Opening Remarks by Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR, on the occasion of the PDP Stakeholders’ Meeting Today

By Funmi Akinbolu On Apr 6, 2017

Opening Remarks by Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR, on the occasion of the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Stakeholders’ Meeting holding at Shehu
Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, on Thursday 6th April, 2017

Protocol
My dear party members, on behalf of the leaders of our great party, I
welcome you all to this meeting of stakeholders. Thank you for finding time
to attend, even at such a short notice.

2. I specially welcome our State Governors and deputy Governors, our
members of the National Assembly who are competently flying our party flag,
as well as Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and Senator Ahmed Makarfi who are our
eminent party leaders.

3. Let me appreciate the presence of the former National chairmen of our
great Party and remind ourselves of the commendable services these Chairmen
and Acting Chairmen had rendered towards improving the fortunes of our
party.

4. We remember the services of Chief Solomon Lar of blessed memory, Dr.
Ahmadu Ali, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, Chief Okwesilieze Nwodo, Dr Haliru
Bello, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Alhaji Adamu Muazu and Prince Uche Secondus.

5. Permit me to also acknowledge the efforts of our founding fathers who
played key roles in moving the country from dictatorship to a
constitutional democracy. We remember the services of the former Vice
President Chief Alex Ekwueme, Mallam Adamu Chiroma and others. We are proud
to state that the PDP had propelled this country into a functional
democracy and creditably managed the affairs of the nation for 16 years,
from 1999 to 2015.

6. I will like to note at this point that, although I had been working
with some of our leaders back stage, this is the very first major meeting
of our Great party that I will be attending, since I left office almost two
years ago. So permit me to describe this meeting as a joyous family
re-union. I am really very pleased with the enthusiasm shown by our party
members to attend this meeting.

7. There is no doubt that our party has in the last two years gone
through some difficulties. However, in a democracy this is not strange in
the life of a political party, especially after losing power to the
opposition, like we did.

8. I should note that the situation is similar, albeit milder, even in
advanced democracies. We should not forget that the Labour Party in the
United Kingdom and the Democratic Party in the United States, both of which
lost power at different times, have also been making efforts to reunite,
reconcile and re-energise to become stronger, before the next general
elections.

9. I will like to point out that every election cycle throws up a
challenge as well as opportunities for a political party; a test to
re-evaluate its performance, and an opportunity to reform its processes and
programmes, towards rediscovering itself to become even more appealing to
the electorates, in its next outing.

10. That is how evolution happens in a functional democracy: as parties
continue to retool and reform in the bid to regain political power,
governance improves and the people and society become better.

11. It is obvious that some of our people see this development as not
only disappointing but discouraging for our great party. Although I can
understand this sense of loss, I always prefer to align myself with those
who choose to see it differently, given the positive impact our conduct and
disposition has had in deepening our democracy.

12. All over the world, political parties lose elections, not because
they have entirely failed, but because, in most cases, the people who gave
them power in the first place, have decided to hand it over to another
party, in order to experience a different kind of leadership. In Africa and
other emerging democracies, the challenge had always been with the
disposition of the party in power to allow the people the opportunity to
freely exercise this right.

13. This obviously is the area where we have excelled. The fact that we
allowed this process to take place peacefully, and freely handed over power
to the opposition did not only lift the profile of our party, but also
elevated our country to the status of one of the world’s stable and
reliable democracies. For this gesture alone, the whole world has continued
to applaud our party and its leaders as icons of democracy on the
continent.

14. We were able to achieve this because our Government really reformed
the electoral and political process, by giving the electoral bodies their
true independence which subsequently opened up the political space for free
and fair elections.

15. We may have had shortcomings while in power, but we also recorded
significant achievements and great milestones. Through purposeful
leadership, we reformed our institutions, rebuilt the nation’s confidence,
regained international goodwill and rekindled hope in our people.

16. This is not a forum for chest-thumping but it is important we
highlight some relevant initiatives of past PDP administrations. Our
ideological commitment towards a private sector-led and
people-oriented economy manifested in the great achievements we recorded in
various sectors including communications, agriculture, public financial
management and financial reforms, the financial services, rail and roads
infrastructure, as well as in the social services.

17. In agriculture we revolutionized the sector by introducing programmes
that encouraged more people, including the youths to embrace farming as a
thriving business. We also boosted local capacity for food production,
thereby drastically reducing the prize of food stuff and food import bill.

18. Our Youth Enterprises with Innovation (YouWin) and the Nagropreneur
programmes not only encouraged young people to go into such difficult
business areas as agriculture, it also helped them to become entrepreneurs
and acquire the capacity to employ other people.

19. That the PDP Government improved communication in Nigeria through the
introduction of Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM) and the
expansion of the nation’s information and communication technology
architecture needs no gainsay.

20. We equally expanded our educational horizon by implementing reforms
in the sector and establishing 14 new Federal Government-owned Universities
while three colleges of education were upgraded to degree awarding
institutions.