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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
In the aftermath of the recent Supreme Court judgment that resolved the leadership crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), National Publicity Secretary of the party, Prince Dayo Adeyeye has issued the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) red card.
In this interview, Adeyeye said the APC administration has not recorded any meaningful achievement in the last two years that would warrant Nigerians giving them a fresh mandate in 2019.
He also spoke on how the PDP will send the ruling party packing in the 2019 polls.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court judgement on the PDP crisis, a lot of the leaders have been boasting that the PDP will regain power in 2019. How prepared is your party for the next general election?
We are ready! We are ready!! We were in power for 16 years. Then we had this setback in 2015 and this prolonged party crisis. Now that we have put the crisis behind us and given the fact that we are not a new party, we are very experienced in political campaigns and in management of affairs.
With the crisis behind us, we are ready any day, any time to face the APC. We are also confident because the APC is not a political party. It is just an amalgam of very desperate people. What I will call an amalgam of desperadoes whose sole purpose was just to push the PDP out of power. Now that they have achieved that, we have seen that they have no plans for Nigerians.
We have seen that they were not prepared for governance. We have seen that they are in disarray.
APC leaders were quoted to have said that despite the Supreme Court judgment, the PDP remains a discredited party. Even Lai Mohammed was quoted to have said the PDP was a dead party.
Lai Mohammed is noted for infamous statements which lack credibility and truth. He is just a propagandist. That is not the kind of model we are after.
The truth of the matter is that the PDP is alive. And the way Nigerians received that judgment, there was jubilation all over the country even among APC members, shows clearly that the PDP is alive.
They may not be able to see because some of them, when they were in government were deaf and blind. They were not able to see what Nigerians saw that the PDP has come alive and has come to take its place as the ruling party in Nigeria because they have been a complete disaster.
What legacy would Lai Mohammed say that APC has bequeathed to Nigerians since 2015.
It took them two years, to come up with their so-called economic recovery and social programme, which President Buhari launched only this year. After two years of being in government, which means that they came to government without any programme on how to govern the country.
That is why we have seen that the economy nose-dived from number one in the whole of Africa to number 10. They can’t dispute this. They can say anything they like, because they are propagandists. The same propaganda they used in 2015, no matter the amount of lies and propaganda they heaped on the PDP, it is not going to stick; they have been a monumental disaster.
Nigeria was the number one investment destination in Africa. Today, we are not even among the first 20. Youth unemployment has sky-rocked. The economy is in a parlous state.
Look, at the time we left government, the exchange rate was N170 to one dollar. Today, the exchange rate has increased because of incoherent policies.
If they want to tell you that the prices of oil dropped in the international market, I am telling you that the price had dropped since the time we were in government, but we were able to manage the situation.
Since they assumed power, they have been borrowing money without caution. And they have increased the debt profile of Nigeria so much so that they have said they are going to put a break to borrowing.
The government would completely have collapse if they have not been borrowing money from the international agencies. It would completely collapse because they have not added any value. Let us face it.
Programmes that were working, they stopped them. Projects that were being done by the PDP, they stopped them for more than one or two years. By the time they continued the projects, prices have sky-rocked beyond what they could cope with. So, the APC as far as the economy is concerned has been a complete disaster.
It is for Nigerians to judge. Nigerians know where the shoe pinches. The question we are going to ask Nigerians in 2019 is whether they are better off now, than they were in 2015. That is just the simple question.
Many see the defeat of the PDP in 2015 as self-inflicted. What measures have you taken to avoid the pitfalls of the past?
Absolutely, you are right. Well, we didn’t manage our affairs very well in the run-up to the 2015 general election. We are wiser now. We are going to ensure that we don’t have that kind of crisis again in our party. Everybody is important. That is why when we won the Supreme Court case, the first thing our national chairman said was that there was no victor, no vanquished. And that has remained our policy. We want everybody to remain in the party. We want to work together.
So, we are wiser and we are going to manage out affairs well.
I want to tell you that with the problem of the PDP coming to an end, that of the APC is just starting. It is inevitable.
They know that once PDP solves its problem, they will have their own problems because they are not a party. Those who left PDP and joined them are beginning to regret their actions and they want to come back. That is the truth. You can quote me.
Even though they came together to fight the election of 2015, they didn’t have a common ideology. They don’t have a common set of values and ideals.
So, they are not a party. That is why it has been impossible for them to fuse together. Each of the groups is still on its own – ACN, ANPP, CPC, New PDP. They are still in their various groups. They are not able to fuse into one united party. That is very clear.
So, because of that, many of them are going to retrace their steps back to PDP because they know there is nothing they are going to use to campaign in 2019.
What will the APC use to campaign? Will they say that they have improved the economy? Will they say they have stabilised the polity, when there are now centrifugal forces pulling the polity apart.
During the 16 years of PDP, do you hear of people embarking on secessionist drives? Did you see ultimatum being issued anywhere in the country? Those things never happened under the PDP. So, as far as the polity is concerned, they have been a complete disaster. They have almost torn the country apart.
Prior to PDP coming to power in 1999, Nigeria never witnessed democracy for more than six years at any point in time before it will collapse and military will take over but now we are in the 18th year of democracy, uninterrupted democratic experience.
Now they came in less than two years, we see tension everywhere in the country, with the fact that a lot of people no longer believe in the continued unity and coexistence of the people of this country. They no longer see why we should believe in our country, it is as bad as that, we didn’t see that happening under PDP.
When we come to the polity, they are a complete failure; nurturing of democracy, they are a disaster.
We were able to conduct free and fair elections in this country, particularly the one that even led to our being ousted from power, but since they came in in the last two years, it is either one election is inconclusive or the other and a lot of malpractices. They will fix the date of election, but because of malpractices, they will compel INEC to shift the date so as to favour them as we saw in Edo State. They manipulate a lot of things.
You can now see the impunity. This National Assembly will make laws and these laws, the president signed, you know law making is between the presidency and the National Assembly because any law passed by the National Assembly must still be signed by the president. If he doesn’t want to sign it, he will veto it and the veto can only be overridden by two third of the majority of the National Assembly members.
How confident are you that INEC will conduct free and fair elections in 2019?
We are going to put pressure on INEC. The international community will be monitoring the situation and I believe Nigerians will be more vigilant and they will hold INEC more accountable.
There will be greater monitoring of INEC by all of us collectively in the upcoming 2019 election because we cannot afford another four years of APC’s mis-governance.
So, I am confident that whatever they do, INEC will be compelled to do the right thing in 2019. Nigerians will rise up to defend their votes, it is as bad as that; people are very hungry in this country, things are very bad.
