Chief Emmanuel Ogidi

Excerpts:

De-registration of some political parties by INEC

It came too late. In other countries, there are other parties but they try to win, even their local areas. But ours could not win. They depend so much on government. They can’t even win a ward election for councillorship. Why are you registering them? What are we talking about?
Let’s be serious for once. You don’t just throw the window open. What is the essence of having a party? When I was PDP chairman in Delta State, when we hold meetings, when you look at some of their representatives, I don’t even know how they appointed them. They’re ruse. To contest an election is very expensive. The Nigerian way, you must have offices, they don’t have. They can’t pay the rent of their offices. They depend on the stipend from the government. They share it and fight over the money.

Possibility of the opposition party taking over in 2015

When you talk about opposition, is there really an opposition anywhere? Many parties have basic problems; they don’t have ideology. Check all the parties? Unfortunately many of them have been crushed.
It is only the PDP that is the real party that has a root. People just walk in and walk out of other parties. If there was a real party, it was the Alliance for Democracy (AD).
ACN is actually PDP. It was formed by PDP. ACN and Accord were all parts of PDP. That is why you see people crossing from one party to another. There is no really hard and fact rule about it. As part of democracy, you don’t just sit down and get the manna from heaven In this country, the PDP has no opposition, not even now or in the near future.
You said, there is no opposition; it is only PDP, is it good for the growth of democracy?.

So, I should go and create opposition? I agree with you that it is not good for the growth of democracy. Look at the United States, who is the next Secretary of State? They have submitted his name. He is Senator Kelly. Where is he from? He is a Republican.
Unfortunately for us in Nigeria, when you win an election, it’s the winner takes all. Yes, it is good to take all but if you know that the other party has people that share your common goals, you can also appoint them.
But most time when we appoint them, they go there and do something else. PDP has been magnanimous.
We don’t look at Nigeria as our country, that is the problem. If we are criticising really because we want the country to develop, I concede. But most of the time, we just look for what to criticise.
I went to The Gambia, for three days, I didn’t hear any horn. I had to call taxi man if they did not have horn, he said they have but they only horn when there is something. I was touched. But today in Nigeria, it is only cow that people will run away from. A vehicle will be coming, the car will horn but people will not leave the road.
What I think we should have is to go back to the basics, reorientation because the churches have failed us, a whole lot have failed us. I was lucky when I was growing up, I was not trained at home only by my parents, I was trained along the road. As you were going to school, people were checking us, asking what kind of uniform we were putting on. It is not so again today. Even in our days, students were well dressed.
From the home, you get to the church, there is discipline in the church. Today in most of the churches, there is no discipline. They are telling you, you can dress anyhow. You can do anything, all they want is money. We have a problem there and I don’t know what we are going to do about it.
Like my church, thank God we still have discipline there but not as before. At least I know when you commit an offence in the house, your parents take you to church for discipline. We don’t do that again. Today, you want to correct a child, you can’t. It is a problem.
I feel sad. I don’t know how we can go back to it. We need it. The basic problem in Nigeria today is discipline. The corruption we are talking about is because indiscipline has gained so much root in our system. When you are disciplined, you won’t be corrupt.
We have too many excess luggage, that is the problem. People want to follow you, they don’t want to walk. So, it is challenging.

The Delta North people are aspiring for the governorship seat of Delta State in 2015; they felt it is their turn. What is the place of Delta Central and the Isoko people in particular?

It is true in PDP that we agreed to power shift but in practice, you wrestle power. You don’t just sit down and say Delta North, give it to me. That is why at the centre, all elections, must be contested.

Culled from Vanguard