PDP is on its way to the grave – El-Rufai

Nasir El-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State and a founding member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), spoke at a national conference in Abuja on strengthening democracy in Nigeria, recently. INIOBONG IWOK brings the excerpts:

My political journey

I was very active in the CPC; I was one of the leaders of the CPC before we merged into the APC. I can say political parties are very important because in our constitution, the only way you can contest for power is through political parties.

Our constitution does not recognise independent candidates even though we tried in our APC committee on true federalism to recommend that the constitution be amended to allow for independent candidates; that has not happened yet and I don’t even know if it would ever happen. What is the state of political parties today?

Political parties under persecution

I would give my opinion to what I have seen in the last two years. The PDP which is the oldest political party in this republic is targeted for destruction, it is a matter of time. There are internal machineries in the PDP that have been hired, paid, or otherwise motivated to destroy the party. So, the party is on its way to the grave. And it is most unfortunate, because Atiku just explained now how the politicians came together, put away their differences and formed parties to drive away the military, most of these politicians ended up in PDP.

The PDP represents most of the politicians that actually fought for the restoration of democracy. Forget those that make the most noise, but run away from the country, those that went to prison, and those that stayed back in the country ended up in the PDP. Those are the real politicians that faced the military.

Even the Labour Party is targeted for destruction, the last time I had a conversation with Peter Obi, he said he does not know what is happening to the party he contested for President on. There seems to be a project to destroy all the opposition parties, the only option for the opposition is to come together and create a bold platform that would do the driving of the military again because we are almost there.

We founded APC

I am a founding member of APC; if you go to INEC and ask for the form that got APC registered, I was one of the 34 people there. I was also a founding member of the NWC, but frankly I no longer recognise the party; no organ of the party has met for the past two years.

No caucus, no NEC, nothing, I don’t even know if it is a one-man show or zero-man show.

We wanted to form a progressive party that would fight corruption, restore security to Nigerians, and we all came and formed that party after forming, we went to recruit others who we think can add value to the party.

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We went to Atiku’s residence and invited him to join the party, even though many of us were Buhari supporters, but we were not scared, we wanted a broad coalition that would address the problem of Nigeria. Where is the APC today? It has left me behind.

Importances of political parties

I still believe the purpose of political parties in Nigeria is revamping the economy, restoring security and fighting corruption. The problems are still there; however, I do not believe that my party believes in confronting those problems.

I don’t understand APC anymore

So, the distance between me and the APC is widening, it has left me, it is driving at a very high speed from where I am, but I remain where I’m because problems remain the living problem of Nigeria and they have to be addressed. For me, the only way to address them is through the instrumentality of political parties.

What happened to our party? Why did they end up where they are? When we started APC, we were hopeful it would be a member-financed party.

We registered 15 million members, if every member just gave the APC N100 a month, which I think everybody can afford, we would have N1.5 billion and it is enough to run a political party. We had a dream of a real ideology driven progressives’ party, today it is something else.

If you look at the life-cycle of PDP, it was similar, they all end up becoming a one-man show; no leadership, no internal leadership, no internal democracy and the party always get pocked by those elected on the platform.

Ideology

What is the ideology of the APC? I don’t know. We said we are progressive, but we are not progressives any more. What about societal projects, what is our big societal project? I have mentioned the three, but now if you ask anyone that was elected on the platform of the APC; they would say they wanted to be governor. I wanted to be president, nobody talks about national project, societal project anymore. It is about me, myself and I.

Manifesto

What about manifesto? When was the last time you saw a manifesto of a political party in Nigeria? The last one I remember was the one we drafted in 2007 for the PDP, since then the PDP has never produced any. We did one for APC when the party was to be formed, but apart from that I have not seen the manifesto of any other political party in Nigeria.

What about membership? Members want to take from the party rather than give to the party and we are in trouble because these parties are vehicles in which leadership would emerge, yet they exist only in our imagination or paper.

Challenge before opposition

This is a challenge to those in the opposition, they must come together to form a party that should resemble the NPN of the second republic.

That is one political party that was an effective machine, the leadership was collegial and the party imposed its will on those elected on its platform, unfortunate that process was terminated in 1983.

Maybe, by now we would have a real political culture around ideological politically driven and broad-based political parties, this is the challenge for the opposition.