In
this interview with The Punch, National Chairman of the All Progressives
Congress, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, speaks about the challenges of managing the
nation, President Buhari’s policies and other national issues. Excerpts
The opposition Peoples Democratic Party has accused
your party of being responsible for its leadership crisis. How do you respond
to this?
All
I can say is that they cannot eat their cake and have it. When their factional
chairman left us, they were celebrating, they were happy saying oh, we’ve got a
big fish. Now that they see the kind of man he is, they are crying wolf.
We
have nothing to do with the travails of the PDP because in reality; we want a
virile opposition. We want an opposition that is responsible, that has ideas to
contribute. They have failed to do this so far. So, it is not of any value to
us that they are heating up and that they are losing the little bit of the
sense of direction they had left.
They are just looking for a scape goat. We
have absolutely no interest in what is going on in the PDP. If you recall, we
once urged their members who were trooping into the APC -as soon as we won the
election- to remain in their party to give us the kind of opposition that will
strengthen our democracy. This shows we mean well for them.
We asked them to go
and re-engineer themselves and be as we were- a responsible opposition party. I
just pray for them and hope that they will be able to rediscover themselves, to
be able to start the process of rebuilding themselves. Maybe, it is even good
that what is happening is happening, because it will give us the time to take
the tough decisions that the country which they ruined requires.
The Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed,
recently said the APC-led government has fulfilled its campaign promises to
Nigerians. Is this the position of your party?
What
we promised to do we are doing. I don’t think we ever promised that in the
first two months; everything will be okay.
If only because we did not also
predict that the price of crude oil will collapse the way it has collapsed,
neither were we aware that the resources of the nation were in fact, diverted
for electioneering purposes to the extent that even our troops who were
fighting life and death battles in the North East were being deprived of the
resources needed to carry out their assignments.
In fact, their (troops) lives
were out at unacceptable risk. To come back to your question, what we promised
to do was -to be honest with the people, to do things that will improve their
lives in the long run and in the interim, to have a social net which is already
going into operation.
A lot of the things we promised, we are doing. We
promised improved security in the North East, we’ve delivered on that. We
promised a reshaping of the economy so that we can provide jobs, we are
delivering on that.
At present, the police is recruiting 10,000; there are also
500,000 teachers being recruited and the various other programmes are already
in place to retrain and re-motivate youths to become self employed and of
course, in the interim, they will get some payment that they can rely on whilst
they are being retrained and reoriented. All these are going on.
Then there is the issue of the President’s foreign
trips which has become a talking point among Nigerians …
Oh
that. The President’s foreign trips have virtually locked down the construction
of a new standard gauge railway system that will go all the way from Kano
through Lagos to Calabar. Things are happening; it’s just that these things
take time to mature and have the desired effect on individual lives within the
society.
There are insinuations that the leadership of your
party has preferred candidates for the Edo and Ondo states governorship
primaries. Don’t you think this can lead to a loss of members?
No,
no, no. The party does not have preferred candidates anywhere. We are not in
the habit or in the trade of imposing candidates. We want to win elections and
you can only win elections when you have popular candidates. We won the 2015
national elections because we had a popular candidate in the person of
President Muhammadu Buhari. That is something that we want to replicate all
over.
That does not mean of course, that individuals, not the party, cannot
have their preferences and give help to these people in what manner they
consider fit so long as the party itself whether in the state, in a senatorial
area or in a federal constituency, does not come out to say this is our
anointed candidate. That will not happen, not under my watch.
The Federal Government has denied being selective in
its fight against corruption, why has none of your members even at the state
level been prosecuted?
Prosecution
depends on evidence. Once there is evidence, if anyone has evidence, let him
provide it.
This generalised rumour is not basis for serious action of that type.
And in any case, there are a few APC leaders who are being called to question.
It is not as one sided as it seems and it is not something to be apologetic
for. When the then National Security Adviser was disbursing funds from his
Automated Teller Machine, he did not call an opposition person to say take
money.
So, it’s a natural course of events. This administration- if anybody can
read; the President will not mind whose ox is gored so long as justice is done.
It just happens that as at now, those whose hands are found in the till happen
to be preponderantly in the PDP. But you can see that a lot of other
investigations are ongoing and quite a few involve some APC leaders.
Can we have some names sir?
They
are already in public domain and I’ m sure even your paper has published them.
It is not the same as hearing it from you; you may have
more names than what is in the public domain.
Do
your investigations.
It has been said that your party has no firm grip of
its members- especially at the National Assembly. Why is this so?
We
didn’t have time to really melt things together; that is one aspect. But the
reality that everybody knows is that the party came together from three main
parties and fractions of others with interests, differences in visions and
perception, ambition and the rest of it and what we suffered, as serious as it
was, was natural and we are getting out of it.
The good thing is that, it has
not hampered the operations of government. It has implications for the
operations of the party which we are watching very closely, managing very
closely and tying to make sure it does not cause serious disruption now or in
the future to the party itself. It’s unfortunate but that is the situation and
that is the reality and we are working within that confine.
A lot of Nigerians are unhappy with the way things are
especially in the area of development. Do you think Nigerians are being too
harsh in their judgement?
Yes,
it is harsh. But it is understandable. Harsh because when you talk of power,
everybody is aware of the activities of the so-called Nigeria Delta Avengers,
everybody knows that the minute you cut off gas supply to the power plants, we
have a problem that has prevented the stabilisation of the power sector.
A lot
of work has been done; consultations are going on. Apart from the presence of
the military in the Niger Delta, consultations are going on behind the scenes.
We hope that things will be brought under control speedily. Criticisms are
there but we have always said, we empathise and regret the anguish that the
general population- particularly those living at the margins are going through.
Change is painful but at the end of it, everybody will be happier because we
will have a stronger economy; an economy that is creating jobs, an economy where
industry is getting back into its stride. We are going through this painful
stride which is not being made easy by the fact that corruption is actively and
massively fighting back.
Not to mention the eruptions in the Niger Delta or the
ones in the South East, all of which are still vestiges of corruption fighting
back. But this is not a struggle that this nation can afford to lose; we must
and cannot go back to business as usual.
Senator Dino Melaye said recently that the APC should
be grateful that it didn’t lose the National Assembly leadership to the PDP
instead of persecuting Saraki. Is the party grateful or still displeased with
that development?
I
think the thing that rankled us most was the election of Ekweremadu as Deputy
Senate President. Saraki is a member of the APC, much as the main line of the
party would have wished a different result and a different scenario but we all
find it very, very difficult to accept the emergence of a PDP person as his
deputy.
The Federal Government has been investigating PDP over
its campaign funds. How did the APC raise its Presidential campaign funds? Why
is nobody investigating this?
That
is not the issue. There is a great misunderstanding. We are not
investigating PDP campaign funds.
We are investigating records as to how public
funds were hijacked for illegal purposes which were not budgeted for by the
National Assembly. Nobody in business who contributed a lot of money has been
dragged to any tribunal because he gave PDP funds.
Public funds, public
resources, money that belongs to you, me and the people of this country were
stolen and diverted. Crude oil was being illegally sold to fund the
campaigns and other political activities.
Not just the campaigns, people just
shared money and pocketed. It’s not company XYZ limited giving PDP X amount and
about being dragged before EFCC, that is not what is going on. Anybody
who steals from the treasury either to fund campaign, or to put in his pocket
or to buy an estate in every part of the world would be asked questions.
It
must not be allowed. Nobody must be allowed to get away with that. It is not
the same with campaign funding. We are not investigating PDP campaign funds.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed said recently that he spoke too
much before the 2015 election and that the backlash he has been receiving was
like paying the price. Did your party make too many promises?
What
promises did we make? The President promised security; he promised the people
jobs. He promised the people revitalisation of the economy and strongly promised
the people the taming of corruption.
A lot of things are under this and up till
today, we still stand by this and we stand behind because these are the things
he promised and he is determined to do them for the people. The results are
already showing all over the place.
The President did not make too many
promises. A lot of other things people are saying are neither here nor there;
people are saying things he never said. Things like: he will make the Naira
equivalent to the Dollar; he never said things like that but people just
manufacture and read what they want to read into these issues.
This brings us to issue of the fuel price. Remember
during the campaigns, your candidate said there was no subsidy on petrol; that
the whole thing was a sham. How come we now hear that subsidy has been removed?
When
the President said there is was subsidy on fuel, all he was saying is that, the
inefficiency of the system, the corruption of the system was being visited on
the people and the government was being made to pay huge unacceptable sums that
ended up in people’s pockets.
If all these things are corrected, you will find
that there is no subsidy in the real sense of the word. That was precisely what
the President was saying; that is precisely what it has turned out to be. It is
now being corrected and the price of fuel is beginning to drop gradually all
over and there is no subsidy.
The market forces will now determine just like
what has happened in the Foreign Exchange Market in the last few days. Let
demand and supply be the determinant of the price of anything whatsoever in the
market.
During his time as governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola once
said any serious government would fix the power situation in six months. With
benefit of hindsight, was your party not unfair and unrealistic in its
criticisms of Jonathan’s government?
We
were not unfair. It was not just about Jonathan but the PDP as an institution.
Sixteen years of the PDP administration and $18 billion was spent on the power
sector, we haven’t got a single additional kilowatt of power.
So, any such
criticism is very, very deserving. Of course, in the interim, a lot of other
issues like we discussed earlier, cropped up like the Niger Delta Avengers,
otherwise, power was stabilising already but the minute the power station
cannot get gas to power it, then you are in deep trouble and that is what is
happening now. Otherwise, what he said was correct.
We were firstly going to
stabilise the system, strengthening the transmitting and distribution network,
build captive power plants in areas of high intensive use like industries and
so on, bringing on stream power stations that were virtually ready.
Some were
waiting for connection to the gas station, some were waiting for final
installation of turbines that were imported and were already in the country.
All of these were being done, then came the Niger Delta Avengers. You cannot
but escape the impression that there is a powerful group intent on sabotaging.
I want to assure them that they won’t succeed.
Your party also criticised the presidency under
Jonathan for running the largest presidential air fleet and the APC promised to
cut down on this. What have you been waiting for?
I
think this has largely been cut down. Besides, I think they are even available
for hire in case you want to use any of them (general laughter). Don’t forget,
from the very first day, even the vehicles being used by Mr. President were
exactly the same vehicles used by his predecessor.
Do you agree with those who say that APC’s popularity
has waned because of the harsh economic reality Nigerians are facing since it
took office?
All
governments worldwide in between terms lose some degree of popularity; no
question about that.
We are having harsh economic times, no question about that
and that does not increase the popularity of any government. It only diminishes
it to some extent. What is different is that, in our case, in spite of the
harsh economic realities, the people still have full confidence, trust.
I think
that is the proper word, in President Buhari, that he will do his very best to
improve their lot and I think the proof of that was the reaction to the
threatened strikes by the labour unions. You can see that even though people
are unhappy, they refused to come out because they understood.
They are in pain
but they understood why the pain was there and they trusted the President that
he was doing everything within his power to ameliorate their pain. So yes,
there is a lot of grumbling all over the place, but also there is a lot of
trust in Mr. President.
Your party is also having its internal crisis at some
state chapters. States like Kano, Bayelsa, Kogi and the like, what happened to
the various committees you set up to deal with these issues?
We
are attending to each and every one of them. In virtually every case, we are
making progress. Bayelsa should be concluded in a matter of weeks, Kano is
basically a personality thing and we’ve got everybody to sheathe their swords
for now.
And I think that has happened. Kano has cooled off. We also have
issues in Kogi State which we are also attending to.
That is the only way you
know a government that is in power. If we were in opposition, there won’t be
skirmishes in these states because there would be nothing to skirmish over but
since we are in power, people are still struggling for relative importance
within the system with an eye on tomorrow.
These things are normal, they are
expected but we’ve developed that habit of democratic consultation and
reconciliation and it is working.
Some have said the country would have been better if
the President pursued other areas such as the economy with the same vigour he
is pursuing anti-corruption. Don’t you agree?
The
President is somebody who multi-tasks, he can work on different issues at the
same time. The only difference is that corruption attracts headlines.
Mr. X
stole N20 billion, ha! Headlines, you people in the media make it headlines.
When you hear that there is a project in XYZ place, you say, well, it’s one of
those things and you give it small space but when a major elite is accused of
stealing X amount of money, it is headlines.
This has nothing to do with the importance which the President is giving to different issues that face the nation.
Source:The Punch
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