The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, says it is planning new strategy of electing candidates for the 2019 general elections.
National Publicity Secretary of the opposition party, Olisa Metuh, while receiving former chairman of the National Patriotic Party, NPP, of Ghana, Peter Manu, at the party’s national secretariat on Friday in Abuja, disclosed that the PDP is planning to adopt the A4 system in electing its candidates.
Metuh said this is part of PDP’s reforms and re-positioning strategies to reclaim power from the All Progressives Congress, APC.
The party spokesman noted the application of the method may begin with upcoming congresses of the party if it is approved by the membership of the party.
Metuh said that the decision was part of the part of Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s committee’s recommendations on reforms to reposition the PDP for the 2019 general elections.
He said that the system would not be restricted to presidential election as it would be applicable to others elective positions such as governorship, senatorial, house of representatives and down to the wards.
He explained that with the proposed system, party members would have to queue behind the candidates of their choice.
Metuh said that the proposed new system will allow party members in all parts of the country to vote for the presidential candidate.
He added that the party will no longer elect presidential candidate at the national convention.
“Basically, this would be the last convention where we would have people to be elected at the national convention. We are taking the party back to the Nigerian people,” Metuh said.
He said whoever would vie for the presidential ticket would have to tour the entire country before he can be elected.
He added that the proposed amendments had been sent to the state chapters for their inputs in line with “our desire to have peoples’ opinion.”
“After their inputs, the recommendation would be sent to the National Executive Committee (NEC) for approval.
Earlier, Manu had said that the process of electing presidential candidate was one of the reforms his party adopted after it lost election to opposition party in Ghana in 2018.
He said when his party lost election, there was need to review and make amends and these amends led to some critical reforms in the party structure and organisation.
“We realised for example, that the modus operandi of how our presidential candidate was elected had a hand in why we lost the general election,” he said.
According to Manu, there were as many as 17 presidential candidates contesting in the 2008 primary election when the incumbent president, John Kufor, was exiting and all the 17 presidential candidate were running for votes from a mere 3,500 delegates.
“So, it was money, money, money until the day of congress,” he said.
Manu said that NPP realised that the then opposition party, which was now in government, used that against his party “and cast spell on us as being corrupt, that we were throwing money at the people.”
“So, the first thing I did as the national chairman of the party was to expand the delegates system to cover the nooks and cranny of the party structure,” he added.
He said the party had to reorganise the structure starting from the polling unit level where a five-member executive was elected.
