Prof Udenta Udenta, is a political strategist and founding National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy, (AD), In this interview monitored on Arise Television by ADEYEMI LAHANMI, he speaks on the crisis in the opposition parties in the country and the way forward

As a former member of the AD, you must be happy that the PDP is imploding, while the APC is doing well and your former ally looks set to get a second term in office. Do you agree with my submission?

A quick correction here for historical accuracy. I was the founding National Secretary of the AD in 1999 and the founding National Secretary of the party, where President Bola Tinubu was the governor of Lagos State. I left the party in 2001 and since then, I have never joined any political party…

But there are defections and PDP is imploding…

I don’t consider myself a classical politician because since then I was never a member of AC or ACN or the APC. That is why I don’t have a party card. If I had any from 2001 to date, I would have had a lot more advantage and patronage because I would have been a governor of my state, Enugu, an ambassador, ministers and I don’t want all that. I’m not interested in all of that. I believe in the division of labour. There are governors, presidents, ambassadors and there are people like you and I. Our voice is strong and powerful.

I am comfortable with what I am doing as a strategist, a thinker and a public intellectual. When it comes to the PDP crisis, I want us to make distinctions. One, crises that are internal to the party are organic. In every human organisation in every human institution, a crisis of that nature is an opportunity for a party to grow but the PDP crisis is unending for a simple reason.

There is an external force, an intrinsic internal agency right into the heart of this mix. That is why in the struggle to grow its brand, there is an external agency in the shape and form of the President, Presidency and the APC to diminish the party. This is because if you can contain the PDP, curtain the SDP and the ADC. Take it down to the conflict in the party, the factional fighting, the brouhaha at Wadata Plaza is well deposited.

I want to do an institutional analysis. The role of public institutions in this crisis. Number one is INEC. INEC has the mandate to be clean and equivocal about its stand in the leadership crisis of the PDP. INEC does not have to rely on the courts to determine what it wants. The issues of the Ekiti State primary election was an indication that it does not accept Abdul Rahman then as the acting chairman of the party. It is there in the public domain.

INEC accepted the suspension of the four members of the NWC of the Damagum led NWC that he has accepted the leader of the party before the convention and INEC has not spoken. INEC went to Oyo to tell the judge that it will not monitor or observe the convention. The judge ruled that they wait for him till after the conversation and I will answer your question. INEC had to decide whether to or not to go. The courts said go and don’t go, INEC chose the one of don’t go and it should speak today on the leadership of the party.

You have said INEC is one of the reasons the PDP has imploded as well as external influences. We would imagine the APC or the ruling party. What should the PDP now do so that this will not lead to their total demise?,

What the party has to do is what it is already doing. To the best of my knowledge, the leadership of the party under Amb Damagum wrote to INEC that we have suspended four members of the working committee and we are proceeding with our convention in Ibadan. The date has been set, you monitored our three NEC meetings, we prepared this with you giving you 21 days’ notice.

We want you to respond to us based on the legal understanding of the issue and what this crisis is all about, because INEC can call a meeting of all political parties including PDP. Who will INEC invite and that is what the party is asking INEC to tell the world. INEC’s silence is not golden anymore. INEC does not need to wait for the verdict of the courts.

That silence is not good for the cause of determining the leadership in the party. It is INEC that will determine which section or faction of the party is real. If INEC fails to do that the party can’t do beyond what it is doing. All these questions and concerns were the reason the party went to the Secretariat of the party to hold their meeting and that is a story for another day.

If you take the issue of INEC out of the matter and the PDP strategy within the public space in terms of information deposited, you will come to the second layer, the Police. The new chairman of the party, Turaki, led his Excos to the FCT Police to make a complaint that some characters wanted to come and topple the Secretariat in the name of the party and were not sanctioned by the party. The police assured that nothing of such would happen and will take care of business.

The following day as early as 5a.m, the Anyanwun faction went in and the police were watching them. So, the police are also complicit in the crisis because if they had shut the place down even before the brouhaha and crisis erupted, Nigerians would have been spared the spectacle. They even sprayed over 200 canisters of teargas on sitting governors and leaders of the party. That was what was done to Senator Chuba Okadigbo decades ago and he did not survive it.

The third most problematic of the matter is the role of the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike and I want to use the opportunity to talk to Nigerians. Wike this and that is not important and helpful. He is not an autonomous administrative, governance and political force. He is answerable to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Bola Ahmed Tinubu. By law he is the Minister of the FCT and by making way to Wadata Plaza be went on behalf of the President. It was the President that was at Wadata and not Wike.

The way be called the media for press conference or grievances, it is not him but the President and that is what the law says as he is answerable to the President. There is a document I have here which I do no have time to read, it is the extant public service rule and regulations of behaviour.

I’m really glad that you are highlighting the institutional weaknesses that have allowed this crisis to fester. Can you sum it up by saying who you think hold legitimacy within the PDP at the moment?

I will come to that. The Chief of staff to the President is a gatekeeper. He keeps the gate for the President, Ministers, Advisers, Ambassadors if they wake up from their slumber and appoints one.

Evey Minister speaks for the President upon clearance between the office of the President and Chief of Staff. Every Minister is monitored and evaluated by Adiza Usman whose job is to do that in the Presidency.

If Wike holds a public function, he does so on behalf of the presidency and sometimes is dictated to. So, the PDP crisis is not from him but from the Presidency. In 2010, a certain Bala Mohammed became FCT Minister from ANPP and later joined the PDP.

It was the President that brought Wike from the PDP. If there is an internal crisis in a party, it can be done internally but if its external, its whole because Wike didn’t send himself. There is a deliberate institutional failure to weaponnise INEC and the FCT Minister’s office.