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Two weeks after its take-off, the Social Democratic Mega Party
is already being besieged by politicians who have expressed their interest to
contest at gubernatorial and presidential levels on the platform of the party,
the Party’s Protem National Chairman, Pat Utomi, said on Wednesday.

Mr. Utomi was speaking on the political strength of the new
party, amidst statements by some politicians that it is just a paper formation
and dispute among two of its former backers, Atiku Abubakar and Balarabe Musa,
on their roles in the project.

“All the candidates, including myself, are getting ready for a
long primary-season during which we would go to the length and breadth of our
constituency to canvas members of our party to support certain ideas that we
stand for and how to serve the Nigerian people in a disciplined manner and
bring an end to this curse of poor leadership that has bedevilled Nigeria for
so many years,” he said.

“For the avoidance of all doubts, the movement is strong,
healthy and surging forward.” He said a number of those who initially
participated in the process that led to the formation of the party had
different ideas of what its outlook would be.

“Different players have had different understandings of the
issues in the run of process. The situation is that different perspectives of
the structure of the party that should result from the Mega Summit Movement
have been expressed from the very beginning as should rightly have been the
case in a democratic process,” he said.

Misfits will leave

On the challenges that the party faced at its beginning, Mr.
Utomi said two schools of thought were dominant.

“One school led by Balarabe Musa wanted the process to result in
the coalition of political parties where members continue to belong to their
parties and decide whether they wanted to concentrate on local or state
election while all collaboratively work towards issues at the national level,”
Mr Utomi said.

“The second school of thought suggested that, with the experience
that we as a nation have had in the matter of political party coalition, it is
better that people coming into MSM should come, leaving their political parties
behind and come to join as individual.”

Mr. Utomi said that the group finally agreed to a model that
fuses both schools of thought.

“People who lack discipline, who cannot follow party discipline and rigorous
visionary decision-making aimed at uplifting the majority of the Nigerian
people, self-serving persons in their orientation, would eventually leave the
party,” he said.