AHEAD of the 2019 General Elections, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Monday apologized to Nigerians to overlook its past mistakes and begged for another chance at the coming polls.
The National Chairman of the Party Prince Uche Secondus tendered the public apology in Abuja yesterday at a public discourse on contemporary politics and governance in Nigeria” as part of efforts to rebrand it.
Secondus who pointed that in the past, the party engaged in impunity and imposition among other issues “we are sorry, we have made several mistakes which will not happen again.”
According to him, “In the past there were impunity and imposition, we are not the spirit, we have to be humble to apologize for imposition, impunity and other wrongdoings, while in government, there was no nepotism, but today nepotism has been taken to the highest level by this government of APC.
“We have to stand before the people and apologize. We made mistakes. Unlike APC that will lie and use another lie to cover it, we will apologize or our past mistakes. We are human that are bound to make mistakes. How long are we going to continue to lie to our children?
“Since it is said that charity begins at home, I am the very first to admit that our party the Peoples Democratic Party of Nigeria made many mistakes. Consequently, we were roundly sanctioned by Nigerians occasioning our loss at the polls in 2015.
“Let me seize this opportunity to apologize to Nigerians unequivocally for the several shortcomings of our party in the near and far past. It was all parts of an evolution process without which there can be no maturity.”
He then made a promise that under his watch there would not be an imposition and vowed that nobody would be allowed to influence the primaries that would lead to the emergence of presidential candidate and other candidates of the party in the forthcoming elections
According to him, “under our watch, there will be no imposition of candidates and no impunity. My colleagues and I at the National Working Committee have vowed to uphold the rule of law as enshrined in our party constitution
“Power has been devolved to the zonal, state and ward levels. PDP national headquarters at Wadata House will only co-ordinate affairs. There are no votes to be solicited or won at Wadata House. We are committed to the Rule of Law and assure you that not only will your votes count in our primaries across the land, I assure you that your voice will be heard.”
Secondus equally promised that party would stand by the truth and that whatever happened in 2015, would not be allowed again, as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would not be able to rig elections.
While lashing out at the APC government for recklessly devaluing the naira, he said,
“our currency has been recklessly devalued from N199 in 2015 to nearly N500 a dollar before it came down to about N365 only due to an increase in oil prices and not any significant thing done by this government. Fuel prices rose from N97 to N145 yet the nation experiences unabated scarcity with its attendant long queues and suffering by the Nigerian citizens.”
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He condemned the borrowing spree of the APC administration, saying, “from friends and members of this government, we learnt that while in 16 years PDP government was able to borrow N6 trillion and had some projects commissioned for it, in just less than three years, APC regime has borrowed N11 trillion and has not commissioned a single project.”
Speaking, former governors of Katsina and Anambra states, Ibrahim Shema and Peter Obi respectively, told the leaders of the party to do something different from what the APC is doing, adding that Nigerians wanted to know what the party was bringing on board in 2019.
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