Nigerians Voted Change, Not Acts Of Masturbation - Iwuanyanwu Tells Buhari

Forum 10 years ago

Nigerians Voted Change, Not Acts Of Masturbation - Iwuanyanwu Tells Buhari

Known for his blunt and never compromising attitude to issues in the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Chyna Iwuanyanwu, says for PDP to survive, all its current leadership must resign for a new order to be instilled. He further describes how impunity and lack of internal democracy cost the party the general elections. He spoke to STANLEY NKWOCHA


Read Excerpt Below:

Your party said they will rule Nigeria for 60 years and suddenly crashed after 16 years on the saddle. What happened?
I speak to you as a genuine patriotic Nigerian, because, Nigeria is more important to me than any political party. And you have to be a Nigerian first before you can be PDP a chieftain or APC chieftain.


The truth of the matter is that PDP had all the opportunities in the world to drive the democratic process and provide Nigeria with purpose -driven leadership, for even 100years. If you check the foundation of the party, a group of genuinely patriotic Nigerians from across the country came together to confront a most vicious military government in order to bring democracy and promote the ideals of unity and progress.
Along the line, that vision was derailed or rather corrupted, so the loss from 60 years to 16 years didn’t come to some of us as sudden; we saw it progressively coming.


The cardinal principle upon which PDP was formed is zoning. When Yar’Adua died, some of us felt that the North should be allowed to complete their tenure. Of course we were overuled, called rebels and all sort of names. And you can’t shut down any part of this country from power. We believed that zoning provided opportunity for access, and anything that happened to zoning will scuttle the unity of this country and threaten stability and development.


When Jonathan became president, we thought there was an agreement for one term to complete Yar’Adua’s tenure. But as we were doing that, we were losing people, particularly from one section of the country. That’s why when I hear that there is a conspiracy of the north, I laugh it off as after all, politics is about conspiracy, and it’s a game of interest. So basically, our loss didn’t come to me as a surprise.


We were part of the last national convention. The basic tenets of democracy were not upheld anymore, because there was more impunity, imposition and all that. So it didn’t come as a surprise, what you sow is what you reap, garbage in garbage out.


At a point, PDP was being run like a business enterprise by some board of directors and ownership being played out. Instead of Peoples Democratic Party, we now had the Democratic Party without the people. So the people started looking elsewhere and ran into this ‘changeless change’ we now have. But it was inevitable as some of us saw it coming.
It’s only those who perpetrated the atrocities within PDP that should be responsible for what happened to us.



Two months down the line, what do you make of Buhari’s presidency?
Well I think there was an overwhelming clamour for change, and I had warned that change for the sake of change is not it. If we are going to change for the better, then it’s good for us. I have also said that the only good thing about APC, is the pedigree of Buhari and Osibanjo. Every other person in the APC is like another PDP member. And two trees cannot make a forest in a population of 170 million people. So what you are seeing now is Buhari trying to grapple with the issue of leadership, he wasn’t prepared as far as I am concerned. For instance, what they called merger, if they have truly merged, this fragmentation within the party of CPC tendency, new PDP and others which is manifesting now would not have been there. So there was a conspiracy and not a merger. If we merge, then the identities of the merging entities will diminish, but that is not the siuation now. What we are seeing now, is a contention within APC, to show you that there was no merger. It will take some time before it settles. But Nigerians voted for change and they are in a hurry. There is an urgent need for that change, not the masturbation of “I reduce my salaries” or symbolisms of “I didn’t buy new cars”. What about your allowances? What about security votes that runs into 500 million naira a month? Why don’t you talk about that one rather than a salary of 7 to 12 million?

We have to go for the real thing. I trust that Buhari has the pedigree and the capacity, but it’s not all about one person. He has to engage people who share his vision and that’s where the problem lies.
[ads4]