Why do you desire to become the national chairman of the PDP?
I wake up every morning asking myself the same question. This country belongs to all of us, it has to be salvaged and we have to make sacrifices to salvage it. Seeking to become the national chairman would have been a daunting task if it were the PDP that is in control of government at the federal level because many people who consider themselves powerful would be interested in the position. But it is when the going is tough that the tough have to get going. A lot of the people who created the problem we are in now in the party, did so because they did not understand the essence of political activities; they came into politics for the wrong reasons. Perhaps they wanted to make a name, perhaps to make money, perhaps they had nothing else to do and felt that politics was a way to fill the time. Politics is service, it is sacrifice. Right now, PDP needs to be able to network, to be able to draw on its experience base. Very few of us have that kind of experience in the party. Many of our elders who started this are dying, the few of them who still have the strength to help us out of this morass are not the kind of people you will find in Abuja or Lagos, you have to go to their home states to see them. I believe I have the knowledge and leverage required for that kind of work.
I take this as a service to the nation. I am not just participating to win, I am participating to make a statement to the large majority of politicians out there who have been demoralized because they have not seen things going the right way. Don’t give up, offer your service, make the sacrifice, things can only get better, for things to get better, good people have to come forward and show that they are ready to serve.
What difference do you hope to make if you do win?
To have a clean break from the inglorious past. You hear people talking about juggernauts in the party, I think that is wrong. In any party, every member is important, everybody has a role to play. It is not the post you hold or the money you have that makes you important. Even those who do not have money are important because politics is a game of numbers. There are some people who believe they are juggernauts because they once occupied positions that enabled them to make money and subsequently they look down on others. The truth is that you were given such positions to serve the people and improve the party, not to lord it over everyone.
We have to get the party back to its feet, we have to return the party to the owners. We have to bring PDP back to the founding fathers. Those we entrusted with the leadership of the party in the past got so swollen headed that they forgot to consult the founding fathers.
Secondly, there are too many factions in the party. The factions are affecting the growth of the party. What I will do is to go to these factional leaders and beg them to join the mainstream of the party as equals. But any faction that feels that it cannot reconcile with the mainstream, we will shake his hands and wish him goodbye. It is better to have a small cohesive party of disciplined people than have some members turn themselves to demigods.
Then the party will be run fairly and with discipline, whoever cannot submit him or herself to properly constituted party leadership is of no use to the PDP.
If we take these steps and put somebody who is fair and accessible to the elders, the party will move forward.
Do you see PDP as a sellable party to Nigerians?
That definitely depends on who leads the party. Nobody can come tomorrow and say I, Akintayo Akin-Deko, have an EFCC case or that I was in a position and didn’t function. That is the basis on which someone like me should be given the opportunity to lead the party. The PDP made its mistakes, the important thing is to be able to learn from the mistakes and correct them. If the PDP does not choose the right chairman, people will know that we are not ready to correct our mistakes. If we pick any of those people in leadership position when we lost the presidential election as an incumbent party, it will be obvious that we are not yet ready to learn from our mistakes. That way, it will not be the fault of the populace if they reject PDP, it will be our fault. We have to reinvent the PDP.
The PDP is tainted as a party of corrupt people. APC said last week that the problem of corruption it had emanated from the PDP members in its fold. You are banking on your integrity to win the election. Will your tree make a forest?
The forest of the PDP is not a plantation of one tree; it is a plantation of different trees. They come in different forms but they all have their uses. Those PDP members that are now in the APC were perfectly functional when they were in PDP. It is when they got to APC that they became a problem. It is now for the APC to look into themselves and find out what they did to turn those wonderful PDP members into what they now are. In the PDP we have the tradition of resolving our problems within the party. I maintain that it is that ability to call ourselves to order that got lost and brought the party to its present state. The inability of certain individuals to submit to the leadership of the party
To become a better party, all the elements within the party be they president, minister, governors or whatever, have to come under the control of the party. Once a governor begins to feel that he is the leader of the party, then the party is going to start dancing to the tune of the governor and no longer the tune of the principles of the party. That will constitute a serious problem. The chairman is the constituted leader of the party and must be allowed to function as such otherwise the party will come under the control of the presidency or one money bag or the other. Within the PDP, we have a culture of going to our elders for consultation. That is the culture I want to bring back into PDP. If we can bring that culture back and encourage our elements which are frustrated right now, then the party will become stronger and better. Right now those who don’t have money to throw around are despised, but when it comes to election, it is these people that win elections, it is not the moneybag or the big man. It is the local man who wins election so you must listen to him and allow him to have his own ideas and views considered and either rejected or accepted. The Nigerian forest right now contains 300 to 400 tribes as the trees of that forest, so it is not just one tree that is going to be the forest. It’s got to be different trees and those different trees must be harmonized under a constitution and leadership that is fair to everybody and does not recognize moneybags or leaders that are unconstitutional.
As it is now, the South-West risks losing the chairmanship because there are about 10 people from the zone gunning for the chairmanship. Do you see this working against the interest of the zone?
I personally believe in zoning. The party has made it clear that the position has been zoned to the South, not just the South West. In the same way as the presidency has been zoned to the North. The sadness of the whole thing is that while the North is working hard to ensure that it presents its best as the presidential candidate, the same thing is not happening in the South, which is why so many people are coming out. I look at myself in the mirror and ask myself if I am qualified for the post. I ask myself if there is anything in my cupboard that other parties may use against me if I become the chairman. I also ask myself if I have the network of friends and associates who can help me accomplish my aim if I become the chairman. The job of a chairman is not for one man; it is a composite. The chairman is as good as those advising him. Eventually, after praying and seeing people, I decided that I am probably one of the best candidates that the party needs now. That is why I threw my hat in the ring. Unfortunately, I don’t think all of us parading ourselves as candidates have done that same exercise. There are many candidates out there and it makes a bad case for the South West but at the end of the day, it has to be the best person from the South that wins the race. If tomorrow any other part of the South brings up a candidate who I think is better than the candidates from the South West, I will support that candidate. That is my position.
Is there a possibility of candidates from the South-West agreeing to present just one of them as the zone’s candidate?
Of course, meetings are going on right now. The first thing is for all of us to identify ourselves as having ambition and being interested in this position. The next thing is for a meeting to be called to decide who we want to present. Even so, at the end of the day, it is the party convention that will decide. A lot of us know that other people are still going to come up. So, we wait and see. Between now and December 9 is a long time in politics. So, let us wait and see what happens within the next one month or so. But the door is still wide open for more good people to come forward and join the race.
You think you have the capacity to lead the party against an incumbent who defeated your party when you had the benefit of incumbency?
We will beat the APC hands down if we have the proper leadership. We will beat the APC flat, I repeat. PDP lost the last election but APC did not win. Many people have become frustrated in the APC and right now they are dancing to the tune of the presidency because of the things that go with the presidency. There is the talk of cabinet reshuffle which has been thrown into the political firmament so that politicians could behave themselves. Promising to increase number of ministers at this time is a political bait to buy loyalty. God bless President Buhari but he has up till May 2019 to do all he wants to do because PDP will be the party of choice in 2019. I know that if I become chairman of this party, more people will come back to the PDP than with anybody else being at the head of the party. It is actually those people who were in the PDP before and those in the party currently that are asking me to run. I don’t belong to any faction, I don’t have any godfather that is financing my campaigns but I am extremely focused. Once I am there, I will run that party for the benefit of the generality of the party rather than for any one person.
If you become the chairman will you push for restructuring of the country?
I am interested in a lot of the discussions going on at the moment about restructuring and devolution of power. I am interested as an individual, an intellectual and a Yoruba man. When I win the chairmanship of the PDP and become the leader of the party, I will follow the position of my party. What we shall do is to set up a committee that will look into this thing. Don’t forget that the primary consideration of a political party is to gain power and gaining power means answering to what the people want. So, we first of all have to hear clearly what the people are saying about restructuring, not what the professors or the professional politicians are saying but what the common man is saying about restructuring. Restructuring will be dealt with by the PDP under my leadership in a very structured way.
So, the first thing is for the PDP to get a good chairman who will not run a one-man show or dance to the tune of a few powerful people but one who will listen to the people and do their bidding if it will bring good to the generality of the members.
You plan to bring back to the party those who left a while ago for different reasons. Having tried the other side, you think they will want to return to PDP?
The truth is that the true power brokers of this country if they are not openly PDP members, they covertly support PDP. They are the ones who formed this party originally. They are even the ones, I believe, who got so angry with the PDP under President Jonathan that they turned their backs on PDP and opened the door for President Muhammadu Buhari to win the 2015 election. I know because I continuously consult with them and beg them. They are the ones who I believe also have now seen that one man does not make the presidency and desire a change. No matter how clean President Buhari is, he cannot rule the country on his own. Even now the same caucus that I am working with, under one or two of these leaders, is talking with people across the country on how we are going to manage the country after we win, what are the policies that this country needs to become better, who are the people, not necessarily from the PDP, who can play certain roles in the government? Our job is to win power, exercising power requires that we go back to these our elders and ask them to help in forming a government. Thereafter, that government must run the country efficiently and fairly. Any member of government that is not functioning properly, it is the party that will first deal with that person, not the National Assembly, not the FEC. The party will invite such minister, query him and if not satisfied with the response, impress it on him to resign. That is how a party is supposed to function.
I am interested in how PDP under your leadership hopes to win the presidential election. In those days, PDP had the control of the bulk of the North as well as the South East and South-South. But now apart from the South East and the South-South, PDP is virtually nowhere. How will the tide change in favour of the PDP within the next one year?
This is something which the party executive will work on after I become the chairman by the grace of God. As a politician, it is obvious to me that why this wave of popularity moves back and forth is that the power brokers in those centers are disgruntled probably because of what is happening in the party that does not favour them. We are looking at what is angering the people of Nigeria from the North to the South. The luck that we have in the PDP is that we already have the network. Right now, I admit that many members of the network are actually working against the PDP because they are not happy with what is happening to their own different areas. I believe that once they can see that the party is ready to listen to them in the old ways, things will change. The problem in the party started because we were not listening to our traditional spheres of influence, the traditional rulers, the religious leaders, the community leaders and the rest. Once we start listening and responding to issues raised by these groups, we will get the country back and the country will move forward.
and then