A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former minister of aviation, Osita Chidoka, has warned that the opposition party could become extinct if reforms are not made urgently.
He disclosed this when he appeared on ChannelsTV’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday.
Chidoka expressed concern that the PDP lost some of its strongholds to Labour Party (LP) in the last general election.
“The PDP is a government that was in power for 16 years. Its instinct is that of a government party; not an opposition party. And it has taken us eight years to begin to realise this. We smell the coffee; that it’s not four years and we are back…or we are coming back the next day,” Chidoka said.
“Now, we are beginning to see that PDP itself needs to be reformed. It needs to renew and re-imagine itself to be able to begin to play the role of opposition, knowing full well that we have a politician as president.”
“If PDP doesn’t get its acts together, it will be an extinct party. So, we need to wake up, smell the coffee, find the kind of leadership that will represent us in an opposition atmosphere, and begin to do the work of the opposition.
“We must do the work of mobilisation and imbibe technology. The last four years have taught us a bitter lesson that a young party can come up and take away PDP strongholds in an election cycle.”