A former Minister of Education and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chairmanship aspirant in the botched August 17, 2016 national convention, Professor Tunde Adeniran, has said the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was not behind the crisis tearing the PDP apart.
Adeniran, who is also a one-time Nigerian Ambassador to Germany, stated this in an interview on Friday in Abuja.
Loading ...According to the ex-Minister, it was preposterous and nonsensical for anybody to put the blame of the chaos and commotion in the PDP on outsiders when it was obvious that the members themselves were the root cause of the problem.
His words: “I do not agree that APC has a hand in the PDP crisis. If we did not create problem for ourselves, there is no way an outsider, the government of the day or some other people outside our party would have opportunity to interfere. Even if they were trying to interfere, if we were doing the right thing, if we were conscientious and if we were not being selfish wanting to do the wrong things, there was no way any outsider could have influence on the direction of things in our party. They will make attempt. But they will not succeed, because we are doing things the right way and we are also determined to get the right results by doing things the right way. But when you are trying to cut corners; you are violating your own rules, regulations; you are turning the constitution of your own party upside down and you have no regards for it and you are treating your own members as if they are slaves or second class citizens, no regards for them, why won’t we have problem. The overflowing arrogance that was pervasive over there from some characters who are in leadership positions were enough to cause disillusionment. And within that context anything could happen. So, I do not believe that we should be blaming APC or blaming some outsiders on what is happening. We should face the issues. We should be realistic. We should be truthful. We should fear God and tell the truth to ourselves that we are the cause of our own downfall. And not to start looking outside to blame some people. To me, that is arrant nonsense!”
On the allegation that the PDP governors hijacked the entire process and wanted to manipulate the exercise in favour of their preferred aspirant for the national chairmanship position, the Professor said: Yes, you are right. We discovered that some people already hijacked the process and the delegate list had been mutilated and tampered with. In some cases, the numbers were increased unduly, unjustly, and of course, fraudulently. In some cases, some had been reduced. The areas where they felt they did not have sufficient number of votes to support whoever they want to impose, they tampered with the list and so on. And many of the delegates were going to be denied access to the stadium. It was a terrible thing which we discovered eventually. And it is shameful that a party like the PDP that has gone through political turbulence, some leaders within the leadership of the party will still adopt that method. If the police had not stopped the convention, which I would say was a divine intervention, the crisis that would have erupted would have been beyond the control of the party.”
Debunking the claim by Chief Bode George after the failed convention that the Southwest PDP members, except for Jimi Agbaje’s betrayal had endorsed him as the sole candidate for the chairmanship position, Adeniran said: “Many people have called me about it. Chief Bode George is an experienced politician. He is a very good friend. I know him very well. Probably, they were misquoting him. He couldn’t have said that we endorsed him; that the Southwest endorsed him. I learnt that a group gathered themselves in Akure deceiving themselves. I wasn’t invited to that meeting. My supporters weren’t invited. I think a few people who wanted to deceive Chief Bode George called him over for whatever reason that they were going to endorse him. They knew what they were doing. They had their own plans. But he (Chief Bode George) went there and went away with the deception that he would be endorsed. There was no way the Southwest would be endorsing someone and the entire leadership of the party in the zone will not be there and the key stakeholders. I was also endorsed by different groups from within and outside the southwest. But I cannot go about saying I am the endorsed candidate.”
Describing the delegates who had converged on Port Harcourt from the 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) as wonderful and patriotic Nigerians, the PDP chieftain appealed to them for the pain they must have gone through with the way the proposed convention was aborted. He urged the party members not to succumb to the pangs of frustration, but continue to remain resolute in their determination to contribute their quota to the advancement of democracy in the country.
