How PDP can bounce back in Anambra, by Ezeh

Prince Lawrence Ezeh was recently received back into the Enugu State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi and other leaders of the party. He had left the PDP in 2018, shortly after he lost the primary to join the All Progressives Congress (APC), which gave him the ticket to run for the Enugu East senatorial seat. In this interview with reporters in Enugu, the Prince of Mburubu, as he is fondly called, explained why he returned to the party. CHRIS OJI was there

 

HERE are you always defecting from one party to another?

One thing I will let you know is that my political godfather who groomed me made me to understand that you should never take stock of the expenses you do in the line of running for elections.

If you make that mistake, it will completely discourage you from any future political endeavors.

But what I will say is that it’s expensive, not just expensive but very very expensive, especially going from a formidable party into a state of almost vacuum, and to start building structures, new political friendships, and building new grassroots, and all that is needed to deliver electoral victory.

You will agree that, in Nigeria, if you want to run for councilorship elections in a ward, you will see people selling their landed property and family lands and everything.

They will go from one stakeholder to another soliciting for funds, how much more running for the Senate. Of course, remember that while we were in PDP before the primary, we had already spent a lot, before we left the party.

We went to the APC which had virtually nothing on ground and we had to start building from the scratch, laid foundations, up to a point where we became very acceptable to the people and all. The bottom line is that it is very expensive.

Maybe it might not be too expensive for some people, but it’s when you venture into it that you can come out and tell us your own side of the story.

Now that you are back to PDP, what does the future hold for you in the party?

What the future holds for me is what the future hold for every other PDP member. I feel very sorry for a few feeble-minded party members who think that, because Prince left the party and came back, he is going to start from behind.

These things are just in the minds of very myopic people. You will understand and agree with me that Governor Ortom of Benue State was a frontline PDP aspirant prior to the 2015 general elections.

The then governor Suswam played a fast one on him and gave the ticket to someone else. He defected immediately to the APC and won the election.

He didn’t go to the APC to queue behind somebody. So, in the just concluded 2019 elections, it appeared the APC was not going to give him ticket; there were lots of squabbles and issues in the APC and he returned again the PDP. He did not queue behind anybody.  He ran for governorship and won again.

What am I trying to say? This thing has to do with the quality of the membership we are talking about. So, it’s the quality of the person, it’s the quality of the personality involved that determines where he should start running the race from.

In a nutshell, what the future holds for us majorly is dependent upon what God holds for us that’s the number one factor. Besides that, it now comes down, because He doesn’t work in vacuum, He uses instruments which are humans, to achieve whatever is His desire.

You now come to the party, the officials, the stakeholders and all that. The stakeholders of this party at the national level, at the state level, at the local government level have not at any point lost confidence in my ability to win elections anytime, any day.

They have not lost that belief. So, that confidence is still very strong and that was why, even immediately after the elections was won and lost, the PDP leadership in the state, the governor who happens to be the leader of the party in the state, they kept in touch with me and insisted that I needed to come back.

If I wasn’t some sort of asset in the party, nobody will reach out to me, nobody would care. I am not the only one that has left the party.

What happens before is that those who left the party usually quietly sneak back into the party from their ward. It’s about the very first time in the state where you see the governor come on a well-celebrated note to welcome a super/stakeholder who veered off the track, back into the party.

During the electioneering, you accused the government of financial misappropriation and underdevelopment. Now that you are back to the fold, would you say no such thiung happened?

The truth of the matter is that, when once you are in opposition, you take an opposition disposition, and part of the opposition disposition is to ensure that you try to dig up all faults of that government.

Even when there are no faults, you manufacture one. It’s part of opposition. As we speak right now, you see the PDP Government every day busy digging up all manner of things against the Buhari administration.

They are playing their role as opposition. I played my role then as opposition. Even where the governor was not doing anything wrong, I tried to create things to make it look like he was inefficient.

My attack wasn’t against the governor, or the government, it was against the party, because we were doubling our efforts to be able to win elections then.

So, now that I am back into the PDP, even when the governor appears not to be doing well, areas where he is not putting perfect touches, we give a blind eye to it.

Why? This is because of party loyalty. So, you try to give a blind eye to so many things because you cannot be criticising yourself.

You are part and parcel of the party. In our usual slogan, ‘the party is supreme’, so you try as much as possible to get your mouth shut an okay along.

When you meet the governor in private as a friend, you try to bring one or two things that have not received his touch to his attention, and he is a very good listening governor and will give attention to it.

We understand that you have formally notified the APC about your decision to leave the party. How did they react to it?

I never complained, what I gave was an advice to Enugu State APC. I also expressed a very deep appreciation for them to have provided a platform for me to fly my aspirations then.

Read Also: Forgive my iniquities, Fayose Begs PDP members

 

If they didn’t provide the platform, there was no way we would have run for elections, nobody in Nigeria in this age runs as an independent candidate, and we wouldn’t have gone to a mushroom party.

I appreciated them so deeply for giving me the platform very necessary support I needed. I must advise again that they need to put their house in order.

In any society where there is no strong opposition, you just create an opening for tyranny where a leader becomes a maximum leader because nobody is criticizing him.

Constructive criticism is very healthy in politics, and that should be the responsibility of the opposition.

There are allegations that Governor Ugwuanyi planted you as a mole in the APC and that he bankrolled your campaign in the party. How true is that?

Those who know my account officers should go and ask them whether the governor is running my companies for me and was now sending money through my accounts for the money elections.

They are just childish talks politically. Why will the governor want to plant me in the APC? Will that brighten his chances? There was absolutely no APC in the state to be able I stop the governor from winning elections.

It was we that now came up and made all the noise and gave APC a voice in the state. Why will the governor want to bring in someone to create a strong opposition when there was no opposition at all? These whole timing you here is coming from a seemingly beer-parlour situation.

What are your regrets?

In politics, especially when you ask me he we spent our money and all that, you will discover that when you go with the mindset of coming out with so much regret, you will just end up dropping politics.

The only regret I will tell you that I had was that at the peak of the electioneering campaign, it temporarily severed my relationship with my friends, because 99 per cent of them are in the PDP.

That’s where I belong, where I played all my political activities. When I joined the APC, almost everyone was a new face to me beside the ones that moved into the party with me.

It was the only thing that I missed. There were these beautiful moments we used to share as friends especially among us but there was a temporary seizure from all those moments.