National Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun has said that the party has always meant well for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
“We have absolutely no interest in what is going on in the PDP. If you recall, we once urged their members who were trooping into the APC -as soon as we won the election- to remain in their party to give us the kind of opposition that will strengthen our democracy. This shows we mean well for them.”
Chief Oyegun who spoke to The Punch in an interview, hoped and prayed that the PDP will be able to rediscover from the trouble it had dragged itself into so as to enable it to start the process of rebuilding itself.
The APC chairman blamed PDP for inviting Senator Ali Modu Sheriff into its fold, saying that members of the party could not eat their cake and have it.
“When their factional chairman left us, they were celebrating, they were happy saying oh, we have got a big fish.
“Now that they see the kind of man he is, they are crying wolf. We have nothing to do with the travails of the PDP because in reality, we want a virile opposition. We want an opposition that is responsible, that has ideas to contribute. “They have failed to do this so far. So, it is not of any value to us that they are heating up and that they are losing the little bit of the sense of direction they had left. They are just looking for a scape goat.
“We asked them to go and re-engineer themselves and be as we were- a responsible opposition party. I just pray for them. Maybe, it is even good that what is happening is happening, because it will give us the time to take the tough decisions that the country which they ruined requires.”
Oyegun insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari is fulfilling what APC promised to do for the country, saying that the party never promised that in the first two months, everything will be okay.
“If only because we did not also predict that the price of crude oil will collapse the way it has collapsed, neither were we aware that the resources of the nation were in fact, diverted for electioneering purposes to the extent that even our troops who were fighting life and death battles in the North East were being deprived of the resources needed to carry out their assignments. In fact, their (troops) lives were out at unacceptable risk.”
“To come back to your question, what we promised to do was -to be honest with the people, to do things that will improve their lives in the long run and in the interim, to have a social net which is already going into operation. A lot of the things we promised, we are doing. We promised improved security in the North East, we have delivered on that. We promised a reshaping of the economy so that we can provide jobs, we are delivering on that. At present, the police is recruiting 10,000; there are also 500,000 teachers being recruited and the various other programmes are already in place to retrain and re-motivate youths to become self employed and of course, in the interim, they will get some payment that they can rely on whilst they are being retrained and re-oriented. All these are going on.”
On the issue of the President’s foreign trips which has become a talking point among Nigerians, the APC boss said that one of the benefits of such trips was the coming on stream of the construction of a new standard gauge railway system that will go all the way from Kano through Lagos to Calabar. “Things are happening; it’s just that these things take time to mature and have the desired effect on individual lives within the society.”
He denied that the leadership of his party has preferred candidates for the Edo and Ondo states governorship primaries, saying that party does not have preferred candidates anywhere.
According to him, the APC leadership is not in the habit of imposing candidates and that the party wants to win elections which can only be done when popular candidates are presented.
“We won the 2015 national elections because we had a popular candidate in the person of President Muhammadu Buhari. That is something that we want to replicate all over. “That does not mean of course, that individuals, not the party, cannot have their preferences and give help to these people in what manner they consider fit so long as the party itself whether in the state, in a senatorial area or in a federal constituency, does not come out to say this is our anointed candidate. That will not happen, not under my watch.”
On the allegation that the APC government is doing selective prosecution of suspects in its anti corruption crusade, Oyegun said that prosecutions are done on the basis of evidence and that if anyone has evidence against any APC members, he should provide it.
“This generalised rumour is not basis for serious action of that type. And in any case, there are a few APC leaders who are being called to question. It is not as one sided as it seems and it is not something to be apologetic for. When the then National Security Adviser was disbursing funds from his Automated Teller Machine (ATM), he did not call an opposition person to say take money. So, it’s a natural course of events. “This administration- if anybody can read; the President will not mind whose ox is gored so long as justice is done. It just happens that as at now, those whose hands are found in the till happen to be preponderantly in the PDP. But you can see that a lot of other investigations are ongoing and quite a few involve some APC leaders.
On the issue that APC has no firm grip of its members- especially at the National Assembly, Oyegun blamed it on the little time members had to melt things together, realising that fact that the party came together from three main parties and fractions of others with interests, differences in visions and perception, ambition and the rest of it.
“What we suffered, as serious as it was, was natural and we are getting out of it. The good thing is that, it has not hampered the operations of government. It has implications for the operations of the party which we are watching very closely, managing very closely and tying to make sure it does not cause serious disruption now or in the future to the party itself.
“It’s unfortunate but that is the situation and that is the reality and we are working within that confine.
On the comment by Senator Dino Melaye that the APC should be grateful that it didn’t lose the National Assembly leadership to the PDP instead of persecuting Saraki, the APC chairman said that the thing that rankled the APC leadership was the election of Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President. “Saraki is a member of the APC, much as the main line of the party would have wished a different result and a different scenario but we all find it very, very difficult to accept the emergence of a PDP person as his deputy.
On how APC raised its Presidential campaign funds against the backdrop of the investigation being carries out on PDP’s Presidential campaign funds, Oyegun said that the great misunderstanding the people have was that the government is not investigating PDP campaign funds.
“We are investigating records as to how public funds were hijacked for illegal purposes which were not budgeted for by the National Assembly. Nobody in business who contributed a lot of money has been dragged to any tribunal because he gave PDP funds. Public funds, public resources, money that belongs to you, me and the people of this country were stolen and diverted. Crude oil was being illegally sold to fund the campaigns and other political activities. Not just the campaigns, people just shared money and pocketed (it). It’s not company XYZ limited giving PDP X amount and about being dragged before EFCC, that is not what is going on. Anybody who steals from the treasury either to fund campaign, or to put in his pocket or to buy an estate in every part of the world would be asked questions. It must not be allowed. Nobody must be allowed to get away with that. It is not the same with campaign funding. We are not investigating PDP campaign funds.”
On the alarm raised by the minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed that he spoke too much before the 2015 election and that the backlash he has been receiving was like paying the price, Oyegun asked:
“What promises did we make? The President promised security; he promised the people jobs. He promised the people revitalisation of the economy and strongly promised the people the taming of corruption. A lot of things are under this and up till today, we still stand by this and we stand behind because these are the things he promised and he is determined to do them for the people. The results are already showing all over the place.
“The President did not make too many promises. A lot of other things people are saying are neither here nor there; people are saying things he never said. Things like: he will make the Naira equivalent to the Dollar; he never said things like that but people just manufacture and read what they want to read into these issues.” [myad]