Former Secretary to the Plateau State government and gubernatorial aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, who is presently the protem secretary, Plateau for Atiku Movement, Professor Shedrach Best, speaks with ISAAC SHOBAYO on the 2023 presidential election, the chance of the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the crisis within the PDP and other political issues in the country. Excerpt:
Sir, how prepared is the Peoples Democratic Party in Plateau State for the 2023 general election?
The party is fully prepared; don’t forget Plateau State is one of the strongholds of the PDP in Nigeria. Since inception of this democratic dispensation, it has never lost presidential election in Plateau State. The records are there. Presently, there is no crisis in Plateau PDP; primaries were conducted at all levels and candidates have emerged for all positions in line with the constitution of the party and the Electoral Act. As far as Plateau State is concerned, there is no issue at all. So we have a presidential candidate that Plateau people are willing to work for. We also have a governorship candidate that people are ready and willing to work for. Likewise, the senatorial, House of Representatives, and state Assembly. There is no problem as far as the Plateau PDP is concerned. We are looking forward to the commencement of campaign.
From all indications, the PDP is currently embroiled in crisis with division among the stakeholders. Is the party aware of the implications concerning the elections ahead?
It is not unusual to find misgivings and acrimony arising from a process like this. Every political party has its own problems. APC has its own Muslim/Muslim ticket and other things they are contending with. But PDP is an experienced old party. It is used to the contestation of forces, but the beauty is that this is internal. Whatever it is, I know it arose from the selection of ruining mate. I believe this issue will be resolved. It has been said repeatedly by the people around them that discussion is ongoing. It could be worrisome, but it is not unsurmountable by the party and I know that before campaign commences, all these issues would have been resolved. I want to tell you that everything is being done to reposition the party ahead of the campaign.
The altercations among some notable personalities within the party are aggravating and fuelling an unhealthy situation. What do you think is the way out?
The situation is not all that bad. What is happening is that some interests or groups are simply expressing themselves. These issues at stake will fizzle out as we approach the campaign. The reality is that primaries have come and gone, but some people want to discuss other interests, forgetting that what they are doing is likely to have far-reaching consequences.If you want to remove the National Chairman of the party, other positions will be touched. If you shift the chairman to the South, other principal offices from the South will equally be shifted to the North. This requires the party to sit down for a special convention to actualize this, because it is only the convention that has the power to tinker with party’s positions. Sometimes you find voices being raised too high, particularly from Rivers State governor, who is providing leadership for the disquiet and the contestation in terms of interest for the other group. But I know that Governor [Nyesom] Wike is a committed party man. He has done so much to stabilise the PDP and invested in the PDP. He is a leader and also has the mandate to deliver the party in his state. He is a leader in the South-South where many people look up to him. Therefore, he is not going to rock the boat. I know that discussions are going on. It might not be fully satisfactory, but I am sure that it is only a matter of time for the issue to be resolved. The party cannot repeat its primaries; it has come and gone and reconciliation is going on. It doesn’t have a terminal period, but I believe it will end at the right time.
With the wave [Peter] Obi movement is creating in the country, don’t you think the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Obi, might create an upset in the 2023 presidential election?
People say Plateau State is a Christian state and, therefore, the people will vote for Obi on Christian grounds, but they have forgotten that Plateau State is also a PDP state and, therefore, will vote for Atiku on account of PDP. You have to put everything in context. Where you have people running for Senate and House of Representatives and the election will be on the same day as that of the president, then how do you tell the voters in Plateau to vote for Peter Obi as president and then go down to vote for someone else in the PDP as senator or House of Representatives member while these are the people who have the people and structure at the grassroots? Over the years, since 1999, the people have been voting for the PDP and they know the party. Therefore, I do not see any monumental upset for the PDP in Plateau State.
What about Nigeria?
In Nigeria, it will take a long time to analyse region by region and state by state, but I don’t see how Peter Obi or the Labour Party will upstage the PDP in the coming election. The facts are there.
Based on the facts and reality on the ground, which might equally change as we approach the 2023 presidential election, there might not be a block vote for your presidential candidate (cuts in).
I don’t know what you mean by “block vote,” but it will be voting along traditional support base. If you take the southern zone of Plateau State, for example, I don’t know who is going to take Obi to the southern zone of Plateau, where you have senatorial candidate AVM Domkat Bali with grassroots support in that zone. So people are going to vote for Bali and Atiku. If you come to the northern zone of the Plateau, which is more cosmopolitan, the same support base will be used likewise in other parts of the country. I do not see how this will affect the voting pattern and while not undermining, taking for granted, or devaluing the presence of Peter Obi in Plateau State and Nigeria, Peter Obi’s campaign has a long way to go. It is more of a movement of people, mainly youths, who are disenchanted with Nigeria. But in my opinion, Peter Obi lacks the requisite preparation [needed] to lead Nigeria as it is today. He is a fine economic thinker, but if you go to other areas of national governance like foreign policy or security issues, among others, I don’t think he has the ability to cope and turn this nation around.
But other presidential candidates like Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Peter Obi [will argue] they have the requisite experience to govern Nigeria. What advantage does the PDP presidential candidate have over them?
The former Vice-President is mature; he has the mental capacity to respond to Nigerian issues and has more experience than anyone else, because no one has served in government at the presidential level like Atiku. He is also an economic player in the sense that he understands the economy. He has chaired the National Economic Council and understands how the economy is run and worked with the president who turned around the economy of this country. He is also a stakeholder in the nation’s economy. He is not a marginal or sideline player. Atiku understands Nigeria’s diversity and that is why he is a unifier. There are quite a lot of factors you can bring together that if you aggregate them, you will say with ease that Atiku Abubakar has no match in this race.
What is your assessment of the political situation in the country?
Nigerian voters are in a state of frustration, but do not have the privilege of apathy because everybody wants the present situation to change; everybody is tired. The first thing every Nigerian wants to recover is this nation. We want our country back from the present slide. In terms of the electoral environment, one area I score President [Muhammadu] Buhari high on is electoral reform. The decision to move from card readers and incident forms to the electronic transmission of votes. I believe this is going to create a new environment where the votes of people will begin to count.
The general belief is that Nigeria’s politics is devoid of ideology and that we still have unstable politics with unstable characters. What is your opinion on this?
Nigerians have been reluctant to define ideology. During the first republic, there were Action Group, Northern Peoples Congress, NCNC, and NEPU, among others. They were individually driven. Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s personality and convictions defined Awoism, which was anchored in human capital development, free education, and many other things. Zik set the tempo for the NCNC in the South-East and the [Ahmadu Bello] for NPC in the North.
The Political Bureau tried to push the need for political ideology in national politics, but the military rejected it during the former President Ibrahim Babangida regime. So political parties have sprung up as a collection of individuals who want political power. We may have ideological parties in the future, but for now, I want to be honest with you, ideology is not something that is sharply defined. What we have presently can be defined as the policies and programmes of each political party or manifesto, and this is what you find in the constitution of each party and the framework of the campaigns. I want to say there is no party with clear of ideology that Nigerians can lean on. So Nigerians have been scrutinizing the individuals to see if they have the credentials to lead the country.
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