What lessons did you derive from the emergence of General Buhari as President elect in the last election?
The lessons are much, back in the days, it has always been the cabals, the godfathers who dictate where the election will swing, who will be voted for and who will not be voted for, but now the masses have woken up, I believe that the election of the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, will now pave way for other people, even though they don’t have money, but have genuine interest to serve the people.
If they have ideas to improve the lives of the populace, they will want to try it out at the poll, it won’t be like before when you spend a lot of money or because you have federal might behind you, its automatic victory at the poll. Now, democracy has come to stay in Nigeria, the incoming government will seat tight, because they know if they don’t perform, they will lose the next election, so the party that lost the election now will go back to the drawing board and check where they have lost the election and re-draw. So who is the winner? It is the masses, the people have voted for the All Progressives Congress, APC, because since 16 years, it has been the same party and it has failed the people; it was relaxed, thinking it would be rigging as usual, they forgot that power belongs to the voters and not whom they have voted for. So, the emergence of Buhari has deepened democratic culture in Nigeria.
The expectation of Nigerians from the incoming government is very high, do you think Nigerians will see changes as promised them?
If you look at the President-elect, General Buhari, you will see he is a man of his words, he is not just there to rule Nigeria, it is because he has unfinished business with Nigeria, this is the first time he is democratically elected as a leader. Back in the days, he was a military Head of State, that twenty months he stayed, I was in Lagos then and was working with Bata at Ojota, there was discipline, you don’t jump the queues, then people don’t even throw thrash on the streets, he strengthened the institutions and we had good economy.
I strongly believe Nigerians will enjoy under General Buhari, he will make good every promise he made during the electioneering campaign, but Nigerians must exercise patience, because it will take time to clean the mess of the past 16 years. He will need to build a disciplined citizenry that will complement his anti-corruption stand. The bane of Nigeria is indiscipline. We Nigerians are indisciplined. It will be a good idea if he re-established his War Against Indiscipline, WAI, because building a new Nigeria is a huge task that must involve all.
Do you support the incoming government spending time on probing past governments’ activities?
I am happy the General has said he will probe the missing $20 billion in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Nigerians must be made accountable for what has happened. It will be a huge task for him to move beyond the wall of President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime but from Jonathan’s regime, also its wise for Nigerians to know what happened under Jonathan, the cases of corruption we heard under him should not go unchecked, it will not be easy to probe the 16 years of PDP rule because some records would have been missing but Nigerians want to know what actually happened in the last six years.
The APC is now the new bride of all politicians, don’t you think defections into the party could have negative effect on the party
You see, I did not anticipate this cross-carpeting from politicians to the incoming ruling party, because in 1999 when parties were formed, the conservatives and the progressives all mixed together to form a party, so along the way I expected each of them to go their separate ways and that is what is happening now. If we are able to get the progressives on one side and the conservatives on the other side, you see, if we ended up having two party system, which is good for the country, after some years, this cross carpeting will stop, because if you want to join politics afresh, you will know which party suit your ideology.
But the APC should also be careful, because many of these people jumping ship want to protect their interests. There are many people with ill-gotten wealth, looking for avenues to protect their stolen wealth. But there are still some genuine people who are progressives but found themselves on the other side, so that is the kind of movement you are seeing right now, you are still going to see something like this in the next four years or eight years and we will now have the progressives on one side and the conservatives on the other side. This is expected in democracy.
You see, I did not anticipate this cross-carpeting from politicians to the incoming ruling party, because in 1999 when parties were formed, the conservatives and the progressives all mixed together to form a party, so along the way I expected each of them to go their separate ways and that is what is happening now. If we are able to get the progressives on one side and the conservatives on the other side, you see, if we ended up having two party system, which is good for the country, after some years, this cross carpeting will stop, because if you want to join politics afresh, you will know which party suit your ideology.
But the APC should also be careful, because many of these people jumping ship want to protect their interests. There are many people with ill-gotten wealth, looking for avenues to protect their stolen wealth. But there are still some genuine people who are progressives but found themselves on the other side, so that is the kind of movement you are seeing right now, you are still going to see something like this in the next four years or eight years and we will now have the progressives on one side and the conservatives on the other side. This is expected in democracy.
Won’t this affects the APC?
If only they are able to define what they stand for, if they are unable to do that, they can make mistake of the PDP, they can come out to say this is what we stand for, we are progressives, we want to do things differently, they will be able to set up that foundation, i don’t see how they are going to make mistakes but if they will want to do it like they are competing with the other party, then we don’t know where we belong to; we don’t know what we stand for, if they say we are progressives, progressives are people who do things differently in a positive manner, it will be difficult to make mistakes.
The APC lost Edo Central senatorial district to the PDP in the last election despite being an APC stronghold, what went wrong?
Some people hijacked the party in the district, after the governorship election, they became the boss of the party, because they have access to the governor, so a lot of people were left behind, most of our electorate and party members became aggrieved, some party leaders were angry because they weren’t recognised and some of them moved to the other party. So in a situation like that, we are expected to lose the election. It wasn’t the same structure we used in winning the governorship election that we used in the last election. The Esan people voted massively for Adams Oshimole, but unfortunately we didn’t maintain that structure for the general election.
But as a party leader in Edo Central, we’ve already set the ball rolling to correct the mistakes, by bringing the aggrieved parties together to try and rectify these mistakes. We know what they are and we have started working on it, we won’t allow the PDP take over the zone, it remains a stronghold of APC, in the governorship election we will not lose the senatorial district to PDP, so as leaders of the party, we will all come together to sit down and find solutions to all these problems.
We are calling on other APC leaders in the zone not to be weakened by the situation but come together and entrenched the ideology of progressivism in the zone.
Some people hijacked the party in the district, after the governorship election, they became the boss of the party, because they have access to the governor, so a lot of people were left behind, most of our electorate and party members became aggrieved, some party leaders were angry because they weren’t recognised and some of them moved to the other party. So in a situation like that, we are expected to lose the election. It wasn’t the same structure we used in winning the governorship election that we used in the last election. The Esan people voted massively for Adams Oshimole, but unfortunately we didn’t maintain that structure for the general election.
But as a party leader in Edo Central, we’ve already set the ball rolling to correct the mistakes, by bringing the aggrieved parties together to try and rectify these mistakes. We know what they are and we have started working on it, we won’t allow the PDP take over the zone, it remains a stronghold of APC, in the governorship election we will not lose the senatorial district to PDP, so as leaders of the party, we will all come together to sit down and find solutions to all these problems.
We are calling on other APC leaders in the zone not to be weakened by the situation but come together and entrenched the ideology of progressivism in the zone.
source;National Mirror
Is it that easy,,,hope this guys know GEJ is not our first democratic elected leader n his predecessor....
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