Chief Chyna Iwuanyanwu, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that President Muhammed Buhari would have sullied the fragile peace in the Niger Delta, and turned it to a war zone, if not for his Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo.
In an interview with SUN newspaper, Iwuanyanwu also said Buhari was not prepared for governance and outlined several failings of his administration.
Excerpts:
Two parties, APC and PDP are trading blame of how the nation got into recession. How do you react to this?
What I know about governance is that there is continuity in government, where one person stops, the other begins. Before you decide to contest and take over power you must have a blue print, they did not have a blue print until one and a half years ago, even to appoint ministers took them six months, it has never happened.
In Ghana, the president appoints ministers within seven days, they promised us that they were going to get technocrats and they ended up with well known people. So nothing changed, when in fact we were expecting change. We have seen that the All Progressives Congress (APC) was not prepared, in fact they did not expect the victory which the former President, Goodluck Jonathan gave to them on a platter of gold.
To now blame the same Jonathan is not right because when Obasanjo took over the mantle of leadership in 1999, the country was at its lowest level he did not worry himself blaming Abacha, of course he was dead, Abdusalam who took over after, was never blamed, rather he assembled a team and set up a system that rolled Nigeria out of it all. The only thing these people have held on is corruption.
But corruption did not actually start with Jonathan, it started with the military government of which Buhari was one of them. So basically, what caught up with them was that the oil price came down, if the oil price was still as it was during Jonathan, there wouldn’t have been recession and they would have not seen anybody to blame.
Secondly, the Niger Delta boys started striking and the quantity that was available for sale also dropped. It’s a combination of these factors that rattled them, confused them plus their unpreparedness for governance and that is what brought us to where we are today.
Are you going to blame Jonathan for the oil price that dropped or are you going to blame him for the Niger Delta agitation? He was able to manage it, you brought out soldiers to go and kill them. If not for the Vice president, Osinbajo who changed the parameters by going there to dialogue with them, If we had allowed Buhari, that place would have been a war zone and there would be no oil at all.
If you meet a problem, solve it, move us away from it. If you tell us first year Jonathan caused it, second year Jonathan caused it, going to third year again Jonathan caused it. I mean it shows that you have no plans to get us out of it.
All I am saying is that we have tolerated the blame for a long time, from the second year, no amount of blame would be acceptable anymore, let them get down to the business of delivering democracy, the change they promised us, they owe us because we did not ask for it, they promised us change, we voted for change and we have the right to demand change. Look at the roads, there is confusion all over the country, the senate is not agreeing with the presidency, inside the senate there is problem, the APC is as if it does not exist, the president operates as if he is not a product of a party and all kinds of things.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting was recently cancelled because of Sallah break, is there something the president is not telling Nigerians?
There is a lot. Nigerians are being deceived. Here is a government that promised us change and they are dealing in absolute secrecy even the health of our president is secret, everything is secret. Now how do you imagine a whole Charles Okputa and his team says he should step down, if somebody says resume or resign, is it an insult? I don’t see anything that should provoke them to go and hire some miscreants and almajiris to arm Okputa and his team.
In a Democratic system, they should have their say, the man should have his say, but they went to the extent of physically attacking him in Wuse market, manhandling him and breaking his cars and we have found out through intelligence that the attackers were sponsored.
Basically, as far as I’m concerned, Nigeria is in a state of confusion or what I call spiritual cross road, nothing is working. The man hurriedly came back, if his return was planned, his aides who are in Nigeria could have gone to his office and found out the rat that invaded his office and they could have disinfected and prepare the office for his return. Nothing brought the president back, and it is either Charles Okputa or they had some other intelligence that they are hiding from us. The way he came back was unplanned. Now he came back the first Wednesday, it was an opportunity for him to meet his ministers, he did not, and he said he would work from bedroom. For three months, rats droves our President away from his office.
I am into building and decoration; there is no damage that rats can cause that the problem cannot be solved in one week. If Julius Berger enters that place they can turn it round in one week to get our president’s office ready. These people are deceiving us and for you to tell the whole world that rat invaded the office and it would take three months, is not fair. How does a British man look at you? How does an American man look at you? They would just be amused they cannot understand what is going on.