The immediate past Governor of Abia State, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu has singled out the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the only political party in Nigeria that has the mechanism to overcome crisis.
He likened the crisis rocking PDP to a furnace being used to refine gold, adding that the former ruling party would emerge from the crucible very strong and united to regain its lost glory.
The former Abia Governor expressed his confidence on his party’s survival capacity in a chat with journalists on Friday, October 18 during the event marking his 60th birthday at the City of Nain Umuobiakwa, Obingwa Local Government.
He said that no other political party, including the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC) and the Labour Party (LP) was built to withstand internal crisis of the magnitude confronting PDP without disintegrating.
According to Ikpeazu, his party was already used to internal squabbles and had always wriggled out due to its time-tested internal conflict resolution mechanism, adding that in partisan politics crisis would always arise.
“Not until a party faces problems and overcomes it, you won’t be able to know whether such a party has sufficient resilience and bumper to survive it,” he said.
He said that PDP has “inbuilt mechanism to survive our conflicts” hence there was no need to lose sleep over the centrifugal and centripetal forces buffeting the party.
“I’m sure that the resolution of the conflict is in sight and everything will be okay,” he said.
Ikpeazu alluded that the conflicts in PDP is because “2027 is almost here and people are jostling” as usual. But he was quick to point out that “the noise you hear in the market place is not a war, it’s haggling”.
The former Abia chief executive under whose care PDP lost control of the state after over two decades, gave assurance that the party would bounce back and regain its lost position in Abia.
He stated that since after the 2023 general election, the Abia PDP has been undergoing a rebuilding process and repositioning, adding thaf the party is ready to demonstrate its renewed strength at the forthcoming local government poll.
Dr Ikpeazu, who left office 17 months ago, used the occasion of his 60th anniversary to empower 25 young men and women with tools and startup capital to encourage them to survive the present economic downturn.
He said that he was saddened “to see people drift into despondency without trying” because of the present hardship, adding that giving up was not the best approach to life.
“I want people to know that they can make something big out of life by just starting from the scratch,” he said, pointing out that many examples of such success stories abound.
He explained that he intentionally targeted small businesses for empowerment, noting that such ordinary business people and not limited liability companies deserve the push to enable them take off and soar high.
“So, whatever money we gave out today, we want our people to know that they can make something big out of life by just starting. It’s not good to give up on life without trying. So that’s the inspiration and I’ll continue in that trajectory,” the former governor said.
In the Ikpeazu birthday seminar with the theme “Maintaining Business Growth in an Inflationary Economy”, the keynote speaker, Professor Nnamdi Chinwendu Nweze, stated that with right strategies businesses could still survive in Nigeria’s “turbulent economy”.
Nweze, who is an associate professor of economics at the Abia State University Uturu(ABSU) listed the survival strategies to include diversification, innovations, strategic plannjng, operational efficiency, among others.
At the seminar and birthday celebration attracted huge number of Ikpeazu’s political associates, friends and well wishers, including the senator for Abia Central, Senator Austin Akobundu, and some PDP lawmakers in the Abia State House of Assembly.
They all joined the former Abia Governor and his family to celebrate the milestone of his life replete with divine favours which he readily acknowledged, saying that “there’s nothing that has come to me that didn’t come from heaven and heaven is still open”.