Founding chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party in Kwara State, Pa Kunle Suleiman, tells SUCCESS NWOGU why he left the PDP, following the defection of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, to the party
You are the founding chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party in Kwara State. Why did you leave the party you laboured hard to build for the All Progressives Congress?
I am not only a founding father of the PDP in Kwara State, I am one of the founding fathers of the PDP at the national level, having started from G-18 to G-36 until it transformed to the PDP.
Therefore in Kwara State, I nurtured the PDP from the scratch. It is painful that I had to leave the house I laboured hard to build. I really need to do so with pains because I cannot stay in the same political party with Bukola Saraki. At the beginning, when we had three parties including the PDP, and the Alliance for Democracy. I deliberately went to the PDP in order to avoid being in the same party with that dynasty when late Baba Olusola Saraki was alive. We (Olusola and I) had very good working relationship, we talked and so on but I told him (Olusola Saraki) that we cannot be in the same party because their own politics is not ideology-based, and it is not geared towards the improvement of the lives of the masses, therefore we cannot co-habit in the same party; that is why I went to the PDP.
After the old man died, his son stepped into his shoes. Because he was not a politician, he merely stepped into the shoes of his late father and inherited the existing structure but he does not know how to manage it. He reduces everybody to the level of a servant. Politics is not a master-servant relationship. Those of us who have something to offer can never play that type of politics. So basically, we are just different politically. Our thoughts are not the same; our ideas are not the same. We think of the masses, Bukola thinks of what he will acquire.
Bukola does not think of the people, he thinks about himself; all others are mere instruments for him to achieve his objectives, expand his political empire and political image. If you look at what is happening, why did he leave the PDP for the APC in 2014? It was not because former President Goodluck Jonathan was not performing; it was because he felt that he had not had enough recognition.
Under President Muhammadu Buhari, his defection is not based on differences of ideology, and it is not that the masses are suffering and the government should have initiated and implemented better policies; it is about him. That’s why we cannot be together.
Punch
