BY HENRY UMORU

ABUJA – NATIONAL Woman leader of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Kema Chikwe, yesterday, disclosed that the party lost the last Imo State governorship election to All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, and its candidate, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, because of what she termed internal sabotage from members.

Speaking when Imo PDP women paid her a  visit at Wadata Plaza, the former Minister of Aviation, who noted that Imo was a PDP state, said: ‘’I can assure you that Imo State is PDP, what happened to our party was internal sabotage and what need to be done is internal discipline.

“When discipline is enforced then you can separate the wheat from the chaff, you know people who are really with PDP, who are going to work for PDP, but I can assure you that if you go to Imo State, any grassroot gathering and you mention another party they are bound to respond “power to the people” because they still think they are in PDP.”

On her plans for women as the national woman leader of the party, she said ‘’I have been working for women over the years, I have been in the mainstream of women mobilization and activism in Nigeria and because of that, I decided to translate it into politics.

‘’Most of these women are veteran politicians, they have been around for sometimes, acting in the field. I hope during this tenure, we are going to structure the empowerment programme too well that it will not be a kind of empowerment you cannot really record, it has to be properly recorded and every year, we take stock and find out how many people have benefitted.

“Are their businesses striving? Are they in the positions to run elections or to be appointed? these are really what we want to do.

‘’I have already presented my take off action programme to them (NWC), what I intend to do, I had a meeting with all the party functionaries, I mean women on Thursday and they are going back with forms that will be administered on the Ward level to get and audit women membership of PDP.

“With that form when the women at the Ward level fill out the forms we will be able to collate and know how many women are actually registered in PDP. In that form there is a column they will tick indicating what they need for empowerment.

‘’My intention is to structure distributorship, petty contracts, agriculture loans, business loans and I am already reaching out to people who will be in position to partner with PDP women to help them, at the end of the day we will see how many empowerment packages are available.

‘’I am emphasizing on PDP women because PDP is in government, it is the PDP that has produced the government. It means that most of the women in PDP have been working for the party and it will be very good to give them incentives so that in future they will be more committed and people will have independent of action.

‘’If people are well mobilized and empowered, it means that whenever there is election, primaries within the party they will have their own free minds to chose the right people to represent them, but if you are poor all you want to do is to know where money is being shared and you go and you may be influenced with the little that is giving to you.

‘’Poverty is one thing that has affected our politics adversely, so the empowerment programme is going to be very aggressive, I am going to reach out to a wide circle of people that can do it.”