IN a move to entrench transparency in the selection of its candidates in the 2019 general elections, the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) has announced its intention to adopt the option A4 method to pick candidates for the Presidential, governorship and other elections.
The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, who disclosed this while receiving in audience a former National Chairman of New Patriotic Party, Ghana, Mr. Peter Manu, explained that the new process is necessary in order to allow members take ownership of the leadership selection process.
Metuh, who insisted that the era when the party would organise a national convention to elect its presidential candidate was over, said the option to be adopted by the party would bar secret voting during the primaries, adding the party would have to amend its constitution to actualize this.
He said already, a proposal to amend the party’s constitution to achieve this had been prepared and would be tabled at the next national convention which comes up on May 21.
According to him, “We intend to elect our presidential candidate starting from Ward level.
We are going to apply Option A4 in electing our presidential candidate.
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“It is not going to be restricted to presidential primaries alone, but others like governorship, senatorial, House of Representatives and all, everybody would be elected from the ward level,” he said..
“We are going to change our system so that our presidential candidate would be voted by all our party members in the country,” Metuh declared. .
He said that tt would be done at the ward level, adding, “we would no longer elect presidential candidate at the national convention. It would now be for every party member to vote for whoever would be our presidential candidate.
“Whoever would vie for our presidential ticket would have to tour the entire country before he can be elected. This is part of the reform we are coming up with. 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.”
The PDP spokesman noted that the party did not prepare for opposition which it suddenly found itself in 2015 after being in power for 16 years.
He admitted that the loss of power made some members of the party to defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), citing different reasons.
“This is the first time we are witnessing the change of guards and we have a lot of our people defecting to the ruling party. In Ghana, you people are much more stable in terms of party politics,” he said.
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Manu had earlier told his host how his party reviewed events that made it lose the election in Ghana, adding that that made it possible for the party to carry out reforms.
He said he was sad that the then opposition party in his country was referring to his party as being corrupt due to the way it conducted its primaries.
Manu said this was the reason why he led the reforms that changed the fortune of the party.
His words, “When we lost election, there was need to review and make amends and these amends led to some critical reforms in the party structure and organisation.”