By Henry Umoru

ABUJA—FORMER  Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ibrahim Mantu has admitted that both the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and the opposition party, the All Progressives Congress, APC  lack internal democracy.

According to him, it is sad that party members are forced to wait in the sun without food to express their  voting rights, only to discover at the end of the day that their votes do not count.

Mantu in a chat with journalists weekend, said  he was now a born again politician who had left the past behind.

He however went down memory lane, explaining that he was refused the position of National Chairman of the defunct National Relublican Convention, NRC, because he insisted that power must shift from the north to the south.

Speaking during the special media interactive session orgsnised by the Save Democracy Group, Senator Mantu warned that the country would not get it right until she started doing things right and putting democracy in its right perspective.

According to him, the international community abandoned the country especially the President of the United States of America, President Barack Obama who refused to come to Nigeria, but went to Ghana.

Mantu noted that his heart bleeds like every other politician that things were not in their rightful perspective, saying, “today, all the parties are guilty of lack of internal democracy, they are all suffering of lack of internal democracy. You ask people to sit all day, no food, no drink and their vows not taken as leaders sit at the party secretatiat to send names to INEC, all the parties are guilty of this. When you have a fraudulent person presented to INEC, it will affect the system.

“Until we start doing things right, that is when we will get democracy right, once we get it right, we then achieve all. Nigeria is not flowing with milk and honey because we have abandoned the right things.

Speaking earlier, national coordinator of Save Democracy Group, Dr. Ifedi Okwenna explained that the group believes that by creating strong institutions, appropriate checks and monitoring would be brought to bear on the nation’s political actors to ensure that they imbibe consciously the democratic culture and norms; value of tolerance for another viewpoint; playing the games by the rules and in the propagation and promotion of the principle of internal democracy among political parties.