All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman Comrade Adams Oshiomhole spoke with reporters in Lokoja, Kogi State capital on preparations for next Saturday’s presidential election.
Do you think President Buhari has fulfilled his promises to Nigerians to seek for a second term?
The PDP ruled for 16 years without fixing our problems and now you are saying that President Buhari would have fixed Nigeria in three and half years. President Muhammadu Buhari has fulfilled most of his promises to Nigerians and you cannot tell me that he would have fixed the country in three and half years. We are on the road to sustainable growth and development. Our local industries are very very firm now and that is the root of the development of any country and massive investment in infrastructure which I believe President Buhari has been doing. Addressing the infrastructural issues, reviving the rail way system, dealing with the issue of power even with the way and manner that the PDP privatized the Discos, giving them to those who neither has the capacity to run them nor the resources to invest. But this is not to suggest that everything is fine. If we think that we have completed our mission we won’t bother ourselves.
But do you think that those things that you have done will earn your party victory at the polls?
Let me tell you, what Nigerians have always wanted is an honest leader. You can accuse Buhari of anything but you cannot say that Buhari is corrupt. Even the worst foreign leader has acknowledged that Buhari is a man of honour and integrity, no President before him commanded that kind of respect, not even Obasanjo. And when the British Prime Minister had the guts to say, Nigeria is fantastically corrupt, our President said but you are the custodian of the corrupt money, return the money to me. How many Presidents can look at the British Prime Ministers face and say that to her, but he did. So I am not suggesting that those who are going to vote for us think that the problems are solved, they see honest intensions by the President and he is pursuing honest solutions.
People are saying that your party will not win South East and South South, they will not win in the North Central and they will balkanize the votes the President has always had in other parts of the North. And they are saying your party cannot win in the free and fair election?
The campaigns have started. You can actually go round and find out what people think. And the things about choice, is that no man is good and no man is bad. But when you compare one man with another, no man will compare President Buhari to Atiku, those who know Atiku and what he stands for. And this reminds me the point we need to make about foreign interest in our election, we begin to see foreign countries go beyond their bounds, more or less interfering. Right now Americans are talking about the Russian interference in American election. It is a subject of investigation as we speak. So no country will tolerate interference. But that you provide a system to monitor and ensure that you assist countries to strengthen democracy, all of that is fine. But don’t get to a level of interference.
When you hear Atiku saying, I will privatize NNPC, even if they will kill him, I don’t know why he had to add that one. Who will kill him? I am not sure how many Nigerians have money to buy NNPC, he is speaking to his Western audience. When he says he will float the naira, you know whose values he is piloting. Those are IMF agenda, float the naira. So in Atiku’s world floating naira means one thousand naira to one dollar so be it. You think he does not know what he is saying. Of course there are countries if they have their way they want Nigeria to be perpetually under developed.
But do you think President Buhari will earn votes like he earned in 2015?
Of course he will earn more votes, you know why? Somehow, there are things I really don’t want to talk about. PDP tried to give the impression at a point, if you review some reports in the past, including some stories in the print media, there was an attempt to link President Buhari to Boko Haram. That they brought him just to make Nigeria ungovernable for Jonathan. But they change the narrative now since he became President. There is nothing they have not said. Today, the man from the South East who has seen Buhari building the River Niger, it is no longer rhetoric, he did not have to change his name to Azikiwe, but he is building River Niger. He is restoring the dual carriage way between Onitsha and Enugu. He is building one connecting to Port Harcourt, there are a number of roads in the South East that he is doing. So those ordinary traders who ply those roads, they are going to vote for Buhari. Last time they did not vote for him. Look at the outing we had in Enugu, we can see the difference between the campaign we had in 2015 in Enugu and now. We were in Akwa Ibom, you must have seen the pictures, that is the South South where they call the safe haven of the PDP, it is no longer going to be so.
But some will say that crowd at rallies may not be the true reflection of votes?
What are the true reflection of votes? Social media? Let me tell you, most times the crowd reflect the true picture of acceptance of that person. Go and organize a rally and say you want to be President and see. I have ran elections, I was a governor twice, so I understand the language of the electorate. I can read the body language of the electorate, I know where we are strong and where we are weak. So if you were to go to Kebbi as I have done, and stay with ordinary farmers who are experiencing new posterity because unlike PDP government, this President said we must eat what we produce. Atiku says he is going to renew importation, he will remove the ban on 42 items so that we can go back to begin to import tooth pick, import plantain, import Amala. He is going to export our jobs and import unemployment to the country. Because there is no miracle about job creation. What this government is doing by insisting that you prohibit the importation of rice, requires huge political will. PDP producing Atiku is the best thing that has happened to this election. The day PDP selected him, we were happy. First because he cannot plead innocence. Atiku has been in government and he was a party to many decisions, he superintended over the privatization of many enterprises, he was involved in many pronouncements. He was one Vice President who was so ambitious. So his face is well known.