In a recent interview with ThisDay, Emmanuel, the PDP presidential campaign council chairman, made his comments.
Aware of PDP’s shortcomings, he nonetheless expressed hope that the party’s internal conflict would soon be resolved.
According to Emmanual, every vote matters if the PDP is going to be successful in the elections in 2023.
The governor said: “We are trying to take the right step. You can’t let anybody go in an election; every vote matters. That’s why you are asking about a few issues in our party, and I said, of course, we are making progress. We’ll resolve all problems.
“Every single person is important in politics, not to talk of when you’re talking about very big men. Small men like us will go and prostrate ourselves before them: please, oh, big men, don’t let us down. I’m into this game to win. I don’t think anybody will get to this point and be doing permutation. What kind of permutation?
“But they are not unhappy with me as Udom Emmanuel. Did they tell you they were unhappy with the party? Four of them are candidates of the party. They hold tickets of the party. They’re members of the party; you are getting it wrong.
“Even spoons and plates hit themselves and create a lot of noise; that doesn’t mean they’ve broken. It doesn’t mean they’ve broken. I think that is the situation here. The fact that people are unhappy is inevitable, definitely inevitable, with a large party like PDP. It is the largest party in the whole of Africa.
“So, certainly, we all make mistakes. I must also confess as a party, we’ve made mistakes, and as individuals, we’ve made mistakes. But these mistakes, I can assure you, will not break us. We are trying to come back, review and then reappraise and see how we can move forward, and I can assure you, we’ll do that.”
Emmanuel said that the PDP will be victorious in the elections in 2023 and that if he weren’t confident of the party’s success, he wouldn’t have been the chairman of the party’s presidential campaign council.
“I say I’m not looking at any permutation. I’m going into this (election) with optimism because if I’m going with permutation, it means I shouldn’t be the chairman of the campaign council. I’m going with optimism. I would not have accepted being the chairman if I was not optimistic that I’m going to win. So, we are in the race to win. There’s no permutation in this case at all,” he declared.
Five PDP governors, led by Rivers’ Nyesom Wike, have been vocal in demanding that PDP national chairman Iyorchia Ayu resign because the party’s presidential candidate and chairman cannot be from the same region.
