Professor Iyorchia Ayu, the newly elected National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has stated that if the old ruling party had not lost power in 2015, it would have been authoritarian or complacent.
On Saturday, November 6, Ayu told journalists in Abuja that if the current ruling party had lost, they would have thought they were better than the PDP.
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He said;
“My priority is for the party to take power. Political parties priorities is always to win. Therefore, I reviewed the reasons why we lost power in 2015 and going to work to unite the party, to sharpen the programmes of the party, market the party to the Nigerian electorate in a way that they will be prepared to vote for us.
“In a democracy, it’s normal for political parties to lose power. If we didn’t lose power, may be, we would have become a dictatorship or become complacent.
“To believe in democracy…there must have been something we were doing wrong or must have done wrong that the Nigerian electorate shifted. But today, if we didn’t lose power, they won’t experience the policies and programmes of the other party. They would think there is something better than us. Thank God, we lost power. Today, Nigerian people know better.
“And I believe we will re-energize the party and take over power again, not only at the centre, but in Nigeria, there is a lot of attention taking power at the federal level. There was time 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. So, that is really my vision for this party. We will unite the party as I have said and I believe that very soon, we will have a very united, a very focused political party.”
Ayu went on to say that the choice to zone party offices apart from executive and legislative offices was “extremely tactical.”
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Ayu also addressed the intra-party conflict, saying that required reconciliation measures will be undertaken to reconcile party members and resolve concerns in various states when the report of the Bukola Saraki-led committee was submitted.
The return of former governors Olusegun Mimiko and Rashidi Ladoja, according to the PDP Chairman, is the start of a wave of high-profile defections to come soon after the party astonished critics who predicted it would collapse after the convention.
Photo Credit: Getty
