Dokpesi speaks on his vision to revive the PDP

Media mogul, High Chief Raymond Dokpesi, has spo­ken of his vision and ambi­tion to revive the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and place it in a vantage po­sition to win the 2019 pres­idential election.

Dokpesi, who is in the race to be the Chairman of the PDP, reportedly submit­ted his nomination form yesterday for the Chairman­ship election scheduled for the party’s National Conven­tion this August.

He affirmed that since the PDP has zoned the pres­idential candidacy to the North for the 2019 gener­al elections, and the Chair­manship to the South, he was the best candidate from the South who would lead the party to regain the Presidency which it lost last year to the All Progres­sives congress (APC).

“My mission is to win 2019. And I intend to deploy every resource I can to achieve that. We need to reconcile with all those who have left the party,” he said.

In an interactive session with Editors in Abuja, Dok­pesi stressed that his ulti­mate goal was to transform the PDP and return it to win­ning ways in order to retake the presidency which the par­ty lost when it became over­confident and complacent. He warned that the PDP was sick and would disintegrate and disappear unless it healed it­self and changed its ways.

“The PDP became over­confident. Impunity set in. Over-confidence set in – and the imposition of candidates. Internal democracy was aban­doned. We started offending each other in the party. Those who could not cope left. Oth­ers were just hanging on. The failure of the PDP (at the pres­idential election) meant that something was wrong,” Dok­pesi said.

He said the time had come for the PDP to reform and re­invent itself as a mega par­ty which once prided itself as the largest political party in Africa.

His words: “We need to re­turn the party to the people. We threw away the suprem­acy of the party. Money bags took over the party – and de­termined who became what, from Councillor to Chairman, Governor, etc.”

Dokpesi lamented the cur­rent situation in the country and said it was imperative for the PDP to provide a virile opposition to the ruling par­ty and then retake power at the next presidential election – hence the need for a strong candidate and loyal party man like himself to lead the PDP at this critical time.

“My mission is to serve the party, to return the party to the vision of the founding fa­thers; to strengthen the party, to deepen democracy and give the ruling party a virile oppo­sition. There is a lot of hunger in the land, a lot of poverty in the country. People are frus­trated. The PDP has gone to sleep. I want to awaken the party, to rebrand the party. That is my mission,” Dokpe­si said.

Speaking on the forth­coming PDP National Con­vention, Dokpesi called for a level playing ground and the entrenchment of internal de­mocracy in the party.

“The PDP can no longer afford to allocate posts in the boardroom. There must be in­ternal democracy; there must be a level playing ground. I represent reform; I represent reinvention of the party. We need to leave the old ways that brought us to the situa­tion we are in today as a par­ty. We need to do things dif­ferently.

“The era of imposition, the era of rascality in the party has gone. Our ultimate aim is to reform the party. We are hop­ing there will be a free and fair convention. I want us to hope and pray that the Governors have learnt their lessons and will allow the party to make its own decisions. The conse­quence of not allowing inter­nal democracy in the PDP is that the party will break and disappear; if the party does not reform it will go into oblivion”.