Why APC Can't Make Headway - Olisa Metuh

Why APC Can't Make Headway - Olisa Metuh
Barrister Olisa Metuh is the National Publicity Secretary of the rulings Peoples Democratic Party PDP,  in  a chart wih Alarinka Agbaye, the foundation member of the PDP bares his mind on various issues including why he feels that the opposition party merger cant make headway in Nigeria; Excerpt


How do you feel not seeing former President olusegun Obasanjo not present here

 As a member of the National executive of this party and I have been at the national executive for thriteen years since the inception of this party, I can't recall how many meeting the former BOT chairman and president has not attended, may be 1 he is a very busy person.and as we are speaking now, I don't know wether he is here in Nigeria, Africa or outside Africa I know he is a very busy person that does not make issue

How will you asses today's meeting?

Well I will tell you I am impress because before coming here we have heard about the problem of the party in the zone,and we expected that there will be problem but what I am seeing here is overwhelming, the party at the National level is impressed at the level of attendance of this meeting, the fact that we have former governors of the PDP, former and serving Senator, former and serving House of Rep members, former speakers and members of the House of Assembly, former members of the National Working Committee of the party and other members of the party.we are impressed with the level of attendance.

But that does not bury the fact that there are factions in the party and some of the fictional leaders are not here, how will the National Executive reconcile this?

If there are no factions in Nigeria we will not embark on this tour so we embarked on this tour and we call it reconciliation and concentration tours because we know that there are problems there are challenges, there are problems within various executives in different zone south west is not immune to be without problem and that is why we have been sayin coming together as a party, you can  be a mushroom party, you can be a one man party and manage it well,when you have a big party like PDP and when you want to be praised and cover national interest and not one man's interest its difficult to manage so we are welcoming the opposition we want to see how they will do their internal democracy and how they will come over the crisis and internal Democracy that they will have as a party we have manage our own for 14 years we have withstood it and we are strong and we are still going stronger

The former vice president Atiku Abubakar  call for the reform and the need for internal Democracy in the PDP what is your take on that

Well if he said that I think that is ok,everybody want internal Democracy our national party chairman Dr Bamanga Tukur is going around trying to  reconcile and ensuring that we'll have internal democracy in the party at various levels right from the wards, local governments, state levels and at the National level, that is what we are yearning for, we are not perfect as a party but we will keep up improving

 There has been insinuation that with the emergence of APC , PDP national leader are very Jittery because they do not know what 2015 election holds

No, it is not true that we are jittery, as a party we are more worried with our own internal challenges, we want to make sure that we keep our own people,if we are able to keep our members and we ensure we keep our people peaceful and united we are completely unperturbed about any number of party that merge, visibly we can withstand them, we are not worrying about them we have seen the problem they are having by only getting a name and we are thinking if they have that kind of problem by chosen a name or getting registrations how can you fix the problems of the country, the normal problems that face Nigeria how can you solve them if you cannot solve a little issue of registration, if they want assistant we have a very strong national organization and mobilization department and we are willing to assist the opposition to advise or help them how they can do it to get registered because we want an opposition party that is strong that can withstand the PDP, it will he'll re engineer and engender good democracy in Nigeria, if we have a good opposition, it would build a stronger Nigeria. So we are ready to assist then and we will not charge them for assisting them.

With the reception the National Chairman receive in the southwest would you say that is a vote of confidence on his leadership?

I said it that while we are coming here we never expected this kind of attendance, we are impressed, we are very very impressed we are more concerned with the issue of reconciling our members and challenges that the issue of confidence or no confidence, I am aware that the party chairman wanted to show appreciation that we are doing well but the primary is solving the problems with in the party and the secondary is getting ready to win elections and most importantly is that those we elected should perform and satisfy the yearnings of the people so that the people that gave us the mandate will continue to vote for the party

 General message for the PDP members in the country

 They should continue to listen to the national chairman and continue the process of reconciliation and rebuilding the party.