A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential aspirant, Sam Ohuabunwa, claims President Muhammadu Buhari’s has not done nothing to guarantee hope for Nigerians. He also says the clamour by some politicians for indirect primary in the Electoral Bill is fraudulent, anti-democratic legislation. The renowned pharmacist and industrialist spoke with Igho Akaregha and Dennis Mernyi
Why are you interested in becoming president when your party, the PDP, seems to be looking towards the North-West for a candidate?
I want to be President of Nigeria, not that of the PDP. PDP is only a platform. And it is not going to dictate for Nigerians. Nigerians will choose their president. If the PDP chooses the wrong person, Nigerians will choose the right person. In 2023, Nigerians want a president with a difference. That is what I believe. So, anybody, including the PDP that makes the mistake, will be bye-bye. As I said before, Nigerians don’t like PDP. They don’t like APC.
But they are compelled to deal with the two of them. From the research we have seen, they feel the PDP is a lesser evil than the APC. And that is the truth. Even though when you analyse it properly, in terms of the hype, the way the PDP was demarketed, it was not as bad as they made it look. And we didn’t have sufficient counter publicity after those de-marketing. Because during the time of PDP, you could talk about economic growth. We became the biggest economy in Africa. We were having double-digit growth. So many things to the extent that we even had schools that is the nomadic schools built for cattle herders. Maybe we were not able to manage the level of impunity in terms of corruption and those things we were doing. And, maybe that is the area we didn’t do well enough. However, Nigerians are willing to give PDP a chance. I think I am that key that is missing.
You know when you have an intractable solution, Nigeria’s issues have proven intractable. Because at any given point, regime after regime, you get better a bit, then you can get worse. There has been no time you can say we have consistently solved our problems. An effort is made, you see some bright light, and then the lights are extinguished. So, the reason I am coming, I believe I am the solution. I have the key. I know how to create wealth.
I understand the factors that will help us deal with corruption. Not a television show. I am going to lead by example. And people who are going to work with me are going to be like what Lee Kuan Yew did in Singapore. His team swore to be faithful to the nation. And anyone who went against the instruction faced the music. I am coming to change the narrative. It is not a question of letting us try and improve or do less corruption. Or poverty.
I am coming to completely bring poverty to the lowest level it can be. Bring unemployment to the lowest level it can be. Bring corruption to the lowest it can be. Wipe-out injustice as much as possible, and then stabilise the Nigerian security situation. And, when I do these four things, Nigeria’s story will change. I am going to increase my level of productivity. We are going to move Nigeria from a low-performing level to a high-performing productive nation.
There is going to be an increase in agricultural production and processing. If we cultivate 80 per cent of our fertile landmass, Nigeria can raise two trillion naira or dollars per year. Agriculture alone through raw materials and processing because what is it that we cannot export? Millet, maize, sorghum, corn wheat, cassava, yam, soybean, etc. Everything we need elsewhere is here with us. What about our solid minerals? We allow peasant farming to go on. We used peasant mining, farming, and everything. And, the whole place is messed up. And we allow people to come without proper arrangement to exploit and cause trouble in our country, whereas, for mining, we can get proper mining companies. They will come to Nigeria, and we will reach a proper contract.
With that, we can say Federal government, this is your entitlement, state government and local government, and this is your entitlement. Communities, this is your own. Then when everybody knows that there is something to benefit from, there will be no quarrel. And, if we are open and transparent, then you will find that Nigerians will believe in you. But we have an opaque system. Nobody knows how much we earn, how much oil we generate. Look at the illegal refining going on all over the country. The whole Niger Delta is turned into soot. And everybody’s eyes are closed. And we are just moving around hoping that one day this problem will solve itself.
We need a leader that has competence. That has a good character. As I said, that dares to do the right thing. And be prepared to face the music if you do the wrong thing. Because it is only when you do the right thing that the situation will change. Nigeria’s story needs to change. And it needs a serious understanding of what we need to do.
Not to patch or manage. Look at the issue of our polity. The division in the country, the lack of unity, the social disequilibrium. This can be resolved by getting Nigerian leaders of the country together to sort out the problem of the country. Nigeria is in this place because somebody doesn’t think we need to call a meeting of ethnic nationalities. And say, gentlemen, this is not the country we want. When we start killing ourselves this way, when did we become marauders? When did we start being bandits? What is wrong with us? And the elders in my community say when things start going wrong and women are being raped, houses are being burnt, the old men will take their walking sticks and come to the Obi. And yesterday, somebody will say I saw the son of Okonkwo carrying plantain across the road.
The other one will say I saw they call Okonkwo, come, this is what your son did. Even if they cannot bring him, Okonkwo will go and bring his son. And by that, Okonkwo will face the music, and the community will change. Nigeria has no father. It has no leader. Even these guys they say are rebelling, or causing trouble, including IPOB, or Igboho, why can’t we call them and say, if you have children in your home, if you feel this country is one country, with one father and then your children are misbehaving, two out of your 12 children are breaking the windows and glasses, and they are causing you embarrassment, send police to arrest them? Or an army to shoot them? The right thing is to call them and say, sit down. What is the problem? What is your issue? One might say you didn’t pay my school fees. You paid the other man, but you didn’t pay mine. You will say, is that the problem? Let me tell you what happened. I have limited resources, and your brother is doing WAEC. And you still have one year to do WAEC. And I decided to pay his own so that he can start, and I will pay your own eventually, and you will still do WAEC.
Since 1999, political campaigns have not been issue-based. What burning national issues are of immediate concern to you?
The first is security. Without security, you cannot do anything. So, the first burning issue is security. How do we deal with insecurity in our country? And I think there are many ways to deal with it. The first is to find out what the cause is. Have we done a diagnosis? To say, what is the smoke that is bringing this fire? Because they say there is no smoke without fire.
If there is a disease and you do not diagnose it, and you are treating symptoms, you might be treating a headache, and after two days, it will come back. Nigeria needs to diagnose what is causing the problem and how to deal with it. They say armed robbers are not spirits. He is somebody and he lives somewhere. And are you saying that we can’t get technology that can help us secure our country? Satellite technology today can detect your DNA. I am here and I see who is moving in front of my house in Lagos and Arochukwu from here, with simple technology on my phone. How much more when you employ today’s technology from the countries and companies that have them? We have armed drones.
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If you cannot send the military, you send armed drones. And they are targeted or guided missiles. They take out the criminals. When you take out 1, 2, 3, 4, the others will level. The reason why they stay is that they commit the crime and nothing happens. Nobody arrests anybody. They share the money and disappear. Gumi will stand with them with the army and police, and they move to the next destination. We are in a country where non-state actors are ruling state actors. We have police, army, DSS, DMI, every type of security outfit, but nothing seems to be happening. What is the number of bandits? How many are they? Even Boko haram, how many are they to defeat us? Something is wrong?
And that thing that is wrong is leadership. We have leadership that is bereft of ideas. It is as simple as that, leadership that is not ready to explore new ways of solving problems. Bring more soldiers, police, kill more people, and all that. That is not how to solve the situation. Two, it is corruption. It is eating us. But the issue is poverty. The most important problem is poverty. Poverty is number one. Because it is contributing to insecurity. Poverty is contributing to corruption. I am going to focus on how we create wealth. And creating wealth means, how do we create investment? Local investment and foreign investment. Because investment is the starting point of any development.
It is capital, the publisher of this newspaper has invested in this business. If there is no capital, let him be the best journalist in Africa, he cannot make an impact. Investment creates business. Investment created ThisNigeria. ThisNigeria now creates jobs. It employs reporters and all the people working for it. You people create wealth through the wealth you generate.
This wealth is distributed to drive away poverty. It is a straight line thing. If I am president of Nigeria, my title will be president/ minister of investment. I will have nothing to do with oil. Because after two years that I am president, the oil will no longer appear on our budgets. What will appear will be income. Every earning after the first year will go into a sovereign wealth fund to generate income. Then we will take the interest to run our budgets. We will no longer depend on oil because it has killed Nigeria. And, it is a major cause of the corruption and indolence that we have in our country. We lived well before oil. Nigeria is a country suffering from injustice. People in the north are feeling unjustly treated. The minority tribes in the middle belt are feeling unjustly treated. The south is feeling the same.
The Igbos of the southeast are feeling unjustly treated. The southwest is feeling the same way too. So, it is all over Nigeria. So, what is causing the feeling? Some are perceived, they may not be real. Some are real. And for each one, they are resolvable. First by establishing a level playing ground; by having a transparent governance system. And when we do things, we bear in mind that we are in a country of diverse people, religions, and ethnicity. And, therefore, each person must be given a sense of belonging and inclusiveness. By the time we deal with poverty, injustice, insecurity, corruption will go. Because we are going to deal with corruption in multiple ways.
The first is to change the earning structure of our country. Nigerians are paid a starvation wage. Nigerians have become glorified beggars. They are paid wages that cannot take them home. Any Nigerian who is not doing multiple businesses or has multiple streams of income, or not depending on his parental heritage will steal. Quote me. Those who don’t steal, maybe don’t have the opportunity to steal. So, they can be pontificating like we are seeing now. But some don’t because you must balance the budget. You cannot be hungry and you see food and you say you fear God. You eat food and tell God to understand that you are hungry.
Which area in your view is President Buhari doing well?
Which area? Is it the economy? I can’t say yes. Is it security? I can’t say yes. You see corruption or anti-corruption, I can’t say yes. Is it social cohesion? Is it empathy for the people of Nigeria? There must be somewhere he is doing well. But I am looking for it.
Some Nigerians have described Nigeria as a failed state? Is Nigeria a failed state?
The issue is that certain things are already defined by the dictionary. For example, when somebody says he wants to restructure a country. Go and google or check the dictionary meaning of the word. There is a meaning to it. Restructure, re-engineer, re-invent, revamp, rejig. Check the dictionary. They have definitions. They say they want to restructure and somebody said what do you mean?
What am I supposed to mean? Go and read the dictionary meaning of restructuring. It was not created by me. It is an English word. What is the meaning of a failed nation? Nigeria may not be a classical failed nation. Because we are still meeting some of our international obligations. We are still attending to certain things while keeping up with some multilateral agreements. But, we have failed Nigerians, even if we are not a failed nation. It is a nation that has failed its citizens.
Because the primary thing Nigeria owes its citizens is the safety of lives. And it is number one, but today, people are dying. In Jos, Niger, I even saw some corrections that it is 13, not 31. So, should one have been killed? So, we should clap for the people that it is 13, not 31? Have you not lost count of the number of people being killed? So, if a government has failed to protect its people, people don’t travel with ease, they don’t sleep with their eyes closed, I think that country has failed its people. I don’t think we are a failed nation yet in the classical sense of a failed nation because we are not yet insolvent. Even though practically, we are close to that. All the money we are making we are using to service debts.
As long as we keep servicing debts, we are yet not a failed nation. It is when we fail to service these debts there is trouble. Since we are servicing and we are borrowing more, we are still surviving. But this is not the country we ought to be. We are supposed to be generating ten times the revenue we are borrowing. We ought to be going at a faster rate. Our level of poverty at 71 percent is appallingly dismal. It is unacceptable. Our high unemployment of 53 per cent to 55 per cent of youth unemployment is unacceptable. So, we are not a failed nation, but a failing nation.
What will you do differently, if you succeed to become President of Nigeria?
So many things. I will govern independently. I will live differently. I will be people-oriented. I am going to be consultative. I will create an opportunity for the voices of Nigerians to be heard. I am going to be a servant leader who will listen to what the people want. And do what they want. If I want them to do what I want, I will spend energy convincing them and showing them what I want to be done. Showing them is better. I am going to have a vision. I am coming with a vision which I have told you. I am going to make Nigeria the first world. I have never seen a presidential hopeful that has a vision.
I have never seen one. They come with manifestoes, which is a party. My vision is different from the party manifesto. Party manifesto may be written by other people. I wrote my vision. Because it is what is in my heart, I am coming with a vision. I am coming with a full understanding of Nigeria’s problem. Because I have been chairman of Nigeria Economic Summit, President of NECA, chairman of MAN, Ikeja, President Nigeria Chambers of Commerce, chairman of private sectors at some time.
Participated in the National Political Reform Conference, being involved in designing Vision 2010 and 2020. I understand Nigeria’s problems. I have travelled around the whole of this country. I don’t think any presidential candidate has done it. In the last year, I have gone around more than 30 states training young Nigerian group chapters. Now, I am going through the 36 states aligning with PDP’s new leadership. Yesterday, I was in Nasarawa, tomorrow I am going to be in Benue.
A week before, I was in Cross River. I am going around the country. No other presidential candidate past and present has travelled Nigeria through the roads I am following. Even in this period of insecurity that I am doing. It is because I want to feel the pain of Nigerians. I want to understand what their issues are. So, when I become president, I will not be distant or alien to the Nigerian people and their problems. That is what I am going to do differently.
What is different from the Vision 2010 and 2020 that you were part of? And what is new in your ambition?
Those visions were not owned by Mr. President. People developed a vision for them. And, even when we developed Vision 2020, lots of people around it did not understand it. They interpreted the vision from what we developed. Because it is not their vision.
Two of us see things from a different perspective. A leader must have a vision. And then recruit us to see that vision. Not applying to sell a vision to the leader. He cannot understand where you are coming from. He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to properly comprehend what you are saying. So, this is the first time a president is coming with his vision which he will sell to Nigeria, not to appoint some eggheads to sit down in the university and design a vision which the president doesn’t even understand what they are saying.
They spend two hours explaining to you a vision that has taken them one year to develop. How can it work? Nigeria’s visions are not working because they are not indigenous or owned by the leaders. We started dealing with Abacha. He didn’t want to see us at the Nigerian Economic Summit. But when he started thinking of transforming to please us, he agreed it was a vision.
Do you think he will ever have used it? When we finished it, we brought it to Obasanjo, and he refused to touch it because Abacha’s name was on it. When we started vision 2020, halfway, Yar’Adua died. We convinced Jonathan, and he let us do it, but when we finished, they announced it in Transcorp Hilton, and only the public sector knew a little bit about the vision and the rest of Nigeria didn’t know about it. A vision should be a uniting thing. Vision explains where we are going as a people.
As I said, we are going to be the first world, what we are going to get in the first world, I will tell you. What roles are you going to play as a journalist? What roles will medical doctors play? What roles will nurses and pharmacists play? What roles will the government play?
What roles will states play? Everybody will have his role applied to take us to that goal in days, weeks, months, and years. Day one, you ought to know what you should be doing. And I will know what I am supposed to be doing. And, on day two, we need to mention what we said we are going to do on day one. That is how you approach a vision. And you achieve it. And the man who does it is a champion. He is the person who is the dreamer. He is the person who is going to champion it. You cannot champion the vision of another man.
Since you are not the only presidential aspirant in your party, what mode of the primary would you prefer?
I will prefer direct primaries. For the major reasons that this is about democracy, and we are running a presidential system of government.
How do they do primaries in the United States of America? Is it not direct? So, how can we choose certain parts and leave the others? Because we want to manipulate. If it was an indirect primary, Trump would have been president. He had the opportunity to manipulate, but the system stopped him. So, direct primary gives powers to the people. Let the individual members of the party choose their nominee, and then he goes on to win the election.
But when you do this indirect primary, it is fraud. We know what they do. They will warehouse the delegates and shepherd them in a hotel, lock them up, and put them in buses. And treat them like slaves because they have given them 5,000 to 10,000 dollars. And they vote whether they believe or not. They dictate to the highest bidder. That is not democracy. That will not bring the change.
But I am not the president of Nigeria. I cannot make the rules myself. But whatever rules they make, I will be president by the grace of God. God has destined me to be president.
What went wrong with Nigeria producing its COVID-19 vaccines from the point of view of a pharmacist and industrialist?
It is because Nigeria has failed to invest in research and development. Nigeria has failed to develop its local resources. Nigeria prefers to depend on the world to do everything for it. Do you know that for many years most of the healthcare in Nigeria was funded by multilateral agencies? Malaria, Tuberculosis, maternal health, polio. What do we fund? The budget that goes to health, what is it used for?
Child mortality and others are funded by Bill and Melinda Gates; Global Funds, Cambridge, Oxford, etc. What is Nigeria using its own money for? I have asked that question. Yet, the doctors don’t work, but they are on strike every time. Because they are not paid what they are promised. So, what are we using our money for? I am sorry to say this because I belong to this country. I am not just speaking because I want to be president. I have endured it and spoken about it. I have spoken in summits and after we come up with proposals, green and white books, give it to the people, they abandon it. And they don’t look at it.
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One minister of state in 2009 or so, I was chairman of the Economic Summit. He finished his own story, and we took him to Transcorp. When we finished making a presentation, the man mounted the rostrum and said, these things you have been saying, who will implement it? If you want to come and implement it, then come down, otherwise, it is just mere talk. It went down. Folusho Philips and I were looking at the man. First, we are angry, but then, this is the man who has told us the truth that we are wasting our time. And it is evident because year upon year we go and beg them to come to the summit. We knelt, we went and begged the president.
For him to come, we will be begging and talking and fasting. We will beg the Vice President, Minister of Finance, and everybody; we will have to beg and kneel to come for a conference. We have arranged a conference with our money, we are the ones paying the bills. Come and use the platform, we have to beg the ministers, governors, like an honour they are doing to us. Brothers that must change. And it has to change.
