Former minister of Mines and Steel, Alhaji Sarafa Tunji Ishola said, yesterday, that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is still in charge of politics in Nigeria in spite of the presence of All Progressives Party (APC) at the helm of affairs.
Ishola disclosed that it took a lot of supports from the PDP members for APC to win 2015 election, adding that the APC is still a political movement and not yet a party.
According to him, without the collaborating efforts of some aggrieved PDP members, who formed the newPDP and joined forces with some regional political parties, there would have been nothing like APC today.
He said the APC was Jonathan -Must-Go political movement which joined forces with aggrieved PDP members to send out the then president but because they were not yet a political party and did not have the same political ideology they were finding it difficult now to really work together.
Analysing the scenario, the PDP chieftain said the four political parties which joined forces with the newPDP were only in charge of nine states while the newPDP were in charge of five states out of the 36 states in in the country.
He argued that if a party was in 22 states out of the 36 states before the 2015 election and today they have accomplished the purpose for which they joined forces, for them to continue to stay together when they don’t have the same agenda any more, will be difficult.
“Their secret has now come into the open, and the future of APC will be determined by their ability or inability to manage their stay together,” he said.
Since the deputy Senate president now is a PDP member and the Senate president now, was a PDP member and their team are more or less in charge of the Senate, while the civil service is full of people employed by the PDP for many years the influence of the umbrella party, according to him, is still great. He emphasized that the APC thought it would be easy for them to govern the country better than the PDP when they were not in the corridor of power.
“Now that they are there they have realised that the passengers view always change when they leave back seat and come to the driver’s seat.
“They said they will hit the ground running but they are now grounded instead of running because APC knows how to criticise but don’t know how to perform,” he said