Abuja: The Labour Party Presidential Candidate for the 2023 General Elections, Mr Peter Obi, has urged Nigerians to commit to building political parties that are larger than government and law-abiding.
Obi stated this in his remarks at the public presentation of two books entitled The Bubbles of Nigeria’s Democracy: The Musings of a Nigerian Journalist and Wadata Wonders: Memoirs of a Partisan Journalist.
Obi, while urging Nigerians to remain committed to building that new Nigeria, advised citizens, especially journalists with deep knowledge of Nigerian politics, to write more for people to read and understand the nature of the Nigerian political space.
“We are working hard to build that new Nigeria where we are going to have political parties that will outlive us, that are organised, that will be bigger than the government.
“Because, as it is narrated here, we now have a situation where those of us who are opportune to be in government have helped to ruin the parties.
“Let’s hope that one day, we will have parties that are bigger than the government, that will run the way parties are run in other nations of the world and will be law-abiding.
“I thank those who are writing, and let us remain committed to building that new Nigeria,” he said.
On his part, the former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, also emphasised the need for Nigeria to have a proper democratic political system, where people stayed to build their parties.
Secondus decried a situation where a Nigerian could, in several political parties and at the same time, behave as if that was the norm, saying` it is not. Decide whether you are in one party or the other.
“But today, this is what we have in our country, because it is broken; That democracy is broken.
“I believe that until we establish a proper democratic political party system where people will stay 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, as the case may be, build, reconstruct, then the country will be in for it.
“And of course, we will leave something for the generation to live. But as of today, we have nothing.
“We are just a country trying, in the wilderness, to look for where we can settle,” he said.
Secondus noted that the challenges in Nigeria were so enormous that no single person, unless the citizens collectively come together, can resolve them.
Commending Abonyi for the two books, Secondus said he believed the author had done their best for posterity.
“It’s a testament of experience that he has garnered throughout his career as a former journalist.
“When I was born as a national chairman in 2017, the first appointment I made was to IK Abonyi as the media advisor to the chairman. We also know that he’s been at the Wadata house for a very long time.
He, however, said that he differed with some of the thoughts of the author in the book.
“When you go through the Wadata wonders, several chapters, as I went through, some of them, I don’t agree with him.
“But he has his own opinion. He’s a man who must share his experiences with the world and reflect on them as he goes.
” So we can always agree, but we can agree to disagree and agree or disagree to agree,” he said.
The immediate past Managing Director of the Guardian Newspaper, Mr Martins Oloja, who was the book reviewer, tasked journalists to emulate Abonyi in promoting alternative views.
Oloja said that promoting alternative views in a democracy can be challenging.
According to him, journalists need to overcome those challenges and ensure that alternative views are given a platform.
“Alternative views provide a necessary check on power, promote critical thinking and ensure that citizens have access to a wide range of perspectives and ideas.
“The media plays a critical role in promoting alternative views, as a vital component of a healthy democracy.
“By promoting alternative visioning and embracing diversity, we can create a more inclusive, equitable and just society. That is what Abonyi has shown,” he said.
In his remarks, Abonyi described his journey from the newsroom to the PDP as “accidental”.
“I was enjoying my journalism in the newsroom, and when my brother, Nwodo, was made the national chairman of PDP, he insisted I must go with him.
“When I told him I don’t like PDP; I’ve never written anything positive about PDP, he said you are the type of people we want because we are going to redeem PDP and that’s how we entered the PDP,” he said.
Nwodo stated that he came to PDP to redeem the party through the digital registration of members, but he was sabotaged.
“His first major policy was to introduce a means of digital registration that could have given the party enough money to run without looking at the governance and elected people.
“He started it. The president did a pilot registration, but the governors noticed that if by any means Nwodo succeeds in what he was doing, there will be no power for the governors, and that was how it was sabotaged,” he said.
He stated that the process led to Nwodo’s departure from the office within six months, marking the beginning of PDP’s loss of power, which has yet to be recovered.
In the book “Wadata Wonders”, Abonyi said that absolute wonders were not in the book because they could not be published.