Nigerians haven’t enjoyed dividends of democracy under APC govt – Ohuabunwa, PDP chieftain
Technical Advisor on Private Sector to the Atiku/Okowa Campaign Organisation, Sam Ohuabunwa, says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, will use the private sector as a spring bud to increase productivity in Nigeria. In this interview on Channels TV ‘Politics Today’, monitored by Linus Aleke, the founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Neimeth Pharmaceutical Company, speaks on other sundry issues.
Nigeria is more or less at a crossroads in terms of security, corruption, and economy, amongst others, and some Nigerians are wishing to die, can your party provide the leadership needed to rescue Nigeria out of this wood?
This is the time to be alive in Nigeria truly. If people wanted to die, I encourage them to be alive because what is about to happen is something we prayed for. And those of us who are Christians and Muslims have also fasted about it. As we know, God answers prayers and he does it in his way. I think PDP is perhaps the most equipped party to offer what Nigerians are looking for at this time, because of the experience. It is said, that experience is the best teacher, when people go through certain circumstances, they are better educated to be able to do things better than they thought. So, PDP has the experience, having governed Nigeria for 16 years, and being in opposition for 8 years. It has understood the areas that Nigerians are yearning for change, it has understood the areas it could have done better at the time it was in the helms of the affair. Therefore, it brings all that, with the large human resource that it has that are in the different sectors of the economy and politics to be able to bring the yearning of Nigerians to reality at this time. So, I think the party is set and equipped to be able to meet the needs and the cries of our people.
What is your view on the comment, credited to the APC Presidential Candidate, Bola Tinubu, that your party is a poverty development party?
Talk is cheap, facts are sacred. I think you are a very experienced journalist, what do figures say? What do statistics say? What was the poverty level, when PDP was in power? What is the poverty level today? What was the unemployment level when PDP was in power? What is the unemployment rate today? What was the inflation rate? What was the exchange rate? What was our placement in the human development index? What are the statistics today? What was the corruption perception index during the PDP administration? What is it today? In every area, including insecurity, Nigeria has degenerated to the level that it is regarded as one of the most unsafe countries in the world. We cannot see what is black and convince people it is white. PDP took over the reign of power from the military government and did its best to turn us on the path of modern economics, politics, and governance. That was why PDP came with deregulation, commercialization, and all other efforts to open up the economy, so that the private sector can participate and foreign investment can flow in. PDP did its best to renegotiate our debts so that we became credible and worthy that investors and businesses can come, that was what PDP did. It changed the status of Nigeria from a pariah nation to a nation that was globally respected. It could not have been finished in 16 years, nation building is an ongoing process. So, for the pot to be calling the kettle black, is amusing. If there is any poverty development party, it is clear that it is APC. It is clear, not because I said it but because of the number of poverty in the land today. Nigeria became the poverty capital of the world during the reign of this government. Nigeria has the highest number of youth unemployed which went up to fifty percent, misery index climbed. There is nothing that Nigerians had enjoyed in this government, nothing because they can no longer buy anything. Can you imagine the cost of petrol, I was buying petrol for N500 and yet we are budgeting 3.6 trillion for subsidy payment. We are paying a subsidy, the cap has been removed and the prices are haywire. What kind of a country is this? Between November and now, many more Nigerians had been driven into poverty. I met a lot of people at the Motor Park, who came and couldn’t pay their fares back because prices jumped up due to the change in the cost of petrol in a nation that produces fuel. This is a joke by the APC, Nigerians can see and hear.
Why should Nigerians look in the direction of your party’s candidate, Atiku Abubakar?
They should look in his direction because he is the most experienced. Trust me, experience counts in governance. He is going to come to power if he is elected by Nigerians and he will hit the ground. He is not going to be learning, he is not going to be understanding the interface between the three arms of government. He is not going to study to understand the interaction between the three tiers of government, federal, state, and local government areas. These are things that you may not understand if you are out of power and you take time to learn them when you come in. Nigeria is in such a state that we don’t have much time for learning. The need to just hit the ground and start running is key. Atiku is prepared, having been Vice President for 8 years. Whether we like it or not, in the 8 years he governed along with Obasanjo, we know that our country moved in the right direction. It was not as if it attained the highest level of growth but, Nigeria began to recover.
Can we trust Atiku?
Why would we not trust him? What has he said that he failed to fulfil? In which area? Is it in trust?
The reason why I ask this question is that Nigerian politicians often say one thing and do the other and this leads to pessimism about them.
First, is that I talked about their experience, and track record, if we check the work that was given to Atiku to do, as Vice President, along with running the government, we would discover that he discharged it creditably well. Every insinuation otherwise had been proven false. Secondly, Atiku had learnt his lessons, much more than anybody else, so he has experience on his side. Thirdly, Atiku is currently building up a team of versatile Nigerians in the different sectors of the economy. Today, I am the campaign technical advisor in the private sector, because he knows that I was the chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, and I was the Chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria. Because he has the desire to use the private sector as a spring bud to increase productivity and investment in our country, he is assembling experts. So, he is bringing a couple of people into his team, which will help him focus on those areas that will create employment.
Since you are acting in that capacity for Atiku’s campaign organization, what kind of economy is he trying to build?
He will build an economy that will be private sector lead.
That is a capitalist economy, which seeks to exploit the people more, is that not so?
No, a capitalist economy is an economy that allows every individual, who has the desire to create wealth, to do so, without undue interference by the state that is what the capitalist economy is all about.
In countries where it has been operated, it is to the detriment of the average citizens.
Yes, that is why there is a need to protect those who are unable to compete, through deliberate government policies. The critical thing in capitalism is that it allows individual development. People often try to turn things to suit their argument. Today we are complaining that our refineries are not working, if we know the amount that the government has invested in the refineries, we are importing fuel. Would we not have preferred that those refineries were sold off? One was sold to Dangote, but he returned it, and now he has built a new one that is capitalism. The whole country is now hoping on the Dangote Refinery. It is the capitalist that creates the wealth, but when the wealth is created it should be distributed in a manner. That is why those who create the wealth are taxed and the tax is used to take care of those who are unable to create wealth.
