t come to a situation where 50 or 60 people are ruling a patriotic party.

In clear cut terms, can we get your model for redeeming the PDP?

I think that the whole national executives should resign and the executives should do a proper congress up to the national convention, so that the will of the people will prevail. Let people choose their leaders. Secondly, the board of trustees are supposed to be the conscience of the party and there are so many people who are there that have no business being there at all. In any case, some of them have left to other political parties. So I think we should re-energise and bring in credible people, men of honour and integrity, who have the capacity to act as the conscience of the party into the BoT. A situation where a member of the board of trustees is contesting for the senate is a conflict. Who would we run to when there is a conflict with other candidates? A situation where a member of the board of trustees is a member of the national executives amounts to duplication if there is any issue, the person takes undue advantage. So a BOT should be a platform for the creme de la creme and compose of the founding fathers and the embodiment of the vision of the PDP, so that other people can also take other positions.

If we change the BOT, change the leadership, from ward to the national level, then we look into our manifesto and make it more populist. The political climate is changing. In 1999, the mantra was let the military go, right now, the people are asking for the dividends of democracy and it must be seen in the manifesto.

As you advocate for some of these changes, the crisis in Anambra and Kogi PDP does not suggest change on the part of the party does it?

I am totally disappointed that anybody wants to go to any state and be doing congress or convention now. Once the head is rotten, the body follows, it’s the same syndrome. So what we are asking for is that there should be a committee set up to review the party. I have no confidence in the previous committee and I have said it before, because it is the same people that have held the party hostage that are members of that committee. They should ask people across what went wrong and we will tell them. Not those who inflicted the wrong, it’s like being the judge in your own case, it cannot work. That is why they have the audacity and impunity to be talking about congress. No, we have to first put our house in order, get a template to find out where we went wrong, ask our people questions and then develop a blueprint. There has to be a roadmap. It’s not selecting Anambra today, Imo tomorrow by the same people. If we continue what we were doing with the same people, we will get the same results, that’s my fear.

Two months down the line, what do you make of Buhari’s presidency?

Well I think there was an overwhelming clamour for change, and I had warned that change for the sake of change is not it. If we are going to change for the better, then it’s good for us. I have also said that the only good thing about APC, is the pedigree of Buhari and Osibanjo. Every other person in the APC is like another PDP member. And two trees cannot make a forest in a population of 170 million people. So what you are seeing now is Buhari trying to grapple with the issue of leadership, he wasn’t prepared as far as I am concerned. For instance, what they called merger, if they have truly merged, this fragmentation within the party of CPC tendency, new PDP and others which is manifesting now would not have been there. So there was a conspiracy and not a merger. If we merge, then the identities of the merging entities will diminish, but that is not the siuation now. What we are seeing now, is a contention within APC, to show you that there was no merger. It will take some time before it settles. But Nigerians voted for change and they are in a hurry. There is an urgent need for that change, not the masturbation of “I reduce my salaries” or symbolisms of “I didn’t buy new cars”. What about your allowances? What about security votes that runs into 500 million naira a month? Why don’t you talk about that one rather than a salary of 7 to 12 million?

We have to go for the real thing. I trust that Buhari has the pedigree and the capacity, but it’s not all about one person. He has to engage people who share his vision and that’s where the problem lies.

Let’s talk about your state – Imo State. Again your party got its nose bruised at the last gubernatorial election in the state. Is it res judicata for the PDP in Imo State?

I can tell you that I was involved in the entire election in Imo State. Imo is a PDP state, but the culture of impunity and this business template is the problem. What I saw was satanic extortion in the name of primaries. A kind of ‘Those who have money can buy, highest bidder situation’ where they were not thinking about win ability, integrity or acceptability. They just collected money from somebody and announced the person as a candidate. The corruption in the system is what the problem is and I think everybody is on the ground now. Formally, they will lose and then come to Jonathan at the federal level and be eating, now they have been shut out at Abuja, they’ve been shut out in Imo state, so they are forced to think now. I can tell you that there is thinking going on. Imo is a PDP state and for as long as they don’t do it right, they will continue to lose during the election. But the flesh is somewhere else and the spirit is somewhere else. In spirit, Imo is a PDP state.

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