Segun Showunmi, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), stated that the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike would have stabilized the party by resolving the ongoing crisis if he was still functioning.
According to him, the former Rivers State governor, Wike, had become indispensable in the party.
In an interview with Arise News on Sunday, the former PDP governorship aspirant in Ogun State regretted that the crisis of the party has no end in sight.
“He, who is mostly vilified, and if you like, when you mention his name, you are accused of having been funded by him. It is his role in the party over the years that is now clearly becoming a gaping hole. I’ve always said that Nyesom Wike is the Achilles, the key man risk. A key man risk is that one person that his functionality and well-being impact your organization one way or the other. I’ve concluded without any reservation and no apologies to anybody that Wike is a key man risk of the PDP.
“Had he been functioning in the PDP the way they had known him, I can guarantee you all of these things going on, he would have found a way, whether dancing, bribing, begging, speaking, bullying to stabilize them. His absence is clearly a question of if it didn’t dey, it didn’t dey. Now, has peace returned to the party? How can, how could peace have returned to the party?” Sowumi said.
Ude-Okoye and Anyanwu Crisis
The Ogun State PDP chieftain condemned the inability of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) to address the national secretary crisis between Sunday Ude-Okoye and Samuel Anyanwu.
He questioned why BoT members failed to stand on their agreed decision in Enugu when they had a meeting in Abuja.
“Let me tell you something that interests you. The BOT leadership sat in Enugu with all of the South-Eastern leaders. They have affirmed Okoye. Yet, they were invited to a meeting in Wadatta House that had Anyanwu, whom they say they don’t want, sitting there. They watched Okoye get bullied out of the place, and yet they did not protest, they didn’t leave the place. They sat down there, they completed the meeting, they gave a communique. So you get the impression that the elders have become like children who don’t have the capability and the strength of character to say, this is our position, and we’re standing by it, and then, what do you want the party to do? The members, people like us that are passionate members of the party, slowly but gradually, we’re beginning to accept the reality,” he stated.
Showunmi argued that the PDP was in the intensive care unit. He decried that the party has failed to look inward in its crisis but resorted to blaming others.
He explained that the party’s crisis could be managed easily with commitment. He said the consolation for some party faithful remains the stability at the ward, local council, state and zonal levels.
He continued, “PDP is in ICU, intensive care. It’s blaming everybody but it’s itself. We have blamed the President for even taking Wike. We have not blamed ourselves for not having someone that has the balls and the capacity to reverse the process. We have blamed other people for causing problems that we’re the ones causing ourselves or they are the ones causing themselves. We’re going to do a united merger, a merger that does not give you the powers to deregister the PDP or to deregister any of the other party.
“I think that I’ve accepted that everything that has a beginning can sometimes have an end. My hope is that maybe by us speaking some truth to them, they can take a halt and ask themselves, really, what is the problem? And my consolation, if there be any, is that the crisis is only at the top. The baseline of the party at the ward level is a bit stable. The party at the local government level is stable. The party at the state, most of the state is stable. The party in the zones minus a little bit of the issues in the southeast is a bit stable. We’re not having any problem in the zone of the southwest. We’re not having it in the south-south. We don’t really have any major problem in the north-central, northeast, and northwest.
“So maybe the only problem we have is in the NWC. And then you look at the NWC itself. Perhaps we should say the only issue we have is maybe the top two. We don’t seem to have any problem with the national organizing. We don’t really have any problem with the publicity and all the others. So if they can recognize that you can’t continue like this in an election, in a situation when we have lost three elections back-to-back, blaming everybody except ourselves, I think we’ll be okay.
“But those who want to leave the party, who are tired and think that maybe they can do some amalgamation of decamping, that they are calling merger, just decamp and let the party have peace. If some of them even live to this, they are so-called merger process. Maybe we’ll be able to see who is left. Maybe the ones that will be left will be like orphans, who will then know that their fathers and mothers are dead, and they now have to, on their own energy, move themselves forward.
“But something has to give. It’s nasty because it’s giving the whole country and the democratic conversation in the country. It’s making it look untidy. It’s making it look uninspiring. It’s wearing out all the young people in the country and people that are potential voters. For a nation where people don’t even turn up to vote because they don’t have real clear choices, do you expect the oldest, one of the oldest, one of the most stable, one of the most consistent, one of the most democratic party to be managed by kindergartens? Of course. If it didn’t dey, it didn’t dey.”
