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• Lai Mohammed • Photo: Sun Publishing |
Recently, Lagos State held its local government election with the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) recording a landslide victory but the outcome of the poll did not go down well with the opposition parties. In this interview, the National Publicity Secretary of the ACN, Alhaji Lai Mohammed speaks on the development among other national issues. Excerpts…
Are you comfortable with the state of affairs in Nigeria today?
I must say and I am not being partisan here that virtually at every point, the government is beleaguered. At the economic front, the situation is disturbing, the internal security is not working. Look at the economy for instance, in the last couple of years, the Naira has taken a terrible bashing. Today, Nigeria is fluctuating between N160 to N167 per dollar. Unemployment has not abated.
The state of infrastructure has not improved. Power supply has nosedived. But more worrisome is lack of security of lives and property in the country. We have terrorist groups in some parts of the country. Armed robbery is rampant everywhere. Kidnapping is still thriving in some parts of the federation and coupled with this, our roads have become death traps. And the government has been embarking on very unpopular policies such as removal of oil subsidy, the establishment of the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and of course the lingering issue of the single tenure policy. So, I must say that the government is really embattled and is fighting at all fronts.
There is no sector of the economy that you can really give kudos to the government. The government is accused of interfering with the judiciary. The arrest of the editor of the Nation newspapers also is interfering with the freedom of the Press and the freedom of Nigerians are being restricted everyday.
The Nigeria Police Force put up a show of force in harassing and detaining harmless reporters. This is typical of the police, which sees itself as beholding to the elite while daily intimidating, brutalising and killing ordinary Nigerians.
One can only imagine how successful the police would have been in tackling the security challenges facing the country if it had been employing the same attitude (show of force) in battling armed robbers, kidnappers and Boko Haram elements.
You recall what happened in Lokoja in the last two months when members of the Action Congress (AC) were literally deported from Kogi State by the Police Commissioner. Really, the country is embattled.
So, in the next three and half years when President Jonathan would have completed his tenure, what do you think would be the state of the nation?
I think we should not be talking about four years. What we should be talking about is how do we ensure that the ship of nation is managed well not to capsize. We are going to inherit a very battered country. What we should be worried about is how do we right the anomalies of this government in the areas of security, infrastructure, power etc. Our position is that this government needs more thinkers, courageous people who can think out of the box. They must kick start this economy.
You hear everyday that the government has opened an employment bureau here and there and many state governments are also doing the same. You do not create jobs by fiat. Jobs are created when there are constructions going on, when the government takes agriculture seriously, when you embark on Housing projects and so on. That is how you can create jobs. I want this government to be more pro-active. When you create employment, you generate more revenue and you also solve the problem of security. It is the level of unemployed youths in the country that has formed ready armies to be hired by terrorist groups and some disgruntled politicians. So, what we should be saying now is-how do we fix our power, roads and so on.
If you fix roads, power and you fix the economy by creating more jobs via production, you would be seen to be doing the right thing. How do you arrest the migration of industries in Nigeria to Ghana? How do you put a more clement weather and environment for our economy? How do we stop heating the polity by very unpopular policies? This is what should occupy our minds than be talking about the next three or four years under President Jonathan.
Penultimate week, Lagos State held its local government election with the process recording a high level of voter apathy. Do you share the view by some people that it is the result of increasing loss of confidence by Lagosians in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)?
The voter apathy is not because Lagosians are losing confidence in the government of the state.
If voters lose confidence in Lagos State government, then the country is in trouble. This is because that is the only visible government that is working. But the voter apathy could be explained by other reasons.
It is sad that over the years, Nigerians do not look at local government elections as very important. Too much emphasis is placed on the central which is the presidential, and the governorship election. People do not even care about House of Assembly election. So, the average person believes that local government elections are not important and this is why I think that we need to change the orientation of our people and let them understand that the local government is nearest to them and that they should take more interest in the tier of government.
Again, for a long time, we do not have the right quality of people taking enough interest in local government elections. In other parts of the world, people rise to the president from being mayor. A good example was the former president of France who rose from being mayor of Paris to become president of the country. That is the importance of local government in other parts of the world. In other parts of the world, councilors and chairmen are fought for keenly during elections by professionals and accomplished people. But all over Nigeria, people do not take local government seriously. And I think this explains in part the apathy in the last local government election. I do not think it has anything to do with confidence in the ACN or lack of it.
This government is fit and running and I think it will be mischievous to say that the apathy was owing to lack of confidence in our party. Don’t listen to PDP propaganda. We know where such talk of voter apathy being the result of loss of confidence in the ACN is coming from. Efforts were even made to drag security agencies into the mix in a desperate attempt to concoct an undeserved victory for a party that is almost non-existent in Lagos State. But the power of the people, exercised through their votes, won the day, to the chagrin of the anarchists, who are now crying blue murder.
Local governments now seem to be an extension of the states with hardly any opposition party having any chance against the ruling party during council elections. In the case of the recent exercise in Lagos, the victory of the ACN seemed predetermined. Do you agree with that impression?
Let us face it; the election of the local government is the prerogative of the state House of Assembly. They make the rules governing elections and tenure of the chairmen and councilors. And that is how it should be. I think our country is evolving and in a couple of years, it will evolve to a level whereby it will be possible for the opposition parties to win even the local government elections. And this will come about when people get more aware and show more interest in local government affairs.
By that time, there will be more competition during elections into offices of the local government. Yes, I agree with you that it would appear that if a state is controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it means that it would win elections into local governments in such a state and if it is the ACN, it would be the same thing. But whatever the hue and cry over the last council election in Lagos, it is to the credit of ACN that a couple of dozen councilors emerged in the state. But seriously speaking, the ACN has done very well in Lagos and other states and I was not surprised with the result of the last local government election.
Many Lagosians believe that a greater percentage of the chairmen who were returned by the ACN for a second term fell short of the people’s expectation. Do you have a contrary opinion on the performance of the chairmen?
I do not think that most people even know the duties of the chairmen. Do you know that primary education in the state is part of the portfolio of council chairmen; so also is primary healthcare. Do you know that a lot of projects are jointly undertaken by the state and local governments. Most of these chairmen inherited a bloated administration. Local government administration is more of a social service. Many of the chairmen have performed very well and I can tell you that 80 per cent of our local governments have put in place a lot of infrastructures.
They have done a lot of drainages. They pay salaries on time, take care of teachers welfare and maintain their schools and primary health centres. Ask me what is their core responsibility? One of their responsibilities for instance is the environment where you expect a local government to take care of the surge from the Bar beach. An environmental issue of that magnitude needs the intervention of the state government or even the Federal Government in some cases. Without being partisan, our chairmen have performed creditably well compared to chairmen in any other part of Nigeria. And the issue of returning chairmen for another tenure, we are just following the constitution. The constitution says that any chairman who has performed has the opportunity for another term. And is not every chairman that returned in any event.
There are single tenure chairmen who were not returned for various reasons. Some were not returned because they could not perform or because of the peculiarity of their locality. By and large, I must say that it is not quite correct to say that most chairmen returned, failed to meet the people’s expectation. They did quite a lot. Many of them provided free text books, school uniforms and even shoes for their primary school children. Many people were empowered through various poverty alleviation scheme established by these chairmen. Many provided roads and street electrification. Many of them provided transmitters. So, I do not think the impression that the chairmen did not perform is correct because they seriously took care of their responsibility which are schools, primary healthcare and their staff, and they maintain law and peace in their locality.
In the last general election, the ACN performed very well in the South West and many people were happy that it turned out so but a reasonable percentage of supporters of the party seem not to be impressed with some of its governors. Do you agree with those who argue for instance that the Osun State governor, Rauf Aregbesola has failed and that Governor Ibikunle Amosun is yet to show the stuff he is made of?
I think the problem is that you listen too much to PDP radio and propaganda. In Osun State, the governor met a debt portfolio of about N14 billion. The first thing he did was to negotiate the payment of that debt, otherwise, the state would have been crippled.
Secondly, hardly had they resumed than the Federal Government unilaterally imposed a new minimum wage without a corresponding increase in revenue to the states. Many of the governors not just in the South West find it difficult to deal with. In Enugu for instance, the workers were on strike for long. In Osun, what did the PDP government achieve in seven and half years? Nothing. But what the PDP could not do in those years, Aregbesola has done it in less than six months. The governor came and within three, four months, he employed over 20,000 workers. That record is still unparalleled in the history of Osun State. Today, Osun State has embarked on Agricultural reform. It prevented even flooding in the entire state. The government is proactive. That is why I said that you listen too much to PDP propaganda.
And in the case of Ogun State, Amosun is just about five months in office yet he has been able to touch the lives of the people. Tell me any state outside the ACN that has experienced the kind of strides you see in states controlled by our party. Take Oyo State for instance which has witnessed two natural disasters in recent time but the governor rose to the occasion and lives have come back to normal. The ship of state is back. I think you are listening too much to PDP propaganda. Most of the ACN states have been able to pay the new minimum wage and somebody somewhere is saying that some ACN governors are not performing. Let the people of the states affected speak for themselves. Without being partisan, I tell you that our governors are doing very well and are committed to the welfare of the people.
After the last general election which saw the ACN sweeping the polls in the South West, many expected that Ondo State which is being controlled by the Labour Party (LP) would easily join your party but that has not happened. What is the problem?
Those who are expecting that Ondo State would be in the kitty of the ACN after the last general election are not wrong. Many people were thinking that probably we were going to reach an agreement to act as one immediately after the election. The calculation is based on the fact that the South West is already under firm control of the ACN.
Everybody knows that there is a wind of change blowing across the South West and even beyond. It is based on that that many people assumed that the governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko would join the ACN, which no doubt is the party to beat in the South West. But as it is now, what people were expecting did not happen and I can assure you that in the next governorship election, the Sunshine State would be in the kitty of our party, ACN. How we are going to win Ondo State in terms of strategies, I am not ready to disclose it on the pages of newspapers but I can assure you that Ondo would soon be an ACN state. People may be surprised because their thinking based on the overwhelming victory of the ACN in the South West is that the governor would join the winning team. Anybody is free to assume anything but what we are sure is that Ondo would soon be under the ACN.
Recently, the former Lagos State governorship aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Musiliu Obanikoro criticized the ACN leader and former governor of Lagos, Bola Ahmed Tinubu for playing God in the politics of the state. Would you like to comment on that?
I read it in the Sun precisely and frankly speaking, after reading that interview, I was surprised the extent to which people can go. I believe that there are ways you can even attack your political opponent without becoming too cheap. Even if you do not agree with Asiwaju, there are ways to say it if I were him. In politics, we all know that you can disagree but you do not come out to attack the personality of somebody when you do not have the facts to prove your case. In politics, you do not have to agree all the time but there are standard ways of making your points.
Do you agree with those who argue that the Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola has slowed down in terms of development unlike in his first tenure when he hit the ground running as soon as he was sworn in?
That is total bunkum. If Fashola has slowed down, then there is a problem in Nigeria because he is a role model and a pacesetter. No person who is objective would look at the strides of Fashola and say that he has slowed down. Ask yourself-slow down in what sector.
Source: Sunday Sun
I must say and I am not being partisan here that virtually at every point, the government is beleaguered. At the economic front, the situation is disturbing, the internal security is not working. Look at the economy for instance, in the last couple of years, the Naira has taken a terrible bashing. Today, Nigeria is fluctuating between N160 to N167 per dollar. Unemployment has not abated.
The state of infrastructure has not improved. Power supply has nosedived. But more worrisome is lack of security of lives and property in the country. We have terrorist groups in some parts of the country. Armed robbery is rampant everywhere. Kidnapping is still thriving in some parts of the federation and coupled with this, our roads have become death traps. And the government has been embarking on very unpopular policies such as removal of oil subsidy, the establishment of the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and of course the lingering issue of the single tenure policy. So, I must say that the government is really embattled and is fighting at all fronts.
There is no sector of the economy that you can really give kudos to the government. The government is accused of interfering with the judiciary. The arrest of the editor of the Nation newspapers also is interfering with the freedom of the Press and the freedom of Nigerians are being restricted everyday.
The Nigeria Police Force put up a show of force in harassing and detaining harmless reporters. This is typical of the police, which sees itself as beholding to the elite while daily intimidating, brutalising and killing ordinary Nigerians.
One can only imagine how successful the police would have been in tackling the security challenges facing the country if it had been employing the same attitude (show of force) in battling armed robbers, kidnappers and Boko Haram elements.
You recall what happened in Lokoja in the last two months when members of the Action Congress (AC) were literally deported from Kogi State by the Police Commissioner. Really, the country is embattled.
So, in the next three and half years when President Jonathan would have completed his tenure, what do you think would be the state of the nation?
I think we should not be talking about four years. What we should be talking about is how do we ensure that the ship of nation is managed well not to capsize. We are going to inherit a very battered country. What we should be worried about is how do we right the anomalies of this government in the areas of security, infrastructure, power etc. Our position is that this government needs more thinkers, courageous people who can think out of the box. They must kick start this economy.
You hear everyday that the government has opened an employment bureau here and there and many state governments are also doing the same. You do not create jobs by fiat. Jobs are created when there are constructions going on, when the government takes agriculture seriously, when you embark on Housing projects and so on. That is how you can create jobs. I want this government to be more pro-active. When you create employment, you generate more revenue and you also solve the problem of security. It is the level of unemployed youths in the country that has formed ready armies to be hired by terrorist groups and some disgruntled politicians. So, what we should be saying now is-how do we fix our power, roads and so on.
If you fix roads, power and you fix the economy by creating more jobs via production, you would be seen to be doing the right thing. How do you arrest the migration of industries in Nigeria to Ghana? How do you put a more clement weather and environment for our economy? How do we stop heating the polity by very unpopular policies? This is what should occupy our minds than be talking about the next three or four years under President Jonathan.
Penultimate week, Lagos State held its local government election with the process recording a high level of voter apathy. Do you share the view by some people that it is the result of increasing loss of confidence by Lagosians in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)?
The voter apathy is not because Lagosians are losing confidence in the government of the state.
If voters lose confidence in Lagos State government, then the country is in trouble. This is because that is the only visible government that is working. But the voter apathy could be explained by other reasons.
It is sad that over the years, Nigerians do not look at local government elections as very important. Too much emphasis is placed on the central which is the presidential, and the governorship election. People do not even care about House of Assembly election. So, the average person believes that local government elections are not important and this is why I think that we need to change the orientation of our people and let them understand that the local government is nearest to them and that they should take more interest in the tier of government.
Again, for a long time, we do not have the right quality of people taking enough interest in local government elections. In other parts of the world, people rise to the president from being mayor. A good example was the former president of France who rose from being mayor of Paris to become president of the country. That is the importance of local government in other parts of the world. In other parts of the world, councilors and chairmen are fought for keenly during elections by professionals and accomplished people. But all over Nigeria, people do not take local government seriously. And I think this explains in part the apathy in the last local government election. I do not think it has anything to do with confidence in the ACN or lack of it.
This government is fit and running and I think it will be mischievous to say that the apathy was owing to lack of confidence in our party. Don’t listen to PDP propaganda. We know where such talk of voter apathy being the result of loss of confidence in the ACN is coming from. Efforts were even made to drag security agencies into the mix in a desperate attempt to concoct an undeserved victory for a party that is almost non-existent in Lagos State. But the power of the people, exercised through their votes, won the day, to the chagrin of the anarchists, who are now crying blue murder.
Local governments now seem to be an extension of the states with hardly any opposition party having any chance against the ruling party during council elections. In the case of the recent exercise in Lagos, the victory of the ACN seemed predetermined. Do you agree with that impression?
Let us face it; the election of the local government is the prerogative of the state House of Assembly. They make the rules governing elections and tenure of the chairmen and councilors. And that is how it should be. I think our country is evolving and in a couple of years, it will evolve to a level whereby it will be possible for the opposition parties to win even the local government elections. And this will come about when people get more aware and show more interest in local government affairs.
By that time, there will be more competition during elections into offices of the local government. Yes, I agree with you that it would appear that if a state is controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it means that it would win elections into local governments in such a state and if it is the ACN, it would be the same thing. But whatever the hue and cry over the last council election in Lagos, it is to the credit of ACN that a couple of dozen councilors emerged in the state. But seriously speaking, the ACN has done very well in Lagos and other states and I was not surprised with the result of the last local government election.
Many Lagosians believe that a greater percentage of the chairmen who were returned by the ACN for a second term fell short of the people’s expectation. Do you have a contrary opinion on the performance of the chairmen?
I do not think that most people even know the duties of the chairmen. Do you know that primary education in the state is part of the portfolio of council chairmen; so also is primary healthcare. Do you know that a lot of projects are jointly undertaken by the state and local governments. Most of these chairmen inherited a bloated administration. Local government administration is more of a social service. Many of the chairmen have performed very well and I can tell you that 80 per cent of our local governments have put in place a lot of infrastructures.
They have done a lot of drainages. They pay salaries on time, take care of teachers welfare and maintain their schools and primary health centres. Ask me what is their core responsibility? One of their responsibilities for instance is the environment where you expect a local government to take care of the surge from the Bar beach. An environmental issue of that magnitude needs the intervention of the state government or even the Federal Government in some cases. Without being partisan, our chairmen have performed creditably well compared to chairmen in any other part of Nigeria. And the issue of returning chairmen for another tenure, we are just following the constitution. The constitution says that any chairman who has performed has the opportunity for another term. And is not every chairman that returned in any event.
There are single tenure chairmen who were not returned for various reasons. Some were not returned because they could not perform or because of the peculiarity of their locality. By and large, I must say that it is not quite correct to say that most chairmen returned, failed to meet the people’s expectation. They did quite a lot. Many of them provided free text books, school uniforms and even shoes for their primary school children. Many people were empowered through various poverty alleviation scheme established by these chairmen. Many provided roads and street electrification. Many of them provided transmitters. So, I do not think the impression that the chairmen did not perform is correct because they seriously took care of their responsibility which are schools, primary healthcare and their staff, and they maintain law and peace in their locality.
In the last general election, the ACN performed very well in the South West and many people were happy that it turned out so but a reasonable percentage of supporters of the party seem not to be impressed with some of its governors. Do you agree with those who argue for instance that the Osun State governor, Rauf Aregbesola has failed and that Governor Ibikunle Amosun is yet to show the stuff he is made of?
I think the problem is that you listen too much to PDP radio and propaganda. In Osun State, the governor met a debt portfolio of about N14 billion. The first thing he did was to negotiate the payment of that debt, otherwise, the state would have been crippled.
Secondly, hardly had they resumed than the Federal Government unilaterally imposed a new minimum wage without a corresponding increase in revenue to the states. Many of the governors not just in the South West find it difficult to deal with. In Enugu for instance, the workers were on strike for long. In Osun, what did the PDP government achieve in seven and half years? Nothing. But what the PDP could not do in those years, Aregbesola has done it in less than six months. The governor came and within three, four months, he employed over 20,000 workers. That record is still unparalleled in the history of Osun State. Today, Osun State has embarked on Agricultural reform. It prevented even flooding in the entire state. The government is proactive. That is why I said that you listen too much to PDP propaganda.
And in the case of Ogun State, Amosun is just about five months in office yet he has been able to touch the lives of the people. Tell me any state outside the ACN that has experienced the kind of strides you see in states controlled by our party. Take Oyo State for instance which has witnessed two natural disasters in recent time but the governor rose to the occasion and lives have come back to normal. The ship of state is back. I think you are listening too much to PDP propaganda. Most of the ACN states have been able to pay the new minimum wage and somebody somewhere is saying that some ACN governors are not performing. Let the people of the states affected speak for themselves. Without being partisan, I tell you that our governors are doing very well and are committed to the welfare of the people.
After the last general election which saw the ACN sweeping the polls in the South West, many expected that Ondo State which is being controlled by the Labour Party (LP) would easily join your party but that has not happened. What is the problem?
Those who are expecting that Ondo State would be in the kitty of the ACN after the last general election are not wrong. Many people were thinking that probably we were going to reach an agreement to act as one immediately after the election. The calculation is based on the fact that the South West is already under firm control of the ACN.
Everybody knows that there is a wind of change blowing across the South West and even beyond. It is based on that that many people assumed that the governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko would join the ACN, which no doubt is the party to beat in the South West. But as it is now, what people were expecting did not happen and I can assure you that in the next governorship election, the Sunshine State would be in the kitty of our party, ACN. How we are going to win Ondo State in terms of strategies, I am not ready to disclose it on the pages of newspapers but I can assure you that Ondo would soon be an ACN state. People may be surprised because their thinking based on the overwhelming victory of the ACN in the South West is that the governor would join the winning team. Anybody is free to assume anything but what we are sure is that Ondo would soon be under the ACN.
Recently, the former Lagos State governorship aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Musiliu Obanikoro criticized the ACN leader and former governor of Lagos, Bola Ahmed Tinubu for playing God in the politics of the state. Would you like to comment on that?
I read it in the Sun precisely and frankly speaking, after reading that interview, I was surprised the extent to which people can go. I believe that there are ways you can even attack your political opponent without becoming too cheap. Even if you do not agree with Asiwaju, there are ways to say it if I were him. In politics, we all know that you can disagree but you do not come out to attack the personality of somebody when you do not have the facts to prove your case. In politics, you do not have to agree all the time but there are standard ways of making your points.
Do you agree with those who argue that the Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola has slowed down in terms of development unlike in his first tenure when he hit the ground running as soon as he was sworn in?
That is total bunkum. If Fashola has slowed down, then there is a problem in Nigeria because he is a role model and a pacesetter. No person who is objective would look at the strides of Fashola and say that he has slowed down. Ask yourself-slow down in what sector.
Source: Sunday Sun
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