Jonathan Chickened Out Of Reforming PDP

Former President Goodluck Jonathan was bullied by state governors in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from executing reforms that would have solved the party’s financial problems and weaned it off overbearing sponsors.

The then-ruling party’s governors killed the reform initiative at a National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, which was supposed to ensure the party was free from the grip of wealthy governors. Jonathan was at the NEC meeting.

The idea had earlier enjoyed Jonathan’s blessing after the then national chairman, Okwesilieze Nwodo, made a presentation to him at the villa. Nwodo was chairman between 2010 and 2011.

This was contained in the book titled, “Wadata Wonders: Memoirs of a Partisan Journalist”, written by Ike Abonyi, a former media aide to two PDP national chairmen, Okwesilieze Nwodo and Prince Uche Secondus.

The book, which was launched in Abuja yesterday, had PDP dignitaries in attendance.

The book recounts events within the PDP as a ruling party under Jonathan’s presidency, including that Nwodo, as PDP chairman, initiated a reform to make party funding come from party members.

Nwodo had designed an initiative that encouraged self-funding. At least 10 million card-carrying party members would commit to paying N1000 every year, which would have generated at least N10 billion per year, enough to run the party and remove it from the burden of overbearing sponsors.

Although Jonathan approved the initiative after a pilot demo in Aso Rock Villa, it never saw the light of day because the party governors, an influential bloc, opposed it.

The book read, “All that was needed to liberate the party from financial insolvency was for President Jonathan to insist on the reforms, especially as he had amply shown their potential at the pilot demo at the Aso Rock Villa. However, he didn’t do that at the NEC meeting that proposed to approve the reform programme.

“Instead, he allowed Rotimi Amaechi, then governor of Rivers State, who was leading the PDP Governors’ Forum, to override him. The governors did not want their influence on the party whittled down, especially in the approach of an important election.

“That was how the proposed reforms died on arrival, with all the dreams of projecting an independent political party aborted.”

The book added that the governors facilitated the removal of Dr Nwodo as party national chairman, “ostensibly to head off any future revolutionary ideas to strengthen the PDP. That act also marked the beginning of the loss of power by the PDP.”