By Tony Adibe
A former Director-General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has said that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should be held responsible for One Party State in Nigeria not the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Okechukwu said this to journalists in Enugu on Sunday while speaking on the musings and public outrage blaming APC and by extension President Bola Tinubu, and not PDP for Nigeria’s slide to One Party State.
He dismissed the blame game on APC as the architecture of One-Party State in Nigeria as misplaced. Okechukwu, a Founding Member of APC, maintained that PDP members had been inflicted by the same humongous culture of impunity they planted in our political culture in their 16 years in power (1999-2015).
He appealed to Nigerians to go down memory lane and recall when the Tinubu-led defunct Action Congress (AC) and the Buhari-led defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) trudged on with one governor each.
“This is despite enticing stomach infrastructure being offered by the PDP government before the APC merger, that is the hallmark of a multi-party state,” he said. He noted that Nigeria naturally would slide into one party state when PDP the major opposition party with more than 10 governors were afflicted by stomach infrastructure syndrome.
“One without being immodest recalled how Engr. Buba Galadima, then National Secretary of CPC was arrested and hounded at eve of 2007 General Elections and offered all manner of carrots to abandon CPC and by extension Buhari. Or, how we trudged on with minimal family survival in the 13 years interval before 2015,” he said.
Okechukwu reminisced that since the APC merger in 2013, PDP members, even their Presidential Candidate, converted the APC to Rehabilitation Center, instead of adopting the prerequisite ingredients of opposition – resilience, grit and patience.
He added that it was because of a culture of impunity that made the PDP to off-handedly jettison the rotation convention of president from north to south and even Section 7 of the PDP’s Constitution, which made rotation mandatory.
“Imagine the breach of rotation convention by the PDP leadership not minding the unintended consequences, with the erroneous thought that His Excellency Atiku Abubakar will unlock the northern electorate from their dormitory to vote PDP in the 2023 presidential election.
“This is misjudgment pure and simple with its collateral damages, one of which is One Party State. They are at it again with fake arithmetic of South 17 years and North 11 years rule since 1999, as if Nigeria got Independence in 1999,” Okechukwu added.
When asked what the APC is doing with economic hardship in the country? Okechukwu noted that on the issue of economic hardship, there are lights at the tunnel. He said, “Am in league with IPMAN, TUC, and a host of others for reduction of fuel pump price, luckily it is already happening as NNPC has started the reduction process.
“Secondly, I held a meeting with our APC National Chairman, Dr Umar Ganduje, where he assured me that the Livestock Ministry will find a ranch solution to herders/farmers crisis which will allow farmers to access their farms. And also that President Tinubu is in deep negotiations with investors in the electricity chain, Eastern Corridor Standard Gauge Railways and Deep Seaports etc.
“It is my candid opinion that with the new mandate Tinubu gave the development commissions – South-East, South-West, South-South, North-West, North-Central and North-East – to shop for foreign investors, the economic hardship will be alleviated.”
