Governor Henry Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa state says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not playing its opposition role well.
According to the governor, the party members are not used to being in the opposition and thus have more work to do.
Dickson, in an interview with Vanguard, said the country needed two strong opposition parties to deepen democracy.
“Clearly Nigeria needs a strong party in opposition and I agree with what the former head of state, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, said when he said that, the PDP has disappointed, because it has not proven to be a strong party in opposition,” the governor said.
“That is very sad, because I am essentially an opposition man and I am very comfortable being in opposition. There are not many governors who can survive the type of election I survived in this state. I believe my party has a lot of work to do, so that the country can have a real taste of two strong parties.
“We are proposing to have a convention. Let’s see how it goes. I think that, basically, the PDP is suffering from having a preponderance of people who have never tasted opposition politics.
”All their politics have always been with a party at the centre, using everything for their elections. They should learn from what we did here.”
The PDP lost to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 presidential election, the first time a ruling party lost power at the centre in Nigeria.
