The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Monday admitted making mistakes during its 16 years stay in power and pleaded with Nigerians to forgive the party.
The party rued the culture of impunity and imposition of candidates, among other ills while in power, saying its leaders and stakeholders have turned a new leaf.
The party’s National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, made the plea in Abuja at a public event, with the theme: “Nation Building, Resetting the Agenda,” held at the Congress Hall of the Transcorp Hilton Hotel.
Secondus said the party has learnt from its past mistakes, adding that regardless of its failings, the PDP has garnered the requisite experience in governance and ready to correct its mistakes.
Secondus said: “I am the very first to admit that our party made many mistakes. Consequently, we were roundly sanctioned by Nigerians occasioning our loss at the polls in 2015.
“Let me seize this opportunity to apologize to Nigerians unequivocally for the several shortcomings of our party in the near and far past. It was all part of an evolution process without which there can be no maturity.
“The PDP has embarked on a rescue mission and together we will salvage this nation back from the grip of the incompetent All Progressives Congress (APC).”
Lamenting that the country and its people have become more divided than ever before under the present administration, the PDP chairman said Nigeria needs reconstruction to realise its immense potentials.
“Not even during the fratricidal civil war has this country been so divided along ethnic and religious fault lines. When a country is in such precarious situation, nation building becomes absolutely inevitable.
“Soon after independence in 1960, our forefathers set out to build a nation worthy to be proud of. But early internal contradictions engineered by tribe and religion truncated it, using the military.
“For over 30 years, the military in league with some politicians, led this country until 1999 when they were pressured to return to the barracks through combined democratic efforts from both within and outside the country.
“For the first 16 years of this milestone political transition, legitimate power rested in the domain of the PDP, a party baked in the nation’s oven of democratic struggle. Its founding fathers set out very lofty dreams for the nation’s economic, social and political emancipation and development.
“Within those 16 years, the party, which I now have the privilege of leading, was able to lay the foundation blocks of our nascent democracy by setting up and nurturing vital democratic institutions that will ensure its survival.
“Ultimately realising the critical importance of credible elections in the life of any democracy, the PDP government embarked on massive electoral reforms that ensured the conduct of free, fair and credible elections and saw a ruling party lose an election and successfully transited power to the opposition.
“This was the first of such in the democratic life of this country and an example for the entire continent. Even though we are sad about our loss, we as a party are immensely proud of what we consider our most significant achievement of willingly transferring power to opposition when the time came, thus giving a lie to all predictions that Nigeria would break in 2015. Let me alert the current ruling party, that no less is expected from them.”
He lamented that in less than three years that the party lost power, all the gains recorded in the 16 years of PDP administration have been eroded as a result of lack of understanding of the intricacies of governing a complex state like Nigeria.
