Former Ogun State governor, Gbenga Daniel is a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national chairmanship aspirant. He spoke on his plans for the party, and why he remains the best choice for the party.
Why do you want to be national chairman of the PDP?
Since the collapse of the Berlin Walls and the emergence of China as the bastion of communism, there has been a convergence in the ideological disposition of major political parties that the economy should now be the focus, about the survival of our people. Some of us who have had opportunities to serve at various levels have also discovered this. But, when you look at the process by which people who go into service emerge, sometimes, it is faulty; I don’t want to say most times. And that affects the quality of people who they have presented to serve. And if you intelligently look at the quality of people who had served in our country, from the First Republic, the kind of personalities that occupied the space, even up to the Second Republic, you will understand my point. I can use my own state as an example. In the days when a person like Senator Abraham Adesanya was a senator, and the kind of personality that we have today, there is a decline. When you look at it across board, it is the same thing. We are witnessing a decline in the quality of representation and leadership. That is so because it is through the party that this emergence occurs. So, if we say we want to right the wrongs and create a better environment, get good people to participate and by extension, improve the quality of leadership, then, we need to organize the party, beecause the party is the engine room.
If you remember the politics of the Second Republic, for example, the UPN under the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was very well organised. They had their four cardinal programmes-free education, free medical care, rural integration, gainful employment.
It was clear. That was the Bible. It was not complex at all. Everybody knew the programmes. On the other hand, if you look at the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), they were also quite clear-the concept of one nation and they believed that the agricultural revolution was the way to go.
In moving forward, you could expect what to get from the governors of the NPN and the governors of the Unity Party of Nigeria then. The NPP of Dr. Nnamidi Azikiwe also had its own strategic focus. The party must be the engine room of governance. The party must provide the strategic direction. If it does not get it right, the government will suffer. So, the party must be the monitoring agency of governance, based on the party manifesto and what the party promised the people. My own take, therefore, is that, if we agree that the quality of governance is declining, as we look for good individuals and encourage them, there has to be a vehicle and that is the party.
And that is why some of us feel that, having had the opportunity to serve in executive position, we know where the issues are. If there is no good party, there can’t be any good governance. If we are all passionate about good governance, we have to take more than a passive interest in the party administration.
In concrete terms, what are the reforms you intend to carry out, if you become the national chairman of the PDP?
The very first thing is to return the party to winning ways. And in returning the party to winning ways, the first thing is to create a party that can relate with the aspirations of the people, or put differently, the party must be about the people. Power must be returned to the people, which mean that the era of impunity, which happened in various instances in the last few years, must be relegated to the background.
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