All  Progressives Congress(APC)gubernatorial aspirant in Edo State, Mr Godwin Obaseki has said that he wants to be the next governor of the state, so that, he can consolidate on the achievements of the Adams Oshiomhole’s administration.

Obaseki, who is also the chairman of the Edo State Economic,  told journalists recently that contrary to speculations that the governor wants to foist him on the state, he is contesting for the governorship seat based on his personal conviction that he has alot to offer to the development of the state.

He also spoke on other issues.

Excerpts:

 You were part of the team that came in with Governor Adams Oshiomhole in 2008. Why was it that people didn’t get to know you until few years ago?

Certainly I am. But first, I will say that I paid to serve. Secondly, I thought that I would just come in and help organise things and go back to what I was doing. But as chairman of the Economic Team, I realised that what we had anticipated that existed in government did not exist. I had on my instinct invited people to come and help the government to take off; but I then realised that we cannot be talking about an economic policy or running an economy when there was no engine to drive the economy.

So, for me, I realised that it was much deeper. So, I had to set up the Economic Team and institutionalise it and ensure that it was properly resourced to now support the Comrade Oshoimhole’s effort.

This took quite a lot out of me. As an Economic Team, what are you supposed to do? You expect that civil servants should have done their work. There are policies in place and you come in and advice and make comments on what you think would happen, the options, why those options and choices. But I found out that I got dragged in more into first, helping them to create a base. I asked the question: What is the purpose of government and its objectives? I did this to see how we can begin to build the base on which we can now actually advise the government.

My aim at that point was not become a political appointee. So, to that extent, I didn’t feel that I had to be in front. I was just there to support and help the Comrade Governor achieve the goals he had set out. And I felt that I would be more effective if I was apolitical. We looked at decisions and issues dispassionately and the truth is that within the first two, three years, I had no interest in politics. I didn’t see myself dealing with the intrigues, subterfuge and others. It was during Governor Oshiomhole’s re-election that I understood and appreciated that one can fix the bureaucracy,  but it is beyond that; because if you don’t also fix the politics, nothing will abide.

Looking at how far you and Governor Oshiomhole have come, can one say that your governorship ambition is payback time?

It is not payback, because the question I had always asked after the governor’s re-election is: Now that he is in the second and last term, what happens after him? The thought was always there; who will continue with what we started? But even if it was there, it wasn’t something that I pursued strongly, because I don’t see how I can even do that; the energy and time. If you think about Nigeria’s politics before the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as president, you got to have a thick skin to be able to fight. And, in any case, since I didn’t have that political background and history, it wasn’t something I thought about doing initially.

But after Buhari succeeded despite all odds, I said it is possible. That gave me the perspective of the ability of an outsider to come in and take over power.

More importantly, I looked around and said we’ve been here together in the last seven years; I cannot absolve myself of any key policy that was made. And I said to myself, because the future is going to be more challenging than where we are coming from, we run a huge risk of losing the gains of what we have accomplished. What are those things that we have accomplished? First, we had to restore effects of governance by ensuring a sense of accountability, professionalism in the civil service, planning which helped us to earn the trust of people and getting money to execute projects. After going through all these, I realised that we have done the easy part, because we had a plan and money to build infrastructure and now created that expectation from the people that if government can, then it should continue to do it, but we are going into an era where oil prices have dropped drastically and those expectation are real and can still be accomplished, but with a different mindset and management style.

So, looking around, I felt that it can’t just be politics only, it has to be politics mixed with some capacity to manage resources in difficult times and I think that I am more than qualified. If there is anybody in the race today, who has the experience in terms of managing resources and government, I am that person. I agree that I don’t have 30 years of political experience behind me, but I have more than seven years’ experience of monitoring political activities in Edo State. What we need at this point in time is not just someone who is adept to politics alone. We need someone who has managerial ability. So, I feel that I have that advantage of being able to handle both.

From this perspective, I said if I left with Governor Oshiomhole and things broke, and we went back, they will say it was just a fluke and more importantly, from the risk standpoint, they will not be able to understand what we did and why did what we did. To explain failure, they will turn around and I will be culpable. They will say they borrowed, not understanding that yes, you borrowed, but you borrowed to drive economic growth, so that you can increase your tax revenues to now pay your borrowings. It is a cycle, which requires skills in finance and management. So, from a personal standpoint, I said that I am safer running as a governor than just being outside after now, because if things broke, they will turn and say that they said it, we took all the money.

How do you explain how we built the Airport Road? How do you explain that there is a drainage system on it that cost the state government so much, and there is another ecological study that we have done that we have to link all the roads in the Government Reservation Area (GRA) into that drainage system before we build the roads in the GRA. So, it is not a payback; but more like continuing with what have started.

Do you stand a chance of picking the APC’s ticket given the array of aspirants in the party?

The truth is that after 16 weeks, I am the person to beat. A lot of political actors have failed to realise that the political environment has changed drastically; that the current economic reality is going to affect our politics more than we understand at the surface. The thinking of most of them is let’s just grab power, once we are in government house, everything will fall in place. But I say that it is beyond that.

Being in government house does not make things happen. You have to possess the capability. With technology and improvement in our electoral process, people will now determine who governs them; people will now matter in the political process. Having political structure alone will not in itself deliver political power.

There is the belief that those worked for the emergence of Oshiomhole are not with you. Who is going to deliver you as governor?

First, Oshiomhole delivered himself. If he had not restored governance and built the infrastructure that he did; if he has not gotten the confidence of the people, nobody would have been able to perform any magic. People voted, and that’s the point I am making. Gone are the days when politicians think that the people don’t matter; when a few political elites will gather and say this is how we want it; when you can just carry the ballot boxes and fill in result sheets.

Today, whoever that is going to deliver you politically is going to make sure that the votes count. Yes, some people worked during the last governorship election, I am not disputing that. I equally played a role in that campaign because I was the chairman of the Finance Committee, but we were able to succeed because of the accomplishment of the Oshiomhole government during his first term.

A lot of political actors just believe that there is a structure and system, so they don’t need to work. I have gone round the 18 local government areas in the state. As I speak, I am going ward to ward. I have done 30 wards in the last two weeks and I am going to go round all the 192 wards. Somebody said something in one of the wards. He said: ‘But they said this man was imposed on the party, but he is the only one that we are seeing. We don’t see those who were not imposed.’

What is your reaction to the allegation that there are plans by the governor to foist a list of delegates on the APC leadership, so that you can emerge as the party’s candidate?

It is unfortunate the way some people have just decided to sit somewhere and be crying foul on the pages of newspapers. The delegates list that was used for the last elections is what is going to be used for the party’s primary. I don’t know how it is going to be possible for anyone to substitute names on that list. It is only in Nigerian politics that you see magic happening. When we met with the APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, he said that APC has rules on how things are done.

When a delegate dies, do you allow that vacancy? There is a process of filling that vacancy. There are some people who defected to other parties but the guidelines of the party are very clear on how to fill such vacancies. How can one belong to a party and still have a sub-party within the party? For me, the only structure that I have is the party and I will work through its structure. The delegates are members of the APC and they are the people that we need to market ourselves to on why they should vote for us as the governorship candidate of the party.

So, I don’t see how one can sit at a place or go to Abuja and change a delegates list, which has 3,023 people on it.

Some of the other aspirants are saying that the governor wants to substitute about 900 delegates; that there are some who are not really dead as well as didn’t defect to other parties.

How is he going to do that? They just sit down and create phantoms. First, they said that I am not popular, that the party will lose but I ask: If they are that popular, why are they afraid? I have gone round the local governments and interacted with party chairmen at the ward level. So, I will tell you that I don’t see how anyone can change the delegates list. But if they have any evidence of substitution, they should come out with it because 900 out of 3,023 is about 25 per cent. We should realise that politics has gone beyond all these, it is now about ideas.

Governor Oshiomhole came in with a lot of goodwill and performed creditably in his first term, but of late, some people say that there is a question mark on his performance in the second term. Don’t you see this as a sort of impediment to your ambition?

There is such a huge gap between reality and phantom. Here is a man who came in and in seven years he has performed creditably well even without me saying it. If you knew Edo State and the amount of physical transformation that has occurred in the state within the period Oshiomhole has been governor, you will marvel. The PDP is saying that we borrowed about N600 billion to do all the things that we have done.

I never really understood what they were saying until I thought about it and realised that it is true, because if you value in Nigerian parlance, particularly PDP parlance, what we have done is in excess of N600 billion. The quality of work we have done is in excess of N600 billion, but our actual spending is about N150 billion.

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So, when some people now say, questionable, I ask: are you questioning the roads that exist, the schools that have been refurbished? Let’s go to the poll tomorrow and see how many people that will come out and vote again for the Comrade Governor.

There is nothing in my view that is questionable. Think about it, before now, we were an opposition government under the PDP-led Federal Government. There was no month that officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) did not come because of phantom petitions but no member of Edo State Executive Council was ever arraigned, no impropriety till tomorrow. Because we are no longer in that old arrangement where the people didn’t matter, when they just sit down and write results, all they do now is just to sponsor propaganda and false information. We say, let’s go to the field but they keep shouting.

Under what credibility are you running for the election, yours or that of Oshiomhole?

I don’t see the difference because I have been part of what we built in the last seven years. I cannot distance myself from any major policy of Governor Oshiomhole. I can only extend and improve on what he has done and we did it on the platform of our party – the APC. So, there is no difference as far as I am concerned.

What are the critical needs of Edo people that you would want to address within the first few months of your government if you are elected?

The key issue is jobs. We have trained a lot of our children, but there are no jobs. The level of unemployment in Edo State is quite frightening. Education is our major industry, so every parent strives to send his or her children to school but when these children leave school, there is nothing to do. So, a lot of them want to travel abroad, they trek to Libya and a lot of them die trying to cross over to Europe for better live. Why can’t we create opportunities here? What will it take? Just jobs creation. So, what we will do is to get our technical schools back and tying them to industries, expanding agricultural production and processing.

Also, my experience from the private sector will help me to attract businesses that will create jobs.


“Why PDP must put its house in order,”

From Peter Ogbonna Eze

Dr. Kach Ononuju is a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) and a former National Publicity  Secretary aspirant  in the party.  In this interview,  he speaks about current development within the PDP and other issues.

Excerpts:                                                 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is currently facing what can be referred to as serious implosion, what is  the confusion at the moment?

It simply tells you that the PDP is a dynamic organisation.  We used the PDP in Nigerian as the omnibus to transcend from dictatorship to democracy, and in using the PDP, the party achieved the longest period of political stability in the history of the nation. PDP is also responsible for the Nigeria economic expansion. It was also able to achieve an electoral success in which the incumbent PDP man lost and picked up the telephone to congratulate the winner.

In as much as people could say the processes were rigged, we wouldn’t mind about it, we are all Nigerians. So, the test is right now  is on Buhari to maintain democracy, respect the rule of law, adhere to court rulings and of course, sustain the inclusion, we have achieved in the past 16 years.

In 16 years, we built an inclusive country, that was tolerant of the aspirations of the weak, the poor and the vulnerable. We have lost power, and of course, yes, as a normal human organisation, we have found out that those that led us, while we lost power, a lot of people are asking that those people should go away, so that we can rebuild the party, with brand new, fresh blood. It is because those people have not gone away that we are having this current struggle for the control of the PDP.

It is not an implosion. No. It is what I will call a tactical calibration to set up proper for our tomorrow’s conquest. As I speak to you, the PDP is still the largest party in Africa, because the APC was primarily formed as a movement to win the presidency. Buhari has  won  on the APC platform. But of course from his behavior, he has refused to allow the APC to sustain its build up to becoming a national party.

What is your assessment of APC government led by President Muhammadu Buhari?

President Buhari came earlier out of the anger that democracy will remove power from the Fulani, he has now come again angry that the economic expansion allowed the Igbos to grow. The way he has ruled, his  bias against the South East, of course is the reason why the ethnic emotions in the East has been so charged up, that you have all sorts of fringe groups gain national recognition and presence, as you have seen in the case of Independent people of Biafra (IPOB) and the Niger Delta militancy movement, already rearing their head up and threatening to implode. So, the onus is on Buhari to realize that what we built was an inclusive enterprise.

Today, even the economy of Lagos is down with constant increase in capital flight. A country that used to be the biggest destination for Foreign Direct Investment is now a place where there is a lot of investor flight; investors are no longer coming. They do not trust us again, from an annual growth rate of 6.8%, Nigeria is now experiencing and projected to 3.5% and 3.2 % growth.

The economy is down is because Buhari is making the same mistake he made when he came as military head of state. That the country is so bad, does not mean, we do not have people who can help in providing good economic advice, it’s just because Buhari does not listen to anybody; he wishes to rule as an emperor and sole administrator. We are almost in a recession and history repeat itself for those who do not learn. Buhari as far as I am concerned is a failure.

It is obvious there is hunger in the land, if things continue the way it is now, what is your thought about 2019 election?

2019 election will be banana, it will be ice cream for the PDP. That is why it is important the PDP gets its house in order, remove those that led it to failure and bring a new crop of people who can lead it to win;  that is why there is struggle in the PDP. Probably, it might break into factions before it bounces back, but the PDP should understand their stake in the country. It is the only political omnibus that was used to sustain the longest period of political stability.

If the APC and the PDP fail to put their houses in order, do you foresee any alliance or formation of a new political party?

You should understand that  nature abhors vacuum. If there is a need to sustain our progression as a market driven democracy, those who seek from the challenges of such arrangement will form a new party. It is a test for Nigerians now. Now that we have seen that President Buhari is  very frustrated and is not comfortable with democracy, all we beg him is to respect the courts

I support his anti-corruption fight, but corruption is a general disease. It is not an APC or PDP disease and should be fought generally. No doctor wanting to treat an ailment would want to test only one part of your body. No. He must do a holistic test of the entire body, before he can start prescribing  treatment.

This country is a very important enterprise. The APC as a party has not been able to crystallize into a national party. One of the things I have always said is that APC is a work in  progress.

Now there is no room for economic development. The economy is down, and once the economy is relegated, the poor will rise against the masses, and so they can now channel the anger against the APC. Check Imo state and see how confused Governor Rocharas  Okorocha has been. He wants to retrench workers but the labour did not allow him. They know he is only flying the kite and once he successfully does that, other governors will follow. Things are very bad, the big test is for Buhari, I know Buhari is  frustrated and Nigerians thought with him, things can get better. But now, everybody knows what everyone is doing.

You said that President Buhari is frustrated and the economy is going down daily ,you also said that the poor might go for revolution ,how do you expect the poor to go about it when they do not have capacity to carry it out?

The PDP lost power because ,whether you like it or not, a lot of the poor were convinced  that things were so bad and that if Buhari  gets in, they will be getting #5,000 on monthly basis. That is the deception, the elite threw to the poor to deceive them to get power. Historically, politicians are people who say things they know they will not do. Now Buhari has gotten into power and every single economic policy he has done has failed.

Nobody controls a free market; what you do is set laws and guidelines that allows the market to be free and allow elections to be transparent. You cannot guard the market and because Buhari seems very uncomfortable with capitalism and democracy, you can see all his policies are anti-market policies to the extent that an international report put it that every single decision Buhari has made has not be sound.