Dr. Abdul-Jhalil Tafawa-Balewa, son of Nigeria’s first Republic Prime Minister, has expressed his disapproval over the scheme by the PDP’s national working committee to close up the door against other presidential aspirants in its move to adopt President Goodluck Jonathan as the party’s sole presidential candidate in the 2015 general election, describing it as dishonourable.
Making the condemnation yesterday at a press conference in Abuja on the state of the nation , Tafawa-Balewa said his decision to contest the 2015 presidential election on the platform of the PDP still stands, because he is a better candidate and has more to offer Nigerians.
He said that in a democracy, everything that happened in the federal, has to trickle down to the ward, that everybody needs to be able to have some recognition, whereby what happened at the presidency, should be repeated at the state level, at the gubernatorial down to the senatorial and ward level.
According to Tafawa-Balewa, “But, when you create some rules at the presidency and you create another different rule at the ward level. What do you think we are getting? We are getting Animal Farm, where you make us to believe that some animals are more equal than others. That is not democracy. We need to have homogeneity.
“This is about our country, we have had so many different things going up, we have gotten to a point that we have not been able to create institution. I know that our democracy is supposed to be so young, especially this situation that we are in. But, without creating institution, we will have no historical lineage.
“We want to advice the so-called powers that be in all political parties, not just the PDP, to look very closely at other democracy. We do not need consensus candidature, what we need is to be heard. Any one that feels that he or she has something to give to this nation, should be allowed.”
He stressed that the PDP members cannot say they have a democracy and then they go communist at the same time, by saying that ‘this is the one that they have chosen,’ stressing that only a few people do that, not the rest of the country, because, everybody wants their votes to count.
“This is another urge to urge the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), that for our democracy to last, INEC should make sure that every single person that thinks that he or she is able to deliver something for this nation, should be allowed to contest. What I am trying to advocate, is internal democracy, if we are practising internal democracy, we should show it.
“Charity begins at home. If there is internal democracy in our parties, Nigeria’s democracy will grow. Why I am more interested than more people, is that I honestly believe, that come 2015, the rate at which Nigeria is going, I am the better leader for Nigeria and I must have the opportunity to let my people know what I can offer them.
“The adoption of the PDP NWC, is not totally correct. It is not President Jonathan’s fault. It is the exuberance of wrong doers that has created such situation. The constitution of the NWC of the PDP to present to the National Executive Council (NEC), without a convention, without any voting or primaries, it is not the path of the PDP, they should sit down and know that what they are trying to do is not noble,” Tafawa-Balewa said.
