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From Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
The National Vice Chairman of a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (South-South), Chief Dan Osi Orbih, has said that the recent convention organised by the party in Oyo State was nothing more than a social gathering, describing the event as a resurgence of Amala politics in Oyo State which Ibadan, the state capital, is reputable for.
Orbih who spoke with Sunday Sun in Abuja, also said the crisis in the party was not about the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, but about political undertakers who want to bury the party.
While acknowledging that the party is going through a painful situation, Orbih, who bears the traditional titles of the Oduma of Uzairue Kingdom and the Kulukulu 1 of Ogoni Land, however said party members must sit up and join hands with those who have shown clear commitment to the survival of the party to rebuild the party.
Noting that there is nothing impossible within the political space, Orbih recalled that there was a time Lagos State was the only state the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) had in its kitty, but by expanding the frontiers of the party and reaching out, they eventually got to power.
Orbih spoke on these and other sundry issues.
As we countdown to 2027, what is happening in the PDP? There are clearly two factions in the PDP. Number one, the convention in Ibadan, your faction has not recognised it and you met on Sunday and you are going to do state congresses leading to a convention. Is that not illegal?
I rather take it from the angle of the convention, the so called convention…
The one in Ibadan?
Yes. The so called convention in Ibadan was illegal. There were two subsisting court judgements, not order, given at the Federal High Court in Abuja, restraining the party from going forward with the convention, asking the party to meet certain conditions as enshrined in the Electoral Act. Those things were not met. They went ahead, went to a state high court in Ibadan where they sued INEC and the court gave a restraining order that they can go ahead with whatever they said they were doing. But they knew themselves that a state high court has no jurisdiction over a federal body like INEC. They ought to have gone to a federal high court, knowing full well that there are judgements given in Abuja in respect of former governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, and judgement given in favour of those who took the party to court, saying they cannot go ahead with the convention except they are able to conduct congresses in some of the states where they did not. They went ahead to say they were doing an event in Ibadan. That event in Ibadan eventually turned out to be a social gathering of people of like-minds because the chairman of the convention committee, His Excellency, Fintiri, said it publicly at the ground of that event that he cannot proceed based on the court judgment and also, going by the fact that INEC was not present at the venue and cited several other reasons as stated in the Electoral Act, why it was impossible to go ahead to conduct the event in Ibadan. It was on the basis of that that he excused himself and he did not participate.
There is a process you follow to conduct a convention. The NEC will appoint the members of the convention committee and it was NEC that appointed Fintiri as chairman of the convention committee. That decision has not been revised by anybody. So, that is why I am referring to the Ibadan event as a social gathering of people of like-minds. And going by history, political history has shown that Ibadan is noted for Amala politics. It was said that at that event, the Amala that was served, there is nothing to compare to it in the history of politics in Nigeria. So, it was an event organised by the governor of Oyo State for his guests and there was lavish entertainment of those guests with Amala and Ewedu. That was all. Don’t ever make the mistake of calling it a convention.
Are you saying that the meeting that held on Sunday which BOT and NEC are saying no, go and conduct congresses that will lead to convention, is an illegal one?
That is the position of the law. You don’t disenfranchise states from participating in a national convention that will throw up officers that will manage the affairs of the party. So, the judgment that was given in Abuja was very clear on that – that for the party to go to convention, go and conduct congresses in states where you have not been able to conduct your congress because they need to have their delegates to represent them and exercise their right to determine who should manage the party at this critical time of the party.
There is a Supreme Court decision in the case of Anyanwu who went to Imo to contest the governorship election and returned to the party. The Supreme Court said the case shouldn’t even have come before them because the party has the right to regulate its own affairs. What is your take on this?
No, no, no, no. You know that when people want to cite cases to support their illegality, they can quickly look for any case. Even if it is not similar to the case at hand, they will draw on that case to support their illegal act. There is nowhere the Supreme Court said people should not abide by the Electoral Law, which is the binding law on the conduct of primaries, conventions and all that. The Electoral Law is very clear. There is nowhere in the case you are referring to where the Supreme Court said look, because it is an internal affair of the party, don’t follow the Electoral Law, don’t follow your constitution, do whatever you like. What you are saying in effect is that if we are in a party meeting and somebody carries a cutlass and murders another person, because it is within the party, it is an internal affair of the party, nobody should say anything about it? No. Don’t let us trivialise this very serious issue.
A party that is in opposition, fighting and wanting to take over government, must show example that they will abide by the rule of law if eventually they are given the opportunity to be back to power. It is not this display of disregard for court judgements, disregard for court orders that will make the party attractive to the electorate to get them back to power. So, it is very important. What we are having now in the PDP is actually a thing of regret. Since the party was formed, we have never had it so bad. We have a situation where we now have a governor, a serving governor of PDP, calling himself chairman of the governors forum, a forum by the time he took over as the chairman of the forum, you compare the number of governors PDP had and to what we are having now. I think the right thing to do is for Bala Mohammed to write a letter of resignation. You cannot just be parading yourself as chairman of governors’ forum and you are losing all your governors by the day. You saw yesterday, that of Plateau is on his way out and until the party is able to come together to identify the true enemies of the party, we will continue to lose ground. I don’t want us to find ourselves in a situation whereby we wake up one morning, the so-called chairman, Governors’ Forum, will announce that he has left the party. That is where we are going to. So, we have those who call themselves managers of the party in one way or the other, who are actually undertakers. They are political undertakers and they want to bury the party. That is why one must applaud the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory for what he is doing. He has said clearly that he will not leave the PDP – I will not allow tenants to drive away the landlords because in his case, since the formation of the party, in 1998, he contested for the chairmanship of a local government on the platform of the PDP. He won, he contested again, he won and ever since, he has been in PDP. But some of these people masquerading as leaders of the party, they were never there. They are latter day converts to the party. The chairman of the governors’ forum was a Senator in ANPP. It was his role during the crisis at the National Assembly, using the Doctrine of Necessity that gave him opportunity to serve under Jonathan’s government. The moment they appointed him minister, he abandoned his party. But look at Wike, he has been a minister in the government. He said I am in PDP, I am a member of PDP, but we will not allow strangers or tenants to drive away the landlords. And to that extent, I must commend him and I salute his courage for being able to stand for what is right.
The crisis we are going through now is about doing what is right and those who are saying you don’t need to do what is right. Keep doing whatever you are doing as far as it will satisfy your personal ambition.
Whereas you are saying that the minister of the Federal Capital Territory is saving the party, the impression out there is that the government at the centre is using him to kill the party and he will remain in the party until he buries the party. What is your take on this?
You see, this is the narrative of the enemies of the party. The true lovers of the party will tell you that Wike has always fought for the party. When we had crisis during the time of the former governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff, he stood by the party. Is it Wike that is asking them to disobey court orders and go ahead with a social gathering in Ibadan, calling it a convention? Is it Wike that is responsible for lack of leadership, leading to governors leaving everyday to join other parties? We have a situation where those who say they are leading the party, they have not been able to attract one popular or significant politician, somebody with influence in the politics of this country, to the party. Instead, those we have are leaving. Do you attribute that to Wike? We have a situation where before now, through the effort of the man you are calling; he brought in Ortom when Ortom was having issues in APC. He influenced Ortom joining the PDP in his time as governor. In his time as governor, he prevailed on some of us who said Obaseki was not a good man and we should not allow him to come and take the ticket of PDP, that he was going to destroy whatever that we have been able to achieve in Edo State in PDP. But he prevailed on us, he said this is a serving governor, we will be adding more governors to our party, please let him get the ticket. So, when he was governor, I was playing a very big role in building the party. He brought in Ortom; through his influence, he allowed Obaseki into the party to take the ticket in Edo State, and he brought in Tambuwal. All these were APC governors. Now, we have a situation that PDP governors are leaving PDP to join APC and people are grandstanding, calling themselves chairmen of governors forum, chairmen of BOT and all sort of bodies. What have they been able to do for the party? They have not been able to retain the present membership of the party. Instead, we are losing them to other political parties. And even those who have stepped out to say let us save the party; you are issuing useless papers you call them certificate of expulsion, making it look like a child’s play. Here is a party, you are losing influential members of the party by the day and at the same time, you are expelling those who claim, who still probably refer to themselves as members of the party. Tell me one single influential politician that they have been able to bring into PDP. Instead, we are losing people. We are losing people. Even Atiku they supported during the presidential election had since bolted away from the party. So, you have a situation where we now have undertakers managing the party and they want to destroy the party, even removing those who are committed and loyal to the party and at the end of the day, we will wake up one day and they will say they have left the party. These are nomadic politicians who like to move from one place to another.
The saying out there among people is that your faction is deliberately doing this…
(Cuts in) Just say the party. We are the party. They are the people doing faction. They are swimming in an ocean of illegality in destroying the party. We are the ones saying let’s work by the party’s constitution; let us walk with the Electoral Law, let us work with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. They are saying you don’t need to follow this processes, let’s do whatever we are doing. And you cannot build something on illegality and you expect it to stand. So, you see, the problem we have is that people don’t like to hear the truth. The truth is what I am telling you now. I have challenged you to tell me one influential politician that they have attracted to the party. Instead, we are losing members everyday – losing governors, losing senators, losing speakers of houses of assembly, losing members of state houses of assembly across the country and you are saying that oh! These people, we must stop them in their track because they are on a mission of destruction. They don’t want PDP to exist.
What is being said out there is that…
(Cuts in again) What is being said out there should not supersede the bare facts that I am putting out here.
What they are saying is that this crisis is deliberately being contrived to stop PDP from having a presidential candidate in 2027. Is it true?
No, no, no, no. Let me tell you, do you want us to start talking about what they are saying or we talk about the reality, what we are faced with today? I want to tell you one truth: this people, all of them making noise here and there, what have they done for the party? We had elections, the last elections; let us use the last elections to judge. Wike delivered all the members of the state house of assembly; he delivered on National Assembly, and he delivered on governorship. Of course, for obvious reasons, he said I was not going to support the presidential candidate and there is nothing, there is nowhere you practise the presidential system of government that compels you because you are a member of a political party, if you go through a presidential primaries, if you don’t emerge, there is nothing that compels you that you must support whoever is the candidate. That is why in America, after primaries, they reach out to all the contestants. Sometimes, they will even compromise in terms of policies so that they will agree that look, if you agree you are going to address the health challenges facing the nation based on my own preferred programme, while I concede A, B and C to you, health is crucial to me. If you want me to be part of your government to support you to win this election, let us agree on the agenda. That is what happens in America and other countries where presidential system prevails. Well, in our last election, some people thought it was a done deal. So, they did not bother to reach out to make peace with those who were aggrieved with the process that threw up the candidate of the party. That was the beginning of the problem. And now, you start saying all sorts of stories. As we are talking today, the man who got the ticket had since resigned his membership of the party, but Wike is still a member of the PDP. The man, his preferred choice for the vice presidential ticket, was the first to leave. He had since resigned and pitched tent with the APC. Wike is still in PDP. So, let us not project the story because every time you keep saying the story out there. Let us face the facts before us because some of the stories out there too is that we now have people who are enemies of the party, when they come home and there is no food on the table, they will blame it on Wike. If their children fail exam in school, they will say it is Wike. They are just making the man more popular. But the truth is that these people have shown clearly that they don’t love our party.
This crisis revolves around people you can call either former friends or friends. Why is it difficult to reconcile them?
All the meetings we’ve had, even the one you just referred to that held few days ago, at every meeting, Wike keeps saying let us save our party, we are open to conversations, we are open to reconciliation, we are open to discussions. And let me tell you, before the Ibadan thing, a committee was set up. There were efforts to see how we can come together. They set up a committee from the Board of Trustees, the conscience of the party. They said look, let us look at how we can come together and save the party. They made recommendations to the party and they said don’t go forward with this so called convention, let every person come together. Let us put together a caretaker committee that will work while we are busy reconciling ourselves, that nature does not allow a vacuum. They said look, it is going to take a little while to bring every person together and let us agree on how to move forward. It was agreed. They saw Wike, they saw all the contending leaders in the party and the Board of Trustees came out with a recommendation that we should not go on with the convention, we should reconcile, we should set up a caretaker committee comprising all the principal actors and they should send nominees into the caretaker committee that will eventually organise congresses in these states before we do our convention. Those who felt that today, they are now the all powerful people in the party, threw away the recommendation from the BOT and they said they were going ahead. There were court judgements. The judgements were very clear that we should not go further. They ignored this court judgement. So, it is not about Wike. It is about a group of persons who now appear to be political undertakers, who are on a mission to bury the party. Even the caucus of the party at the National Assembly came over. They met with Wike. They agreed, they said no, no convention, let us reconcile, and let us set up a caretaker committee. They ignored those who were speaking with the love of the party at heart and they went ahead to have a social gathering in Ibadan where they started announcing the expulsion of some people. Here, I have told you, we are in a situation where those we have are leaving. The ones that are left, you are even saying you are expelling them. You have not brought in one new person into the party. It is a very painful situation the party is going through. And for the younger ones who see the party, thinking that the party will provide them a platform to contest future election, I feel very sorry for them because the picture, what we are seeing, the handwriting on the wall, is not painting a picture that is encouraging. You see, even Governor Adeleke, he has also resigned from the party. He is looking for a platform to contest election and you want to tell me that all these that we are referring to today, they don’t mean anything?
Can we adduce that these governors are just undertakers of PDP?
That will be a sweeping statement. You cannot say all of them. Even yesterday here, we had a very lively conversation with a serving governor who is genuinely showing interest in bringing every person on board and saying look, every person must bend a little bit backward to accommodate every person. We had this lively conversation and at the end of the day, we told him there is need to tell your colleagues, those who are remaining, if any, because like I said, I don’t want a situation we allow this crisis to continue till Bala Mohammed will wake up and tell us he too has left. I mean, you cannot be driving a car on a journey with passengers in the vehicle and you say you are heading to Lagos and these passengers have paid their transport fare to go to Lagos. But because of your bad navigation when it comes to gallops, the rough manner the driver is driving the vehicle, you see some people will get to Benin, they will come down and say no, I am no longer going on this journey. Others will get to Ore, they come down and some will get to Ijebu Ode, they will come down. A driver, a good driver, will not like passengers disembarking before their final destination as a result of the way he is driving the vehicle. So, we have a situation where passengers in the PDP vehicle are disembarking because they believe those driving the vehicle are not driving it well.
Going by the crisis on ground, do you think the PDP will survive till 2027?
Well, I am not a prophet of doom, but I must tell you that we must sit up and join hands with those who have shown clear commitment to the survival of the party to rebuild this party. There was a time ACN that eventually led to APC, there was a time that Lagos was the only state remaining. But there were people who said no, we will not go anywhere, we will remain here. They stayed back, they started expanding the frontiers of their party, they reached out and today, their party is in government. I also don’t support those who are running away from the party, thinking that oh, there is crisis, we need to contest election, and the party will not be strong enough to do election. We should all stay back like Wike has said, I am not going anywhere, I will fight within PDP to correct the wrongs in the party. Let us adopt this attitude. We can have disagreement, we can have our differences, but let us stay in the party and resolve those differences and disagreement to strengthen the party and build upon where we are today. If the then ACN could have only one state and today, they are controlling almost all the states, even states that were controlled by PDP are joining them, we should learn a lesson from being consistent and being conscious of the fact that hard times will always pass away and we can stand and rebuild.
ACN went into coalition with other parties. Is the PDP looking towards that, maybe merging with ADC?
Today, PDP is fighting for its soul and survival. So, until PDP survives before you talk of coalition or merger. As it is today, you are referring to those who are determined to destroy the party as faction even though I have corrected you to say we have one party and the party is where we are.
There is no faction in PDP?
You see, in every organisation, you will have some people who can decide to call themselves names, especially those who are on a path of destruction. You cannot deny them their right to call themselves whatever they are calling themselves. But those of us who truly love the party, we believe that no matter how bad the situation may look, PDP will rise again.
The issue of anti-party, it is like it is no longer in our political lexicon or dictionary in Nigeria because there are some of you who are either in PDP, but in their respective states, they are stakeholders in other political parties. What do you have to say about this?
Again, it depends on what you call anti-party. If you have elected leaders, having the mandate of the party to manage the party to victory in a general election, they put aside the constitution of the party, they put aside the rules governing primaries and they drive the process towards achieving one objective. You are not calling those people doing anti-party. When people react to what they have done, deny people their legitimate right to aspire to certain positions, you say oh, why are they reacting, it is anti-party. We must address the fundamental issue of people not abiding by the constitution and the governing processes that lead to choice of candidates. When you totally ignore them and you do what you want to do, when people react, you say they are doing anti-party. The people doing anti-party are those who will disregard the constitution and the party guidelines that show clearly what should be done. If the party says if the chairman of the party is from the North, the presidential candidate should come from the South; if the guidelines say that if the presidency has been in the North, it should come to the South, you disregard it and you do exactly what you want to do, nobody is accusing you who have totally sidelined the guidelines and the party’s constitution, then when people react, you say it appears anti-party is no longer an issue. Let us place the blame on those actors who will ignore party guidelines and constitution to drive the process to achieve their selfish end.
What is the state of affairs in Edo? Is the former governor, Obaseki still the leader of the party in that state?
I don’t know how you call somebody a leader. Governor Obaseki cannot lead anything. Obaseki was in APC. He was in APC, he could not lead APC. He left APC destroyed in a crisis and joined PDP. He joined PDP, he left PDP destroyed.
But he left as PDP governor…
No, no, no, no, no. Obaseki left as PDP governor, he could not retain power for PDP in Edo State because of his attitude and conduct when he was governor. He did so much damage, thinking that his tenure will never come to an end. Today, his tenure has ended. He is in exile, self exile, moving from one country to another. We need a PDP leader who is resident in Nigeria, who will freely go to the state and talk to people for people to be back to the party. Obaseki cannot lead Edo PDP.
