Adetokunbo Pearse, a Lagos PDP chieftain and former member of Atiku Abubakar 2023 presidential campaign council, says there is still hope for the main opposition party in Nigeria.

On Thursday, Mr Pearse, a former PDP national chairmanship aspirant and gubernatorial candidate in Lagos, said that things were not as bad as they were being made to look in the party.

He said, “PDP is not done yet. It is not over for PDP in Nigeria. When you look at the national landscape, PDP still remains very strong number two at the National Assembly.

“APC has about 20 governors, we have about 14 governors while other parties have two. If we go to the national assembly, we are very strong number two with maybe 38 per cent to 40 per cent of members.”

Mr Pearse, however, said the PDP’s strength in Lagos state is a different issue, as the Labour Party had displaced the PDP to emerge a distant number two to the ruling APC.

“We have lost a lot of ground in Lagos,” he said.

Mr Pearse, however, said the fortune of PDP would revive once the party completed its mid-term congress for the emergence of substantive national leadership.

“Part of our problems now is that we don’t have a substantive national chairman. We really don’t have a party leader. That is the problem. Once we get a substantive national chairman in our mid-term congress, the party will move forward,” he said.

He urged the party to be more aggressive in constructive criticisms of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

Mr Pearse said although the PDP’s national secretariat was doing some of this, all the party’s state chapters should be doing the same and be more aggressive about it to give life to the main opposition party.

“We must be speaking on behalf of the people. It is the opportunity to make the party look good. All the flaws of the incumbent, we can expose and tell the people what the party will do if given the opportunity to represent them.

“We should just keep hope alive, keep getting ready and planning toward the 2027 general elections,” he said.

(NAN)