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President of the Indigenous Igbo Youths Congress (IIYC), Chief Mayor Echefu, has called on the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, not to waste taxpayers’ money in hiring 4,000 social media influencers to showcase President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s achievements.
Chief Echefu stressed that if the president achieved so much as the minister claimed, Nigerians would have seen the works and the impacts would have been felt everywhere.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the Igbo youths’ leader bemoaned the fate of Nigeria after 66 years of independence.
How can you describe the state of the nation?
Where do I begin? Is it the hunger that is prevalent everywhere? Is it the insecurity that has made travelling from one state to the other nightmarish? Nigeria is in a sorry state.
The excruciating hardship in the country, as a result of poor implementation of government policies, has made Nigerians become desperate, angry and dangerous.
Federal Government policies are wonderful on paper, but wickedly implemented, without transparently impacting on the people.
Go to the streets of Nigeria, you will know how desperate people are. They are angry, despondent, and are becoming irrational and dangerous. The level of violence and desperation in the country has reached an alarming point where people now steal and kill because they feel they have nothing to lose.
Citizens no longer feel protected, their rights are being trampled upon, and fear and panic have set in. If this were another country, by now we would have been up in flames. You come back to your house; somebody has entered your own house and chased you out.
Let me warn that pushing people to the extreme is risky because no one can tell when a person will crack.
Nigerians will be going to the polls in the next three months. What are your expectations?
I’m expecting Nigerians to come out and vote for their candidates and defend their votes. We shouldn’t allow the 2027 elections to be like the previous polls in Nigeria, where citizens complained that their votes did not count because after voting for their preferred candidates, the electoral umpire would declare the loser as the winner. This has brought voter apathy, where less than 25 per cent of registered voters came out to vote, while the rest believed that there was no need to go and waste their time queuing under the sun to cast their votes, which by the end of the day wouldn’t count. This is the tragedy that the compromised electoral umpire has brought upon the country.
I urge Nigerians to troop out en mass and vote for the candidates that they believe will put Nigeria back to the trajectory of development. They should not give anyone any chance to roughshod them this time around. Vote and stand at the polling centres and defend your votes; if need be, use your phone cameras to record development at the polling units and at the collation centres so that we elect a competent leader who will place Nigeria in its rightful and respected position among comity of nations.
What do you expect INEC to do?
One shouldn’t tell the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) what to do if they are sincere. Its Chairman, Joash Amupitan is a professor and also a Christian, and so should live above board. He should defend his academic status and also his faith. If he toes the line of his immediate predecessor, he would also be listed in the book of infamy.
I’m appealing to INEC to give Nigerians credible elections; don’t manipulate the system, and we don’t want to hear of any glitches this time around.
Look at Brazil that went into election few days ago. By 1:30am the following morning, the result was out. The incumbent, Lula da Silva, got 45 per cent of the votes while his challenger, Flavio Bolsonaro, got 47 per cent. None could meet the constitutional requirement to be declared outright winner. So, they are going for a run off on October 25th. Brazil has a population of 215m people. The election was electronically conducted. No ‘INEC Chairman’ reading out manual results state by state. Not a single report of election violence. This is a country that is still classified as a ‘developing country’.
But ours will take days for the result to come out because they are looking for ways to circumvent the wishes of the people, and in the end, the result would be announced dead in the night when the people are sleeping.
Prof Amupitan should give Nigerians credible elections so that he can get the blessings of the people and not curses.
What are your assessments of the three strongest candidates – President Bola Tinubu of APC, Atiku Abubakar of ADC and Peter Obi of NDC?
Each of them has a large following. I want Nigerians to look at them and decide the one that will bring back laughter to them. This time around, it is not going to be about parties, it is going to be on individuals.
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Let the choice of Nigerians at the polling booths be the outcome; let nobody tamper with the result.
The Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, said that they were going to employ 4,000 social media influencers to market Tinubu by showing Nigerians what the president has achieved. What is your reaction to this?
Tinubu should be careful about those people; they are deceiving the president. Tinubu should be careful of these ‘halleluiah boys’; they are not telling him the truth. He shouldn’t trust the praise singers around him, who are only interested in telling him what he wants to hear and not the truth. They are deceivers. The president would be deceiving himself if he claims not to know the truth. What these people are saying is because of their positions and what they are gaining from the president and not the reality on the ground.
If Tinubu has achieved much, there is no need to employ social influencers to market the president. Knowledge should speak for itself. So, the social influencers would be telling Nigerians something that wasn’t in existence that now exists, or telling a hungry man that he was not hungry.
Look, you can only tell a blind man that there is no red oil in the soup, but you can’t tell him that there is no salt in the soup.
So, if the president has worked; why do they need social media influencers?
All the federal roads in the country are death traps. The deplorable states of the Nigerian roads were shown on the international television stations. If that was not shameful, what was it? They went to the failed portion of the federal road in Benin, and were belching fire. Afterwards, what happened? Nothing! Don’t mind these people; they are all deceivers. Enough is enough.
October 1 was Nigeria’s 66 years of attaining independence. How can you rate the country?
Nigeria has failed both God and man. Nigeria was supposed to be the pride of the black race the world over, but we have become the shame of the black race. Judging from where we are and given the abundance of human and material resources, was President Donald Trump not right to have described Nigeria as a ‘shithole’ country?
Nigeria is a failed state, where non-state actors are feared and respected more than the government. Tell me what is working except the corruption industry. Name any sector that is excelling – is it health, education, roads? The cries of infrastructural deficit have reached the high heavens.
As a country, we have tried for the past 66 years, and these years have been tortuous; the more we try to patch the nation, the more the tears continue to expand. The country is akin to mixing oil and water, the two cannot blend, and we have become like a nest of scorpions stinging themselves to death. The best thing to do now is for every region to go back to its region, and manage her affairs, and if it is the will of God, after 20 years, we can come back together if there is any gain in it. We must say the truth at all times.
How can the country be fixed?
Fixing this country is not rocket science. Our problem is mainly leadership, and then our electoral system. The day we organise a credible; free and fair election that will usher the leaderships at all levels, which Nigerians have been yearning for, it will mark the beginning of the end of our problems. When the politicians contesting elections understand that the people’s votes now count, they would stop misbehaving, and start serving the people because they would have realised that it’s no more business as usual, then we begin to see structural changes, developments at every level – equity, fairness and justice would be enthroned. Nigerians would begin to stand on the truth; there would be respect for the rule of law.
How do you think the voting pattern is going to be in the 2027 elections?
The upcoming 2027 elections will define Nigeria’s political landscape because the people are not going to vote according to parties. We’re going to vote according to character and competence among other values. So, party or platform is going to be the least consideration for people in deciding where to cast their votes. Some people will vote for Obi, Atiku, Tinubu and other candidates.
Those who won elections under the Peter Obi wave in 2023, and think it would be repeated in 2027 would be utterly disappointed because Nigerians have seen that they are bereft of character. Over 80 per cent of people, who were unknown political elements, abandoned Obi and the Labour Party, and defected to the APC. Thank God most of them were denied tickets by the ruling party. Some of them tried to join NDC to reap from the same Obi popularity, but didn’t get the tickets.
Look at what happened in Oshodi/Isolo Federal Constituency II, where Ikechukwu Onwuka won the NDC party ticket, but it was taken away from him and handed over to another person, who defected from the PDP. Onwuka has now defected to the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), and he is making waves in the constituency, and he is the favoured candidate. Go to Ajegunle, Island, Kano, Anambra, Ekiti, Rivers, and Benue etc, Nigerians are going to choose the best candidates into various elective offices irrespective of their parties.
If you see the best candidate in APC vote for him; if he or she is in NDC vote for him; if he or she is in ADC vote for, or other candidates
Are you worried about the insecurity situation in the country?
Any person who is not worried over the insecurity situation in the country must be bestial. Travelling from one town to the other is a big risk. Look at how the 20 corps members travelling from Oyo State to Imo and Akwa Ibom states for their primary assignments were abducted, and have been in the captivity of the kidnappers for more than 10 days. That is one incident. Many citizens are in the dens of kidnappers in the north, and nothing is being done to free them.
Nigerians are going to vote for a candidate that will provide security for them and protect them from any form of attack.
