By Louis Ibah
Former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Vice chairman (South South), Mr. Emmanuel Ogidi has flayed the All Progressives Congress (APC) for coming into power in 2015 unprepared and resorting to blame games and buck passing on insecurity and poor state of the economy to confuse gullible Nigerians even after spending more than seven years in power.
In this interview, Ogidi, who is also a former Chairman, PDP Delta State, described Atiku Abubakar as the best presidential candidate for the 2023 poll given his experience as vice to former President Olusegun Obasanjo who inherited lots of liabilities from the military but fixed the mess and improved the quality of lives of majority of citizens without boring citizens with endless buck passing.
What’s your views on the state of the nation?
Some months back, I would have said I don’t have hope, but that’s no more. With the upcoming elections, I can now say there is hope for our country.
While growing up attending a secondary school, we were taught Government as a subject. And they taught us separation of powers as part of the attributes of a presidential system of government. And they taught us that as we go into the presidential system of government, we are going to witness separation of powers with checks and balances. But, sadly, what we have witnessed in our own presidential system is a situation of no checks; once there are no checks, there will also be no balance. And that is where we have found ourselves today. The executive arm of government has become so powerful that the judiciary and National Assembly sometimes appear helpless. So, until we have true separation of powers, Nigeria will not be a great nation. This is what has affected the state of our nation. And you know I am a PDP member, and one of our five point agenda is restructuring. Now, restructuring is not only about issues pertaining to the federating states, it means all facets of our country, including the legislature and judiciary because if these other two arms are not independent, we cannot go anywhere.
I know some people have suggested otherwise, in fact, one of my colleagues said we should go back to parliamentary system of government. He said the presidential system was too expensive. But I disagree. It is only expensive because we don’t have the checks. And so we allow people to be fixing their salaries by themselves and making the system expensive. But where there are the appropriate checks in place, I don’t see how the presidential system will be expensive.
Do you think Nigerians believe in their political leaders to restructure the country?
Nigerians are very hopeful people and they have always trusted their leaders. In fact, it is the leaders that have always betrayed the people. So I am happy because Nigerians have not given up on their leaders. It is because of that trust that today you find Nigerians watching the way the political parties are going about their campaigns. You notice that at least the four major political parties are going on the airwaves using their spokespersons and principals to reach out to citizens, and they are listening and watching.
But don’t blame me if I say the one candidate that can be trusted more is Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. I am PDP from the beginning and I know what I am talking about. I know him and his views on restructuring; he’s always talking about it and the need for it if we must make progress. So I believe in him and that’s why I want others to also believe in our candidate.
Because until we have a president who comes in and restructures, there will be no hope for the country. Nigeria would have long been developed than where we are today if we had allowed each of the regions to be optimal through restructuring. But we keep dragging ourselves backwards. With Atiku, you’re going to witness a lot of developments.
But the APC has been blaming Atiku and PDP for the country’s current socio-economic crisis?
And for how long will they do that? Let me remind you that when we came into power in 1999, the situation that we met was not what you can say was very good. But we hit the ground running. We never wasted time blaming the military, neither did we spend eight years boring Nigerians with references to what the military did and did not do. We went to work immediately because we were fully prepared as we knew the state of things. We went for the best hands and brought them in to do the job. Look, any workman that starts quarrelling with his tools is not a good workman.
The APC told us, and I am quoting Governor Fashola, that any good government should be able to provide uninterrupted electricity to Nigerians in six months or it is a failed government. And that is what they said. They knew the condition of the power sector before saying that or didn’t they know? It’s the same with so many of their promises. Energy, food prices have hit the roof. Cost of living is higher than where we left it. But they keep blaming the past and looking for PDP as if when we came in, we didn’t inherit problems. I told you a good workman does not do that; for more than seven years complaining about the tools. You just go straight to the business.
So in the PDP, we know what the problems are right now, we know the situation of things, things are so bad, life is harder more than it was in 2015, so why should we take over power and each time we come out to speak, we will be complaining about what APC has done as if that is what the people elected us to do. We are in the business of recruiting people that are the best and then we give them the job to deliver. We are in power; you deliver good governance to the people, not excuses. Yes, we know the economy is bad; yes we know we are so indebted; it is true there is insecurity and things are no longer the way we left it. We know all these. But what we are not going to say is that we will do it in six months. What we are telling Nigerians is that we are going to work and make things better or right. Why should we waste time passing buck and blaming the past? Is APC a party ready for governance? It was just a gang up of people forming a party to oust the PDP and that is why for instance they have not been able to manage the economy. You ask them why is this so and they tell you it is PDP….for more than seven years? They were not structured to manage the economy. Are Nigerians better off under them than they were under the PDP? People just came together to get into power. In fact, Buhari was shocked that President Jonathan threw in the towel as he never expected that. They were expecting a fight but the man said “take”. But how can you, after more than seven years, still be buck passing if people tell you that their lives are not better than it was when you took over. It is a sign of failure. So, we are telling Nigerians that we are coming in to take over the situation and fix it. Nigerians will always be better off under the PDP economically. Look people are badly hit economically. We want to rescue the country. It is not someone from the APC that should be telling Nigerians that they want to rescue the country because they have failed. Like Jesus Christ said “let not your heart be troubled”; we are telling Nigerians to vote for Atiku and we are saying “give us the chance again and let not your heart be troubled.”
How confident are you of PDP victory?
Oh I am very confident. APC has no job anymore. We even expect them to be apologizing to Nigerians that they have failed. But what you see them do is talking about the crisis in the PDP and the five governors and not the crisis in the country which is what is affecting the people. But we have our own internal party mechanism to resolve issues and we are on it. From January we are going to enter another level and you will see changes. If you take Governor Wike, you know that all his candidates are PDP and he is working hard to deliver them. Wike is a very smart politician, so don’t be surprised if after the polls, Rivers State produces the highest numbers of votes for the PDP for the presidency. Governors Samuel Ortom, Seyi Makinde, Ikpeazu and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi all have stakes in the PDP in next year’s election. Some are running for reelection for second term, others for Senate. They are all PDP members. The presidential and National Assembly elections, won’t they hold the same day? So watch and see. We will put an end to the crisis. We are so confident of winning the 2023 presidential election.