Jonathan’s Approval Rating Poor, says Fashola

•Governor Raji Fashola2

Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola

Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of Lagos State granted TheNEWS editors an exclusive interview. He seized the opportunity to speak on his achievements, life after office, state of the nation and other issues

What are the successes and failures you have recorded since you were elected as governor of Lagos State?

I don’t measure things in terms of successes and failures. Lagos State, as an entity, was and would remain a going concern. The important thing is: do we add value? And by how many yards, how many measures, have we added value? It is not finished, you know. It must continue. I will be the wrong person to answer that. Your question about successes and failures is directed at the wrong person.

I think also that those who gave the mandate should be the best persons to say whether the trust and the efforts and the sacrifice had worked. I think that a fair majority stand on that, and that’s what you need in a democracy. I think that the question should be fairly directed at ordinary Lagosians who we serve or maybe I should ask you.

Maybe I should say are there things you would have loved to have done differently?

We have about 14 months and there is always room to reflect during the 14 months to change things that are not giving us the types of returns that we expected. But I honestly couldn’t put it down to one thing that we want to change. On the contrary, it is my own sense of an infinite capacity to improve upon things. It is like when I came in here, I wasn’t wearing a cap, but I just looked and I said ok I need to wear a cap now. That’s me.

•Governor Raji Fashola
•Governor Raji Fashola

Can we add value? And in that sense, that’s for me like writing a letter last night and not posting it. The tendency is that you may go back to that letter and say I should have used another word here. It doesn’t mean that your message is lost. And if you don’t post the letter today, it may well be that you would re-visit it. Just like when you write articles too. Sometimes, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t get your message right, but sometimes, you would look at it and say ‘if I had to write that again, I would write it better.’ It is in that sense. Let me say this now fairly: the best way to measure what we have done is to go and read my inaugural speech in 2007 and in that sense, you would see that we have kept our word, we have fulfilled our contract.

Talking about your covenant and promises, one of those things you promised during your campaign in 2006/2007 was the fourth mainland bridge which you have not delivered

No, we haven’t finished, you just watch me. I have 14 months to go and I am working on the fourth mainland bridge. Perhaps it is important to understand the context of the fourth mainland bridge. What is at issue is a transportation connection across the eastern axis of the state. People need to commute. Now, many people have said the fourth mainland bridge would be the answer, but you watch us. That is the much I want to say for now.

You are sounding like a miracle worker now

You see, we have a design, we have alignment, we have cost. Construction time is three years, but it can become a longer construction time if you don’t do all of the economics correctly. Now, how many people are going to pass on that road if you do it today? Does it make it financially viable? Because all of us have just sat down and assumed that the answer was a fourth mainland bridge. We have made that assumption. There is no scientific basis. Now we are seeing the viability of that route. So if you do the bridge for 100 vehicles a day, that’s money well spent. So those are the realities that governance throws across to you.

But today, we are providing an alternative form of commuting by ferries. People are already moving in large numbers. So we are now looking at the airport, looking at the refineries, the free trade zone and the Lekki port and how they become the feeder stock of traffic to justify a N250 billion bridge across the water.

Still talking about projects, what I consider to be your signature project is the rail line from Festac to Marina. It appears stalled for now. What actually is the state of things? Could you deliver it before you leave in May 2015?

I like the word ‘appear’. It is not stalled, those are the things we deal with in terms of project conception, project implementation and project delivery. When you look at what we have undertaken there, I don’t know of any city in the whole of Africa that has undertaken that kind of project delivery without direct national government support. And to that extent, it is already a success.

Today, we have completed Mile 2 to National Theatre, seven kilometres on rail and track and four stations. We are taking the next section, which is from Costain, National Theatre to Marina, which is another five kilometres.

So that gives you 12 kilometres and that will be completed by January to February next year. But right now, you can start some testing and service and that is how rail is built all over the world. They build them in sections and start operating them. Now the next problem is that we do not want to use diesel engines because of environmental pollution issues. Simultaneously now, we are pursuing energy to power the tracks. We are also working on signalling, you can’t just put coaches there, there must be signals, stoppages, signings, sequence, a lot of expertise and that is a lot of work that is going on.

What you see out there is just concrete, but not the end of the project. And then, of course, the challenge of financing this thing. We didn’t have the money in shelf.

We just had the courage to start. We had the audacity to be financially inventive and to move. As I have said, what was a dream when I was a child has been concretised into brick and mortal today. It has become irreversible.

So whether I finish in 14 months or not, the real issue is that this project has to be finished and that for me is in itself success, because we could still have been talking of paper concept. Now, a section has been completed. We are going into the next section. And of course the third section is dependent on the road beyond Mile 2 which is being expanded because at that point, the rail comes down to grade level which is on the road. So as you widen the road, you create a section in the middle to construct the rail line. So that is the easiest part we need to do. The hardest work is the pile, the wall over the bridges and all of that. And that should be completed before I go. Now, we are looking at so many options for coaches and coaches again are not things that you buy off the shelf. We don’t manufacture any in Nigeria. There’s a lot of work going on in that regard as well.

So the answer to your question is that even if we have all the money, it is unlikely that we would finish in 14 months, but it is very likely that we would have some kind of service in place before I leave. But like I said before, whether it is Dubai or elsewhere, they are built in sections. You finish one section, then you add another section until you complete it.

In spite of your effort to avoid praising yourself, you still hinted on the fact that you’ve been satisfied with what you have done so far. Would you want your successor to be Tunde Fashola or a radically different person?

If my successor is not Tunde Fashola, it can’t be Tunde Fashola. So the idea of a clone clearly does not exist. Two people are never the same. What is important is that whoever succeeds me, it is my wish that the person does a lot better than I have done because that is the only way really that value can be added. In every time and space, the circumstances and opportunities for adding value differ. The areas where values could be added also differ. And therefore, that is why the era of every political administration has been defined by the challenges of the day.

•Governor Raji Fashola2You may find a government whose success is defined simply by security, you may find a government whose success is defined by employment or unemployment, you may find a government whose success is defined by politics. What are the burning issues of the day? Those things cannot be lumped in space and you say they remain unchanging. TheNEWS with its leadership was defined by and succeeded in journalism in very, very difficult times when many lost their voices. Otherwise, journalism in normal times, everybody is doing well. That was what defined your organisation. Have you leapfrogged that success to competitive and very profitable undertakings in peace times? Perhaps. So that’s how it should be.

Many governments use yours as a benchmark and it takes a great presence of mind for a leader to distinguish between praise and sycophancy. How much of sycophancy do you get and how do you handle it in your feedback mechanism?

You know, first of all, I must say that there are many sides to this and perhaps, it starts from what essentially is my mindset. I have never felt inferior to anybody. Never! Not as a child, not as an adult. I am not afraid to learn from other people. I hold very strong opinions when I am informed about something, but I can change my mind when I feel that I am not right.

But I don’t believe the black man is inferior to any race. So I took a bet on this country as a child. It is not an accident that I went to school here. It was a deliberate choice as a child that this place can get better. And I knew that it is the black people who would change this place. So in that sense, I feel humbled that at a time that I am serving, some of the things we are able to do are worthy of a second view by those I consider, on one hand, as my colleagues and also my competitors. And I will come to that.

For me, it validates my view that there is nothing wrong with us; that something good can come out of this part of the world. So, in that sense, I am humbled that it is happening in my time and that we don’t have to all go abroad to go and learn these things.

Secondly, I am mindful also that being the example is relative because times change. Today’s history can be a footnote of tomorrow’s history, because I can take the same example and adapt it more successfully than you, the originator of that idea have been able to do. So it means also that there are lessons in that success if you measure it that way for us. We must remain humble about it and we must continue to re-invent ourselves. And that is what I tell all members of my team that there is no reserved right for us or for our team to be the examples unless we continuously re-invent ourselves. The day we start lying at ease, the competititions will meet us and they will overtake us. And the competition is there from my brother in Ogun, in Oyo, in Edo, Ekiti, Rivers, in Akwa-Ibom. That is the environment in which I thrive, a competitive environment.

On sycophancy, I am not happy with where my country is. And that’s why I have asked questions: why are you giving me award? What for? Can we equate all of these awards with the development in our nation? Sometimes, some people think I am extremist in my views but I just take myself seriously. And I can’t be another person anymore, I am 50 plus now.

That’s why I called our university’s Senate and said: ‘Look, are all these honorary awards consistent with the development in our nation? Why don’t we stop it until we see real development?’ And they agreed with me. I am happy that in the aftermath of that decision, the Council of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian universities also reached a similar decision. And I hope that one day, those ivory towers can say we give Mr. Bayo Onanuga an award for exemplary journalism and all or us can say: ‘Yes, this man moved the frontiers of journalism in this country.’ That is just who I am. Don’t give me what I don’t deserve and don’t praise me for doing my job, I get paid for it. And you know what? I enjoy doing the job, not about the money, but I am in a position to also influence not only my own life because I will drive on the same roads that I build.

As I tell people, one day-and age is setting in-I will need medical help. I want to be able to go to the hospitals that I helped to build, I want to be able to open a tap and drink water that I helped to produce. I want to sleep also knowing that the security institution I put there is reliable enough to look after me. And if that gives a lot of people joy whilst I am doing it is double joy for me that instead of pain, I can see smile in the faces of people. That is the kick about this job for me. That’s the only reason that it is meaningful. And if things are hard, we sit down and we solve it. That is why when there’s traffic, I sit with my aides and relevant officials. This is just me.

Those things (sycophancy and others) don’t tickle me. And I know the real barometer because there are a few people around me who would tell me: ‘Governor, this is not it.’ I still go to my clubs at night and my friends there tell me: ‘There’s a problem here that you need to fix.’ They are real people and would tell me what time of the day it is. My wife would tell me what time of the day it is and say: ‘I disagree with you on this.’ My siblings do. That’s just who we are.

The school fees regime in LASU is creating a lot of controversies. On social media, people are condemning you for imposing very high fees. Do you think that is the best solution to solving the problem of LASU?

The first thing we need to understand is that the fact of a matter does not change. Our interpretation of the fact and opinions would differ. I think we should go first to the facts. And those facts are very viable. And once you have those facts, you can then form your opinion. People can get on to the social media and write all sorts of things they like. That is the liberty that communication brings today. Whether they are right or not is quite another thing. And the multitude may be heading in a wrong direction. It is going to require just a few to say ‘no, let’s turn this thing back.’

First of all, I have listened to them, I accept first that every government policy, whether mine or any others’, is often times subject to political debate. And that is why in policy making, there’s a lot of consultations, there’s a lot simulations, what would this side say? What would that side say? That is the hallmark of our government. Now, the argument, as posited first, that the poor would be denied, that’s the underpinning argument. That argument overlooks some factual situations which I know.

Every school has a limit of the number of students it can admit in one year by the regulation of the National Universities Commission. It is a fact, we can’t dispute that. LASU has its own and we have admitted. Now, has anybody been able to identify one child who got admission into our school in the last two years that this policy has been operational and who lost that admission because that child could not pay? I would like to meet such a child.

That’s why I said people can get so emotional. The fulcrum of the argument is that you have raised school fees and you are going to deny the poor. Is there one such child that has been denied? I would like to meet that child. Now what are the facts? The facts are that, I think it was in 2010 or so, the students were the ones who got up and went to the Lagos state House of Assembly protesting about certain things in their school. But the one that caught my attention was that, I remember those very words, ‘our school has become a glorified secondary school’. The House of Assembly listened to them, made recommendations to me and government that I should exercise my powers under the LASU law as the visitor, to set up a visitation panel which we did.

We inaugurated that panel and it passed its recommendations back to us. There were several recommendations, but the three major ones were first that the Vice Chancellor should leave mid-term of his second term. The second one was that we should review school fees upwards and the third one was that we should invest in infrastructure in the school.

It was my responsibility to accept and we spent four days in the Executive Council meeting from 9am till about 10pm daily before we finished the recommendations. Four days and that was the only item. And after that, I had to call the Vice Chancellor that in the interest of peace you have to go.  And the man agreed and tendered his resignation. There was no protest about that. Accreditation of the school had been withdrawn then in over 30 courses. I wrote to the National Universities Commission that I was not going to deal with accreditation on an ad-hoc basis.

I’m giving you a commitment on a plan in LASU, we are investing immediately in the first year, N5 billion in LASU. And the man said: ‘Are you for real?’ and I said: ‘Yes.’ And so we started the Senate Building, the School Auditorium, the new library, the law lecture theatre, six projects that we committed to in the first year. And we have been there since 2011 and we are not out. And you can go and see all that for yourselves. Concerning the recommendation that we should increase fees, we went round, no state university was paying N25,000 which was what they were paying. We found that many lecturers had been lost to private universities where they were paying between N400,000 and N600,000. And we tried to stay in the middle of what some state universities were charging and what private universities were charging. The truth is that even if I collect all these monies, they don’t aggregate to N1 billion in a year.

So it is not because we are looking for money to finance infrastructure. It is because also that university education is aspirational and people would rather go and pay $5,000 in Ghana instead of paying N200,000 at home, with all the antecedent risks. People are paying, I think about 6,000 to 12,000 pounds in the UK. Now, the question to ask yourself is: ‘If I train a graduate for N25,000 and another one comes who is trained with 6,000 pounds and comes to TheNEWS to look for work, who would you employ?’ But those are the facts.

Governorship-candidatesWe fixed the fees, the students came to me and said they can’t pay and I told them it would not affect those that were already in the school. So no child who was in that school when the new school fees became operational is paying the new school fees. Fact! They said they were fighting for their brothers who wanted to come to LASU and I told them: ‘No, you can’t do that. The university retains the discretion whether to admit your brother or not. So you can’t fight for somebody who had not come into our school. Now, when the process started, we increased our budget for bursaries and scholarships from N700 million to N1.2 billion and we dedicate N200 million that year to pay scholarships for any indigent student of LASU who got admission but could not pay, apart from our global scholarships.

These are the facts. And every year, the general scholarships, I don’t have the details now of people who have applied for the dedicated scholarships but every year, I sign those scholarships. So even if there was no special scholarship, if you were in LASU and you applied, why can’t you use it to pay your school fees? Each Lagos indigene in our school gets a bursary every year. So why can’t you use that to offset your school fees? We have to make a choice. Do we want N25,000 graduates? People have argued in favour of the poor and I see that, sometimes, they mislead themselves and the public. If a man is really poor, the only thing that can take him out of poverty is a first class education, not substandard education, otherwise you compound his poverty.

And I’ve asked you that question here: who would you employ? BA English of N25,000 or BA English of 6,000 pounds? Let’s be serious. Have you helped the poor? The notion that a university which is a centre for the convergence of ideas and should be an institution where only poor children should go! I have never heard that before in my life-that only the poor should go to one university. I want a university where the children of the rich and the poor can interact together, grow up together and develop into leaders of our new society together, where the rich would see poverty at close quarters so that life can change and the poor, because of the affiliation with the rich, would know that life on the other side is also favourable. That’s the way I grew up.

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We have now implemented this policy since two years, this is the third year.  So those are the facts. There are students who the VC had reported to me when we started the policy and said: ‘Look, these students say they want to pay by instalment,’ and I said allow them pay by instalment. So two years after successfully implementing it, it suddenly becomes an issue. But like I said, show me one student who cannot pay, because if he doesn’t get a bursary, he would get a global scholarship. Nobody has brought my attention to one student who got admission into the school and did not get into the school. I think that is the real part of this debate, access or denial of access. Nobody has given me evidence that any child has been denied and our commitment is that no child would be left behind. That’s why as we raised the fees for the Bayo Onanugas and the Kunle Ajibades who could afford it for their children, those who cannot afford would get the support of the state to do so.

Part of the arguments is that in state schools in the past, fees were virtually non-existent and people were going to school almost free. They are wondering what has happened. Is the state rejecting this past policy?

There’s no commitment to free education at university level whether in the national constitution or in the manifesto of our party. But let’s be factual and open things up for what they really are.

If you have a regime of school fees and it has not been reviewed for about a decade when the price of everything else has been reviewed. If you go and take the budget of 2004, the bursary is possibly a fraction of what it is today. And all of those indices have gone up. Can you legitimately complain? Because bursaries and scholarships were meant to assuage these things, but bursaries are going up and you say the fees shouldn’t go up? Now policy or no policy, at the end of the day, I think the real issue, and that’s why I said I agree that policy will be subject to debate. Now, what is wrong with the school? You are the first to say the quality is not there in our universities. Have we sat down to really interrogate these issues? Is that a problem of the government even though it owns the school? Is that a problem of the governor or the President as the visitor as the case may be? Do presidents in other countries run universities?

Do governors in other countries run universities? Why are we not looking at where the problem is? Is there a personnel issue? Are people taking up enough of their responsibilities? And the question to ask is that if that is the real problem, how does paying N25,000 or reversing fees solve that problem? Because we can have all of these debates back and forth and it is possible that you can show us by demonstrable evidence that some children have actually been denied access. But is going back to N25,000 the destination?

So let’s have a serious debate. If we say go back to N25,000, does that mean that the quality in the school has been pulled up by that? That for me is the real contest. So let’s have a serious debate and that for me is the reason I said you must understand that this is coming two years after the successful implementation of the policy. It is only intended to distract us to take away from the real development going on in the school.

We have just recovered about 600 hectares of their land on which people have built and we have given it back to the school because universities abroad fund themselves on real estate, so that after my tenure, LASU should not be struggling for fundng. And we are helping them now. We are going to create leases for all those who collected LASU land illegally to become tenants of the school, then you take a document on title from them. Those are the much more serious issues going forward and to develop their facilities. We’ve solved the drainage problem inside the school. We were there for a whole year last year. Now we are waiting for all of the infrastructure to be finished so that we can relay their roads, lay out their school streets, put proper signage and create a real university environment, plant trees. That’s my dream for the school because that word rings in my ears-glorified secondary school- and I want to create a real university in name and in content and in appeal. A university where only one section of the society can go is not a university.

The Federal Government every year publishes details of its budget, why does the Lagos state government publishes bulk figures, not breaking down its budget?

It works for us. So, who has an issue with that?

I do

What’s your issue?

Sometimes, it is confusing

How?

Bulk budget under the office of the governor was reported and people thought that: Oh! This governor is spending so much on his office. How can he justify spending this much? I met one of your men who broke it down and that is when it was clear that it is not your office alone that the money is meant for. 

Whenever I finish presenting the budget, the Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget does the budget breakdown, do you ask questions? When you have a 2,000-page budget and you are supposed to present a 30-minute address, discussing and emphasising what you would be focusing on, then you have to choose what you would prefer. But this works for us. It helps us to achieve on budget goals than the 2,000 page you see. In any event, what interest is a budget? A budget is nothing more than a statement of intention-this is what I want to do. Let’s remove all the nice things about it. Everybody has a budget- even in your homes. Whether you achieve it or not is now a matter of discipline and resources. It is a statement that we intend to spend so much, but quite a number of people focus on the expenditure side of a budget. Very few ever focus on the revenue side. Every budget I present has a revenue side. If we earn N10, we are going to spend N10. But nobody has ever come up to say did you earn all your N10? Everybody is like: Ha! You want to spend on tea, on toothpick? But the truth is that some of those things sometimes are incidental.

Right behind you in this room is water. If there is no budget for it, my aides won’t buy it. How do you come and say you are thirsty and I say wait, let’s go to Sangrouse’s market to go and buy water for you to drink? How much food can I eat? Now, within this building alone, I think there are about 180 people- from gardener, to cleaner, to cook, to sweeper and to the lawn man. They eat lunch. The kitchen is there. If you go to the kitchen now, they are cooking for them. You have to have fuel. So, whether there is fuel scarcity or not, you have to plan ahead. We had an emergency about two days ago and I can’t tell you that because there is fuel scarcity, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, LASEMA, could not respond to emergency. This is the way it is.

Let us talk about the Road Traffic Law and the Tenancy Law. While the Traffic Law is working, a lot of people are complaining the Tenancy law is not working. Is government going to do a review of this law?

You see, the Road Traffic Law is different from the Tenancy Law. The Road Traffic Law is working and part of its successes is that it has reduced the rate of accident, it has reduced deaths. Accidents have reduced from around 640 in a month on motorcycles to about 102 a month. As at the last of quarter, death has dropped from 15 a month to one a month. In August and September, there were no deaths at all. That law has achieved its purpose but it has not finished. There is still a lot of work to be done.

The Commissioner for Transportation is moving to other phases of licensing taxis, badging taxis, licensing vehicles that are in transit from the ports, because the security implication of driving an unregistered vehicle is that if anything happens, we can’t track it.

In terms of the Tenancy Law, that law is self enforcing. When we made that law, people complained that the houses were not enough, who would agree to accept one-year rent? They should build houses first. But the law is self enforcing in that it invests in you, the tenant, a right to say no, I will not pay more than one-year rent. It imposes an obligation on the landlord to say this is what is fair. If you pay more than a year’s rent and a dispute arises, you know that you have signed more than a year’s contract. That is where the law becomes self-enforcing because no court would entertain that dispute. The court would say: ‘We will not help a tenant enforce an illegal contract”. That is where the law works.

Of course, we are mindful of the limitations of supply and demand, but that was the first step to take to protect our citizens first and that’s why when I was launching the Lagos Homes, I said it was an intervention out of compassion. That was the law. The obligatory necessity is now to build houses which we have started delivering. And these things don’t stand in a void. There is sequence of events that encompass the totality of our policy make-up. For those who say the law is not working, I don’t know what they mean. There’s something in the law also that says that you cannot pay for an agent that you did not employ. Before, the landlord’s agent, who did not help you find a house would charge you and you paid. You can now say no to that. And in not a few instances, some people have told me their landlord is now accepting  one year’s rent. The reason is that at the end of the day, the landlord an all of us lose. If I earn money monthly and you ask me to go and bring it in advance, I earn money monthly in arrears and you tell me to go and bring it for two years in advance, I have cheated the system somewhere. That is the truth.

It may not be apparent now, but the landlord will bear that because of my cheating somewhere down the line. So everybody must now put his card on the table and say let’s deal afresh, that this is not right. And, of course, the law does not apply across Lagos. There are places where the law is exempt, like corporations that need to let properties for expatriate staff, really a class of tenancies that are protected thereby. The interesting thing is that government also rents properties and in some of those places where they brought the issue to me, I said no, we didn’t take agency, so I won’t approve it. I say no, this is an affected area, so you must remove one year; tell the landlord to take his property, we will move out. In many instances, they have said if that is what the governor wants, we agree. So, it is for people to now claim their rights. Laws are more or less inactive instruments. You activate them by conduct.

Do you think that National Conference will bring about positive result or deepen the division we already have in the country?

I hope it doesn’t. There was a conference in 2006 and by many standards, consensus was reached on many issues. Nation building is an on-going exercise. Let’s go back from there. Those things that have been agreed, why don’t we first implement them? Those things that are a little contentious today, can we solve them by consensus? If not, can they wait and let’s see the value of those things we have agreed upon? You know, the idea that 75 per cent vote is enough to carry the decision in the conference is self-defeating because it licenses the will of the majority against the honourable minority which are some of the inherent issues that have provoked the idea of a debate in the first place.

Yes, we are small, but our voices need to be heard. And if this conference is going on that way, that once the majority has decided, the minority can shut up, then you run yourself into a cul-de-sac. For me, that’s why I said things that have been agreed by consensus are more sensible to take forward because the underlying principle behind all of this before was that we are being marginalised, we are being oppressed. I wish the conferees well, and I wish Nigerians well.

Did you discuss this with Jonathan last night?

No. But I raised the point at the Council of State meeting

How would you assess President Jonathan‘s handling of the nation’s affairs and what do you plan to do after your tenure expires?

Let me take the last question first. I don’t know what I plan to do after my tenure expires, but I know that I need to rest, I need to read, there are few things I need to catch up on. Hopefully, I will write and then re-appraise my life. From there, I also need to spend some more time with my family, especially my children. I’m not impressed by the way that the President has handled the affairs and I think that I speak the mind of the majority of Nigerians that his job approval rating is very, very poor. That’s my honest opinion.

Could you expatiate on this?

You know, there are a lot of issues about process, institutions, public accounting. When you pitch the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN against the Ministry of Finance and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, at the end of the day, CBN, for example, is not an alien, but it is part of the government. So if the left hand in government does not know what the right hand is doing, this is a very, very strong message that something is wrong.  If you say those institutions are not doing well, clearly, the bulk stops on the President’s table and that’s the reason for my conclusion. He appointed the CBN Governor, he appointed the Minister. If you say there is no electricity, that’s the President’s problem. And he can’t do well in my view if those problems are not solved. There is insecurity in the country. The President lives in that wonderful house called Aso Rock. That’s why he has all of those powers, privileges and things. That’s why when he talks, we all listen.

Not many people listen to him  because he doesn’t inspire them.

I listen when he talks so that I can hear what he wants to do next. If majority of Nigerians are aggrieved that the country is not doing well, then the President is not doing well.

Many critics claim there is no difference between the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the All Progressives Congress, APC. We want you to respond to that.

Well, I will only say one thing. We’ve launched a road map, our code of ethics and the underlying message there is that we think things should change. And it is not our opinion. It is the aggregate of the expression of majority of Nigerians. Now PDP says all is well. That’s a major difference between us. If they say what is happening now is fine and we say no, it is not, that is a major difference. Those who say those things, I don’t know whether they think through it or whether they even listen to us. If one says the way power is now is fine, the way we can’t account for $20 billion is fine, the way children are being killed in school is fine, and the other side says things are not going well, then there is a major difference between us. We disagree with the status quo. That is fundamental difference. And it does not matter who is saying it. It is the message.

What are the particulars of the fundamental difference?

You heard some of them. How can $20 billion disappear? How can children continuously be killed and we can’t find an answer? How can we spend N2.3 trillion to import fuel and we don’t get the fuel or a large part of it. And those who took the money?

Listen, they stole police pension fund, not so? So if they pick the pocket of the police, who is supposed to arrest the pick-pocket? Why are you saying everything is well?

I think those who talk about the difference have in mind the kind of difference that you have between the Democrats and the Republicans inAmerica which is really fundamental.

That is yet to be seen or articulated…

I’m sorry to interrupt you. What does PDP want to do for Nigeria? I have never seen the PDP manifesto. From 1999, they moved from NEEDS to Vision 20-20-20 to seven-point agenda to transformation- largely sloganeering. In 14 years, how many Ministers of Health have we had? How many Ministers of Works? How many Ministers for Sports, for Defence, for Petroleum? Those are the key indices of national development. In some places, they have had as many as six. In some places five in a 14-year period. Disaggregate it; where’s the time to plan? Where is the time to implement?

That explains to you why the slogan keeps changing. It changes with as many officers as they bring.

…Published in TheNEWS magazine

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