Erudite scholar and a founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Prof Pat Utomi has admitted that the ruling party has derailed from its vision.
He said the ruling APC has disappointed many by failing to live up to expectations.
Speaking with some journalists in Abuja, Utomi, who is vying for the Delta governorship under the platform of the APC, said he was pained that the party they laboured to build was crashing and is thrown into untold crisis.
He recalled his path with APC thus, “I helped found the APC and we had our ideals. Has it been 100 per cent what we hoped for? Far from it.
“I am convinced that if we are serious as political actors, we can find people who are not happy with the way things are going in our party to join hands together and we can make a difference. That is exactly what I am trying to do with this my final effort to provide example before I exit from partisan politics.
“Unfortunately, the politicians we trusted didn’t trust the military so they didn’t come out, so the country was taken over by those who took it over and as you can guess the result has been frightening. But by 2003 we knew we cannot keep watching that we must do something.
“So The Concerned Professionals formed a political party and took over the ADC initiative and felt that I symbolise that trust in the run. After 2007 which was a complete disaster in the sense that there was no election, even the international community agree to this.
“After that process, Chief Anthony Enahoro began a process of trying to bring the progressives together. His argument was that the way things were going that he needed all the progressives together, all the presidential candidates and their deputies so that they can discuss and give up their claims for the other so that they would form a progressive alliance. Chief Olu Falae said he trusted me the most for that.
“So I was ‘prevailed’ upon to become candidate and be the one to manage that process. Unfortunately, that process didn’t work out as well. By 2013, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu said to me that we have to try again, that we should go and see Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. That is how the process that led to the founding of the All Progressives Congress (APC) took place.”
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