The former Peoples Democratic Party South-West National Chairman, Engr. Adedeji Doherty, has in an interview with ADEWALE AJAYI addressed the current trend in the nation especially with respect to the ruling opposition party, the All Progressive Congress, APC.
Read excerpts below:
Your party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) seems to have lost its voice as a formidable opposition party, which it ought to be. Do you agree with this assertion?
It is too early to say PDP has lost its voice as an opposition party. You know that members of the PDP are antithetical to the situation they found themselves. We have not been in the opposition before; we were only in opposition in some states, but not at the federal level. But the PDP is re-engineering itself and members of the party are working assiduously to reposition the party.
In the next one year, the party would have been repositioned to a vibrant party. The executive of the caretaker committee at the national level are not keeping quiet on issues affecting the party.
Some of the outspoken members of the party have been guests of the anti-graft agencies and this seems to have made many to be careful about making public comments. Isn’t this an attempt to cow the party?
It is obvious that the party in power is doing everything to silence our members, but you will be shocked that most of those accused of corruption will come out innocent. The money some of them were accused to have gotten was gotten legally.
The impression the public have about your party is that the leadership crisis rocking it is self afflicted base on the failure of PDP leaders to reconcile with Senator Ali Modu Sheriff as advised by former President Goodluck Jonathan…
My opinion is that, if you love your party, you will exhibit love for it. If you don’t like the party, you will definitely do things to hurt the party. Many politicians think that the party is their personal property, forgetting that it belongs to every member. They forget that the party also has a role to perform by positioning itself, either to lead the country or to be the voice of the voiceless.
My impression about Ali Modu Sheriff is that he is taking the issue of chairmanship of the party too far. Some of things he has done and steps taken so far shows he does not care about the party.
Unfortunately, he was brought in by some governors to lead the party. They brought him on board, because probably they thought he could do better, but that is contrary to what he is doing right now. I don’t think what is happening in the party is unusual; it is just a situation of an individual pursuing his own selfish interest. But I am confident when the matter gets to Supreme Court, it would be laid to rest.
How would you assess the performance of the Muhammadu Buhariled APC government, which some Nigerians seem not to be satisfied with?
I believe Nigerians now know better, but it is unfortunate we found ourselves in this situation. When PDP was in power, things were not as bad as this. Leaders of the APC deceived Nigerians to vote for their party and now people are regretting their action.
We are going through a very testing period and I am happy that despite the hard time, Nigerians have shown they are resilient, tolerant and a united group of people.
If what we are experiencing right now happens in another country, there would be crisis. What happened in the Arab world country was not up to this before crisis erupted. Nigerians are not happy and the Federal Government and APC are aware of this, but nothing concrete is being done to address the situation.
People have expressed different views about the anti-corruption war; while some commended the war some believe it is targeted at the opposition. What is your take on that?
We are going through a phase and that phrase is what every democracy will go through. Nigerian democracy is still young; corruption is not tolerated in any administration but there are corrupt people in Nigeria, as well as other climes. When PDP was in power, we fought corruption by following the rule of law and giant strides were made.
It was during the PDP era that former Plateau State governor, Joshua Dariye was taken up by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) ditto former Governor Diepreye Alamiesegha of Bayelsa State. Former Governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State and many others were convicted during PDP tenure.
There were also several cases, which started during the PDP administration. If you look into those cases mentioned, judgements were given; over a thousand court judgments were given. The objective of the PDP government was to cleanse the country and we did our best to clean our own house of corruption before going outside, but it is the reverse we are having now.
Can anybody stand up to tell the public that there is nobody in this administration that is not corrupt or is there no minister in this administration that has not been corrupted? If there should be free and fair investigation today, 90 per cent of those in this administration would be seen to be corrupt.
There is no one that can escape this scandalous thing because we all know what has happened in the past. Even as we speak, there is still massive corruption going on in most places, even in Federal Government agencies and parastatals. The issue of corruption is very clear and this administration’s stand is open to everyone that it attacks its enemy of corruption and spares its friends. Anybody that is an enemy to this administration will fall under the searchlight of corruption and anybody that is a friend would be seen as a saint. That is the truth.
The APC administration has always given the excuse that the destruction done to the system by the PDP has slowed down its performance. What is your reaction to that?
This government is a government of talk; it has been a government of symposiums and seminars. It needs to wake up to the reality on ground that Nigerians are suffering. There is no doubt that the APC does not have a template to work with. There is a lot that goes into management of a country, and this administration has not woken up to that.
What APC has indulged itself in is to talk about PDP’s past. PDP took over from a military regime but PDP never wasted time in trying to revamp the economy. If you can recall, Nigeria Airways was destroyed by the military, the power sector was also made worse under the military, Nigeria Fertilizer Company, Railway Corporation, Civil Service and many other organisations controlled by the Federal Government were made worse by the military.
At the end of the day, did you hear the PDP government chastising the military governments that led the country? It never did that. Government is a continuum and government has to take responsibility for what it is going to do. PDP did very good, paid a high price for the lost we had in the last general election by handing over to an opposition party peacefully. It never happened like that in most African countries.
A situation where you had an election like that of 2015 that was glaring that it was rigged, especially in the North- East, the PDP still handed over. We have a party that has brought Nigeria to where it is today in terms of viable democratic governance, peace, unity, hope, tranquility, fairness and rule of law.
These are the things PDP brought into the system. Can the administration on board beat its chest that it is ready to do these? As we speak, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is not even independent. The commission has failed the people through conduct of inconclusive elections.
Nigeria is in recession and the incumbent government seem not to be finding solution to the country economy problem…
What is happening is a cyclical effect because when price of a good that is common to every buyer is up, it will have effect on others. That is why you have increase in the price of other commodities and this has reduced the purchasing power of buyers. What is happening is that physical policy of government is anti-people.
If you look at the policies this government came up with since it came on board, they are anti-people and there is no palliative measure to reduce the burden, and this has made the people to be agitated, and that is why I decided to write a 31 agenda, which is a teeming template for government. And if some of these things I have written about are considered, Nigerians will have some relieve.
There is speculation that Federal Government may increase price of petroleum soon. Don’t you think doing that will add to the problem Nigerians are confronted with now?
APC government is taking Nigerians for a ride and taking them for granted. When the PDP was in government, the APC were the ones through their cronies; third party, so-called Non Government Organisations (NGOs), civil liberties organisations, trade unions, workers union to frustrate the effort of Goodluck Jonathan administration to put things in order.
And now they have succeeded in killing Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) by blacklisting it, intimidating its officials and turned it to a lame duck. They have made the union lose its respect among the people. That is a wrong signal because government now just do what it likes by increasing pump price of petrol, increase tariffs anyhow, and with the harsh situation, government still introduce policy that are more harsh on the people.
At the end of the day, the civil society groups sponsored by APC government against the PDP then have now become lame duck and they now keep quiet.
They don’t see anything wrong in what the APC government is doing now. The danger is that then, these people were being sponsored to take the action they took then, however during that time what you saw was uprising of the people against government, without the negotiators who were the civil liberties, labour union and trade congresses who were between government and the people at the particular time.
Those people have already been relegated to the background, so any ignition of disturbance, protest will now erupt in its own natural form from the Nigerian people.
