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Former Imo State governor, Chief Achike Udenwa, said he was disappointed that the South-East didn’t pick the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential ticket.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the BoT member of PDP explained why the PDP did not favour the South-east with its ticket. He also noted that it would be an arduous task for any third force to defeat the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) or the opposition PDP in the 2023 presidential election.
You have been an apostle of power shift to the South-East and you have seen the outcome of the PDP presidential election. Were you disappointed?
I was disappointed because we had expected the PDP to cede it to the South-East but they didn’t. We argued it strongly but at the end of the day they still threw it open, which became an all-comers affair. So, we lost out.
Can we say that the APC is more honourable than the PDP in abiding by the North-South power rotation?
Quite frankly, I was surprised over the change of heart by the APC. We could remember that the Chairman of APC, Abdullahi Adamu by Monday told Nigerians that APC had adopted the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan as the party’s consensus candidate. But less than nine hours or so, we started seeing a different thing, as some aspirants started stepping down for Ahmed Tinubu, including Northern candidates, and at the end of the day, Tinubu won the election to become the candidate of the party. So, it is a big surprise and till now, I don’t really know what the North is up to because it looked like the Northern governors defeated the president and chairman of the party.
PDP has breached its constitution, which spelt out North, South power rotation. How can Nigerians trust them to abide by the constitution of the country?
The issue is that PDP has another principle all together. The party said, yes, the rotational presidency is part of their constitution, but unfortunately, we have lost power for almost eight years now, and that what will guide them is winnability; how is it likely to win the election. So, they deviated from the principle of rotation and were now talking about a winnable candidate coming from any part of the country. So, that is change of policy, a change of attitude. However, we are yet to see whether that brings gains or disaster.
Talking about the candidate who is winnable, the party looked at the voting strength of regions. Will there be a time where a zone without a strong voting strength may be considered winnable?
Winnability is not completely determined by the voting strength; but also, the strength of the individual candidate or aspirants matters a lot. Your region could have a large voting strength, but if you as a person don’t also have that followership to be able to attract majority of that voting strength. So, it is not completely because of the voting strength of the North; it has to do with the voting strength of the North plus the capacity and acceptability of the candidate itself.
Talking about the capacity and acceptability of aspirants, are you saying the one that came first has more capacity on how to turn the country around than those from South-East?
It is not just the ability of the candidate itself; it also has to do with the voting strength. The two factors are necessary. It is not the one factor alone or the winning capacity of the aspirant alone; it a combination of the two factors.
The South-East has stood behind the PDP, hoping that a time like this, they would be rewarded. How do you think the South-East will support PDP again?
Those of us who are members and also leaders in the party from the South-East feel what you are talking of. We fought hard, we fought at all levels; we fought at committee levels, at general meeting levels; there was no level we didn’t fight for, we fought very gallantly, but we lost it. The party thought otherwise.
I’m not regretting our very strong support for the PDP all the time. We shouldn’t regret it. We are in a dynamic society. Tomorrow, it could be the other way round where PDP would clamour for a South-East candidate. Nothing is static; they are telling us that in terms of winnability, they needed somebody else from the North, who they think is winnable. You can also look at it and see the way the APC primary went. It presents a different picture again and it might even call for a rethink again about the strategy. This is about issues of strategy and it depends on what you wanted to pursue your goal. Nobody is absolutely right for anybody to talk about winnability and all that. What APC has done also makes nonsense of winnability. How has APC gone South when they known that the majority of the votes are in the North? Let’s watch and see how these things play out.
Very soon, the electioneering campaigns will start. What will be message of PDP in the South-East?
Things are very dynamic. It depends on what the next PDP offers the South-East. It depends of what we offer them, nothing is static. Supposing that PDP offers the ticket to the South-East and we can’t win the general election. Don’t you think we will have some regrets? Things are not too late yet. Let’s see what happens and let us see the way the party compensates the South-East for what they have missed out. Let us see how it plays out and be watching the activities of the APC. The important thing as PDP is concerned is that it should thrive to win because if it doesn’t win everything comes to nothing. All the calculations it has made come to nothing. So let the party win; that is the most important thing.
We have two candidates, Atiku and Tinubu from the two major parties. Do you think that Atiku can defeat Tinubu?
I cannot say I’m sure; you are never sure too. I wish we will win, and I wish we win, even though I felt disappointed that a s South-Easterner didn’t pick the PDP ticket, but I still wish we win. So, nothing is sure. You can’t even at this time rule out a third force springing up. You can’t rule that out completely. Things are very fluid and the way things are now, anything can happen; you are not sure of anything. Our party has to work very hard and has to be very tactical in their approach, both in the electioneering campaigns and the election itself. Our party has to be very tactical. If we are not, the other party can defeat us. You may be surprised that things can change and the two parties can fall by the way side.
Many Nigerians have criticised the 16 years of PDP and the almost eight years of the APC as a disaster, and that there is the need for a third force. If the third force springs up, do you think these two major parties would survive it?
The two parties you are talking about are already deep-rooted at the grassroots level. There is no ward, no is there a polling unit in this country that you will not see PDP and APC. They are very deep rooted and it will take a very, very big force, concerted efforts to uproot them. In as much as I’m not ruling out the possibility of it to happen, I think it will be difficult.
About eight years ago, APC did a lot, including massive propaganda to defeat the PDP. But now we are not seeing such coming from PDP to push out the ruling party?
We have a long period of electioneering campaigns coming up. By next week, all the parties will start submitting their nominations, and about August or so, electioneering campaigns will start. If it starts by August, and the election is February, you have a period of six months, which is a long time for anything to happen in politics. We can’t predict what is going to happen within this period. It is not a question of PDP not showing enough strength or force. We can’t say that now, it is too early because everybody has been concentrating on the party primaries. How do I win the primary and how do I get my man to win the primary? The real fighting for the election proper is yet to come. It is too early for you to conclude that PDP is probably not making enough noise or struggle. Time will come; it is going to be about six months of serious campaigns.
What is going to be the PDP’s cutting edge in its campaigns because Nigerians feel it created the rot in the country?
PDP has a lot of things still going for it. Whether we feel that 16 years of PDP didn’t favour us well enough or not, we still have to count on all the gains we made in the 16 years. Nigeria made some practical gains; we increased the level of power generation. What we are enjoying today in terms of phone network was got during that period. Imagine the progress we have made in the area of telecommunication. I wouldn’t have been talking to you now with the old system. The power privatization was there. In those 16 years, we did a lot compared to what has happened in the last seven years. We have not had anything good in the last seven years; it is all suffering, tears and sorrow. During the time of PDP, were you not enjoying security? Were you not able to travel easily? Today no place is safe.
In the area of our economy, what was our GDP then and what is it today? We are almost walking backwards. We cannot sustain this economy. Look at the level of our borrowing, when shall we repay back? It was during PDP’s time that the old borrowing was paid off; negotiated out. If we are talking of our gains, we must be very frank with ourselves. A lot happened during the PDP tenure. There were lot of achievements in the area of education, health services, etc. I wish the APC government had followed up. if they had followed up where PDP stopped, by now we would be somewhere better. By now you and I will not be running helter-skelter. Let us not out of propaganda say that PDP didn’t produce anything to the average Nigerian, it did. We had it a lot better than what we are having today. Even the level of corruption is astronomical now. We read in the newspapers that somebody ate N80 billion.
Every day, that is the type of thing you hear now. PDP set up the EFCC, today, what is the situation? See the level of corruption that we are having. I hope you are not one of those who believe that the 16 years of the PDP didn’t pay. It paid us as a country; we made a lot of progress even on the international scene, Nigeria was a country to be reckoned with in international affairs, but today, Nigeria is nothing. Even for you to say you’re a Nigerian now outside this country, you would look round before you agree that you are a Nigerian.
