TUKUR IS NOT A MEMBER OF PDP - UGOCHINYERE CLAIMS

Barrister Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere is an activist member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP
and was Senior Special Assistant to Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State between 2007 and
2010, a former spokesman of Ohaneze Ndigbo Youths and Director of Youth Mobilisation for
the Umaru Musa Yar‘Adua Presidential Campaign in 2007. Ugochinyere has been in the
forefront of the campaign for sanity in the leadership of the PDP. In this telephone interview
he spoke on topical issues in the party. Excerpts:
Why are you in league with the three men challenging the status of the acting National
Working Committee of the party?
I am not in league with the three men. The foundation of those three men and what they set
out to do runs a little bit contrary to the objectives we have fought for over the years. But I
think along the line they have rediscovered themselves and their sponsors have also seen that
the right thing needs to be done. So, their bid to remove the chairman is good and it is
welcome, but it is on erroneous grounds.
There is a fundamental issue that people have kept off the radar, which is that at this moment
as I speak to you now, he is not yet a member of the party.
You know in 2001 he was expelled from the party and you know the procedures for
readmission and till this moment he has not been readmitted into the party. So we are going
to trash that out completely before the court and we are instituting a fresh suit on whether a
man who is not yet a member of the party has the right to stand for election and be elected as
the national chairman of the party.
We are calling on stakeholders and the founding fathers of the party to come together for a
national PDP stakeholders’ meeting so that we can be able to save the party. The party is
dying and what is remaining is the burial of the party and we are saying that we are worried
that this party cannot be buried because of the ambition of few people and Bamanga is
completely on the part of those who want to bury the party.
Look at the kangaroo disciplinary committee he has now set up. How can you appoint Umaru
Dikko chairman of the disciplinary committee? First of all, the constitution of the disciplinary
committee is the exclusive duty of the National Executive Committee. And again this matter
has been brought before the NEC in 2012 when people said, ‘no, go back and draw a new list.’
So, he is supposed to go back to the NEC, NEC did not give him the power to go and do it for
it. So, the announcement is baseless and the choice of Umaru Dikko who has not been a card-
carrying member of the party is wrong.
Is he not a member of the party?
He is not a member of our PDP. So, you can see the determination of Bamanga to sink this
party. You bring in Umaru Dikko, you bring in Serikae Dickson (as reconciliation chairman)
who is part of the problems in the PDP; you set up Dickson who has not achieved much in the
party.
Who is he going to reconcile? Is he not part of the problem in Rivers? Is he not the one
backing Jonah Jang to cause problem in Governors Forum? So how can a destroyer be the one
who will bring peace? So, when we looked at all these, one thing is clear, the president does
not want peace to reign in the party because if he wants peace to reign in the party he needs
to call Tukur to order and that Dickson panel has to be disbanded.
PDP as Nyako said is heading to be buried and let me tell you we are ready to join in burying
it, everybody is ready to bury this nonsense because it is not in the interest of our democracy
neither is it in the interest of our inter-party politics.
Let them continue what they are doing because there are up to seven governors who are
vehement against what is happening. You may not see them moving with Nyako and others,
but they are aggrieved.
You talk about Tukur, Dickson and others doing things to bury the party but people have
raised issues on who and what is motivating you?
When they say somebody is sponsoring me, they may mention Adamawa governor, Atiku
Abubakar and others. When Atiku and Obasanjo were fighting in 2007 I led a protest to Aso
Rock against Atiku, and as far back as 2007 I fought to stop Anyim from being elected national
chairman of the PDP with a court order because he was not a member of this party.
At that time, Anyim people said that Sam Egwu’s people were funding me. When I went after
Nwodo because he was not a member of the party which I proved with video documentary
evidence the president did not listen to me because he had a motive, they said that some
people were funding me.
When I moved against Bamanga they said it was Atiku sponsoring me, and at the end of the
day when he and Atiku reconciled, they now said it was Nyako. But the truth is that if in your
family somebody is supporting you against somebody, the other person will definitely say that
they are doing it because of something.
There is no fight that you will take on in this world that somebody will not be against you.
There must be a side that is benefiting from what you are doing and there must be a side that
is not benefiting. As an activist in intra-party PDP politics, if I require your help to promote a
project that I believe is in the interest of the party I don’t have any regret on that.
Definitely I cannot be using all my money to promote it. When the battle started I had to look
for people who had the same mindset with me and share the same objectives with me to
support me financially.
But that does not remove the fact that I have fought tirelessly all over the years to say that the
beginning of PDP stability is the installation of intra-party discipline and I can tell you that
nobody is funding me, but if there are people who like my project and have decided to support
me financially, I have no regret about that.