… Says it will be suicidal for INEC not to register party
By Iheanacho Nwosu, Abuja
National Chairman of the new mega party, Action Democratic Party(ADP), Engr. Yagbaji Sani, who led party members last week to apply for the registration of the new party , spoke on the chances of the party and declared that the party would dislodge both the APC and the PDP, in 2019.
This is even as he said it would be suicidal for the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, not to register the new party.
Why did you decide to form another party when we have about 60 parties already in existence?
The constitution of the country allows free association and it also gives individuals the right, to contribute their quota in any way possible, especially in a developing society like ours. And then you said there are many parties. Well, there are many parties but this is a different one. This one is a movement; we have a movement whose time has come. We are a party whose idea has come and we are not like any other party, we are different. When you look at the democratic structures that we have and given the fact that the main structures we have today are weak, I am not sure Nigerians still have confidence in those parties.
Including the APC, the ruling party?
In fact, Nigerians have lost confidence in those parties, and that for us, is a call to duty that we should rescue the political stage from imminent collapse.
But we understand that the PDP may soon bounce back, if that happens, where do you hope to draw the bulk of your membership from ?
Yes, this question is speculative because of the contending forces in the PDP. If you are familiar with the reasons the party is going through it is experiencing now , you will know that it is not just the issue of litigation. It is also about the fact that, the party has lost the centre of attraction.
Right Now?
Not just right now. You know the PDP has lost political power and the party in power, the APC, will do everything possible to remain in power, being their arch enemy. You know the PDP too, was able to hold itself together for long because it had power. They have lost political power now and I am not sure there is a centre of attraction anymore. And I am also sure that the APC, which sees the PDP as enemy number one, will never allow it to bounce back .
When I say do everything possible, I mean that the bulk of those who formed the APC are from the PDP. The PDP does not have a centre of attraction and that is why they could not manage their litigation well. There’s no body to call anybody to order. Also, the party is largely, an indiscipline one. The structures they had, which made elected government officials leaders of the party, unfortunately did not help the party too. If you have elected government officials as the leaders of the party, once they are no longer in power, then the center cannot hold, this is because the leader is no longer there. The leader has lost his position and another leader is yet to emerge.
That is why when you are saying PDP will bounce back, I don’t know how they are going to bounce back because the problems keeping PDP in crisis are inherent in the party. It is the makeup of the PDP that is making it to have the challenges it is having and they cannot reinvent themselves because that problem is like cancer of the brain, a brain tumor, that is what the PDP has been inflicted with. This is why it will be hard for it to come back.
When you rest your leadership on elected persons and nobody is elected, who is going to be the leader? Who’s the rallying point? They don’t have any rallying point, that is why the crises are compounding. You solve one today, another bigger one will emerge tomorrow. So there’sno leadership. This is why we are not bothered about the PDP. PDP is gone. I am not saying people will not try to revive it, but it won’t work.
If you say there is no attraction for the PDP, what of the APC which has been receiving lots of defectors in recent weeks?
Yeah, and these are not people that can go back to their constituencies and tell anybody to join them and the people will listen. In fact, today, if you claim to be an APC member in certain parts of the country, the claim will automatically set you against the people. Mere mention of APC in some places will create anger between the proponents and the people; so the party has really lost followers. Those defecting to join them are just individuals who are looking for business and business is not about masses.
So the masses are looking for something different, something they can associate with, not individuals running from one party to the other to go and take positions or take contracts. So those ones moving to the APC now, are people looking for something and the party also knows that they are joining them to take whatever they can get. It is not to win elections because they know that when the time for elections come, these same people will get back home and the people will stone them.
You just submitted your document to INEC, are you sure you will be registered, considering the fact that many have said you are coming to challenge the party in power?
But it will be suicidal for INEC not to register us. The fact of the matter is that the present government, would not have come into being, if INEC did not register APC. Nigerians are watching to know whether this is the INEC they can trust. I am not sure we are doing anything wrong, by wanting to register our party. What we are trying to do, is to deepen democracy, it will even help the present government.
In the South East, some political bigwigs kept defecting to the APC. If you look at the North too, it looked settled for the APC, so where really are you targeting to draw the bulk of your party?
There are two different things here. You have to be able to separate the two. Why do you have political parties? You have parties to win elections but the parties in existence have lost appeal.
But the APC seems to be in firm control?
Even the APC.
They are still in power you know…
Yes, they are still in power but the power rests with the people and the people have lost faith in that party, so those running there are running to grab whatever they can grab as individuals. Today we are creating a vibrant environment so that they will also become better. Maybe our coming will help them to also become better and to also manage their party affairs more efficiently. It is really in the interest of the government of the day to ensure they have a vibrant opposition; to keep them on their toes and I am quoting the National Chairman of the APC, Chief Oyegun. He was quoted to have said that he would welcome the Mega party because it will keep them on their toes; which is better for democracy and even for this government.
But can we really say that the main agenda of your party is to get power in 2019?
I have told you that we are coming to deepen democracy and deepening democracy means that people should be able to change any government in power. We are coming so that democracy can strive. So we are not coming for the sake of grabbing power. No. You know that when APC came, they were very resolute on grabbing power. But you don’t take power for its own sake. You must have a reason for doing what you are doing and our agenda, if you look at our party’s main principles, you will see it, it is for an all-inclusive government, the empowerment of the young people and also party supremacy. All of these are missing in the government we have right now.
Do we call your party a progressive party, a democratic party or a conservative party?
Well, you can call us a progressive party. Because we are progressives, in the sense that we want to deepen democracy, because as it is today, we don’t think democracy is properly situated in Nigeria . Even the executive is not as democratic as it should be, so we coming to deepen democracy. APC got it wrong because they were just after power! power! Power!! Otherwise, they would have been responsive to the needs of the people.
But I will still want to know where you are going to draw the bulk of your membership from. Is it from the North, North central, South South or South West?
Look, the dynamics of politics today has changed. I told you, ours is a movement whose time has come. So the idea of where do we draw our membership from is just begging the issue. I don’t know whether you watched or know what happened before APC came into being. Why didn’t you ask them then where they were drawing their membership from?
We already knew at that time that they had five governors from the South West, they had one from the North and they were banking on the street popularity of Buhari in the North. So, we already knew the configuration at the time. So where is your own coming from?
Yes that was the configuration then, but today you have even a better environment in the sense that the governors that you are talking about, who probably were in PDP today, are in total disarray and for the PDP to come together, you now have to look at the where and the what, these will be the factors that will force them to come together.
You said that PDP has no rallying point, now, in your party, what is the allying point, since you said that the men leading the mega party are not the real owners, that some big masquerades are behind it . Who are they? Can you let us into the profile of some of them?
The masquerades are the people. They are the masquerades. When we come out in our large numbers as we are doing now, then you will see the masquerades. It is a movement like I told you.
What are some of the names in each of the geopolitical Zones that we can relate with?
I have already told you the big men are the people themselves.
Democracy is about people now. Isn’t it? So, it is the people themselves. Don’t forget that in today’s world, I can sit in my house and talk to one million people at the same time and it works. The politics of today is not like that of yesterday that requires one man telling the people where to go, it has gone beyond that. How Obama made it , even how Trump made it, are classical examples.
The social media you mean…?
Exactly So. That is the politics of today. Maybe you are still thinking of yesterday, where Mr. somebody will tell everybody to go and vote, No,No,No . The youths have taken over already, because they can communicate and they are enlightened. You can give them the billions, they will take it, but when they get to their handsets or WhatsApp, by the time they start sending text messages on WhatsApp and all this group thing, things will change. We are not thinking of any big men from the North or from the West, those are not the issues today. Politics has gone beyond that, even the Buhari administration also benefited from that largely. It is a fact that they came with the idea of change. So this is why when people ask me, who is the masquerade, I say the masquerade is the people. I don’t need to go to the East to talk to people before I can get to you in the East, there is already a network. The politics of today, is such that when you have the idea, you can move the people.
– The Sun
