FORMER President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday maintained that People’s Democratic Party (PDP) should hold its head high because of its achievement in deepening the nation’s democracy and taking its economy to number one spot in Africa.
Speaking at the stakeholders meeting of the party at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua in Abuja, he observed that many members were sad over the party’s loss of power in the last general election but admonished them to take solace in the achievement of the PDP within the last four years of its administration.
He said the party’s loss of power has led to leadership crisis in the last two years, noting however, that such crisis is not peculiar to Nigeria as it happens even in more developed country but at a lower scale.
Jonathan added: “I should note that the situation is similar, albeit milder, even in advanced democracies. We should not forget that the Labour Party in the United Kingdom and the Democratic Party in the United States, both of which lost power at different times, have also been making efforts to reunite, reconcile and re-energize to become stronger, before the next general elections.
“I will like to point out that every election cycle throws up a challenge as well as opportunities for a political party; a test to re-evaluate its performance, and an opportunity to reform its processes and programmes, towards rediscovering itself to become even more appealing to the electorates, in its next outing.
“That is how evolution happens in a functional democracy: as parties continue to retool and reform in the bid to regain political power, governance improves and the people and society become better.
“It is obvious that some of our people see this development as not only disappointing but discouraging for our great party. Although I can understand this sense of loss, I always prefer to align myself with those who choose to see it differently, given the positive impact our conduct and disposition has had in deepening our democracy.
“All over the world, political parties lose elections, not because they have entirely failed, but because, in most cases, the people who gave them power in the first place, have decided to hand it over to another party, in order to experience a different kind of leadership.
“In Africa and other emerging democracies, the challenge had always been with the disposition of the party in power to allow the people the opportunity to freely exercise this right.
“This obviously is the area where we have excelled. The fact that we allowed this process to take place peacefully, and freely handed over power to the opposition did not only lift the profile of our party, but also elevated our country to the status of one of the world’s stable and reliable democracies. For this gesture alone, the whole world has continued to applaud our party and its leaders as icons of democracy on the continent.
“We were able to achieve this because our Government really reformed the electoral and political process, by giving the electoral bodies their true independence which subsequently opened up the political space for free and fair elections.
“We may have had shortcomings while in power, but we also recorded significant achievements and great milestones. Through purposeful leadership, we reformed our institutions, rebuilt the nation’s confidence, regained international goodwill and rekindled hope in our people.”
Jonathan spoke on the achievements of PDP in various sectors of the economy which enabled it to become the largest economy in Africa.
Noting that the meeting was not a forum for “chest-thumping,” he added: “but it is important we highlight some relevant initiatives of past PDP administrations. Our ideological commitment towards a private sector-led and people-oriented economy manifested in the great achievements we recorded in various sectors including communications, agriculture, public financial management and financial reforms, the financial services, rail and roads infrastructure, as well as in the social services.
“In agriculture we revolutionized the sector by introducing programmes that encouraged more people, including the youths to embrace farming as a thriving business. We also boosted local capacity for food production, thereby drastically reducing the prize of food stuff and food import bill.
“Our Youth Enterprises with Innovation (YouWin) and the Nagropreneur programmes not only encouraged young people to go into such difficult business areas as agriculture, it also helped them to become entrepreneurs and acquire the capacity to employ other people.
“That the PDP Government improved communication in Nigeria through the introduction of Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM) and the expansion of the nation’s information and communication technology architecture needs no gainsay.
“We equally expanded our educational horizon by implementing reforms in the sector and establishing 14 new Federal Government-owned Universities while three colleges of education were upgraded to degree awarding institutions.
“We transformed the entertainment industry, especially Nollywood, by not only boosting its capacities and international prominence, but also turning it into an attractive and viable sector that became an important contributor to the growth of our economy.
“We built the Kaduna-Abuja rail, the first modern rail in the country. We also pursued a successful automotive policy and established a promising industrial revolution plan.
“We equally enacted the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) in order to give the people unfettered access to information on the activities of Government.
“The last four years of our time in office as a party was in deed quite momentous as we fully restored confidence in our economy by not only steadying the fundamentals for growth and growing the economy to become the largest in Africa, but also repositioning it to become the number one foreign direct investment destination in Africa.
“There is no doubt that the PDP is a leading light in constitutional democracy and this is why we cannot allow the party to continue to drift. This meeting of today is therefore designed to stem the drift.
“I have to state clearly that today is not a day to blame ourselves. We have blamed ourselves enough in the media. Today is not a day to insult ourselves, we have also done enough of that in the media.”
Stating the objectives of the stakeholders meeting, Jonathan assured that the PDP would overcome its crisis and rise again.
“Today is the day our great party men and women will come up with suggestions and solutions to our problems. We will surely overcome the current challenge. The PDP will definitely rise again.”
He said the meeting was meant to reassure party members and all Nigerians that the PDP is united and still remains the largest party in Nigeria and one that has all it takes to win key elections.
The former president added that without prejudice to the on going litigation over some issues, the party leaders are out to develop a mechanism towards achieving a lasting and enduring political settlement of our differences.