Why Tinubu may be a one-term President —Ologbondiyan

In this interview with John Alechenu, a former National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Kola Ologbondiyan, speaks about the party’s internal crisis, the performance of President Bola Tinubu-led All Progressives Congress administration and sundry other issues: Excerpts:

Is the PDP dead?

No. The problem as we speak today is that the party has gone comatose but it’s not dead. So, the issue of a requiem mass like some commentators are suggesting does not arise. I must, however state that the party has been allowed to wax cold and rendered ineffective in the performance of its function as the leading opposition party expected to put this trial by error administration on its toes.

Those in the current leadership of our party are going to tell you that oh, they have conducted Congresses conviently skipping the fact that the outcome of a majority of these congresses are currently subject of litigations in various courts. They will also tell you that o, they’re selling forms for zonal congresses but these are all games in which many party members are no longer interested because they’ve seen the direction these people are taking the party to. So, if any one says our party is dead, I’ll tell such a person that our party is not dead but it needs to be re-calibrated. It needs to be revived from its current state of coma.

Do you subscribe to the school of thought that believes the PDP is finding it difficult to function as an opposition party because it wasn’t built to function as one?

I don’t. Let me explain. I don’t believe any party is built from the get go to only function as an opposition party. Parties are built to mobilize the people, sell their manifestos, to canvass votes and win elections to govern. I think this is the basis upon which political parties are formed and nurtured. This also speaks to the fact that you can be in power today and out of power tomorrow. In the same breath, in wherever situation a party finds itself, it must be able to engage in a revival such that will inject life into the party to put it in a position that will appeal to the electorate to vote it into power to render service. To me, it’s incorrect to say the PDP was built to function only when it’s in power.

Your party was in power for 16 straight years but was defeated by a coalition which later became the APC. Where did the rain begin to beat the party whose symbol ironically is the umbrella?

Sadly, we cannot run away from the fact that the PDP laid the foundation of its eventual exit from power. It began when successive leaderships began to deviate from the principles of fairness, equity which were the foundation upon which our founding fathers built the party.

Let me give you a classic example of what led the party into its current situation.

Section 45 and 47 (6) of the constitution of our great party are very clear on the issue of succession.
Much as some would rather we stop talking about this, the fact remains, it is at the core of what the party must deal with to move forward. We had a National Chairman in the person of Dr. Iyiorchia Ayu who for reasons that are already in public domain resigned.

Out of respect for our constitution, the proper thing to do was for the party to elect a chairman from the North Central Zone where he hails from to complete his tenure which was truncated. If you recall, the Chairmanship position was zoned to the North Central in line with our time tested zoning formula which takes into account our diversity as a nation.

There have been several instances where this was done since the party came into existence in 1998. Even as recent as 2014, Adamu Mu’azu from the North East took over from Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, after the latter resigned. When our National Woman Leader passed not too long ago, her replacement was elected from her zone. The North Central is not asking for too much. Our leaders must look at the bigger picture and address the truth wherever it is required.

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We must continue to tell those who have undertaken to either kill the PDP or render it comatose that unlike other political parties we all know, no individual can claim ownership of the PDP. The party is owned by the people of Nigeria, it was so from the beginning and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Just for people to respect our constitution has become a problem. They are dancing around, jumping from Court to Court seeking how to manipulate simple rules written in plain English for their selfish purposes. If you look at time past, you will see that similar situations led to crisis. We even had a strange occurrence when people went and brought in a member of an opposition party to be Chairman of the PDP. We have had situations where waivers were created to allow certain individuals use our platform to contest elections. We have people who not only disagree with the established rules but look for ways and means to set it aside. These are some of the actions that have led the party to where it is today.

Would you say the exit of the party’s founding fathers played a major role in the current state of affairs?

When you talk of the exit of founding fathers, it is not all the founding fathers that have left the party. There are founding fathers who people even see as having exited the party that are still indirectly providing genuine advice to the party. People who say look, I’m no longer able to play partisan politics but once in a while chip in an advice out of love for democracy, the nation and the interest of good governance. So, you can’t say such founding fathers have abandoned us because they are no longer in the party. And that they are no longer interested in what is going on. But I can also agree that we can have situations where people who have the right experience and sufficient institutional memory have maintained a deafening silence maybe because those who are in charge of the party now are not prepared to take advice or even consult.

What’s your take on a situation where some of your party members are playing active and visible roles in the current administration?

It will not help resolve our current problems, I can tell you that for free. I guess you are speaking of people like the former Governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike, who is a serving minister in the current government and also holds unto his membership of our party. Such contradictions have not helped the cause of the PDP. I say this with every sense of responsibility. You can’t be in a government that is being run by another party no matter how much you want to help the cause of your original party- you will not be in government and want that government to fail. You are indirectly loyal to the government you are serving in whether you admit it or not. You will do everything possible to put your adopted party and the government in good light. These contradictions surely have an adverse effect on the party.
One of your former National Chairmen, the late Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, once boasted that the PDP which was then in power was going to rule for 60 years. With benefit of hindsight, do you think there was perhaps a possibility of that happening?

I don’t think any political party, including the APC that is ruling now, can beat its chest and say it would rule for that number of years because you are dealing with human beings, you are governing human beings. No matter the level of your performance, no matter how good your work in the interest of the people is, the law of deminishing returns could set in. People will begin to crave for something new . Today, most Nigerians looking back agree that the years spent by the PDP in power are far better in every material particular than what the APC has been putting us through since taking power in 2015.
With the ongoing turmoil in most, if not all opposition parties today, can you say with some form of certainty that any party or coalition of parties can bring APC’s rule to an end come 2027?

I don’t think Nigerians are stuck with APC. It behoves President Bola Tinubu to govern right because when you look at the political history of Nigeria at every point in time when it appears that those in leadership positions can’t take Nigerians out of the woods, they take it upon themselves to choose the way they want to go. I don’t think Nigerians are stuck with the APC just as they were not stuck with PDP in spite of the fact that the PDP had governed meritoriously for 16 years. Nigerians woke up and said look, we want to change direction and they fell for the theories and tales of eldorado by the propaganda machine of the then-opposition APC. See where the APC has brought us to today. Some people have proclaimed that Tinubu Maybe a one-term President (OTP), it is not impossible. The signs that we are witnessing in the polity today, the hunger pangs and growing insecurity and unprecedented corruption and shambolic economics we are witnessing today are pointing towards that direction.

There are claims that the signs of state capture by the ruling elite will make defeating the APC a mission impossible in the next cycle of national elections. Do you agree?

For people like me, where the power of man stops that’s where the power of God begins. We have various examples in the life of this country. In this same country, we had five political parties which the late Chief Bola Ige described as five fingers of a lepros hand submitting themselves to the rule of one man. They gathered and declared that all of them had only one joint candidate for the office of President yet it didn’t manifest.

We’ve had a situation where an elected governor was reharsing to take over power. In 24 hours it didn’t manifest. We have seen situations where someone heading to a convention with no oita of doubt that he is winning the convention yet it didn’t manifest.

I believe that it is totally misplaced for anyone to think that the state has been so captured that Nigerians can’t move a finger. Time and chance can happen to us all. The pain for me in all of these things is that the PDP is failing to lead at this critical point in our history.

Ethno-religious sentiments played out during the 2023 elections. Do you think such is healthy for a nation seeking to develop and catch up with the rest of the world?

I don’t think the failures of the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu administration has anything to do with these sentiments . I have canvassed this on several platforms- the strategic failure of Tinubu’s government began on his first day on the job. Without consultation, without considering the consequences, he announced the total withdrawal of petrol subsidies. The second economic policy blunder he made was to float the Naira without putting in place measures to mitigate the fallout. In the beginning people tried to get him to correct his misteps but he didn’t bulge. I hear the president’s handlers and some of his party men falling over one another to say that all the aspirants who contested against Tinubu all promised to withdraw subsidies. But I remember that our candidate, Atiku Abubakar, canvassed for a phased withdrawal of subsidies in his manefesto.

And nobody talked about floating the Naira, those policies came out of the blues to an un prepared nation. Even those who were pushing the policies don’t bring any shock absorber to deal with the after shocks.

If you recall, during the period Chief Olusegun Obasanjo governed this nation and had to remove subsidies he provided parlliatives, not the trucks of rice this administration is sending out as an afterthought. But here is an administration which is using Nigerians and Nigeria as Guinea pigs for his endless economic experiments. You can’t govern over 200 million people like that.

The president was recently quoted as saying Nigerians were living fake lives before he came on board and that his policies are correcting these errors. Do you agree?

Honsely, I believe that the feedback mechanism of this administration run by President Tinubu-if they have any, is very poor. That is why sometimes, when he is addressing the nation he doesn’t address the issues. How can anyone say the lives we were living before now were fake?

Could it have been more fake than abandoning the presidential fleet and buying a new aircraft for the president’s leisure whereas he wants Nigerians to embrace austerity?

Could it have been more fake than buying an Escalade and leaving the motorcade that successive Presidents have used or even buying something less expensive?
Is it in our history as a people that our presidency before now bought a yacht at an unbelievably high cost ? Certainly not Nigerians that are struggling to make ends meet.

I believe that the government that appointed the number of ministers, advisers and assistants that is unprecedented in our nation’s history are the ones that should be accused of living a fake life.
Do you know how many Nigerians that have been forced to abandone their cars because they can’t afford to fuel it?

Do you know how many Nigerian families have been ruined because parents can no longer afford to feed their children let alone pay school fees? Are those ones living a fake life?

What’s your position on the controversy sorrounding the Tax Bills?

I’ve not yet read the entire bill but what I don’t understand is the ethnic coloration that has been introduced. I know that every Nigerian that engages in consumption pays VAT whether you are black, white, yellow or green. Whether you come from Kaura Namoda or from Patani, I know that we all pay. I’ve watched debates and seen snippets of the arguments.

Is Nigeria jinxed when it comes to the leadership question?

Nigeria isn’t jinxed. The only problem we have is that we have failed to build institutions and so have allowed strong men enjoy free reign to the detriment of the larger society.

We are allowing each set of elected leaders come on board and lead us the way they desire, not in a way that will benefit our society and its citizens.

The only rule we have collectively agreed to and observe is that of tenure and period elections. People are elected to serve for two terms of four years each. That’s all. Outside of that, we’ve not done well on governance indices.