Only APC Can Salvage Nigeria —Moghalu. Chief George Moghalu was secretary of the merger committee under the defunct ANPP that produced the All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview with CHIBUZO UKAIBE, he says the APC is beyond grabbing power in 2015 but making sure Nigerians get genuine leadership. You were an insider in the merger process that produced the APC. Can you give us insights into the intrigues that led to the success of the APC? Let me begin by saying that in the history of politics in this country, this is the first time we are talking about merger of independent political parties that have government at various levels; prior to this time the nearest we have come in alliances of political parties, particularly during electioneering period but this time around, parties with government at various levels decided to collapse their structures and become one to create a strong alternative; an alternative that will meet the aspirations of the average Nigerian. It started by way of exchange of correspondences. If you remember before the last election, there were moves to come together, that is in 2011 but unfortunately it did not materialize but this time around, the leadership of the three parties, ACN, ANPP and CPC started again to talk, this consultation led to the establishment of merger committees within this three political parties; we started talking, in the course of our discussing this project a part of APGA led by His Excellency Owelle Rochas Okorocha came forth and joined us in the course our consultation, a part of DPP led by their Deputy National Chairman with Late Sen. Pius Eweredo came and joined us also, even some civil society groups, youth organizations showed interest, various individuals and organization that felt we are on the right path all came and joined us. It was in the course of these consultations that we now agreed to a name THE ALL PROGRESSIVES CONGRESS, we now agreed to a common manifesto, common constitution and what have you. At the end of the day God willing APC was born and we followed the process of registration as laid down by law and INEC eventually registered us and we became a political party. What is the actual vision of APC? It is to be a viable opposition to take over governance or just to grab power? I try to correct this impression every time I have opportunity to speak to the press; in any vibrant democracy both the party in government by way of the party that controls government and the major opposition party, all are in government. One is in government to keep the electoral promises made in the course of electioneering; the opposition is in government to ensure that those promises made are kept and how do they do this, by criticizing policies of government that are not in the interest of the people and proffering alternatives, in doing this the party in government is kept under check at the of the day, the Nigeria people become the beneficiary, so APC is a mega platform that believes in this nation, believes in our economic growth, believes in stability and security of this nation, believes that we have the potentials, that what we need to do is to create the enabling environment for the potentials of this nation to manifest. It is not necessarily about grab power, it is about giving the Nigerian people what they deserve as a matter of right, running our country right; look at power, and look at the economy. If you take time to look at our manifesto, you will find out that we have addressed every of these sub-headings with a view to getting it right. We believe and I will be humble enough to say it that this country has not being properly run in the last fourteen years and that we out to provide the alternative, we are out to show the Nigerian nation what should have been done that has not been done in time past. Talking about lack of delivery of democratic dividends, lack of leadership, PDP members are equally saying that ACN, CPC have been part of this governance process. Do the APC-controlled states have a better template in terms of democracy delivery and proper governance compared to the PDP state? Sure, you see, I have been confronted with this type of question in the past. The point is when you are an assessment of a government in terms of performance; you also would put side by side the resources available to government, somebody the other day was comparing Zamfara and Akwa-Ibom State, I say it is not a fair comparison; Akwa-Ibom State gets between N20b to N30b on a monthly basis and this may two years allocation of a state like Zamfara, but when you go and compare, you put a scale, you put development in these two states on a scale, you discover that our states are doing very well. Go to Borno state, go to Lagos state, go to Osun state, go to Oyo state, these states are doing extremely well, go to Yobe state despite the security challenges they are having, despite the security challenge Borno state is having, go and see what governance is all about there, go to Zamfara state. I am not saying PDP states are not doing well, that will be a very unfair assessment, in my ratings, I have rated Katsina very high, I have rated Gombe, I have rated Rivers, I have rated Akwa-Ibom, they are doing well no doubt about it, but is that you must look at it holistically, you must look at the center viz–a–viz the delivery of democratic dividends, you must look at it from the point of what does Nigeria need to move ahead, where were yesterday, where are we today, where should we have been and when you look at it side by side, you’ll agree with me that we feel based on empirical evidence that the Nigerian nation has been short-changed. Empirical evidence or democratic evidence? Yes, empirical evidence in areas of security challenges, empirical evidence of leadership failures are at various levels. Are you saying Mr. President’s government is failing at present? No, no, no, that won’t be fair, I hate to use the word failure, I hate to use the word failure, I won’t even call Mr. President a failure, but I would be bold enough to say that we have not received enough returns for the investment been made and the Nigerian people deserve better than we are seeing today, the Nigerian people deserve better than we are seeing today. Now that the APC has been registered and you are into your membership drive, what are the challenges or pitfalls you don’t want to go through again in repeating the mistakes of whichever government you want to replace at the national level? Naturally, when you bring in a new political party into existence, I have had the privilege of being at the leadership level at various times during formation and operations of political parties or organisations so to speak, but the truth about it is that we have challenges. Challenges of awareness, challenges of education because you need to educate the people, assess to media and what have you, to be able to make the people know your message, to be able to make the people know what you intend to do, to get the people convinced that you won’t be like the joneses, you won’t be like others. But as a party, we have told ourselves the home truth. For example, we are going to allow for pure internal democracy because we have to preach what we offer, so we are going to practice full internal democracy, allow the people’s wish to prevail at all levels and when you do that, you see that things will fall into place and it will work well. I am one person who believe very strongly, very, very strongly that the worst form of corruption is electoral corruption because that involves tampering with the wish of the people and that could be very disastrous. Looking at the PDP, which is undergoing a crisis of division, is this like an accident waiting to happen or a disaster foretold by your camp in APC, by the generality of Nigerians against PDP? No I can’t analyze for them. I’m not a PDP person, I don’t what the problems are, I don’t know how they started, but I have being reading in the papers that they have disagreement within themselves and I wish them well, like my national publicity secretary said the other day over the television, we welcome those who want to join us, but I wish them well in their troubles. Senator Ngige has just picked the APC ticket for Anambra gubernatorial election by 60,000 votes and his distant second garnered about 9,000 votes. Are these real votes or did something happen First of all, let me start by telling you like I said in the past, we are very much interested in introducing good governance and everything we are doing, we want it verified. The APC governorship primary that took place in Anambra was not only a matter for us, it was also monitored by electoral agencies, we also allowed civil society groups to monitor because we needed to have the facts to also help us in our planning, and it was direct primaries, it was not a case of secret ballot, it wasn’t a case of stuffing ballot boxes, this is a case of people queuing and been counted so there is no issue of whether they are real votes, I’ll rather say that they were real human beings because they were all counted one after the other. The two participating aspirants had their agents. Dr. Ngige and Chief Ezeomo had their agents, those of us who are party leaders were there and also voted so whether they were real vote, I make bold to say yes, they were real votes and I want to say this, it is not about Ngige as a person, it is about Anambra state, it’s about good governance, it’s about experience, it’s about the desire of the people to be properly governed. The people are looking for a man who will use the resources available to the state for their benefit and Dr. Ngige have something going for him here; he has been tested and proven; he has had the God given opportunity to be governor of that state for two years and the evidence of his performance then, is there for anybody to see and that to my personal assessment influenced the decision of the people to give him another chance to come and complete what he has started to do and I think this is the influencing message. But some of Ngige’s critics in Anambra says he is a man who does not keep to promise that’s why he ran into rough waters with Andy Uba’s family? What promise, what agreement were you expecting him to keep, agreement to steal our resources, agreement to steal our resources, is that the agreement you want him to keep? Agreement to sign away the state’s resources to somebody, is that the agreement you want him to keep? If that is the agreement you want him to keep, then you are not being fair to us the Anambrarians. Probably his not keeping that agreement may be the reason why Anambra people like him, if he had kept that agreement he would have remained governor and completed his term but Anambra state would have been worse than he met it and in the end it is Ngige that would be called on and not those people who collected the money from him. That is why I said it’s not about Ngige, but Anambra state and whenever I talk about any human being, I talk about the person experientially. From my experience with Ngige, I have no reason to doubt that he’ll keep every agreement he entered into because the ones I have seen him enter into, he kept them so far. There are so many money bags in the Anambra election. Do you think Ngige will get the resources to match the likes of Ifeanyi Uba, the other Uba’s in PDP Arthur Eze and co? It is not about money, if it is about money, Goodluck Jonathan won’t even win election in his village. Just get that completely out of your mind that it is not about money. It is about the people’s confidence in the person and his capacity and ability to lead them right. Ngige enjoys tremendous goodwill which I told you here in anchored on the fact that the people know him and they trust him because he has been tested and he has the experience, so it is not about money. While I am not wishing anybody evil, I wish my brother Ifeanyi well like I wish other aspirants well, I must commend them because one thing is to have the courage to run for public office. That somebody to say I want to serve our people is not a crime, rather we should congratulate the person that he has offered himself to serve but the choice of who will eventually be chief servant lies with the people. When they place all those who aspire to serve them, they now make a choice amongst all of them, where do we invest our future? So the choice is for the people to make. Now the hard work starts in terms of mobilization, in terms of pulling Anambra people towards one direction, is your camp; I mean your part of Ngige’s project, do you people have the wherewithal to pull Anambra people towards one direction regarding winning this election? Yes we have everything required, we have a good candidate, we have all individual integrity to place by the side, we have the ability to work and all of us will be assessed based on our track record, so we are all putting our image and integrity on the line at the back of Ngige adding what we have to what he has in terms of integrity, in terms of honesty, in terms of willingness to serve. Let’s look at the igbo agenda under the APC platform. The igbos, The Senate President eluded us, The Speaker eluded us, Vice President eluded us certainly President eluded us; what is the igbo agenda in the configuration of APC process? Blame the PDP for all that……. No, I’m talking about APC right now, where does the igbos fit in this whole……? At the centre, we are at the centre of the political dynamics of APC and we are bidding for the presidency and the only platform that will give us that opportunity is APC. You are bidding for the Presidency? Yes Do you have a candidate? If you are Igboman, declare. Who told you that I do not want to be President of Nigeria? Am I not qualified? I know there are other Igbos who want to be President of Nigeria, why don’t they come in and declare their interest and see whether they will not be accommodated. I am getting information from the hindsight that Rochas Okorocha is bidding to be President, if he comes out, will you support him? Why not? So would your support be because he is an Igboman? Yes, he is doing well as governor of Imo state…. By what yardstick? By my own assessment which I am entitled to. What is the assessment? We are not discussing Imo state now, but the facts are there for you to see. I have gone to Owerri, I have seen clear infrastructural development very visible for everybody to see, I have gone to Okigwe, I have gone to Orlu and we are talking about a man who has so much passion to move the state forward, so I have no doubt in my mind that he has the capacity. So if he decides to run for the presidency tomorrow, why not. But the decision is for him to make not me, like I will also make my own decision if I decide to bid for the office, but he is qualified.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:03:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015