Honourable Aliyu Akuh, former Deputy Speaker and a two-time serving member of the Kogi State House of Assembly, in an interview with Julius Atabor, speaks on the chances of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in future elections.
What does the recent Supreme Court judgement portend for PDP?
It is a landmark judgement. It will promote democracy in its entirety in Nigeria, because without opposition, strong opposition for that matter, democracy cannot be entrenched. With the judgement, even the ruling party and the government need to sit up. They have taken advantage with what has happened to PDP but with the judgement, they need to brace up for competition and it will be good for democracy and the people of this great country will ultimate be the beneficiaries. There will be a turn around in the polity.
It is clear that APC has been its own opposition because most attacks are coming from within. How do you assess this government?
Well, that has exposed them as a government that is not ready for governance. They are simply government by chance and Nigerians are suffering from ‘One Chance’ syndrome. You can see that they are not organised, even in their own house there is serious infighting going on right now in their party. There is opposition within themselves. This goes to show that they were not organised from the inception. Honestly, you can see what is happening in the country; there is much hunger, diseases disillusionment and frustration.
The government does not know what to do with power, they don’t know where they are going. They were not really prepared for governance, they only came together to get power and that is all. The power placed on their shoulders has become a burden.
How did your party, PDP, intend to do things differently in her bid to reclaim power in next elections?
As politicians would say, Accord Concordia’, whatever was the mistake of PDP that made the party to fail in the last elections, we will go back to the drawing board to correct those lapses. We are working hard to remove those impediments to form a strong and virile opposition that will liberate our people.
That means PDP will be a force to reckon with in the next election?
You don’t need soothsayers to know that the PDP is a strong force going into the next election. The situation on ground will determine the outcome of 2019 elections. I don’t think the people will continue to follow the party that has no vision, no control and has engineered widespread hunger, frustrations, diseases and disillusionment. I believe the people will not continue to follow that government. What you are hearing in form of agitation is the fall out of bad governance.
Some PDP members left the party in the wake of the leadership crisis, are you planning to bring them back?
Well, the party has set up machinery to achieve that. From what the Caretaker Chairman, Senator Ahmed Makarfi has been saying that there is no victor nor vanquished, we are assured that those aggrieved one way or the other will be reconciled and brought back to the fold. Reconciliation is going on across the country, we have been mandated to go and bring them to the fold as the ‘Umbrella’ is big enough to accommodate everyone. We are to go to the grassroots, wards, local governments and states to bring our estranged party men and women back to the PDP.
Your message for the people of Kogi State
The issue of Kogi state is pathetic. Kogi is a place where staff screening will take two years without headway. You will read in the pages of the newspapers that salaries are being paid to genuine workers and those unpaid are not genuine workers. There are also some workers in between genuine and not genuine. We heard that salary and pensions have been paid and the workers are lamenting of non payment of salaries and pensions. A couple of days ago, the Kogi State House of Assembly lived up to her billing by calling on all agencies of government saddled with the responsible for salary payments to appear before the House.
Some of us who are grassroot politicians, whenever we go to our constituencies our people come around and you can see stark reality of poverty on their faces. They will tell you their salaries have not been paid up to 18 months, while some will tell you they have been paid half way. Some said they got alert and before they could get to their banks the alerts would disappear. These are some of the hard stories coming out of Kogi state. We in the House have to wade in to see what we can do to help ameliorate the sufferings of our people.
