2 weeks Ago By Rapheal
By Daniel Kanu A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former gubernatorial aspirant of the party in Delta State, Chief Sunny Onuesoke, in this encounter speaks on the challenges plaguing the main opposition party, blaming those running the PDP at the national level for the woes. Onuesoke also speaks on his 2027 presidential ambition, illegal mining, governance in Delta State with Sheriff Oborev-wori on the saddle, among other sensitive issues. Excerpts: Your party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is enmeshed in deep crisis right now.
Are you worried that the party may not actually present a strong oppo-sition ahead of the 2027 elections? Honestly, at the national level, PDP lacks consultation. I want to repeat, at the national level, PDP doesn’t recognise the voic-es from the sub-regional levels. PDP thinks they can do anything at the Abuja level, and they are free to just say this.
Who do they consult? Who did the National Working Committee consult? Every single Nigerian, since 2009, became a member of the PDP. We are all voices, but who are they consulting? And they are coming to the public and telling us about the issue of the secre-tary; who cares about the sec-retary they will appoint? They have succeeded in messing themselves up at the national level. We have people like us who have been there for all these while.
If you are a member of PDP who went to All Progressives Congress (APC) and you crossed paths and came back to PDP, then want to de-cide on the party, you are killing the party. This has been the is-sue. At the national level, they lack consultation.
They lack quality people to speak for the party because they are not PDP, some of them went to APC, then came back to PDP, and now they want to speak. The problem ba-sically is those set of political decampees at the national lev-el, who are coming to prove to us that they have to decide the secretary of the party, because at the national level, after leaving PDP, going to the APC and com-ing back, they lack legitimacy. And I want to say something.
I don’t want to discredit the sec-retary of the party. I don’t know his profile that much, but if the secretary of the party is some-body who has been in the PDP for quite a very long time, he has never crossed, then he should go on as the secretary of the party. That’s it.
Former Vice President Atiku Abu-bakar was quoted as saying that the ruling party has a hand in destroying the PDP. What is your take on this? I’m against such a statement. You can quote me.
I’m against such a view by Atiku. Why would you say APC or the pres-ident is destroying your party? What happened to the PDP gover-nors? What happened to the PDP leadership? How did they destroy the party? When PDP was in pow-er, were we not the people destroying the Alliance for Democracy (AD) at that time? If APC is destroying the PDP, it means we submitted ourselves to their destruction be-cause we cannot be united and an outsider will destroy us. Nobody but we the PDP are the ones de-stroying ourselves.
We have to absolve the president from this and anyone telling you that Tinu-bu or the APC is the one destroy-ing the PDP is not telling you the truth. How can you say that? Can you prove it that APC is the one destroying the PDP. If any party is committed and vibrant, no one will destroy it.
PDP should come back and have a self-check on what is wrong. Did APC ask PDP not to criticise them now? Did APC ask PDP not to correct their errors? When PDP was in government under Jonathan, was it not the same PDP that destroyed itself, leading to the 2015 election? If APC is destroy-ing PDP today as they claim, it is because we allowed them, and the blame should go to those who allowed and not those who destroy. It is not the APC that caused factional-isation in PDP; if they caused it, we sold ourselves to them and we should blame ourselves and not them.
2027 is quite close; what is PDP doing to get back the presidency? I have written a lot on this; un-til you give a voice to very com-mitted and long term members to chart a course for this party, we are not going anywhere. Until proper chieftains of the party with interest in repositioning the PDP are given the opportu-nity, we are not going anywhere in all honesty. Let’s come out of our shells, let’s come out of our silence because we have been si-lent for too long.
PDP members at the state and national levels have been silent for too long and allowed those without the party’s interest at heart to damage things. We have been silent for too long and it is high time we stopped being silent on the affairs of this party. Our con-tinued silence has made people read us and say we are working for the APC.
They know what to do if they want to do it. Some people have expressed fear that based on what is going on in PDP, the party may not field a pres-idential candidate in 2027 if they continue on this trajectory. What is your take on this? Let me tell you now that Onuesoke is going for the presidential ticket of the PDP.
We are going to field candidates who are capable of rescuing Nigeria like myself. I’m contemplating doing it. I have the funds to take the ticket.
I won’t have to solicit money to get the ticket. I have been making consultations with my friends, especially in the North. Yes, I am going in for the presidency.
I’m going in for the presidency un-der the PDP. If they are so afraid of the APC, Onuesoke has embarked on national consultations. I spent almost six weeks before Christmas in the North.
I met my friends. I met a lot of my friends there. I’m qualified to be the presidential can-didate of the PDP and also qualified to be the president.
I have consulted my friends. I just left Adamawa. I went to Kogi and several places in the North, and I can tell you that the responses I have been getting is encouraging.
I have even met a lot of guys in the East who are very interested. I can tell you that a lot of people in the PDP are also very interested in the ticket. I’m going to do my declaration in Abuja soon and the committee is also going to be set up soon because I have embarked on wider consultations.
My friends, a lot of them, are coming from the North, from the East and they are men with ideologies, apart from huge financial strength. We need to have a paradigm shift for good in Ni-geria. We’re going to paint Abuja blue with my posters.
It mustn’t be about the moneybags all the time. Are you in any way worried that a big PDP chieftain like Wike is working under the APC government? There are members of the Labour Par-ty at the National Assembly that have defected to the APC; so it’s not only the PDP. Besides what is wrong with a party member serving in the government of another party? Wike has won votes in PDP just like myself.
If today Tinubu calls me to say I have something to ren-der to my country irrespective of my party, and as long as he would give me free hand, I will go because it’s a service to the country and not to the president. That doesn’t mean I am a member of the APC. Serving under Tinubu hasn’t made Wike a member of the APC because I haven’t seen him with an APC member-ship card.
He’s just serving the country as a minister and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s funny to even think that we have about 13 governors and it is a federal minister that should be painted as destroying the party. What are the governors of the PDP doing? What are the federal lawmakers voted under the PDP doing? What has Wike done wrong in accepting to serve as minister? Those saying this should look at their own problems and leave the minister alone.
They should face it inwardly. For me, I don’t think it’s an issue. Recently, Nasir el-Rufai said that his party, APC, lacks in-ternal democracy and that there are plans by the ruling party to destabilise the opposition, among other negative remarks.
As a chieftain of the main opposition party, what is your take on what the former FCT minister said? I don’t want to be rude, but el-Ru-fai should remain silent if he has nothing to say. When I say el-Rufai should remain silent, it’s because he lacks validation, he lacks legitimacy to speak about issues of good governance. This is the same thing he said against PDP when he left, forgetting that PDP gave him all the platforms he needed to be where he is today.
Atiku brought him to PDP and made him the chairman of the Bureau of Public Enterprise and at last he left. He left the party and destroyed PDP. He left the party along-side people like Dino Melaye and Saraki.
Yes, they left the party with five gover-nors who walked out of Jonathan at a convention in Abuja. So, he lacks any val-idation, he lacks legitimacy. I don’t think some-body should take el-Rufai to be serious.
That’s why I said he should remain silent. He doesn’t qualify to comment on anything opposition, APC and PDP. El-Rufai is one of the Nigerians that is responsible for what we’re going through today.
He and his cohorts shouldn’t say anything. He doesn’t even have the right to talk. He doesn’t even have the right to talk in Kaduna talk more of national issues.
How do you think Nigeria can curb the incessant fuel tanker vehicles falls, some of which occurred many times in the last couple of weeks? I think it’s very rampant in Nigeria, but not that it doesn’t happen globally, especially in developing coun-tries. You see, one of the problems in the whole issue is not the tanker falling or the explo-sions. The problem is the Nigerians who go there to scoop oil or the diesel.
However, the development is as a re-sult of the high level of poverty in the country and it’s becoming unbearable. It’s to the extent that even if Nigerians see that a simple spark can ignite fire, they will still go ahead to embark on that dangerous venture. It shows the level of hardship and poverty in the country.
This is an indication that the country is going through severe hardship, this is a pointer that the people are suffer-ing in this country. And then another thing is that we should try to investi-gate these tankers that are falling, is it the original drivers or their motor boys that are handling these tankers? I’m asking the question because some of these drivers may just have decided to hand over the vehicles to their motor boys who are not yet capable to handle them. I would suggest immediately that a tanker driv-er must pass through training and if possible acquire required certifications that will enable him to be an expert in handling such vehicles, it’s a very sen-sitive thing.
In the developed countries, there’s a separate truck approval license for drivers of tankers and trailers, espe-cially in the U.S and London. You don’t give the same license you give to a car driver or another vehicle to a trailer or a tanker driver because not everybody is capable of safely driving tankers and trailers.
That’s why you see that in de-veloped countries, the level of trailers and tanker spilling is very low. The people handling or driving tankers and trailers in the United States are well trained for the job and they are also highly paid. They are purely truck professionals with separate driver’s approval than the normal U.
S driver license. So these are the things we as a nation should work upon. Honestly, the explosion is not the issue, but the victims that go there to scoop highly inflammable products like fuel and it’s a pointer to the hardship in the society as I said earlier.
Why don’t you actually look at it from the angle of bad roads causing the Incessant falls, hence the government’s complicity? To me, there’s no basis going to this angle and for me, I will exonerate the governors on this. You know why I’m saying so? It’s because if you look at where these tanker spillage accidents happen, I’m not sure they are bad spots on the road. There may be bad spots on the roads, though but where these acci-dents happen are all good spots on the highways.
We must not heap everything on the government. I’m not saying the APC or PDP government are road mas-ters. I never said so.
But what we’re say-ing, some places where these things, accidents happen, for example, the spot in Niger, is it a bad spot? It’s not a bad spot. Why don’t we tell ourselves the truth? This is why I earlier mentioned the issue of profes-sionalism in handling these trucks. We need professional people.
There should be a separate office for certification and validation of truck drivers, like what happens in the U.S. Driving trucks and lorries shouldn’t be all comers affairs.
Senator Adams Oshiomhole alleged that top military personalities are the ones engaging in illegal mining in the North. What do you think the government can do to stop that? It’s very simple; the government should declare a state of emergency on illegal mining. If the government can burn down illegal refineries for crude in the Niger Delta, nothing stops the government from destroying the illegal mining facilities in the North.
What is your impression of your state governor, Sheriff Oborev-wori? My governor has continued his adminis-tration with past projects, projects he met, and the new ones he’s doing, which is very commendable. Governor Sheriff is a continuity governor. He’s continu-ing with the old projects and his new projects.
Governance is about continui-ty. Sheriff never neglected his predeces-sors’ projects. This state doesn’t belong to one person.
It belongs to everybody and Sheriff is just there as a pilot. I commend him..
