The Senior Special Assistant to former President Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, says the Peoples Democratic Party may soon die. The former presidential spokesman said the PDP might go into extinction soon except the party undergoes a complete overhaul. Okupe said this in a Facebook post on Thursday. He commended the PDP for the formation of a body headed by Chief Raymond Dokpesi to increase its membership. He, however, stressed that the PDP must embark on a complete overhaul if it must remain relevant in the next four years. He said:
“The time has come for the PDP, if it must remain politically relevant, to embark on a total overhaul and reform itself. It must engage Nigerians in a new coalition for the sole purpose of putting our dear country on the path to true, real and the enduring change that will, once and for, all establish us as a major global player, not pretenders that we presently are. The PDP must reform lest it dies, God forbids, a painful and insidious death.”
Okupe said he feared that the PDP might soon die due to its declining acceptability. He, however, said the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government had been able to twist the minds of Nigerians such that the PDP appeared as a corrupt party. He noted that overtime, Nigerians would see that the APC and the PDP are the same. He said:
“The party (PDP) has suffered very serious bashing from the sustained avalanche of assaults from the gigantic propaganda machinery of the now ruling party — the APC. The credibility of the party as a veritable political alternative to the APC has been nearly irreparably damaged”.
“Some of the recent disclosures and more that may come up from the impending probes will further damage the national acceptability of the party. At the end of the day, the APC may not meet the expectations of Nigerians or may, in fact, fail outright over time but the PDP, as it is presently constituted, will not be an acceptable alternative to the majority of Nigerians now or in the future.”
Okupe, who was one of President Muhammadu Buhari’s biggest critics during the run-up to the last presidential election, said both the APC and the PDP lacked ideologies and proper leaders. He said while the PDP was created as a coalition to wrest power from the military, the APC was a merger of several interest groups set up to wrest power from the PDP.