Chief Ndubuisi Nwobu is the immediate past chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra State. In this interview with CHARLES ONYEKAMUO, he speaks on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s one year in office, the likelihood of the PDP and Labor Party forming an alliance before the 2027 presidential election among others. Excerpts:

Your party, the PDPin Anambra State is reorganizing, do you think the chapter willget it right this time around before the governorship election in the state next year,

Basically you will agree with me that the PDP is a party that is a household name in Anambra State and across the country. It is a party that is really loved in Anambra State. More often than not our problems are self-inflicted and most of the time the Anambra people get disappointed at every election because their expectations of the party rising to the occasion are not met. The last rally that was held in Awka is a process of rebuilding the party because it is clear that the PDP has gone under in Anambra state due to lack of unity. I commend the national leadership of the party for rising to the occasion and having the courage to set up a Caretaker Executive because any group that has no leadership is bound to falter. With what we have now it is incumbent on the national leadership if they mean well for the party in the state to be mindful and to take clear understudy of those who are building the party now, those who are making every effort to build the partyand bring it back to what it should be and also avoid the temptation of last minute dancing to the whims and caprices of those who are hatchet men. Those people whose job is to collect money from other political parties with the view to destroy the PDP in Anambra State. They take peanuts to the national leadership of the party and make them lose focus and fail to appreciate the need for the party to grow.

Don’t you think that it is not only the members in Anambra State that are the problem but also the national leadership in Abuja?

That is why I said if they mean well for the party in Anambra State. They should call the bluff of those fifth columnists who come in when we are set to conduct primary elections and congresses with their fake and fictitious alliances to the partyand they know that they are paid agents and hatchet men to destroy the party. We have leaders of the party in Anambra State like Sen Ben Obi. If the national leadership wants the PDP to get back for once, they should listen to such leaders who are from the state, who have remained consistent in their support for the party. He is not a money man and he is not somebody that will come to destroy the party and such men cannot sell their conscience for a pot of potage because they have integrity. But if the national leadership throws away his views and the views of such people, the aim of rebuilding the part would be defeated. With that they will end up again destroying the party in the state and that means that the party would further nose dive.

Before 2023 Presidential election the party at the national level lost most of its presidential aspirants due to in house fighting what exactly happened? 

To the best of my knowledge I cannot phantom any presidential aspirant that left the party but His Excellency Mr. Peter Obi who left theparty before the national convention. You see politics has its dynamics and people have their own understanding and perspective on how to play politics. We were in the party together with Mr. Peter Obi and then I was the chairman of the party in Anambra State. But I was not privy to his decision to leave the party. If he left the party because of the zoning issue which did not favour the South East geopolitical zone that is not known to me. But you see in politics you have your views and you must tryto make your views known and acceptable to a majority of the members of your party. If your views are not acceptable to the greater majority of the party members you have to take it that way. PDP has several platforms in the party. We have the partycaucus made up of elected officers. We have forum of Governors, and we have National Assembly leadership. We have the partystructure, the National Working Committee (NWC) to the zone, state and the rest of them. So far any decision to be binding on all these organs must be consulted and their views sort. And when you do that and your views happen not to be accepted and that means that you cannot actualize your ambition in the party maybe that was why he had to leave the party. His leaving the party did not mean that the PDPdid anything wrong to him or asked him to leave the party.

Don’t you think that if Atiku had conceded to Peter Obi to be candidate PDP would have won that election? 

Yes I share this view because if you look at the working demographics, you willfind out that most places Peter Obi had votes were PDP areas. More or less he took away things from the PDP and he did not take away anything from the All Progressives Congress APC. And if you combine the results of the PDP and that of Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party it would have been a work over for the PDP had it been that both of them were together. Beyond the individual issues, I want to tell you that it was a big error on the part of the entire opposition. When the All Progressives Congress (APC) wanted to come into power, all other opposition elements came together as one bloc. They did not come as different parties. They came from Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and All Nigerians Peoples Party(ANPP) and break away of PDP as one political party and it was a contest between two major political parties. So Nigerians were left with either this or that. I think it was a matter of poor planning or poor articulation on the part of the opposition that wanted to unseat the APC government to have thought that they could have achieved that having different political parties. Kwankwaso went the other way, Peter Obi went the other way, the PDP the other way. If they had a concerted effort it would have been much more beneficial to Nigerians. That is where you bring in the conspiracy theory. But the South West understands the politics and they knew that they need to urge Peter Obi along so that he will not capitulate and he will continue to feel that he will make it and has some people behind him in the South West while in actual sense it was a conspiracy that was worked to deny the opposition the opportunity of unseating the APC.

One burning issue now is the likelihood of Obi returning to PDP to team up with Atiku. How feasible is the issue of likely Mega Party from an alliance of Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso? 

On the issue of Atiku trying to get Peter Obi back into the fold, I don’t think that I am competent to analyze that and I am not a member of the national leadership of the partyand at the state level this agenda has not come up and it has never been discussed at our level. But if there are efforts at the national level, I think it is not the PDP looking for Peter Obi but political parties make efforts to re- strategize with the aim of being in power. If the national leadership of the PDPfeels that bringing Peter Obi back to the party is the only way to win political power that willbe fine. On the issue of whether Atiku would consider giving Peter Obi the ticket of the PDP, I have heard Atiku speak on that and he said that it is up to the party to decide and that if the party zones the ticket to the South East, he has no problems with that. When you look at what is happening in the Labour Party and the leadership problems that the party is facing it is being suspected that the party in power may have a hand in that crisis. Another point here is that those who hold offices are more interested in the office they occupy rather than uniting the party. Rather than merging with other political parties they chose to remain the chief executive officers of small companies than being a shareholder in a big conglomerate with large dividend. That these are the problems with the formation of Mega Party is that these politicians are self-centered and they do not care about the common good of the Nigerian people and they are not looking at the bigger picture.

How do you rate the Nigerian democracy so far? 

To start with, it is on record among most commentators that the June 12 1992 election remains the fairest and most transparent election ever held in this country where people from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds freely gave support to MKO Abiola and not the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as a party. Unfortunately the wishes of the Nigerian people was not allowed to materialize for Abiola to assume power. There after we got into 1999 with Olusegun Obasanjo becoming President. With all his short comings to a large extent he meant well for the nation. As a human being he may not necessarily be the best for all but he meant well for Nigerians. Nigeria moved much forward. In the way of most African leaders he wanted to remain in power by getting people to clamour for a third term in office which collapsed in his face. With that collapse of third term agenda tended to have deviated from his very patriotic zeal and the centre couldn’t hold. And his bid to undue those against his ambition led to some subjective actions in government. There after Yar Adua came in as a nice man with a good mindset but his health couldn’t allow him. Jonathan was considered by those who do not appreciate what democracy is all about as a weakling. This is because Jonathan was trying to ensure that everything about the democratic processes was allowed to prevail. Again, unfortunately he allowed his government to be overtaken by a lot of gluttons whose appetite for corruption was shocking and that led to the centre not holding. Then came the Buhari administration with the razzmatazz of anti-corruption and change mantra which turned out to be the most corrupt government we have ever experienced in Nigeria. If you heard the mind boggling amount of money that was frittered away by his administration you will understand that they sold us a dummy and there were efforts to frustrate the democratic process.  And today we have Bola Tinubu. He has some good ideas but poor planning and poor execution are hampering them. It is indeed unbecoming of a President on that day he was sworn in to announce that oil subsidy is gone. That alone changed the financial and economic narrative of the country. You are still not refining the product that you have, you are still depending on other countries to refine those products for you and send them back to you. He should have set up a time frame within which to get our refineries working and gradually remove the subsidy. In the area of power, no country has ever increased tariff by 350 percent and expect the economy to survive. A lot of businesses are closing up on daily basis because they cannot afford to pay for energy. This so called Band A is a problem and you did not say the level of adequate power supply and improvement in the services. People are paying N66.17 and next six months you should plan ahead because it is going to be N160.00 and you will say businesses will thrive. With that you know how you introduce tariff and that is very unfortunate for our country. These drastic actions are not well for our country’s economy. The only thing that I commend President Ahmed Bola Tinubu for is that he took the thirty six state governors to Court over the funds meant for the local government areas. This action of his is a bold step and that is commendable because you cannot hold people’s money and use it to do whatever you want while those that the money was meant for suffer. I was a local government chairman here in Anambra State and we got our allocations direct from the federation accounts and we had activities in the local government areas and they were functional.