TAYO ALASOADURA, former Ondo State Commissioner for Finance and chieftain of All Progressives Congress (APC) talks to Special Correspondent, JULIUS ALABI on Nigeria’s dwindling financial resources and chances of his party in 2015 Ondo politics.
Dwindling financial resources and default in payment of salaries by states
It is just administrative lapse, lack of planning. It is in this country for the first time in my life that we will have a portfolio called “Coordinating Minister”. There is nothing like that. What is the work of Mr. President? The President should be the coordinator of everything. He should be on top of every ministry but now he has ceded part of his own job to the Minister who cannot even run her own ministry efficiently. It is unfortunate. But it will be so when you have a corrupt administration running the affairs of a country. If you have up and doing administration, why did we do planning? We have five years short term planning, 10 years middle planning and 20-25 years long term planning. A very good administration will see this coming and it would edge as we call it in accountancy. When the foreign currency improves in value and your own is dwindling, by the time you realise this, you would have made enough money to compensate for the dwindling fortune at the local level. This government is inept and it has no vision.
What do you think may be the solution?
I want to plead to Nigerians that enough is enough. As I use to say ‘let us make a change’, try APC, trust us and you would be happy for it. We have told you what APC would do; that we would provide 20,000 jobs for youths in every state in every year; that in eight years, we would have provided 10,000 megawatts; in a short period of time that insecurity would be brought to an end.
Governors in PDP not trying their best
They cannot do it because if you are surrounded by angry and hungry lions and you stay somewhere and you are contend, you now want to use your contentment to pacify those hungry ones that are surrounding you, they will eat you up. There is no way a progressive can thrive when taken together with those who don’t have the interest of the people at heart.
Progressives in the PDP?
Of course, there are progressives in the PDP. I was in PDP and I am a progressive and I have always been a progressive. Even in APC today, there are conservatives but the good thing is that the people who are progressives are more than those who are conservatives. In any organisation, you cannot have all of them to say they are on the same level. But remember the saying of the wise one, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the theory of the thesis and anti-thesis that at a time all the progressives from different political parties would come together while all the conservatives from different political parties would also come together. That is what is happening in Nigeria today.
Moving from PDP to APC
Well, there are two sides to it. When my good friend, Dr. Olusegun Agagu was alive, he led us very well. He was a good man and we were so friendly that I thought whenever I needed his assistance too like I gave him all the support when I was serving with him, he would give me support. I wanted to run for the position of a governor in this state and I told him and then I could not see the support coming and this made me not to be too happy. If it were somebody else not giving me support, I would not mind. but somebody who you had served diligently, somebody who you had committed everything to, somebody you made his administration one of the best in this country and the best this state ever produced. I thought those services given should have been enough for him to give me support.
The second part of it was that I saw PDP drifting. When we started PDP, we had this aim and objective to make Nigeria better but after sometime, I discovered that majority of the people in PDP were out to grab money, steal as much money as possible and I as a Chartered Accountant trained in the act of transparency and accountability could not discountenance such bad behaviours. That would not be in the interest of our people. I came to politics to serve, I came from a very poor family, worked very hard to get the little I got and after that to now be a party to the wanton plundering of the Nigeria resources, I don’t think I will like that.
You were not given enough room to operate?
You know you can start something or have a vision about something and along the way, people can derail. PDP has derailed! What is attractive in PDP today? Is it the abduction of over 200 of the Chibok girls that government has not found solution to? Is it the stealing of our money by ministers? There is massive corruption in this country that our President does not know the difference between stealing and corruption. Is it a government that cannot arm our solders to confront the insurgency in our country? To be honest with you, PDP has derailed. The people in PDP are not doing what we set out the party to be and I cannot be part of them anymore.
APC having a way in 2015 general election
To be Honest with you the chances of APC are bright. Before Governor Olusegun Mimiko joined PDP, our party was number three in this state. But the day he joined, it made our job easy. People can now see which one is a progressive party and which one is not. Don’t forget that Ondo State has a lot of educated people. You can put wool to cover their faces for sometimes, but you cannot do it all the time. With the influx of people joining the party now and with what we are hearing from the ordinary people on the street that they have tasted PDP and LP, let us test APC, I think we have good chances of winning this state.
Current political situation in Ondo State
Any house built on quicksand will collapse. That is what Bible said. Mimiko has been a political maverick, a man who is totally unreliable, a man who comes to greet you in the house and one would have to accompany him to the front of the house to see whether it is morning or afternoon. When you are so unpredictable, one day you will dribble yourself and there is a proverb that says those who are too wise sometimes overreach themselves. I think the chicken has come home to roost for him, for the defunct Labour Party in Ondo State and the Peoples Democratic Party.