Prof Pat Utomi Bombshell
As 2023 draws closer, the political parties and gladiators are playing their games even as no one seems to be paying attention to the man on the street and the future of the country.
TheNiche, in its agenda-setting tradition, is aggregating the views of sundry political actors.
In this very first of the “Towards 2023” series, your ever-refreshing and inimitable online newspaper went for Patrick Okedinachi Utomi, popularly known as Pat Utomi, a professor of political economy and management expert; Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of Nigeria; politician and a former presidential candidate; founder of Centre for Value in Leadership (CVL); member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); social mobiliser par excellence, and what an interview it turned out to be.
Of course, a journalist himself, Utomi has formidable media presence. But this is an interview like no other. He spoke from the heart.
Samplers:
“Nigeria has not just been able to rise to its potential because it has not had leaders in power. It has had state captors. It has had adventurers of power, entrepreneurs of power.”
“I knew that Buhari was going to fail. By the time he constituted his cabinet, the so-called anti-corruption government, those who came in, I don’t have any evidence of anything but at least public perception was that these were some of the most corrupt people in public office in Nigeria. You don’t engage in a fight against corruption driven by the most corrupt people, perceived at least, so I knew the game was up from the beginning.
“Nigeria is collapsed already. We are in anarchy. How many of them can travel from Abuja to Kaduna? Let them just continue this nonsense for three more years and they won’t be able to walk on the streets of Nigeria. They better submit to this thing now to save themselves because they will be lynching them on the streets of Nigeria. The way this country is going, that is what you will see happen. They better seize this opportunity to rescue themselves. They don’t know what happened to Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania?”
“I just think that the quality of leadership we have in Nigeria is not smart enough to see through the consequence of their behaviour. They act on the emotion of the moment and they sentence their country to many years of servitude.“
“We are expecting that these two – APC and PDP – will implode. These are gangs of thieves looking at how to share money. They will fight and it will implode. Invariably they will implode. So, let us create something to build a new Nigeria. That is what the process is for me.”
It is Utomi at his analytical best. Call him angry, you won’t be far from the truth!
Keep a date with: www.thenicheng.com tomorrow, October 19, 2021. You will be glad you did.
