A former president of the Ndigbo Think Tank group, Aka Ikenga, Chief Goddy Uwazurike is currently the president of a political pressure group, The Credibility Group; in this interview with OLAOLU OLADIPO, he talked about the state of the nation, saying the current All Progressives Congress (APC) led government in the country has fallen short of expectations with a call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reconsider many of the various steps he has taken since coming on board five months ago. Excerpts:

The current government is a few months old in office; as a stakeholder, what’s your impression of the government?

The impression that I have of this government remains the same that I had for the one before it, I mean the Muhammadu Buhari-led gov- ernment that came before it. We’ve been having governments controlled by the APC (All Progressives Congress) since 2015 and the hallmark of the APC government has always been the same sense of lack of preparedness to govern; lack of planning and their inability to knuckle down to know what is wrong with the country.

Again, they are good at pontificating on the good plans that they claim to have. What I mean is propaganda. Yes! I concede the fact that this government is just in its fifth month but usually governments celebrate when it is 100 days in office, which is three months and a few days in office but this government cleverly evaded celebrating the milestone thus not allowing itself to be examined by the people. As of today, what we have as the scorecard of the current government is our economy, which was already broken down by the government of former President Muhammadu Buhari, has now broken into pieces.

As of yesterday, how much was the Dollar against the Naira? The two currencies were exchanged for 1 dollar to N1,115. The implication of this is that if you are a daily paid worker in Nigeria today, you are not earning up to one Dollar. This government still doesn’t understand that the people are still suffering. Once in a while, they will come to us to say ‘please bear with us’ but they don’t mean it. Today, when you want to buy petrol, you buy it with tears in your eyes.

Unfortunately, those who supported the current government into office and those who didn’t are bearing the brunt. We are in the same boat, we are all suffering. Members of the media support group of the president are busy attacking everyone who doesn’t say anything they like. What they do is to gang up against you on radio and on television as well as newspapers. The worst part is that the various platforms that we have in Nigeria today will never show or do anything to indicate that they are not in support of the President.

If you do otherwise, they will demonise you. Remember that members of this group were also involved in 2015 as part of the APC Amanda. Some of us who saw the danger in their action cautioned them that the government through their activities might not even know what was going wrong in the country. We told them that they were blindfolding those in government with their blind sycophancy. Unfortunately, nobody listened to us.

Are you accusing the media support group of undoing the current government?

Yes! That’s the reason former President Buhari went away with his shoulders held high as if he had done us a favour by presiding over the country as the President. What is happening today? We are going down the hill. We are going down, everyone is against everyone, the economy is nose-diving, yet all that the sycophants are doing is to praise the government and the president who has not even addressed the numerous problems confronting the country.

Remember that during the campaign, President Bola Tinubu refused to join other candidates to debate the issues plaguing the country. If you remember that the Labour Party Presidential Candidate Mr. Peter Obi harped on production as the best way to lift the country out of the current economic predicament.

He (Peter Obi) said that it is when you export goods, commodities and services that you earn Dollars to offset debts but what happened, the media support group derided him for his position. He was thoroughly abused by members of this group. First, he was called an Ibo man, they called him a petty trader but those things that he said are coming to light now. The price of crude oil in the international market has gone up just as the prices of petrol and other derivatives of crude oil have also gone up.

The administration stated that they understood the enormity of the situation on ground when they came on board, they said they are coming up with workable blueprints on how to address the numerous problems and that we should bear with them. Don’t you think these assertions are rather harsh on the government?

Let me give a straightforward answer in one sentence, this gov- ernment is approbating and reprobating at the same time. At one time, the government is expressing pride with its accomplishments while at the same time, it is also talking about restoring hope. The question now is, do you restore hope when all is well? Do you restore hope when the economy is booming? The APC destroyed the nation’s economy and for the man who had to go round the whole country to campaign telling us that he wanted to be the president and five months after coming into power, he still doesn’t know what to do with the country.

This shows the lack of seriousness. In fact, nobody said that President Tinubu should be all-knowing but that he should know a little of everything, that he should know everything moderately. For example, if former President Buhari closed the borders in the South, making it difficult for many traders and manufacturers to trade with neighbouring countries, you as a new leader should appreciate that opening the borders will help those small scale industrialists get their raw materials through these countries.

You need to open these borders and reassure and encourage them and see what will happen. It is so disheartening that the big companies have all left the country. The present government does not really know what to do to kick-start the economy. Let me remind you that no man will invest in any country where there is so much uncertainty. Nigeria today is a place of uncertainty.

If you invest one million Dollars in anything called business, it may yield for you one hundred million or over one billion but when you want to repatriate your profits you will just discover that the amount that would accrue to you will just fetch you just $500,000 because the crashing economy would have eroded investments. The problem is inbuilt but the APC government has nobody to blame but themselves. Politicians in Nigeria should be cognisance of something, which is, to get power is one thing, what to do with it is another thing.

Are you confident that something positive will still happen in the country considering the caliber of people that have been appointed into one political office or the other?

I’m glad that he has appointed people that are capable because anybody so appointed is a mere appointee who will rely on the president for direction but if the president is not visible or accessible, the appointee will just be in office marking time. Look at the schism between the Minister of Works and contractors in Abuja on whether to use cement or not for constructing roads, it is the president that has the final say on issues like that. But the current uncertainty on the whereabouts of the president has further fueled the confusion.

Also, if you put a thousand technocrats in office, they will still look up to the president for direction. One of the terrible things that the current government did when it came on board is the destruction of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s image in the estimation of the international community. I don’t know who advised the president to suspend the Governor of the Bank; they arrested him without trial forgetting that the whole world is watching.

The implication is that anybody who wants to invest in the country will take note of things like that before making such a decision. The CBN governor is still in detention as we speak and we are told that the man has resigned his appointment but the man himself has not come out to say that neither have we seen his letter of resignation. Again, look at the image around the personality of Mr. President with regards to his educational qualifications; these are things that will still be haunting every Nigerian wherever we go as a people.

This is because the government has remained opaque in its dealings with Nigerians. I’m a lawyer, I know my classmates and they too know me. I can tell you where I went to primary, secondary schools and the university that I attended. That’s called transparency. Nothing is going on in Nigeria today, the ministers are supposed to be sit down and iron out things for the development of the country. We have APC not cut out for governance, Tinubu acting like Buhari, says Uwazurike a situation where all appointments are skewed towards a particular area and those in government don’t care.

Are you accusing the current government of nepotism?

You have already said it. As at today, the entire South East has only five ministers, you and I know how many ministers were appointed from Ogun State alone. What of Kwara State? Is it that all the experts in this country are only from the South West? This is supposed to be a national government.

This was not the same in the past. I remember how a friend of mine who was jostling for an appointment in the government was told that he couldn’t get it because many people from his region had been appointed into many offices in that sector. He left the place satisfied that there wasn’t any attempt to deprive him of such opportunity. Are we still practicing all those lofty ideas that we propounded when out of office?

If you meet President Bola Tinubu, what would you tell him?

I have met him a number of times when he was the governor and after he left office. I will remind him of the dreams that we had together of the kind of country that we both envisaged. That dream is all about how to move the country forward towards progressive development and growth. I will tell him to put his feet on the floor to say that these are the people we are working with. Those that would eventually make it must be very competent. Once you are able to establish that, then you can move forward. I will tell him to go for people-oriented policies. (Saturday Telegraph)

Update news