Let me take you to the area of prediction. Most men of God are prophesying that Jonathan will lose the election. Don’t you believe in these seers or prophets? I don’t accept that analysis. It is false. It is not correct. If you look at the media, whether it is radio, television, magazine or newspaper, it is the one controlled by the opposition party or the one they have enormous influence on, and they talk and write rubbish. Such a thing will never happen. Anybody who is going into an election and is predicting anarchy and chaos is not a democrat. Those people will be dealt with in accordance with the law. I am talking about prophets, those who are prophesying failure, doom for Jonathan. Recently Rev Fr Ejike Mbaka, a Catholic priest, who runs the Adoration Ministry in Enugu, said Jonathan will lose the election. He put out four pigeons to fly. The fattest one represented Jonathan refused to fly, symbolically suggesting failure. I don’t accept that. I think that is arrant nonsense. We don’t do elections through prediction. We don’t do election though religion. We do election through democratic process, and by voting. We rely heavily on the votes and voices of Nigerians and through that, PDP will win overwhelmingly. Let’s look at the government of Goodluck Jonathan. There has been accusations of profligacy, especially from his predecessor Obasanjo, who said recently that the foreign reserves had been depleted and that the president has lost focus, describing his government as the worst in the history of Nigeria. Coming from his predecessor, do you not believe that there are gems of truth in the allegations? That prediction is wrong. It is false. And if you have any rationale and objective assessment of regimes in this country, Jonathan’s government is one of the best that we have had. I want you to turn to the price of oil. I want you to turn to the price of groundnuts, the price of other products. Anybody, who was former head of state, and is predicting evil and downfall for his country cannot be said to be patriotic and I cannot support such a person. I support the present government, and I believe the PDP will win next election overwhelmingly. What about the issue of the devaluation of the currency upon which this government has taken a lot of flak. Do you believe it is expedient for a government that is about to face election to allow its currency to be devalued at the time it did, instead of waiting till after the election? You get that very wrong. Currency devaluation is worldwide. It has affected Russia, all the European countries, all the African countries. And Spain is in financial problem. So also is Greece, so also is France; so also are other countries in the Southern and Northern hemisphere. The only country that has a stable currency now is the USA. And it is because they have changed the mathematics of their oil. At the moment, they don’t import much oil again. They produce their own oil, and that is helping them a lot. But here, we depend heavily on oil and there is a limit you can go if you depend heavily on a single product. At the moment, we are doing a lot to develop our agriculture and other products, and I have very strong reason to believe that the sky is not the limit for the strength of our economy in the future. The Movement For the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, a few days ago endorsed the APC. MEND is from Jonathan’s volatile Niger Delta region. What do you read into this endorsement of the opposition by a group from his own region? That endorsement is nonsense. I tell you categorically that PDP and Jonathan will win all the six states in the Niger-Delta overwhelmingly. I have no doubt about that. After the elections, you can phone me and confirm it to me. People say all sorts of things before election. I think it is either out of ignorance or political incompetence. But Governor Amaechi is also from the Niger Delta region and I understand that he and his party are very strong in Rivers State. Are you not building false hopes on Rivers State? I know RiversState very well, and I know the six states of the Niger Delta region very well. I can assure you again, that PDP will sweep the votes in Rivers States. I have been there recently several times. And each time I am there, I go round the place, and talk to the leaders. The governor of Rivers State at the moment, thought he was going to be the vice presidential candidate of APC. Unfortunately, he was not picked, so, his political arithmetic has collapsed, and there is no strength in his calculation. Let me take you to the South East. Former vice president Dr Alex Ekwueme, recently declared that Jonathan will not get the bloc votes of the Igbos over what he termed betrayal. Is the ship sinking right under the feet of the president? I did not read that. If he said that, I don’t know why he said it. But I can assure you that PDP will win the whole five Igbo states, overwhelmingly. Either Ekwueme was misquoted, or he got what he said wrong. I have no reason to know why he said that. I doubt if he said it. In the South-west here, you have very strong voices in the APC, which have been largely unchallenged, or countered by the PDP. Looking at the history of the South-west, they have always been in the opposition. Why do you think it is now they will change and join the mainstream national political movement? That is not true. If you look at the politics of the South-west, before the last elections, the opposition did not control it. It was controlled by our party; and the reason why they lost the states has been analyzed in the media. A large section of the judiciary was corrupted; because of their leadership and manipulation of the people who had election petitions. I don’t want to go into the details of that, but I can assure you that, that will never happen again. You talk with so much confidence, but only yesterday, the DSS, said APC had already concluded plans to hack into INEC data base with a view to rigging the elections. That means they can still manipulate things. I don’t believe in corruption in election; and I have not read what you have said. But I can assure you that nobody will be allowed to corrupt the next election. It is going to be clean, it is going to be clear, it is going to be democratic. Do you have confidence in INEC? I don’t know the personnel of the INEC. I have never met the chairman and I don’t even know the commissioners. So, I don’t want to comment on them. The anti-corruption agencies in this country have been moribund for some time now. What is the reason for that? I don’t know the personnel of that body. I don’t know how they operate; and I will not like to comment further. What are the best credentials of Jonathan, you think that can sell him best to the electorate. One, he is one of the most educated presidents we have ever produced. He is a Ph.D. Two, he has got enormous experience in governance. He has worked at the state level; outside government, he has operated as deputy governor, he has acted as governor, he has been vice president, he has been president. He has enormous knowledge of Nigeria’s problems and governance. So, he is one of the best candidates to rule this country. But he has been in power for six years now. If you add another four years, assuming he wins, that will be unprecedented. The North is seriously agitated, and part of their opposition to Jonathan is because they feel he is usurping their slot on the zoning formulae? Will that not affect his chances at the polls? There you go again. Jonathan is using his term as prescribed by the law and the constitution. He is not breaking any law. He is competent and is obeying the electoral law. Anybody who accuses him of disobeying any law must be talking rubbish. I don’t accept it, and I don’t agree with it at all. Obasanjo was president or head of state during the military regime and ruled again for another eight years as civilian president. And he has been one of the longest serving heads of state anybody can think of. Jonathan has not served as much as that. How can anybody accuse Jonathan of wrongdoing without accusing previous holders of that office of wrongdoing?. North as expressed by their socio-cultural organization, ACF insist that Buhari is their candidate. Why are the cultural organizations in the South like Afenifere, Ohanaeze, finding it difficult to endorse a particular candidate like the North did? Cultural bodies don’t fix candidates for governorship or for the presidency, so anybody who talks the way you presented it must be reading his arithmetic upside down. The political parties are responsible for presenting candidates for elections at the local level, at the state level, at the national level. I reject the analysis you have put forward. Those who have endorsed a candidate of the North are wrong, and don’t know what they are doing. Jonathan by his own admittance said, he is the most criticized president ever in Nigeria. Do you agree with him? I have not done the arithmetic. I cannot say he is right. I cannot say he is wrong. I cannot comment on that. Between Shagari and Jonathan who actually are Nigeria’s only true executive presidents (Balewa was Prime Minister) who would you vote for? Oh! I will vote for both of them. Shagari was excellent as president. I was in his cabinet as attorney general and I know his performance, his competence. At that time, the country was riddled with military interventions. The greatest intervention we have had in governance in the history of the country is through the military. So, I don’t want you to compare military rule with civilian rule. They are two different arithmetic. What do you have against Buhari, plan to come back to power? I am not in his political party. What I have against him is that I don’t want his political party to win. I want his party to lose. And I want my party to win. That is the truth. P T O
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 22:00:14 +0000
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