Nigerians should not allow the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), run the country aground, the Protem National Chairman of the mega party, the Social Democratic Movement Party (SDMP), Pat Utomi, said yesterday in Lagos.

Mr. Utomi, who spoke during a chat with journalists, outlined the policies and priorities of the new party and its desire to rescue Nigeria from the brinks of collapse under the PDP.

“There is a consensus that our country is in very serious trouble, and that at the heart of the trouble is a fundamental-cultural challenge with the PDP, which has been the dominant political party in Nigeria for the last decade,” he said.

The former presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2007 elections, said if the PDP continues to run the affairs of the country, the nation is bound for failure.

“There is a conviction amongst people who are giving to thinking that if the PDP runs Nigeria for the next four years, there will not be a Nigeria,” he said, saying it was for this reason that some people of goodwill, integrity and competence have come together to decide that “it is time to work together to create a political party that can pull Nigeria away from the brink and show it a new light.”

Mr. Utomi said a two-year long meeting around the Mega Summit Movement has led to the creation of a new party, the Social Democratic Movement Party (SDMP), which he claims will be an entrepreneurial party focused on market economy and backed by the goodwill of all the people.

He traced the beginning of the party’s initiative to elder statesman, Anthony Enahoro, who consulted with leaders around the country on the need to save the country with the formation of a broadbased political party, with a spirit opposed to that of the PDP, which he described as “dominant, narcissistic, self-loving, and self-serving.”

Mr. Utomi said himself and Sule Amman, the co-chairs of some of the mergers that led to the movement, agreed with other leaders in the early days of the party’s formation that the fundamental values and goals of the party would force people that are not so well-aligned to its goals to depart the party.

Education and Health as priority

The party, he said, would be one of discipline, service, integrity and with very clear ideas of how to solve identified Nigeria’s problems. He listed education and health as the main priority of the party. Other priorities will be power supply, stimulating economic activities through job creation, fighting corruption, and electoral reform.

Ahead of the 2011 elections, Mr. Utomi called for the quick commencement of electoral reforms, saying, “if we do not start now, there might not be election in 2011.”

The SDMP application would be officially submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) office on the 19th of April.

“We will give INEC 30 to 31 days after which, if we do not hear from them, we will take it that we have being registered and kick off our programmes, because that is what the law says,” he said.