Rivers State Crisis: Okechukwu Says PDP Must Apologise, For Overheating Polity
By Tom Okpe
Former Director General, DG of the Voice of Nigeria, VoN, Dr Osita Okechukwu has said the major opposition People’s Democratic Party, PDP should apologize to Nigerians over it’s comments on the Rivers’ State crisis.
Okechukwu also said the PDP is responsible for the political rumblings and dangerous slide into one Party State, saying the opposition Party is overheating the polity in the country.
Addressing journalists at Abuja on Sunday, over political rumblings, Rivers State imbroglio, and dangerous slide into one Party State; Okechukwu said: “PDP is responsible, and must apologise to Nigerians for the harm, they railroaded our democracy.”
He said it’s high time PDP should come down from their high horse and apologise profusely to Nigerians for unintended consequences of their impunity, currently, the good people of Rivers State instead of playing blame games.
When journalists exonerated the PDP from Rivers State’s imbroglio, and heaped the blame on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for not calling his Minister, Nyesom Wike to order.
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Okechukwu said: “We should beware of retrograde amnesia; as we cannot easily forget how the PDP leadership in the 2023 Presidential primary sowed the seeds of discord and stoked the raging inferno by violently, breaching the rotation convention of North to South.
“The day we tame the culture of impunity, the day we progress, therefore, if PDP had considered our fledgling democracy or even obeyed Section 7 of their constitution, there couldn’t have been Wike Masquerade.”
When asked, whether APC is capitalising on the discord in the PDP to drive Nigerians into one Party State, he stated that it is those elements who jettisoned with the wave of hand, the rotation convention, the ligament holding the North and the South together, that are the drivers of one Party State.
“Otherwise, Nigeria operates multiparty system by law, it is only the fire, stoked by PDP, that is raging. They erroneously misunderstood the sophisticated northern electorates, assumed they were in dormitory to be hauled to polling stations on election day to vote for northern candidates.
“These are illiberal elements fast eroding our multiparty system. They are at it again, to stop rotation convention with an awkward Presidency arithmetic of 17 years South and 11 years North by 2027, as if Nigeria got independence in 1999,” Okechukwu noted.
As one of the founding members of the ruling Party, Okechukwu stated that if PDP had adhered to rule of law and subsisting rotation convention, “maybe, Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso votes could have been theirs, in the 2023 Presidential election,” he added.
