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SENATOR OJUDU WRITE APC LEADERS ON ‘DANGER AHEAD’
THE WAY TO GO
By Senator Babafemi Ojudu
I decided to write this owing to the
strong perceptions and thoughts that I
have been having in recent times, first
concerning our country Nigeria, and
second concerning the role of our
party, the APC, in the historic moment
that we may soon be passing
through. The possibility of Nigeria’s
imminent collapse seems to loom
larger and larger. And then I see the
prospect growing stronger and clearer
that, if Nigeria is to survive, the APC
will have to be the force to save,
revive and rebuild Nigeria.
I believe that a historic opportunity is
approaching our party. And I believe
that our party is being called upon to
do all that will be needed to prepare
to step into the fray creditably and
effectively, in order to save the
country, protect democracy and
remake Nigeria as the pride of all
black people of the world.
While I was considering writing this
piece, two incidents on the Nigerian
stage emphasized the significance and
urgency of it – both of them letters
written to President Goodluck
Jonathan and revealed in the media.
The first was by the Governor of the
Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, where he
raised the mind-boggling allegation
that the country’s biggest public
revenue-earning institution, the NNPC,
has been stealing the country’s
patrimony.
According to the CBN Governor, the
NNPC has failed to remit almost $50
billion representing 76% of the value
of crude oil lifting between 2012 and
2013.
Since the CBN Governor’s letter
reached the President and since it was
revealed in the media, there have been
denials here and there and even the
CBN Governor has attempted a recant.
But how many Nigerians believe his
recantation? Oil is Nigeria’s lifeline.
That even matters relating to the
country’s lifeline have been handled in
this manner by the NNPC and the
CBN is yet another indication of the
hole into which the country has sunk.
The second was the more
controversial letter sent to the
President by former President
Olusegun Obasanjo. Obasanjo raised a
number of apocalyptic issues that
could have been dismissed as
improbable but for the fact that we
are all living witnesses to some of the
already evident consequences of these
issues. Those we are yet to experience
are evidently in the womb of time.
Doubtless, President Obasanjo is the
least credible person to raise the
issues he raised in his controversial
letter to President Jonathan, because
he, for the most account, is “the
author and finisher” of the fate that
has befallen the country since he
became president in 1999 and since
he violated every rule in the book to
install his two successors.
Yet, if President Obasanjo and those
like him who have ensured that
Nigeria would reach this precipice due
to their unflinching opposition to good
governance, justice, equity, true
federalism and human development,
could be alarmed by what we are
witnessing and may soon be
witnessing, then, all men and women
of goodwill must realize that the
Nigerian polity has been heated up to
the point that a conflagration is
imminent.
These two significant letters are
coming against the backdrop of a
collapse in governance at the centre,
the loss of Nigeria’s sovereignty to
the Boko Haram insurgents and
terrorism in the north-east corner of
the country, the reports of escalating
oil thefts in the Niger Delta, the
corrosive consequences of a bleeding
economy, and a ruling party that is at
war with itself.
In short, virtually all the most
important pillars of strength on which
Nigeria rests are wobbling or even
crumbling.
Only our gradually emerging party,
APC, seems now to hold any promise
of strength for Nigeria for the future.
And so the party must rouse itself,
and rise up to the historic duty to
lead the ramparts of the urgently
needed national redemption. We must
(re)organise our party and position it
as a viable, virile and strong
alternative to the rotten ruling party
and the danger that it constitutes to
the security, and even to the bare
existence, of Nigeria.
THE STATE OF THE NATION
There is no doubt – as reflected in the
two letters above and the admission
of even leading members of the ruling
party, and also leading democratic
voices in the land – that Nigeria is on
the brink. What will matter, however,
is that we, as patriotic and
progressive opposition politicians,
should see the rot and the looming
disaster as opportunities to reengineer
politics in the country and remake
Nigeria.
We cannot afford to ignore the
warning signs or to see the dangers
that lie ahead. We would have so
failed if we do nothing concrete and
fast.
We cannot, for instance, as a party
and as citizens, delude ourselves that
Nigerians of different ethnic groups
are not thinking of alternatives to
Nigeria. As things are today people
are meeting all over the country
preparing for what to do in case the
country collapses. It is therefore
incumbent on those of us, in
particular, leaders of the opposition,
as leaders who believe in a united and
indivisible Nigeria, to do something
urgently to save the nation from
disappearing into the garbage dump
of history.
In the womb of every decaying or
perishing order is the possibility of a
new birth.
The PDP is that decaying order and
the APC must constitute the new
birth. However, the APC cannot be so
until we the leaders, have resolved to
make the necessary sacrifices to build
a party that is not only willing, but
also ready, to provide hope for the
people and keep the faith that
Nigerians are waiting to invest in us.
I do not think there is any doubt left
that the PDP has ceased being a
significant factor. It is worse than a
house divided unto itself, thus it
cannot stand. Its heritage of
crookedness and poor governance
from the federal centre has at last
caught up with it; Nigerians are
increasingly rejecting and denouncing
it; and the international community
has at last seen it for what it has
always been – the agency that has
been distorting and ruining Nigeria. In
all essence, the PDP has lost all
semblance of power.
I repeat, power has being lost by the
PDP, but it is yet to be found by
anyone else. Indeed, the time is up for
the PDP to be superseded by a strong
alternative. That strong alternative is
only waiting to find the power lost by
the ruling party. However, that strong
alternative must not only be willing, it
must be ready to find the power on
behalf of the people.
That strong alternative, let me warn,
can be anybody or any group. It will
be a tragedy for Nigeria if either PDP
– or factions within it – is allowed to
regain the power it has lost or if anti-
democratic forces are allowed to fill
the vacuum. Consequently, a lot relies
on the APC.
The APC must win the confidence of
Nigerians, find that power, and
salvage Nigeria. History is calling on
the APC to help secure the future of
Nigeria as a united, successful and
prosperous country.
If the APC fails to deliver on this
burden that the people, history, and
posterity have placed on it, it will be
goodbye to a federal, united and
prosperous Nigeria. Should we allow
this to happen?
WHAT IS TO BE DONE
Our party has all the critical potentials
needed to help save Nigeria – to find
power so as to use it in rebuilding
and remaking Nigeria.
We can leverage on the quality of
governance in the APC states in
Southwestern Nigeria and a few other
states controlled by the new members
of our party. We can use these states
as the base to advance the cause of
good governance, social and economic
development, justice and equity in
Nigeria – with the credible promise
that we are set to establish these
same qualities of governance in the
federal centre.
In short, we should set out to use the
states that we now control to brand
the type of new government and new
order that we are offering to
Nigerians.
Very important also, we need to
embark on a major programme of
massively selling our party. Without
question, our on-going political
manoeuvring and high-profile contacts
are valuable in the elite-driven politics
of Nigeria. But we need now to start
out very powerfully to sell our party to
the common people of Nigeria. That
will involve selling our party’s core
messages to the people of Nigeria –
in ways similar to the UPN’s selling of
its core messages in the late -1970s.
If we were to conduct a survey across
Nigeria today, we would discover that
Nigerians cannot yet recognise the
core messages of our new party. They
may see some of our leaders as
different from the present crop of PDP
leaders, but most would find it
difficult to identify our core messages
– what our party stands for.
Therefore, I am suggesting an urgent
task of branding for our party, which
will involve the identification of core
messages that we will sell to
Nigerians across the length and
breadth of the country. This core
messages will constitute the
foundation upon which we will
mobilise our people, re-sensitise them
to the cancer that the PDP constitutes
to the Nigerian body-politic, and
propel them towards supporting our
party and gaining power for the
benefit of the majority of Nigerians.
There are several critical
constituencies in Nigeria that the APC
is yet to speak to in the language of
their fundamental concerns and
interests, so that they can support us
in building a mass party. These
include women, the youth, workers,
students, the unemployed, etc. We
must have core messages that speak
to the yearnings, aspirations and
frustrations of these and other groups.
It is by doing this that we will lift
Nigerian politics from the gutter and
present our party to the world as not
only a party of concerned people, but
also a party of people of ideas who
also have the capacity for action. As
things stand now, we have only been
talking about what is wrong with the
PDP, we are yet to present a
programmatic agenda about what we
seek to do about Nigeria. Yet, we
have enough experienced leaders,
intellectuals, visionaries and men and
women, young and old, with ideas on
how to propel our party to power
through mass mobilization based
around an agenda for national rebirth.
There also are very many Nigerians
who do not now belong to our party –
intellectuals, labour unionists,
business people, professionals, leaders
of various societal groups at home
and in the diaspora – who are
seriously concerned about Nigeria and
who, if we were to strive to involve
them in the task of Nigeria’s rebirth,
would warmly join the struggle.
In fact, enrolling such elements in our
party’s struggle will have the effect of
giving our party the image of a party
that deserves to be trusted to chart a
new path for Nigeria. Nigeria is facing
a desperate emergency. Our party
must not only demonstrate that we
recognise this, it must also take the
kinds of steps that can convince our
people and the international
community that we are capable of
rallying Nigerians in new ways for new
goals – for the making of a new
Nigeria.
In the few months of the existence of
the APC, by acts of omission or
commission, we have presented the
picture of a party that wants power
for the sake of power, despite the
glaring incompetence of the ruling
party and its office-holders. As the
PDP at the centre fumbles from one
scandal to the other, we have failed to
seize the day to present our party as
not only the viable, but the sole,
alternative to the PDP, not merely as
a group, but also clearly as a radically
different body of ideas and ethos of
society, leadership obligations, human
rights, etc. We need to strike out to
create a solid identity for our party as
the party of the people that will give
power back to the people.
We MUST start today to do so.
As I mentioned earlier, apart from
coming out with our core messages,
we must also fashion out a way to
fire the imagination of the most
important constituencies among the
people and the electorate. We must
create an inspiring agenda to give
hope to millions of our youths,
including school age young people,
and employed, under-employed or
unemployed youths who have become
cynical about politics and government.
We need to identify not only the
critical issues to address about them
and to them, but to also choose the
right messengers to deliver this
messages. We must have the leading
voice and be the leading voice for
youth issues.
There are youth leaders who are
wholly trusted by youths. We must
find a way to sell the people-centred
ideology of our party to such youth
leaders and convince them of the need
to be on the good side of history.
These youth leaders will be the ones
speaking to the youths on our behalf
in the language that the youths
understand. This is the only way to
galvanize youths and get them
convincingly on board the APC train.
There was a time China and South
Korea were sending their youths to
study in the US and Europe, with an
elicited promise to come back and
build their countries. These youths,
now adults, are in charge of every
sector of these Nation’s economies
today. We can include it in our
education programme that the best
youths will have the opportunity to
learn the best of technology,
statesmanship, economic and human
management in Europe or the US and
return to take charge of the country’s
economy. Unless we make the youths
feel as though Nigeria belongs to
them, we would not be able to
convince them as to the genuineness
of our party as there is already the
mistrust and belief that the older
generation does not believe in their
abilities and potentials and is not
ready to relinquish power to them.
We must develop a youth committee
that will use all the new information
and communication technologies to
raise millions of members and
potential supporters among the youth
for our party. This can be the basis
for engineering a new form of
membership recruitment and
commitment based on new
technologies.
But we cannot do this without first
coming out with what we seek to do
about a society that hurts so many of
our youths. And these relate to our
agenda on education, youth
employment, skills acquisition and
training, health and social welfare.
Information & Communication
Technology and agriculture are major
employers of labour and they are not
necessarily long term. We can key into
this.
Regarding women, who constitute
more than half of the population of
Nigeria, the party also needs to
promote genuine leaders among
women within the party and attract
many more brilliant, energetic,
patriotic and committed women to the
party. We must choose women leaders
who would not be leaders just for the
sake of personal aggrandizement and
acquisitions, but those who are
committed to the cause of our women
folk.
For this, we have many potential
women leaders in the civil society that
need to be invited to join our party
and lead the recruitment of women
members and potential voters across
the country. But also, first we need to
have an agenda for women in our
party programme, upon which the
activities of our women leaders will be
based – beyond arranging a bazaar of
ostentatious display of fashion and
beauty.
This must include issues affecting
women and children, including health
(maternal and infant mortality are
important questions to address in our
agenda), education (including of the
girl-child), sexual discrimination and
abuse, gender equality, employment,
social welfare, etc. Once this is done,
we can give a mandate to our new
women leaders to start an
unparalleled process of recruitment of
women membership, one that would
be unrivalled by any other party in
Nigeria’s history.
As regards labour, even though there
is a Labour Party in name in Nigeria,
one of our most important focuses of
attention is the labour force. The
present unemployment rate in Nigeria
is almost 24%. This is an unjust and
unacceptable number. When those
who are under-employed or not
gainfully employed are added to the
statistics, the percentage can be as
high as 40% or more.
Youth and women unemployment
represent the worst aspects of this
plague. The reality is that between a
quarter to almost half of our potential
labour force in Nigeria under the PDP
government are either unemployed or
underemployed. This is a disaster that
we can use in campaigning against
the ruling party and also in mobilising
support and building a grassroots
party.
We have a former leader of the
Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) as a
governor in our party. We can use his
experience and network to create a
critical wing of the party that will
mobilise the labour force (both the
employed and unemployed) to spread
the gospel of our party. However, as
stated earlier, first we need to have a
labour policy and an agenda for
massive job creation within the first
two years of our coming to power at
the centre.
We have the resources to mine data
and create a viable agenda that we
can present to Nigerians and upon
which we can campaign for the
support of our people.
In all these cases, we need to
replicate the leadership of these roles
at every level, zonal, state, local
government and ward. And there must
be intense networking and synergy at
all these levels.
Related to the above is the challenge
of how to ensure that we have a free
and fair election in Nigeria during the
next major elections. Delta and
Anambra States in recent times have
demonstrated to us that the PDP, with
its local allies in the states, is growing
bolder by the day in electoral robbery.
The Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) has become an
accomplice to the regular crime of
electoral theft. There are many
measures that our party needs to take
to forestall rigging of elections.
One of such measures, I like to
suggest is to recruit and train a large
cadre of youths across the country
who have enough understanding and
commitment to monitor elections and
resist election rigging.
The PDP must realise that it cannot
and will not get away with stealing
the people’s mandate again in 2015.
This has to be demonstrated to the
party well ahead of the 2015
elections. We have the backing of the
international community in this area
and we must seek their support and
reaffirm their commitment.
The Nigerian Diaspora is another
critical area which the APC leadership
is yet to pay adequate attention to.
Nigeria now has one of the most
sophisticated, the most educated and
the most engaged Diaspora in the
world. In the United States, Nigerians
constitute one of the most
educationally-advanced Diaspora
groups.
The APC needs the help of the
Diaspora. They have unbelievable
skills, capacities and networks that
can be useful in winning elections and
running a good government. And most
of the people in the Diaspora are
united about their dissatisfaction with
what the PDP has made of Nigeria
since 1999.
Many of them are dual citizens who
have influence in their countries of
domicile, which have also become
their home countries. They are willing
to help; we must embrace this. We
need to have a high-level Diaspora-
Affairs Committee in the APC which
will organize conferences of Diaspora
units for cross fertilization of ideas
and conscious recruitment of talented
individuals into the party leadership
structure.
The intellectual resources in Nigeria
too must not be ignored. The APC
needs to consciously recruit
intellectuals, scholars, professionals,
brilliant and resourceful young men
and women that can form a leadership
recruitment cell for the party going
into the future.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo used this to a
great advantage in achieving all that
we today acknowledged he achieved.
They can serve as useful resource
base for the party’s agenda, policies
and processes. These are the
resources that our leaders will also
depend on in responding to critical
issues and the challenges that the
party will face from now on.
