It Is A Blessing We did not join APC -DPP Chair

The Chairman Democratic People Party (DPP), and Deputy Chairman of Inte-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), Mr Garshon Benson, expressed satisfaction that his party did not merge with the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), when it was formed.
What are your plans for Ekiti governorship election to ensure that DPEnter P participate favourably?
Ekiti Governorship election is coming up on 14th July, 2018. Independence National Electoral Commission (INEC) has release the list of the parties and their candidates.
First, as a party, we are holding our governorship primaries on the 10th of May, 2018. We have three aspirants, one of them will emerge as our flag bearer. We are contesting as a party in Ekiti and after the primaries, we will tell the world that this is the person we are going to contest the election with.
In recent times, in order to reorganise our party in Ekiti, we have a new state chairman. These positions are acting. After the governorship election, we are going to hold congresses in order to entrench permanent leaders. What happened was that many people had to leave. The coming onboard of the All Progressive Congress (APC) made people to move from one party to another. This party was to merge with the APC but couldn’t pull through. Some people have also left their party and joined us.
We are also doing a study. For us, election is won and lost in each of the polling units. INEC has given each party second to last registration of voters in a disc. We are also telling our people on ground to let us know how many polling units we have in Ekiti and how many representatives we have. This is because in most cases, if you don’t have agents in each of the polling units, people can exploit the situation.
It is not just enough to have a candidate, but to have one that cuts across. We pray that the three aspirants we have now should give us the best. They should do their home work well with a view to putting up a credible candidate. If you have a quality candidate, you know that you are going to have good outing and 50% of the election is won. The reverse is true.
 Do you intend to merge with any political party for 2019 elections?
This party was formed and registered in 2006. I happen to be the fourth national chairman and 2007 we were everywhere. We did very well in the first election that we contested. The President then, who is supposed to preside over a transition, said the election was do or die affairs. Like I said, we did very well in that election and Nigerian had their voices but he had his way.
It was late Umar Musa Yar’adua, who was supposed to be jubilating for winning that election, said the process that brought me to power was very wrong. That election was not nullified due to failure of the judiciary. We had a good outing in the 2007 under the chairmanship of late Umar Ahmed from Bauchi. He was the first chairman of the DPP. I took over the leadership of this party when discussions were ongoing to merge with the APC. This is because the person that was representing us joined APC before the conclusion. After several meetings we discovered that there was not going to be a cohesion. We were right, as you can see, at the formation of the APC, CPC took the presidency, ACN took the vice president and PDP that came to join did not have anywhere to match their feet. When Senate President got that position, other parties felt that they were not mixing up at all. So it was a beautiful thing we did not join.
As a party, we looked at the personality of President Muhammadu Buhari, in 2015 elections and adopted him as our presidential candidate. We felt that as a military man and his experience in the civil war insecurity and insurgency could be tackled. We equally thought that our economy will be better, because he told us that petrol price is going to come down. All that endeared us into taking that decision have not been met.
There are more hunger in the land, people are suffering more now, the petroleum price has also risen from what they (APC) met. They are still subsidizing the importation of PMS. We were thinking that by now we would have gotten one functioning refinery. Out of the four refineries if one is functioning, it would have reduced this problem of subsidy.
In primary economics, you can only export excesses of your prodcts when you are locally satisfied. Crude is our main stay in the economy and we cannot boast of one refinery to refine the crude. Whether we like it or not we are running at a lose in Nigeria economy. The reason is this, after the exported crude is refined, value is added to the products. There is no way the crude will be more valuable than the refined products.
Given the rise in the number of political parties that are being registered by INEC. Do think that Nigeria needs more political parties to stabilize the political atmosphere in the country?
We have more than enough political parties. Constitution said that for a party to contest election, the party must field a candidate. We actually do not need more parties. The major problem in this country is that most Nigerians are docile. The things that determine how government is changed is different from what dictates how people come into power in Nigeria.
In the 2015 elections, ethnicity and religion played over 50 per cent role. The question of the quality and competency of the persons seeking elections did not arise. At this point, I urge all Nigerians to forget about ethnicity and religion so that we can be able to lift ourselves from this unnecessary hardship.
Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) is looking forward to presenting a credible candidates for 2019 elections.