With Buhari, Dark Days Are over—Prince Audu
I will rescue Kogi from PDP’s misrule- Audu
Prince Abubakar Audu, first Executive Governor of Kogi St
ate and chieftain of the
All Progressives Congress (APC) in this interview with AU
GUSTINE AMINU
bares his mind on the outcome of the 2015 general elect
ion, the future of the
country and his ambition to run for the governorship of
Kogi State later this year
among other issues. Excerpts:
Your party, the APC won election at the federal le
vel. Can it meet the
expectations of Nigerians?
Well, not only at the federal level, we won the elect
ion at the state levels as well
because I am very optimistic that APC will deliver Nigeria
to the promised land
where we will all enjoy the dividends of democracy. The
reason for the over
whelming victory across the country is simple; the entire cou
ntry is tired of PDP;
16 years of misrule; they fostered poverty and general h
uman degradation on our
people. Our people said: “enough is enough”. They need
a change and that
change is here with us so we are grateful.
I know expectations are high, but we also know that this
country has a lot of
natural endowment. It is not because we don’t have the
resources but the
management has been very poor; that has been the pedigr
ee of this
administration for 16 years. I can assure you that with A
PC, the difference will be
clear.
Nigerians have not made any mistake in introducing change
into our electoral
system, into the entire governance system and it is time to
benefit and in no
distant future, we will see a lot of changes in this coun
try because money meant
for millions of people are being cornered into few pe
ople’s pocket as a result of
glaring corruption that will be a thing of the past.
An APC administration is going
to put a stop to those irregularities.
Before now, APC has been struggling with people lik
e you and a few others
from other states that have actually put in their e
ffort, resources and
energy into building it. Are you worried now that t
oo many other persons
are decamping to APC?
How? Why? We are very happy. This is what PDP did to us a
nd we are paying
them back in a big way. It is the law of retributive just
ice that is taking its course,
so we are very happy; we have no cause for apprehension, t
he only thing is that
in due course, we will try to separate the chaff from t
he wheat because some are
coming to APC with a purpose.
If you don’t have a natural interest in APC and you are
joining APC, it is not a
good thing; we will fish you out and know what to do w
ith you in due course. As
you readily appreciate people like us, we have never belo
nged to the ruling party
and we have consistently been in the opposition and ou
r consistency is paying
off today because we have never being associated with fai
lure. If we had been
associated with failure, today we would have been buryin
g our head in our
armpit but anywhere we go in Nigeria we will hold ou
r head very high above our
shoulder. So, we thank God.
Don’t you think we are tilting towards one party sy
stem?
Well, that is the contention of PDP. When people wer
e decamping enmass to
PDP, they did not say that but now that they are on the
receiving end, they are
now saying that Nigeria is going to one party system. If
that is their contention at
this time, so be it; but as far as I am concerned, we have
about 20 to 30
registered parties in Nigeria and with that we won’t
say it is one party system. All
other small-small parties they have votes, they have support
ers, so why should it
dawn on PDP to start crying at this early stage, crying w
olf where there was
none.
How do you see PDP in Kogi State?
PDP has failed the people, they are a total failure i
n Kogi State. Nine years of
misrule, nine years of total darkness, nine years of plac
ing the entire state and its
people in the woods, nine years of poverty, human degra
dation. I don’t need to
tell you, you are a Kogite, you know it better than me
. In our political rhetorics, we
are in the fact of the situation, so, the choice has bee
n made by the people that
PDP is not good for them, they wasted nine years, 16 ye
ars governing the people
and impoverish the people.
This is why people decided to speak loud and clear in a l
anguage that everybody
will understand. It’s the truth, they spoke through the
ballot papers and I will
assure you that they have not made any mistake, at all.
What agenda will you set for General Muhammadu Buha
ri?
The agenda of agrarian revolution, industrial revoluti
on and complete revolution
of the unfortunate situation we met on ground. The
dark days are over, there is
light at the end of the tunnel. After rain there mu
st be sunshine. For the first time I
can assure that Nigeria will be happy with the democracy t
hat we have been
battling, true democracy that we have been battling for
over the years because
we know the shortcomings and the misgivings held against
the previous
administration and we are going to correct it for the
people, that I can assure you.
Will you subscribe to an all-inclusive Federal Gove
rnment or a winner takes
all?
No! No! If we want peace in this country, we will not s
ubscribe to the
conservative and the progressive idiosyncrasies of winner take
s all. It will be an
all inclusive government, but we will do it with a lo
t of observation and modesty;
we are not going to bring every Tom, Dick and Harry. We
will bring technocrats
we feel we can use to achieve our desired goals and obje
ctives.
There is an outcry by lots of Kogites that they wan
t you back during the
next dispensation, what is your stand?
The voice of men is the voice of God and since the peop
le feel that I should
come and rescue the state from total collapse, I will def
initely answer the clarion
call. I believe in chronological order of approach. I sa
y let’s have a strong party,
we have a strong party, let’s have the National Assembly on
our side, we had it,
let’s have the President on our side, we have it and I
am very sure that we are
going to have the State Governors on our side as well.
With that, the next thing I am going to envisage is t
he governorship race and by
the special grace of God since the people want me becau
se of the kind of
difficulty they are passing through in this country, I can
’t run away from them.
They said I should come and rescue the state from total co
llapse. They want me
to come and continue from where I stopped in 2003. The
re have been no
development of any nature. This is my state, my baby is sick,
I must be prepared
to doctor the baby to health and constitutionally I have
just only one term of four
years and within this four years, people by the special
grace of God if I am given
the mandate by the people and by God you will see what
you never thought of.
After all, during the four years I spent between 1999
to 2003, we were able to
elevate the status of Kogi State to the Eldorado of it
s development and we are
going to improve upon it this time around because duri
ng that time, our resources
had a lot of constraints. For obvious reasons, Nigeria is
a mono-product country.
Our Crude Oil was selling at a minimal price of a nin
e to 12 dollars then and we
were able to build University, we brought Obajana Cem
ent, so many things for
our people and that made the entire Nigeria or Kogi
tes to term me as the best
performing Governor in Nigeria courtesy of media tour
put in place by the Federal
Government under the Chairmanship of Professor Jerry Gana
, the then Minister
for information and National Orientation. We want t
o re-enact the same thing and
do better. By the special grace of God, we will take Ko
gi out of the wood I am
very sure we will embark on this.
What is your vision towards Ajaokuta Steel Company
if given the
opportunity?
Well, I have had good dreams for Ajakuta in my first ter
m in office. When we
came, I approached the Federal Government to allow gove
rnment embark on
managing government in piece meal through payment in t
ranches.
My intention then was to go to the stock market, raise eno
ugh capital, a working
capital and make the establishment a great concern. Ajaoku
ta Steel Company is
a fund generating business, it is a fund spinning busin
ess, and beside all this, it
reduces pressure on labour market and a stimulator to boo
st economy but
because the people are very myopic, they now see things from
my own point of
view and that’s why the place is dead but as soon as I come
back to the office, I
will revive it and it will be very useful to both Kogi
tes and entire Nigerians.
I have done it before and this time by the special grace
of God, if I am given the
mandate and God approves it, I will do it in a grand
style. We have no business
in co-habiting with poverty in Kogi State but it is a
self-inflicted injury which our
great-grand children unless we work arduously to improve
it, they will never
forgive us. It is a very sad and pathetic situation that i
n the midst of plenty we are
wallowing in perpetual abject poverty which is not good
enough.
Politics Thursday page 1 brief contd page 4. Pix- A
tiku,
Bindow, Fintiri
Adamawa: Confusion over plots to impose Speaker
Plot to impose confusion in Adamawa raises dust
Wale Akintunde-Yola
There is confusion in Adamawa State over allegation
s of plots to
impose a Speaker on the State Assembly in the soon-
to-be
inaugurated 8
th
Assembly in the state.
Sources alleged that a powerful individual in the s
tate is already
making moves to anoint and impose a speaker for the
new
assembly that would be unveiled next month.
But Mallam Abdulrahaman Abubakar, Adamawa State Hou
se of
Assembly member-elect for Mubi South Constituency o
f
Adamawa, re-iterated his colleagues commitment to e
nsure the
emergence of a popular and competent candidate as t
he Speaker of
the House 8th Assembly.
Abubakar who is the chairman of the newly formed In
tegrity
Forum by the House of Assembly members-elect, alleg
ed that
there was move by a leading politician to impose a
speaker on the
house, a development he said the members had vowed
to reject.
Abubakar, who was elected under the platform of the
All
Progressives Congress (APC) said that the members o
f the APC
dominated house had resolved to have a speaker from
the Central
zone of the state since the Governor-elect and his
Deputy are from
the Northern and Southern zones respectively.
“We have a particular person in mind who is good an
d equal to the
task. But a political leader in the state is trying
to foist somebody
on us but we will reject that”, Abubakar said.
He said one of the major roles of the integrity gro
up was to ensure
that the house operated in accordance with the cons
titution of the
country.
On the recent appeal by some members-elect to the s
tate
government to sponsor them for an induction course
in Abuja,
Abubakar said such members were on their own and th
at what they
did was not the collective decision of the members-
elect.
“Nobody send them to Government House to solicit fo
r
sponsorship; what they did was not our collective d
ecision”,
Abubakar said.
