The new Chairman of the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Dr Iyorchia Ayu has said that his leadership of the party will try to be free and fair while not overriding the broader interest.
Dr Ayu who stated this in Abuja at a maiden meeting between the National Working Committee, NWC, and the Board of Trustees, BOT said he believes that if the party would go along this route, it would be able to recapture the lost glory of the PDP.
He said most of the elections the PDP lost was because PDP defeated PDP which should never be encouraged and also because the leadership of the party sometimes took sides with certain factions.
“This party requires a lot of openness and courage to carry everybody along, that is the only way that this party will move forward successfully. We want to assure you that we’ll do just that. Every member of the BoT, every member of the party far and wide will have access to all members of the National Working Committee. If you call me and I don’t answer, you’ll know that I’m busy but I’ll return your call. I will be so open to everybody” Dr Ayu said.
“When we built cohesion in the party, we won the first 21 governors and president and we increased this number to 28. So our decline started in 2011. Today we are down to only 13 sitting governor’s but never you worry, very soon the number will increase to the appropriate level”.
The PDP National Chairman said the BoT had over the years played a very pivotal role in the affairs of the party and when the party ran into all sorts of crisis, I thought the BoT had fallen apart in the recent crisis that led to the change of leadership of the party.
“There was a time when the BoT was largely ignored, I think that was wrong. We must return the party to the corporate processes of initiating policies at the National Working Committee. The various critical organs of the party must be taken along. One of those critical organs is the BoT. We also have the caucus, we have the governor’s forum, we have the National Assembly, we have the state chairmen of the party. The moment you begin to take decisions that isolate these organs, it means the party will be working at cross purposes with each other” Dr Ayu said.
Dr Ayu said It was very important that the National working committee constantly and regularly consult with all members of the BoT and if they do that, the party would move smoothly, stronger and win more elections because the objective of a political party was to win elections, not just to create unnecessary intrigue within the party.
Emmanuel Ukoh
