Chief Udeogaranya, former Chairman of defunct African Renaissance Party (ARP), is currently the national president, Ndigbo Cultural Society of Nigeria (NCSN). He spoke to OLULSOLA RICKETS, on the ongoing national conference and why he thinks President Goodluck Jonathan deserves a second term. Do you think anything good can come out of the ongoing national conference? Some good things have started coming out of the national conference. One is that those who have been distracting the Federal Government do not have the time to do so again; they are now busy discussing national issues and they are beginning to have a different understanding about the Nigerian state because then you sit down in your home and you say this should be the way forward but now that people from different regions of the country are challenging themselves on national issues, they must have realized how difficult it is to govern Nigeria. So the polity has enjoyed relative peace which was not the case before the conference. But for the main purpose they were sent to the conference, we have a fundamental problem in this country. The northern political elites want the status quo maintained because they believe the status quo given to them by the British and various military regimes that came from their area put them at an advantage over others. So you also share the belief that the population of the North is inflated? The true position of things is that the population of the north cannot be compared to that of the south. You can see that it took the CNN four days to get to Chibok; no building, no human beings! So where are these millions that they keep proclaiming during questionable census exercises? The north has low population to decide who becomes the President of this country. Their current population figure was based on falsified documents. Look at the last census that we conducted in 2006 that put the population of Lagos State below that of Kano state, what nonsense? Where are those people? Lagos population alone triples that of Kano, I can tell you that authoritatively. You cannot rule a nation based on false demographic figures. In the first republic election that was held in this country, the NCNC got majority of the vote over the NPC but they were denied the position because the NPC got many constituencies that were awarded to them by the British and this is the same problem we are facing till today; why should a minority be claiming majority based on falsehood. As a former party chairman in Lagos, what is your comment about the agitation for a Christian governor in Lagos come 2015? I will say it’s long overdue. When you have a state and some people feel they must continue to have people of their religious faith as number one citizen, it means that the others in that society are not worthy of recognition, this is wrong. Things must move round. It’s 15 years now and it has been an all-Muslim affair; this is not fair. If you look at the list of Lagos Commissioners, it is predominantly Muslims. Is that merit? Are they saying that the Muslims are more intelligent than the Christians? Here, commonsense should prevail so that the Christians will not feel marginalized in the state. In order to see that there is fairness in the polity, a Christian governor is desirable now. Both the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) should ensure that a Christian candidate emerges as the next governor of the state. The indications are that President Goodluck Jonathan may seek a second term in office.Does he deserve a second term based on his performance? I will say yes to that and I will tell you why. From 1967, we have had 11 regimes. When you put all these regimes together, none of them has achieved ten per cent of what Jonathan has achieved in one term. Jonathan is the only President, as far as this country is concerned, that has given Nigerians the right to choose their leaders. He believes in the one-man, one-vote principle. We all saw what happened in Ekiti state. With all the noise of the APC, the Ekiti people went to the poll and elected their leader and the sitting governor consented to defeat three hours later because it was a transparent process. The PDP candidate won in all the local governments. That is a way of telling you that Jonathan has done well. The Ndigbo, who only has trading as a source of livelihood, Obasanjo banned all the commodities they were importing, resulting in their resorting to Benin Republic and Togo to bring their goods through smuggling and so on. Today, Jonathan has unbanned those items even though he is pursuing the agenda that Nigeria should be producing. But because we are not yet producing, you cannot ban those that we are importing. Apart from this, Jonathan has repaired Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway, you can close your eyes and drive on that road now; ever since I was born, that road has not been motor able, but it’s happening now. Also the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is also under construction and will soon be completed and will be a smooth sail and other several highways in this country. Apart from this, there is total freedom of speech under the Jonathan government; he is one President you can insult and will not file a libel suit against you. In the social media (face book, twitter etc), people insult him freely (….Cuts in) But there was a recent clampdown on newspapers in the country.Is that part of the freedom of speech we are enjoying? This is because we are in a war situation due to the Boko Haram conspiracy. So sometimes when you are in a war-like period, a lot of things may be compromised. But as soon as everything settles, things will be back to normal. Even the Speaker of the House of Representatives was recently searched. This may be due to the fact that the security agencies got information that something may be happening; it is all about security
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 13:37:07 +0000
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