₦airaland Forum

Fixamm:
Former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, has said the only way the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) can wrest power from the All Progressives Congress (APC) is to entrench inter­nal democracy.

Besides, he said party leaders must obey and abide by the rules of the party even as he advocated the abolition of delegate system to conduct primaries in the selection of candidates.

He canvassed a review of the PDP constitution to facititate open congress, empowering all registered PDP members to vote and select their candidates.

Nnamani disclosed this in a paper he was sched­uled to deliver at the recent PDP Rebrand Forum held in Abuja. He urged members to stop the blame game over the party’s loss of last elec­tion. Instead, Nnamani said they should take a bold step towards reinventing itself by avoiding mistakes that caused it the trust of the electorate.

He said: “Many of the people who are very pained that we lost the presidential election have needlessly been blaming ourselves. This blame game should not continue. We lost the elec­tion because we deserved to lose. We had run out of policy gas. We worked hard to lose the election.”

He said: “Now it is time for renewal and renewal requires strategic thinking and bold actions. Many years ago, I worked with some of my colleagues in the PDP and we foresaw this moment. We predicted that the PDP needed to keep faith with its cardinal prin­ciples and values to sustain its leadership of Nigerian politics. How I wished our other colleagues listened to us in those days. We would have averted the disaster of the 2015 electoral defeat. Some of those who contrib­uted immensely to the PDP electoral defeat shouted us down and refused to hear our voice of wisdom. This is past now. There is no time for recrimination and self-adulation. It is time for clarity and effective action.

“It is time for genuine embrace of internal democ­racy. The new PDP should become the symbol of in­ternal democracy. Our re­branding should first start with a real commitment to internal democracy. I sug­gest that before we go fur­ther on this journey let all those who desire to lead PDP in formal or informal positions of authority pub­licly declare a new code of conduct. The heart of this code of conduct will be an oath to always promote and protect internal democracy.

“Beyond the code, the new PDP must put in its constitution expulsion for any party official at all lev­els who deliberately sub­verts the process of internal democracy. Impunity must end now. Impunity does not end with mere words or declarations. It includes clear sanctions for violation of core tenets of party sys­tems. It is common knowl­edge that we lost many states to the APC because we deliberately refused to conduct primaries that al­low our party members to vote for the candidate of their choice. If we have been less reckless in man­agement of party politics we would have gained at least four more states and perhaps won the presiden­tial election. But we shot ourselves on the foot.”

Listing how PDP can retake the political space, Nnamani said: “I think we should go the full hog and write into the new consti­tution that all primaries in the new PDP will be con­ducted in open congresses where all registered party members have equal votes. This is very radical. But we need radical responses to a terrible situation. Some­one may say that even in United States, the symbol of democracy, primaries are sometimes based on del­egates. But we can do bet­ter than the United States. We can deepen democracy by making primaries fully democratic.

“As a leader of the pro­scribed PDP Reform Fo­rum, I took the clear posi­tion that we must be a party ruled by law not by men. I have long known that a rule-based system is supe­rior to a discretion-based system. Godfatherism is a weak framework to build a system that can deliver its mandate. The weight of contradiction of reckless abandonment of our core values and rules is what has drowned the ship of PDP in the waters of Nigerian poli­tics,” Nnamani said.

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