No merger will succeed against us in 2015 – PDP

 by John Ameh and Adelani Adepegba 

National Chairman of the party, Dr. Bamanga Tukur

The Peoples Democratic Party has said that mergers and alliances planned to defeat it in 2015 will fail. The party spoke against the background of plans by opposition parties to form mergers and alliances to battle its candidates in the 2015 general elections.

The National Secretary of the ruling party, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, who spoke to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, dismissed the planned alliances as ‘gang-ups’.

Two major opposition parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria and the Congress for Progressive Change – are believed to be in talks to defeat the PDP in 2015. Earlier this year, the leaders of both parties had met in Kaduna to discuss the modalities of an alliance that would unset the ruling party.

But the PDP secretary, who based his assertion on certain events in the nation’s political history, insisted that the alliances would not threaten the ruling party.

He added, “We don’t think we are threatened by what we would call gang ups. In those days when the National Party of Nigeria and Nigeria Peoples Party closed ranks, it was called an accord. When the Unity Party of Nigeria and Great Nigeria Peoples Party did the same, they called it gang up.

“Honestly speaking, ganging up is an indication of some weaknesses. Why can’t a party stand on its own and contest elections if it is sure that it would be acceptable to the people? You don’t need to gang up.

“If you are ganging up then you don’t have the strength. The only true national party today that cuts across every nook and cranny of the Nigerian federation is the PDP. Gang up has never succeeded; it will not succeed.”

Oyinlola also said that the PDP would stick to its zoning formula at all levels.

He added that it would be dangerous for the party to jettison the formula.

Only last month, a member of the PDP and former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, had said that it was high time the party dumped zoning as it was no longer relevant.

But Oyinlola argued that zoning was the glue that bound the different groups in the PDP together.

He said, “It is the binding glue that holds the people together and, as such, it would be politically dangerous to abandon it at this stage. That it is our binding force.

“What has endeared the PDP to people from all over the country has been the zoning arrangement. It has given hope to those in the minority that they could have access to power.

“There is an adage in my language (Yoruba)  that says when a medicine is working for you, you don’t throw it away. So we will continue with the zoning arrangement because it is working very well.”

He added that the Bamangar Tukur-led National Working Committee of the PDP would soon undertake a reconciliation tour of all the six geopolitical zones in order to bring all its warring factions together.

“As you know, were it not for our differences, we would have won Ogun State. We lost Oyo State because of the differences between the Senator Rasheed Ladoja-led Accord Party and the Alao-Akala-led PDP,” he said.

The National Secretary promised that the face-off between the Presidency and the PDP-dominated National Assembly over the 2013 budget oil benchmark would be resolved soon, through dialogue.

 He added that the party would continue to be in control of its primaries, adding that it would not succumb to attempts by the Independent National Electoral Commission to interfere with its internal affairs.

 According to him, under the Electoral Act 2010, INEC has no powers to dictate to parties on how to run their affairs.

 Reacting, the Publicity Secretary, CPC, Mr. Rotimi Fashakin, said political alliance is part of constitutional democracy, noting that the current government in Britain is a product of an alliance.

He said, “We understand Oyinlola’s paradigm. For a man who spent most of his adult life in the military, where authoritarianism holds sway, it is inconceivable to expect him to grasp (the concept of) political alliance.

“Again, when you also understand that his purported re-election as governor was voided by a court of law, it will be too much to expect such person to believe in election-winning collaborations. Quite unfortunately, the anti-democratic vomit of the grand patron of the PDP and the generallisimo of ‘do or die’ politics is what all the members of the behemoth are munching and regurgitating. So do you see where the PDP National Secretary is coming from?”

Although efforts made last night to get the spokesperson for the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to react to Oyinlola’s remarks were abortive, the opposition party had spoken on the matter in August.

Mohammed had said, “What is the interest of the PDP in whether the merger works or fails? It only shows it is fearful. I want to assure you that when the merger works, it will be a surprise to the ruling party.

“Our fear is that when it works, the PDP may not exist anymore because the party deteriorates every day.”

 Punch