Reconciliation: ‘We must avoid worse outcome’, Showunmi warns PDP

A member of National Reconciliatory Committee of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Otunba Segun Showunmi, says the fence-mending drive may achieve a worse outcome if the leaders do not desire “honest, genuine and commonsensical approaches to issues.”

Showunmi, a former governorship aspirant in Ogun State, is a member of a 25-man Committee chaired by Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, a former governor of Osun.

In a statement titled “PDP Reconciliation Committee, My Reflections,” the party stalwart cautioned that, “As we embark on this new effort, we must not waste each other’s time for if we do not desire honest, genuine and commonsensical approaches to our issues we will achieve a worse outcome.”

Showunmi noted that 2023 defeat for the party was a self-inflicting injury, and preventable, but it was allowed to happen because some leaders “refused to allow the party to be supreme in all circumstances.”

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He said the party had toed that path of reconciliation in the build-up to the 2023 with the committee chaired by former Senate President Bukola Saraki.

Showunmi said Saraki’s committee’s report was painstaking, and the agreements were “fair and equitable.”

“One is bound to ask what more must be given for the 2023 general elections which left the party much more divided than at any time in its history,” he asked.

He said “There is no messiah anywhere and as such all must purge themselves of any messiah complex they may have, for it is incontrovertible that our reasons for losing 2015 stem from indiscipline and lack of far-reaching reflections on what is in the party’s interest and there are living players who though may have seen the wrongness of their actions and must not pontificate as though 2015 did not happen, the limping of the party and the management of the consequences of that action was very serious.

“We managed to get to 2019 which most consider our best outing in recent history, but we still came short, at the heart of this too, say what you will is the fact that the complete commitments of those who can work were absent for the altar of personal hurt and using party elections to settle the personal scores and private grudges.

“We surely need not lie to ourselves that 2023 was not a self-inflicting injury, preventable, avoided but allowed to happen because somehow we have refused to allow the party to be supreme in all circumstances and I find this hard to understand, however you prime the argument, at the heart of the excessive behaviour are persons who this great party made but forgot that but for this party they might have made it in life but not on the altar of fame, wealth, privilege and opportunities granted by the platform that is now in tatters.”

He told the party in its fresh reconciliation drive that “we must at the onset speak to ourselves and be ready for compromises, apologies where necessary and some punishment where it is unavoidable.”

“I will end by singing a song “PDP is marching on, PDP is marching on, the gate of destabilization will not prevail for PDP is marching on.

“Prepare your issues for the reconciliation team to be open to hear and make far-reaching recommendations to the party. Everyone must sweep the dirty floor from where they are standing. 100% of Zero is worthless. A New Party Must Emerge from the Old,” he said.