Sixteen years of PDP has only brought untold hardship, desecration of the judicial system, crumbling of businesses and deliberate maneuvering of fuel subsidy to enrich political thugs and friends of the disillusioned and woeful Mr President. Kindly take your time to read this interview excerpts of present opposition party chairman, I am not asking us to support the opposition far be from it, I only want this to be an eye opener to the doomed situation our nation is except we as citizens and enlightened individual rally to stop this impasse:onal Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, in this interview, says the party’s presidential ticket is not zoned to any particular section of the country.While reacting to President Goodluck Jonathan’s boast of capturing Rivers and Edo states, he describes it as a huge joke, asserting that the APC will rather snatch more PDP states in the 2015 general elections.He states that Chief Tom Ikimi attaches so much influence he does not possess to himself, saying that the exit of the former APC leader was good riddance to bad rubbish.There is this fear among APC members that the issue of the party’s presidential candidate might tear the part apart. Do youalso nurse such fear?People always signal, at every stage of our development, that there will be rancour. There may be disagreement but we will always overcome it. We have survived all the predictions so far, so none that is coming afresh will come to pass.We have insisted we are going to have a level-playing field, we are going to provide all aspirants with equal opportunity, there is no anointed candidate to the best of my knowledge.We are issuing a code of conduct that will ensure that the run up to the primaries will be rancour free in terms of personal attacks. People will say why they are the best but they must not say why somebody else should not get it, just tell us what you have for the party and for the nation.We are trying to have as wide an electorate as possible given the fact that our convention hold in one venue. Even though we would all have preferred direct primaries, it is so cumbersome, so expensive that we thought that, for now, the best thing to do, as our constitution provides and expand the electorate is to have primaries in one single venue and whoever comes out of that process becomes the person behind whom the entire party will unite.The PDP seems to have zeroed on President Goodluck Jonathan as its consensus candidate. Why can’t the APC have a consensus candidate?We don’t believe in forced consensus. If tomorrow all our presidential aspirants come to me and say, ‘Mr National Chairman, we have all agreed that, out of four of us, this man is the preferred candidate, we will support him’, we will gladly accept.As at today, all those who have indicated interest in one form or the other in the presidency of the APC, each and every one of them is capable of beating whoever the PDP presents.They (PDP) said they have settled on President Jonathan, but all those who have indicated interest on our side can beat Jonathan. So we will have no problem if thecandidates themselves decide that one of them can go. But barring that, we are goingto proceed and do that democratic thing which is a free and fair primaries.A former chieftain of the party, Chief Tom Ikimi, accused the APC leadership of imposing you and many other officials, saying it was part of the undemocratic actions by your party. What is your take on that?The claim really is getting to be such as a bad joke. He has said what he wants to say, I do not know that at any stage, in any party he was of such overriding influence that he cooked the food for everybody elseto eat. But again to put it very modest, it is an over exaggeration of his role in the party.Yes, the ACN then chose him as the leader of their team and the entire group made him the Chairman of the process; after the leaders of the various parties had agreed to come together, they just needed somebody to chairman the negotiation.So if that means he cooked the food, let him enjoy the accolade he is giving himself.I won’t want to deprive him of that personal crowning of himself.What concerns us now is the future. No party wants to lose any body, but people who are not ideologically attuned to where the APC stands think it is best for the party that such people go where they are at home. That is where Ikimi belongs.We won’t miss such people. Just like we lose some, we are gaining some. A few days ago, I was in Lokoja to welcome seven sitting members of the House of Assembly into the APC. That is addition thatis immediately relevant, so that is the kind of quality addition that APC is getting all over the place and we are expecting more.President Jonathan recently boasted that the PDP will capture Rivers and Edo in 2015and 2016?What do you expect the President to say, that he is going to lose Edo and Rivers? We are also going to win many places because we have the list of the areas we are going to win, even Bayelsa. But you should know that winning Edo and Rivers is totally out of the question because we have very strong governors in those two states.Edo of course has been APC, there have been one or two skirmishes here and that is all. APC is solidly on ground with a governor that is doing very well.For the Rivers governor to have survived the onslaught including major ones by security agencies with full backing of Aso Rock, for him to strived, for him not to havelost control of his Assembly, just tells you that he has something a little bit more thanthe ordinary.He is firmly in control of the politics of Rivers State. So anybody using the totality of the federal might and you cannot unseathim, with all the array of special policemen, array of ministers energized, yet he survived and you are saying that you are going to win that state from him when you cannot get more than five members of the House, that is a huge joke.The PDP will lose more states to the APC in the forthcoming elections.Exit of former governors of Kano and BornoStates, Shakarau and Sheriff, respectively.We lost former Sokoto governor, Bafarawa,we got (incumbent) Wamakko, do you thinkit is a plus or minus?. We lost Bafarawa who was just a party chieftain; we got a sitting governor with the totality of the House of Assembly with other concomitant benefits; so what are we saying? In Kano, Shakarau, a brilliant man, nice man, but welost him to PDP, but we gained a fantastic Kwankwaso, a former Minister of Defence, a very energized, hard working leader. Soldier go soldier come. Sheriff did not win his senatorial seat, you remember. There isa governor there who is part of the APC, and as he (Sheriff) is going, then going coincided with the cresting of who is Boko Haram supporter and who is not. And immediately he left, the flood gate opened as to who is actually supporting Boko Haram or not. So God took him away just intime. Imagine the embarrassment which we would have suffered if he was still a member of the APC. What we gained is more superior to what we lost.There is this allegation that the APC intendsto frustrate Governor-elect Ayo Fayose’s swearing-in in Ekiti. How true is that?APC has no plans to stop the swearing-in. Itis a plan by the APC to get the judicial system to decide whether we are a countryof law and order or not, or whether the laws of the country still mean anything of whether impeachment has almost the same force as a criminal offence, whether it is an indictment because the forms you fill when you are running for any office, they will ask you, ‘have you ever been in prison?’ ‘Have you ever been indicted by any constituted judicial court of law?’ So it is for the judiciary to decide. Stopping him or not is a matter of what the law of the nation says and we have gone to court to seek the interpretation of the laws of the nation. Is he a qualified and fit person to rule a state, to have contested to be governor of Ekiti? That is the issue. What I even expected the press to emphasize is the very unprecedented happening, the humiliation of the judiciary, thuggery in the sacred chambers of justice. Has this count
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 03:34:52 +0000
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