The leadership crisis plaguing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has held down the party since 2015, but the recent exodus of some prominent leaders of the party and their regrouping with other elements from other parties have become a major source of concern for some Nigerians.

A former Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Market, Hon Tadjudeen Yusuf, tells ONWUKA NZESHI that the PDP remains strong even in its current travails

With the advent of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), and the exit of some prominent figures from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), some Nigerians are saying that the PDP is clinically dead? Do you agree?

Whoever is saying that, need to really sit down and have a rethink, it is either the person is delusional, or is a bad student of history. You will understand that political contestations are normal, and when elections are coming, you hear a lot of loud noise that does not translate to electoral victory, or showing capacity of being a politician on ground.

BY the grace of God, I have been in the political space for some time. I was a student union leader. I ran an election as a student and won as president of students union. I was a parliamentarian in the university before I came into national politics.

So, it us not just that I studied politics I have practiced politics to some extent. I’m not ascribing to myself, ominous wisdom about politics, but a party that has National Assembly members, House of Assembly members, has local government chairman, has about 10 governors, because there is a crisis, people say it’s dead.

The defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) one of the parties that merged to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), at a point, had only one governor. The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) had only one; the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) also had just one.

All these parties came together to form the APC, and APC is what it is today. People forget history, that there was a time that PDP had almost 30 state governors. So, because APC is having 27 state governors today and, PDP has kiss you think PDP is done. No, it’s a season. Life itself is governed by time and season.

It is the time for APC now and I don’t fault them. I don’t fault those privileged to be there, I fault their governance strategies and what have you, but I don’t fault that privilege. In PDP, all we need to do is to keep doing what we are doing as a party, rejig our party, make sure we reconcile, compromise and what have you.

We will come back, and Nigerians will realise that they made a very huge mistake throwing out PDP in 2015. I know they already realise it now. But they should not allow anybody to bamboozle the. With that narrative that PDP is dead.

It’s to further make them dead in deadness because the moment you lose hope in the alternative you have, you begin to resign to fate, and you accept your fate the way it is, then you won’t make it. Because one thing about human beings is that you are a sum total of your thinking pattern. Your action comes from your depth of revelation inside. You can’t have outward revelation without inner revelation.

So, PDP is well and alive. I am a member of PDP. I am aware of the challenges, but you can only write it off at your own peril. I talk to the high and mighty in PDP. I interact the way I like. Even those who are fighting inside for different reasons do not want it to die.

It is ego, contestation, and control. If PDP is dead, why are people struggling for the control of the party? Why are people fighting to be in charge? Does anybody want to be in charge of an empty shell? So, I disagree with them.

But the arguments stems from the fact that in the last off-cycle elections, especially the by-elections, PDP didn’t do well at all. What do you have to say on that?

We didn’t do well, but there was a time that those who were in power now didn’t do well. There was a time we did some byelections and PDP won all.

But in the byelections you mentioned, we won some. And don’t forget that our democracy has not matured to a level where people stay in opposition on principle.

Some people joined the ruling party because it’s not everyone that has a second address. Some politicians don’t have a second address. I mean, out of office they can’t feed themselves anymore.

So, we must realise those facts. But let me tell you, if we get it right, we get the right person and the right candidates on board, PDP will shock you.

If PDP is dead, why would they focus on PDP? Why are they talking about PDP all the time? Every time, they are talking about PDP, it’s because they are pained

What makes the PDP thick?

That’s the only party till date that is like a religion. You go to some localities, you see, in fact, in most places where people vote against PDP, the elites coordinated that vote. If you leave the people, most of them will vote PDP. But it is a conscious coordination by elite that produced some of those results. PDP is not dead.

Some Nigerians are saying that your leaders who left for the ADC is actually left with the soul of the party. Do you agree?

With due respect to some of the leaders who left and went to ADC, I will say that most of them are people I call nomadic politicians. Their nomadism is at the highest level.

I can give you the history of some of them, how they’ve been jumping from one party to the other. They are never around when the party needs them to work.

If it’s not election period, we don’t see them. When the party list the 2015 election and needed to reorganise itself ahead of the next election, they were not there until the 2019 election. 2019 to 2022, they were not there until another election period.

So, some of us felt that no, it’s high time we do not allow them to take our party for granted. I didn’t join politics with the sole commitment to make one person president it must not be you all the time.

I joined politics to make sure I can contribute my quota to better the lot of my people. So, it’s not about one person’s ambition. But, ADC is about one person’s ambition. It’s I, me and myself, Nigeria limited. And they will crash in due season. The reality will come soon.

Are you talking about a particular person?

Yes, definitely. Atiku Abubakar.

Do you think he cannot make it this time with all the northern anger against the ruling party?

Tell me when one region’s anger has produced a president. It’s collaboration.

And the mere fact that you were the one that brought this ethnic dichotomy to the fore in 2014 against a southern president that it is the turn of the North.

And if the northerner stays eight years, it’s still the turn of the North. So, it’s about you.

The rules and the values must be changed when it is you. The goalpost must be shifted. Now, it should be a competent hand not about region. Who told you are the most competent person? How? What’s the parameter?

Are you embittered that some of these people left your party for ADC?

I don’t have any business with ADC. Let them go. They have a right to have a party, but they should stop this attack on PDP. If PDP is dead, why would they focus on PDP?

Why are they talking about PDP all the time? Every time, they are talking about PDP, it’s because they are pained. They assumed that when they moved, there will be a big group to follow them.

No governor followed them. So, they were shocked because before then, there was this story… there will be an implosion. Tell me.

Who has followed them? Apart from those who are ambitious? It’s a camouflage association of ambitious politicians whose philosophy is about if it’s not me, it’s nobody. So, let them do their primary. We’ll see where they belong. We are waiting for them.