Many are
saying that President Goodluck Jonathan has not really achieved
anything in his short tenure. What do you think of this?
Things have
tremendously improved since Jonathan became president eight months ago.
Our country had gone so far down within the last 50 years. Quite
frankly, it will be unkind for anybody to judge the president just
within eight months of coming to power. The critical factor of judging
the president should be based on his promises within the last eight
months. He hammered on certain areas like the energy sector and that
sub-sector has considerably improved. On the issue of the Niger Delta,
the quota and the level of improvement on our daily production,
compared to what was happening about a year or two ago, has been
rested. No nation can be healed of all maladies within a spate of eight
months. So we shall all continue to try. When we put the president on
trial, every Nigerian must also be on trial. A president can not make a
nation; it is the collective responsibility of everyone in this country
to ensure that we all play our part if we want Nigeria to develop. We
will support the president, we will criticize him where necessary and
we give all the necessary support to ensure the country remained a
better nation.
What are
the president’s chances when the North believes it is its turn to
produce the next president and the southwest seems to be embracing the
Action Group of Nigeria’s candidate?
There is something
about the southwest that you must recognise. All the victories of the
ACN governors were through the appeal courts. If you look at the
metamorphosis of those courts, the way they got the judgements, you
will know that they are not the majority. Time will tell, by the time
the April general elections are held, you will know where the southwest
lies. Are you telling me that the southwest will want to go back to the
opposition again when they know the implications after three decades,
and we have so many to tell in terms of poverty, underdevelopment,
infrastructural decay to show for it. The southwest is one of the most
educated in the country and they know what they are doing. We are all
voting massively for Goodluck Jonathan. The North is not as monolithic
as you think. Intelligentsia in the North believe that this is what
should happen to Nigeria because everybody, no matter where you are
born, should be free to contest as president from any part of the
country. It is to the advantage of the entire nation, and other
political parties should emulate what the PDP is currently doing. It is
not true that the North was not happy abut the emergence of Jonathan.
The voting pattern in the North during the presidential primaries is a
testimony to that. We are working hard and we are not taking any zone
for granted. We need this to make our country great and maintain its
leadership position in Africa .
Are you saying that President Jonathan’s ambition is a continuation of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s presidency?
In a way, and in so
many ways, it is a continuation of that presidency. It does not require
for any of us to continue to assume that just because something
happened in between, it should be discarded with. Is it not disgraceful
that when the late president was ailing, there was no clear-cut
leadership transfer and that led to a lot of issues that would have
actually engulfed Nigeria but for the way that Jonathan played it. The
position is as good as the person occupying it and we have some peace
today. I am happier today to be a Nigerian, and I am happy for my
children that one day, nobody will judge them on the basis of the
region they come from and because of that prevent them from occupying a
position they want in this country. If we say Jonathan’s presidency is
a continuation of Yar’Adua administration, it is okay. However, to me,
it is an entitlement that nobody must take away from any citizen that
is eminently qualified for a position.
What
efforts are the PDP making to ensure that frayed nerves are calmed and
that the aggrieved candidates at all levels are reintegrated into the
campaigns of the party’s flagbearers?
It is absolutely
necessary to do that and we had spoken to people in various fora to
understand that when you compete for something, somebody must lose and
somebody must win. The victor must understand the fact that it was a
victory for all and those that lost must know that it was a momentary
loss. We have seen great men in their countries who had lost several
elections, yet they still won at the end of the day and even became
presidents of their countries. At this moment, Nigerians want Goodluck
Jonathan. As usual, the first thing we did was to set up a peace and
reconciliatory committee to look at the grievances of those who did not
win the primary election at the various state houses of assembly to the
National Assembly, governorship, and then the presidency. Everybody has
one or two things to say but the earlier we became sportsmanly about
this and begin to talk to one another, the better.
That initiative is
already in place. You will recollect that former president Ibrahim
Babangida congratulated Jonathan, likewise, Mrs. Sarah Jubril. We are
still waiting and believe that the former vice president, Atiku
Abubakar, will one day congratulate President Jonathan. Our party is
concerned about all this. It is not about winning alone. We are
carrying a willing nation along in this journey. If you are a president
and a lot of people are not supporting you to ensure that your
programmes are successful, you will not be able to register the kind of
performance that actually led you to contest in the first instance. So
the critical factor is for the president to reach out to a lot of the
leaders in all the geo-political zones of the country and he has been
doing just that. We are now moving away from the idea that what
everybody is looking for in government is just the national cake.
It is
about time that Nigerians rolled up their sleeves and begin to look at
how employment will be improved upon, how infrastructure will be built
upon. Jonathan, in his speech shortly before the primary election, had
explained that his main concern was education, infrastructural
development, energy, and peace in the Niger Delta and to bring out our
resources to begin to work for us. This, to me, is satisfying and I
believe that it could lead our country to a better destination.
