PDP hasn't changed, but we're the ones trying to outdo each other, says Makarfi

Senator Ahmed Makarfi, former Acting National President of the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP), in this interview with LEO SOBECHI, ​​asserts that the current PDP crisis is a product of narrow political patterns, pointing out that it is better to pursue reconciliation than to draw a line.

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As a founding member of PDP, how do you react to the perception that PDP has dropped the ball, in regards to its original principles? For me to answer effectively, you need to explain what you mean by dropping the ball as it can be interpreted differently, if you can tell me specifically what you mean by dropping the ball.

At the founding, PDP considered zoning in its office sharing, but recently, the zoning issue has received various interpretations… PDP has not changed since its inception. The problem with all of us politicians is trying to play fast against each other. Let me backtrack, the Party Constitution provides for rotation of power and zoning. "Power" means when you are elected and not when you are appointed. A candidate has no power, he seeks power, so if you go through the rotation of power, who was the last president under the PDP? It was Jonathan and if you stick strictly to that, it's power rotation and zoning.

That being the case, a committee was set up by the party to sort out the zoning issue, for some reason most people assumed the president was going to be zoned southwest. Then suddenly there was a change. Some said, oh, let it be the north and the argument made by those asking for it was that we need someone in the north now. We have more governors in the south, let's have someone in the north, after all until we get power before you can address anything and let the presidency open we're not talking about presidency ; whoever is running for president, if he is from the south, then the president is already in the north, no problem.

But, if someone from the north emerges, then after winning, the party can hold a mini convention to spin things up. That was what they professed.

Now, if you profess something and some people probably have other interests and that interest is not satisfied, then you come and start going against what you profess. We have to be careful as politicians because when you push for something you don't know if it's going to affect you positively or negatively, but you assume that once something is in a particular way it suits you. fundamentally. Politics is not like that.

You see, someone might be popular, almost about to seize power, events will change. It's politics all over the world. On this question of the rotation of power and zoning, before the last convention to nominate our candidate for the presidency, I was very open. I said whether general consensus or majority, let me use majority, because in politics consensus is not about 100%, you can have consensus as a majority, there can be have 51%, but if they get together and say that's where we go, that's the majority consensus.

Then you have everyone's consensus; it's 100%, which is difficult to achieve in our type of democracy. I had an open mind, many of us had an open mind that if the majority consensus brings out a Southern person, so be it.

If a majority consensus favors someone from the north, so be it and that's what happened. So a lot of us were open now it depends on who is able to build that consensus of the majority and a lot of factors come into play to make people comfortable and if you want to gain peoples comfort you also have to psychologically do a lot of things.

You can be the most qualified, if you don't do the things that are necessary, you can be the most educated, you can be anything, if you don't do the things that will hold the majority consensus for you, whether you are from the North or the South, or elsewhere, you will have problems politically.

I take the time to explain all of this. These are political gimmicks and games, which began long before the convention to elect national offices. So if you could convince everyone, let the president come from the north, we will decide the presidency when the time comes and it does not matter if the north or the south, after winning, we can now sit down before the inauguration, hold a mini-convention and do ABCD; you cannot change the goalpost in the middle of the game.

You see, in politics, when you say something, everyone is planning, whatever your plans are, you are coming up with something, someone can be ahead of you in terms of planning, you wouldn't know and that's why you see, all politicians, regardless of which party is seeking power, they should...