PDP buckled under the weight of its own arrogance — Ndoma-Egba

2026-03-15 - 06:26

•Warns APC to learn lessons from the plight of former ruling party •Narrates how he was thrown out of PDP when he was Senate Leader •ON CLOCKING 70: I think God has been partial to me By Johnbosco Agbakwuru Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN, was the Senate Leader in the 7th Senate. Ndoma-Egba just turned 70 years. In this interview, he speaks on his political journey, how he was thrown out of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) even when he was the Leader of the Senate. The former senator also speaks on how arrogance and impunity ruined the PDP, and how he took the ill-treatment meted out to him to the Wailing Wall in Israel. He warns the All Progressives Congress (APC) to learn a lesson from the plight of the PDP. He also speaks on the injustice against Cross River State in the ceding of 76 oil wells to Akwa Ibom. Excerpts: You just turned 70 years old. How has life been for you in the past 70 years? Well, like I said in church, life is like a balance sheet. You have debits and credits, and where the credits exceed the debits, it means that you have had a fair life. In my own case, the credits are far in excess of the debits. So, yes, I’ve had the good, the bad, and the ugly, like every other person experiences. You can’t have life on a platter of gold all through. But on balance, I think God has been partial to me. You started being in public life at a very tender age. Give us the experience. The first appointment was actually by Dr. Clement Isong. I had just returned from Youth Service, and the state Housing Corporation had built some houses that they were going to sell. I discovered that the houses in Ogoja, which were more or less rural compared to Calabar, were more expensive than the houses in Calabar. So I wrote a letter to the governor, and the governor sent for me and invited the then general manager of the Housing Corporation. We had a chat, and then the next thing I knew, when they were announcing appointments, I was appointed as chairman of the governing board of my old school, Government Secondary School, Ikom. I was about 23, I think—23 or turning 24.When President Shehu Shagari introduced the River Basin Authorities, I was appointed to the first board of the Cross River Basin Development Authority. I was barely 24, and President Shagari himself told me later that I was to have been his minister if my father hadn’t intervened to appeal to him to let me mature first. But I became commissioner three months short of my 27th birthday. The governor said we should just say I was 27. In those days, we had 19 states—it’s not like now with 36 states. Akwa Ibom was still part of Cross River, and every state had only seven commissioners—no special advisers or special assistants. Every ministry just had a commissioner, a permanent secretary, and your personal staff. You had just one personal assistant, who was taken from the public service. It was a most revealing and rewarding experience for me because the public service was still working then, so you were guided. The rest is history from there. I think that opportunity commended me for every other opportunity I’ve had in life. Some people have alleged that Nigeria appears to be tilting towards a one-party state. What’s your take? Well, I have heard those allegations, but you know we were all in PDP. What happened to PDP was that it buckled under the weight of its own arrogance. If you recall, in 2014, there was a registration or re-registration exercise where people called “point men” were appointed. Their whole assignment was to stop some people from registering as members of PDP, if you recall. My idea of a political party is that a party is like a church—it’s open for those who are looking for salvation, it is open for those who have found salvation, and it is open for those who will never be saved. Everybody has the opportunity of belonging. So when you begin to shut the doors against some people—for instance, people think I left PDP. I didn’t leave PDP; I was thrown out of PDP. At the time I was thrown out, I was Leader of the Senate and Chairman of the National Assembly Caucus of the party, but I was thrown out and I had no protection. I was the only one in leadership from the same zone as the then president. So I think PDP became just arrogant, and that is what it is suffering from today. I just hope that the APC has lessons to learn from the trajectory of the PDP. If we are moving towards a one-party state, it is not the party in power that should nurture the opposition. The opposition should feed itself to be an opposition to the party in power. Do you think PDP will survive what is happening to it presently? I doubt it. On a personal note, when I went through that bitter experience with them, I went to the Wailing Wall in Israel to pray against PDP. For them to survive, I would have to withdraw all the prayers I prayed against them. I doubt it. I think PDP is now history. Does it mean that you contributed to the affliction the PDP is suffering from, as you went to Israel to pray against the party? PDP is responsible for what has happened to it. If anybody contributed, it was just a mere contribution, but PDP is absolutely responsible for what has happened to it. PDP is a lesson because it was a well-organized party, a well-structured party. But at some point, it collapsed under the weight of its own arrogance, and it couldn’t manage power anymore. If you remember, there was a time in Adamawa State— I don’t want to mention his name now because the person is late—he was appointed point man to stop Atiku Abubakar’s supporters from registering in the party. A party doesn’t function that way. But some critics are saying that the APC, your party, only has two persons—the former president, late Muhammadu Buhari, and the current president, Bola Tinubu—as the rallying point, and that after Tinubu’s administration, the party may not have someone to hold it together again and it may follow the path of the PDP. What’s your take? A political party should keep reinventing itself. A political party shouldn’t be static, it shouldn’t be stagnant, and that’s my prayer for APC—that as we move on, we appreciate our own dynamics, our own internal dynamics, and begin to respond to those dynamics early enough.