• Why we expelled Wike, others • Govs defection to APC won’t determine outcome of 2027 presidential election

A public affairs analyst and Convener of the Reset Lagos Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Adetokunbo Pearse, has said that the number of governors does not determine the number of states that a candidate will win to emerge Nigeria’s president. According to him, in 2023, many state governors didn’t win their states for their respective presidential candidates.

In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Dr Pearse noted that President Bola Tinubu would lose the 2027 presidential election because Nigerians who have never experienced this magnitude of hardship and insecurity would make sure he doesn’t return for the second term.    

How can you describe the state of the nation?

The state of the nation has never been so deplorable economically; in terms of security, in terms of unity. The nation has never gone through anything like this before. It is unheard of, it is sad, it is very unfortunate.

The economy is in shambles, insecurity is more severe than ever before, and the trust in the government has been lower than ever in the history of Nigeria.

Nobody trusts the government because the government seems to be acting in a way that gives the impression that not only does it not care about Nigerians; in fact, it is as if it has made itself an enemy of the country, determined to destroy this country.

It is strange. It is so shocking that we are almost speechless. You know what they call protest fatigue in psychology? When you’ve been struck so many times, or you protest so many times, you get tired after a while. This is the way. We feel now we are almost in a stupor in Nigeria. Everything is upside down.

We are borrowing more money than we can afford, and what are we borrowing the money for that we are throwing the country into debt, which we will not recover from in a hundred years? We don’t see what we are borrowing the money for.

We don’t see any improvement in the infrastructure. We don’t see any improvement in quality of life. We don’t see anything being subsidised. We don’t see anything.

So, the cost of living has gone through the roof. Nobody is confident travelling even from one state to the other, not to talk of going from north to south or south to north. There are many states in this country where terrorists are in control of half of the whole state. We’ve never had it so bad.

President Tinubu recently said he would continue with the legacies of Buhari. What do you think the legacies of Buhari are?

The strange thing about President Tinubu is that he never told us to expect anything better. When he was campaigning for this presidency, he actually said that he would continue with the footsteps of Buhari.

And that is to say, continue to appease terrorists, continue to borrow money, continue to print money, continue to damage the economy, continue to run a nepotistic and tribalistic administration, and that is what Tinubu has done. So Tinubu has not lied.

You remember, Wike, of all people, said it before. He said, ‘when Tinubu said he was going to continue with the work of Buhari’, he asked the question – continue with inflation, continue with the continuing rise of our cost of living, continue with insecurity, continue with lack of development of infrastructure?

So, that is what Tinubu has done. And guess what? Tinubu has gone further than Buhari in terms of destroying this country. The north, under Buhari, was unified, even though they were unified for themselves, not to support the whole of the country. But now, under Tinubu, the north itself is upside down. Everything is in disarray. Most states are being under the control of terrorists and bandits today than under the days of Buhari.

Buhari borrowed money that crippled the economy. Tinubu has done even more than that, and has borrowed more money than Buhari.

Something else that Tinubu has done, which is frightening, is that he has compromised the judicial system. When you see judiciary at the annual meeting singing the praise of the president – on the president’s mandate it will stand, not on the Nigerian national anthem, then you know that the country has gone to the dogs. We are in hell in this country right now.

I mean, the judiciary is the last hope of the common man, of everybody, of every citizen, and everybody who comes to this country. This is why you are going to have a dwindling, a drastic reduction in direct investment from abroad because a country whose judiciary is so corrupt, as has been acknowledged, and ascertained by the world organisations, what can you do? Nothing is safe.

Today, they say one thing that you can take your investment out, you can take 40 per cent out. Tomorrow, they change it, they bankrupt you overnight. So, what do you want to come and do in a country like this?

Also, in a country where the only state that probably is safe to some extent, right now, is Lagos State. Not even Oyo State, not even Ogun State, not to talk about the South-South and South-East. And God forbid if you want to go to the north. 

INEC has been compromised by Tinubu. The police have been compromised; the police chief is an errand boy for the president.

The legislature is rubber-stamp because the president of the Senate is a man who does not even deserve to be in the Senate because he didn’t run for the Senate. He was running for president, and when he lost, the man who won senate primary election of that district in Akwa Ibom was cornered and blackmailed and forced to give up his position to Akpabio. This same president used his influence to give it to Akpabio. It is now that we know his compromise of the INEC. Yakubu, the chairman of our electoral commission, is now an ambassador nominee. That is his reward for rigging the election for Tinubu in 2023. So, what more can you say about Nigeria. Which area do you want to look at?

The security structures have been dismantled. That is where we are. Now, our tax data, which should be a property of the country and guarded secretly, jealously by the country has been compromised by the president. FIRS has now gone into contract with France.

We have never had it so bad and we are drifting quickly into a failed state, but our own failed state is just going to be more and more suffering for the people in terms of the economy, in terms of quality of living, in terms of security, and in terms of mutual trust in the country. Nobody trusts anybody. Once the head is rotten, everybody now feels justified to do anything they want to do. Cultism, which was beginning to decrease in the South-East and South-South has gone up now because there is no internal security. Nobody is stopping anybody from committing crime. That’s where we are; the moral fabric of the country is gone

But the PDP is still haemorrhaging in spite of every effort to make it live…

The PDP is not bleeding not to talk of haemorrhaging. The party is 100 per cent healed. After the convention of last November 15 and 16, PDP is back totally in control of the organisation.

What is wrong with PDP now? Nothing, it’s only the man that we have expelled who is not a member of the party, who keeps talking about that when he was a member of the party all these people who are now sacking him were not even members of the party. Yes, you were a great lover of the party. That’s in the past, and now you have become a hater of the party; you want to destroy the party, but we said, ‘go, we have finalised the divorce’’. There is nothing wrong with the PDP. Please, don’t join these people who say that PDP is haemorrhaging, suffering. Everything is under control. We have a complete national working committee headed by a dynamic National Chairman, Dr Turaki. He is in charge, he is focused; his ideas are very progressive, and we are moving forward. Arapaja is the national secretary; our national publicity secretary is doing fantastic work. For the first time in the history of party, all the publicity secretaries of the party in every state are working now in unison with the national publicity secretary. Once the PDP goes through with its national convention, where we would have the presidential primaries, which probably should be in May or June next year, you will see that everything will become clear to everybody that the PDP is in charge, focused, stronger and more united than ever, and more ready than ever to salvage Nigeria; to save Nigeria from the chaos that Buhari brought to us, and the greater chaos that has been enhanced by Bola Tinubu. That is where we are. We are ready to save Nigeria. We are ready to take over government and move Nigeria to far into economic development and security than ever before.

That’s where we are now.

A situation where some members of the PDP bought a media space in the newspapers to announce the expulsion of some executives of the party, another faction did the same to expel those who expelled them. You have PDP expelling PDP. When will this comedy end?

It is a comedy if you don’t understand what is going on. If The Sun newspapers sacks you today and you go out and say, you have sacked the newspaper company, it becomes a comedy, but the joke is on you as you cannot sack the company because you don’t have the authority, you’re just fooling yourself. That’s exactly what Wike and co have done. First and foremost, before they were finally expelled, the National Secretary at the time, Anyanwu; Bature, and the legal secretary, all the people that were perceived to be undermining the party were suspended. Do you know how the suspension happened? Out of the 18 members of the national working committee, 14 expelled four, and the four now went out and said they expelled the 14. Does that make any sense? That is where the comedy is. So, the comedy is a joke on those four. No, PDP did not expel PDP. Some members from the harem; some saboteurs within PDP were expelled from the party and the saboteurs now decided to go and buy media space and said they expelled the party. How can you expel the party?

There’s only one PDP; there cannot be two PDPs. When did they have a convention to elect themselves into those positions? At least you saw our own convention with over 3,000 delegates coming from all over the country to make a pronouncement. Please, don’t compare us to people who have been sacked from the party. They are not PDP and they are not even members of the party.

PDP has zoned its presidential candidate to the south. What’s informed that?

In 2023, according to the constitution of the party, when we have our national convention as we did in last November 15 and 16 in Ibadan, we elected a national chairman, national secretary, national publicity secretary, and all the 18 members were elected that day.

Now, according to the agreement in the constitution, which was not adhered to in 2023, once you have done this election that comes first, where Dr Ayu was the national chairman of the party. The agreement was as he himself, Ayu was recorded on video, saying that he understands the agreement that if a northerner emerges from the presidential election which will come in a few months after his own, he would step down. That was the agreement, but unfortunately, Ayu reneged on that gentleman’s agreement. That is why the G5 governors said we cannot have Ayu as a national chairman from the north, and Atiku, who has emerged from the election as a presidential candidate, is from the north, therefore Ayu, you must step down. Unfortunately, Atiku could not get Ayu to step down. That’s what caused the problem.

To avoid that now, the party has clearly said that we have a national chairman from the north, Dr Turaki; the presidential is coming to the south.

So, anybody from the south – South-East, South-West and South-South can come and contest.

Analysts say that Tinubu has won the election before the election day.

The South-South that used to be the backbone of the PDP is gone to APC, likewise almost the South-East. There are two states that are not APC in the South-West. The North Central is almost APC. Of the 13 states in the Northwest and Northeast, eight are APC. What is the hope of PDP?

There are two ways to look at it. In the first place, I can give you statistics from 2023 presidential election. The number of governors does not determine the number of states that you will win for president. It has nothing to do with it. Let me give you an example: In 2023, APC had 22 states governors, Tinubu won in only 12 of those states. PDP had about 12 governors, Atiku won in only five or six of those states. The most dramatic of all examples is Peter Obi, who had no governor at all and won 12 states, including Lagos and Abuja. So, it is on record that the issue of governor is just a smokescreen; it’s just optics to give the impression that we have won everything.

In fact, there are three things to look. The second one is that, look at all these states that the governors are defecting – When former Governor Ifeanyi Okowa defected with his Governor Sheriff to APC,  and they went to tell the members of the PDP in their state that they are going to APC, with the intention of taking them along, but the people told them that you’re on your own; you can go, but we are not going with you. It is only the officers that they appointed and their house boys that they took along with them, but over 80 per cent of the members of the party didn’t go with them. The same thing happened in Akwa Ibom , and it is happening everywhere, even now with Fubara. Whether he is APC or PDP, it doesn’t matter. The people of River State are voting for PDP as they’ve always done.

Thirdly, don’t forget that for every state that the sitting PDP governor has defected to APC, when the primaries come in June, we are going to have election in those states and PDP candidates will come out and get a governorship ticket. If a former PDP governor, who has gone into APC, if he can, which is unlikely get the APC ticket, he will run and we will get our own candidate in PDP, then we see what happens.

We know that Nigerians are watching. They are hungry, they are poor, they are insecure, they are unhappy with what is going on, they have never been as unhappy as we are now. This is an unhappy regime.

Therefore, when the election comes, let us see; it will be an abomination, a tragedy if Nigerians decide to vote for these people who have destroyed this country since the days of Buhari, and they have made it even worse. So, who is going to vote for Tinubu?

All these things he is doing – oh I’ve got this governor,  I’ve got that governor, is  just to give the impression that when he rigs the election, they will say, yes, after all he got all these governors.

Nobody is going to allow anybody to rig the next election. We are going to go to the international criminal court to deal with this issue this time. Nigeria is already in the eye of the international community; they’re watching us, they’re watching what is going on. They’re killing Christians in the north and people are pretending as if it is not genocide. There’s insecurity in the north like never before. The reason this government will negotiate with terrorists instead of destroying them is because it is part of them.

Were we not here when Buhari said that war against Boko Haram is war against the North? Was Buhari not the grand patron of Miyetti Allah? When they name the financiers of terrorism in Nigeria, some people in this and past government would be mentioned, otherwise, it’s not complete.

The Western world knows even more than I’m telling you. So, they would not allow this country to be destroyed by the same party and the same people.