Former Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should be held accountable for emergence of a one party system in Nigeria and not the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Okechukwu said this to journalists in Enugu on Sunday, while reacting to insinuations blaming the APC and by extension President Bola Tinubu for Nigeria’s slide to one party state.
He dismissed the blame game on the APC as being the architecture of a one party state in Nigeria, describing such insinuations as misplaced.
Okechukwu, maintained that PDP members had been inflicted by the same culture of impunity they planted in the country’s political culture during their 16 years in power (1999-2015).
Okechukwu appealed to Nigerians to go down memory lane and recall when the Tinubu-led defunct Action Congress (AC) and the Buhari-led defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) trudged on with one governor each.
“This is despite the enticing stomach infrastructure being offered by the PDP government before the APC merger, that is the hallmark of a multi-party state,” he said.
He noted that Nigeria naturally would slide into a one party state when PDP the major opposition party with more than 10 governors was afflicted by the stomach infrastructure syndrome.
“One without being immodest recalled how Buba Galadima, then national secretary of the CPC was arrested and hounded on the eve of the 2007 general elections and was offered all manner of carrots to abandon the CPC and by extension Buhari.
“Or, how we trudged on with minimal family survival in the 13 years interval before 2015,” he said.
Okechukwu reminisced that since the APC merger in 2013, PDP members, even their presidential candidate, converted the APC into a rehabilitation center, instead of adopting the prerequisite ingredients of being an opposition party with patience.
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He added that it was because of the culture of impunity that made the PDP to offhandedly, jettison the rotation convention of sharing power between north and south, and even Section 7 of the the PDP constitution, which made the rotation principle mandatory.
“Imagine the breach of the rotation convention by the PDP leadership, not minding the unintended consequences, with the erroneous thought that Atiku Abubakar will unlock the northern electorate from their dormitory to vote for the PDP in the 2023 presidential election.
“This is misjudgment pure and simple, with its collateral damages, one of which is a one party state.
“They are at it again with the fake arithmetic of the south spending 17 years in power and the north spending 11 years since 1999, as if Nigeria got Independence in 1999,” Okechukwu added.
