The newly elected chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Iyorchia Ayu, in this interview with newsmen, speaks about his party’s priorities, zoning, party funding, how it’s presidential candidate will emerge and his plans to lead PDP to Victory come 2023.
As the new national chairman of a former ruling party hoping to take over power in 2023, you have a lot of responsibilities; what are your priorities?
Political parties’ priorities are always to win. I have reviewed the reasons why we lost power in 2015, so I will work to unite the party, sharpen its programmes and market it to the electorate in a way that they will be prepared to vote for us.
In democracy it is normal for a political party to lose power. If we didn’t lose power, maybe we would have become dictatorial or complacent. There must have been something we were doing wrong or must have done wrong that the Nigerian electorate shifted. If we didn’t lose power, they won’t experience the policies and programmes of the other party. They would think there was something better than us. Thank God, we lost power. Today, Nigerians know better.
I believe we will re-energise the party and take over power again, not only at the centre, but everywhere in Nigeria. There is a lot of attention on power at the federal level. There was a time the PDP was controlling about 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. That is really my vision for this party. I believe that very soon we will have a very united and focused political party.
So much controversy has surrounded the zoning formula of your party, especially as it concerns the presidency. Will the PDP 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 would destroy the PDP. 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. Today, we have separated the zoning of party offices from the executive and legislative offices; and it is 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, the All Progressives Congress (APC), would allow electronic transmission of results 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 the PDP won the 2019 presidential election, but we had difficulties with the ruling government because they don’t believe in democracy. They were manipulating things. We have learnt our lessons. We will take the necessary measures to ensure that it does not repeat. There are many other things they did that were undemocratic, which Nigerians didn’t know, but we are aware. We have taken necessary measures to ensure that 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?
Nigeria is a very diverse country, but there’s unity in our diversity. Every organisation will have some conflicts here and there, but we are not a divided people, as I will always say. Nigerians are united. What they need is good leadership, justice, fairness. Once you have that in any organisation, I think Nigerians will rally round and move forward.
The last administration had started processes of reconciling the differences among members of the party. There was a committee headed by Senator Bukola Saraki to investigate the problems and reconcile members of the party. That process is on. I intend to build on that when I resume and they submit their report. Necessary reconciliatory processes will be undertaken to resolve issues in chapters in various states. We have already started by talking to people. I am happy to inform you that so many people have already indicated interest to return to the party – those who were aggrieved and left.
If you recall, a few days ago, a few former governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko, returned to the party. My colleague, Senator Rashidi 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 that before the end of the year, you will hear so many people coming back to the PDP because they now have confidence that the party 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 African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa has pockets of businesses that help them to finance the party, but governors are the main financiers of your 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. From 1998 to 1999, there were no governors. There were so many financiers of the party. The people who formed the party contributed to stabilise it. 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. People even contributed and paid for the N1million forms they had to buy in 1999.
What happened was that over the years, the governors and presidents we had made contributions to the party. But people were still contributing.
The ANC is over 100 years old, so there’s no basis for comparison. The party has evolved; and they did that in struggle. It is a party that evolved fighting apartheid in South Africa. They didn’t just depend on those businesses you referred to; they had massive contributions from outside. Even the Nigerian government gave a lot of money to the ANC, as well as many other people who supported the struggle against apartheid. As a student in the 1970s I participated in the struggle; we raised money and donated to the ANC. So they did not rely entirely on their businesses.
Going forward, the PDP will try to look into other sources of funding instead of depending on few financiers. We have contributions from other supporters of the party, which 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 the 36 states of the federation, including Abuja.
We will diversify our funding. 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 fund. Be assured that the PDP will not only be democratic in its politics, it will also be democratic in its funding processes.
– Trust