“The nature of PDP and the APC is about sharing and that guarantees that Nigeria will fail as a country.”
A Nigerian economist, Pat Utomi, has said the Labour Party (LP) has a better structure than the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Mr Utomi, a member of the LP, stated this when he appeared as a guest on Channels TV’s programme, Politics Today, on Tuesday.
“Labour Party has a super structure, much better than the structures APC and the PDP have,” he said.
“The Labour Party is built around the labour movement and a college of civil society organisations,” Mr Utomi, a professor of political economics, added.
He said the alliance with the labour unions and civil society organisations will ensure victory for the LP in the 2023 presidential election.
He said the Nigerian Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress have political commissions in every state of the federation.
Peter Obi, a former Governor of Anambra State, is the presidential candidate of the LP for the 2023 general elections.
Mr Utomi, who was a major contender for the presidential ticket of the LP, stepped down and declared support for Mr Obi, who eventually won the party’s presidential primary in Asaba, Delta State.
But Mr Utomi dismissed the argument saying that it was unfortunate that some people occupying public offices would steal money to rig elections and come back to ascribe the victory to the existence of political structures.
He said, “with the structure that we have, I am guaranteeing that on the election day, in every polling station in this country, there are at least 15 people who are standing up for the Third Force (Movement) to support the Labour Party candidate.”
The 66-year-old Delta-born politician said he was “around” during the formation of the PDP in 1998 and then the APC in 2014, but was convinced that the two parties were not capable of leading Nigeria to become a better country.
‘Faulty structures’
Mr Utomi said the structuring of the two political parties were faulty from the outset and that they lacked a clear plan to offer quality leadership in the country.
“It became clear to me that the nature of the structures of the APC and the PDP is such that it was about transactions – you give, I take.
“It was all really about self. No ability to throw up leadership that sees Nigeria where it is going and works to deliver Nigeria in that direction. It was about who gets what and who shares what. That’s why production fell off the shelf and got substituted with sharing,” he said.
Mr Utomi faulted the prevalent “politics of sharing” among public office holders in Nigeria, arguing that the country cannot move forward in such a society where sharing has been prioritised over production.
“No country has grown rich from sharing. But the nature of PDP and the APC is about sharing and that guarantees that Nigeria will fail as a country,” he said.
He said although Nigeria was a producing country in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the struggle by some leaders to develop their regions better than their counterparts harmed the consciousness of production in the country.
“By the time we got the new civilian regime of 1999, it was a strong part of the culture. Then, it was clear in my head that the only way we could make progress is to disrupt (the system). That’s why I began to work on this idea of Third Force Movement,” Mr Utomi said.
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