Speaking at a monthly programme organized by the Consolidated Chapel of the Nigerian Union of Journalist in Ogun State held at their secretariat, Ita Iyalode Abeokuta on Friday, Sowunmi said the PDP needs a new direction and leadership that can restore its founding principles and values.
Sowunmi promised to bring his experience and expertise to bear on the party, focusing on ideological differentiation, internal democracy, and accountability.
He also emphasized the need for political parties to be platforms that do not belong to anyone, regardless of their position or influence.
His words "I'm running to be chairman of the People's Democratic Party of Nigeria. Why? It's because I have looked at the country in the last 24 years and I have convinced myself. That is until we can make political parties attractive enough to attract men like you and women like you and even others like you.
"The issue is we have been struggling with Democracy in this country. The question you then ask is why is it that from the legislative end? From the executive end From the governor's end, from the local government chamber's end, even from the president's end and his appointees, why is it that the hope of the people here seems to be dashed or not being met at the speed at which the people want their movements?
"I spent a lot of time reflecting on this and you know, I'm very quick to criticize but I then concluded that the main thing that needs to happen is you need to reform the political parties. So if we can reform the political parties, it will then begin to throw up quality people because it should then make itself available for the people to come and participate.
I felt that the 26 years political party (PDP) was the most established in the country. I felt that the time was now for us to go in there to clean it up to reform it to repurpose it. How do you repurpose the political party? You repurpose a political party by determining the ideological difference between that party and the next party?
"People must be able to know what your party stands for, What is the ideological position of party . All of them said they are going to remove the subsidy in a month. All of them said they are going to float the naira not even one of them said he won’t . All of them said they are going to run on a private sector. None of them said he wouldn't. One of them is the President of the country now, and he's running private sector efforts.
"The room for criticism is very little because all of you said you are going running the same private sector but almost as if you are even copying each other's manifesto It's not their fault.
"It's just that the time is now for you to find out how you can do the ideological differentiation between the party and these kinds of things are not as simple as that requires a lot of brain power to be able to say this is what we stand for.
Over and above that I discover that we have made the political space extremely litigations. The amount of cases we produce as a result of our primaries Congress, this is a bit on the high side. So much that we have overburdened the courts and it is because political parties do not have the discipline to obey their own rules.
"You write a rule for yourself. Nobody forced you to write that rule. Why shouldn't you be compelled and forced to obey it? So I believe We have created political parties in the image of the person that is governing.
"And that's why you see that the attitude of a leader over impacts the attitude of the party. So when a leader is unduly stubborn and just doing things his own way, It will impact the image of the party and when the leader is not serious it will reflect on the image of the party.
"So to address that, I feel that a political party must be a platform that does not belong to anyone in the party no matter how high he plays. If we have a very good memory of democracy, If some of you are not too young, the good memory of democracy we have in this country that made us desire democracy was during the time of Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe and the likes .
"You can see the ideological underpinnings of their parties. You saw the quality of men that were called politicians then. You saw the type of ideas they were pushing everybody knew that.
"It was just a political group that believed that the welfare of the mass of the people is the primary objective of governance and everybody knew that the UPN at that time was an ultra right party that believed very strongly that free market free enterprise is what they are doing. So you people could see the difference. "
