Otunba Babalola Fabunmi is the
representative of Kogi State in the ANPP Board of Trustees. He talks
about the just concluded special national convention of the party and
how they plan to take power from the ruling PDP both nationally and in
his home state of Kogi. Excerpts:
You were one of the delegates for ANPP’s special national convention, what can you say about the convention?
Well, the convention was 100 percent
successful. The convention was what we need to congratulate ourselves
on, that’s we in the opposition, which is a right step towards the
merger. You can see that the APC has come to stay, because the
conventions that were done so far by ACN on the 18th of last month; ANPP
and CPC just finished their own. With that, we can say that it was a
very huge success.
How hopeful are you that APC will succeed at the end of the day?
There is no doubt about the success of
APC. Every Nigerian knows this; it’s very glaring, because people are
tired of PDP. Nigerians want a change; we need a change, and the change
has come. I’m assuring you that APC is taking power from PDP come 2015.
There are allegations that the
ruling party is trying to use some of your party members to destroy the
merger, how do you see that?
To me, I believe that is just rumour,
because we have heard a lot of rumours concerning that. Let me give you
an example; there was a time we learnt that our BoT chairman, Ali Modu
Sheriff, was preparing to decamp to PDP. The same allegation was leveled
against Senator Yarima, former governor of Zamfara State. But they came
on air to say that all people have been hearing are just rumours, that
at no time, no day did they plan to decamp to another party.
So, I don’t want to believe that any
member of ANPP or the other APC parties will be ready to give any kind
of secret information concerning our party to any PDP. Everybody as well
as the whole nation is fed up with the PDP.
Now that the three major
opposition parties have formally agreed to collapse to form the APC,
some are saying that there may be leadership tussle since ANPP, ACN and
CPC all have their own national respective leadership; what will you say
concerning that?
No, that is what they’re expecting.
But let me be very candid and sincere with you; the merging parties
today have made up their minds and have concluded among themselves on
how to go about the leadership of APC. At least we have been meeting
day-by-day, and up till today everybody is happy. By the time it gets to
the point when we’ll make people know about it, we’ll make it public.
How will you rate the administration of PDP in Kogi State from 2003 to date, especially the present one?
Kogi as a state is the poorest state.
Kogi state capital, Lokoja, is the smallest and the dirtiest. When Wada
was healthy, he couldn’t perform anything, now that he has been involved
in an accident, what do we expect from him? Now he’s talking about his
health. I’ve said it severally; we don’t have a governor in Kogi state.
We’re only having a representative, that is Ibro representative, and
I’ll continue to say it. We don’t have a governor, because all our
allocations end here in Abuja.
Can you believe that for over one year
that Wada has been the governor of the state, there has never been any
capital project? My own take is that we have the worst state in Kogi. I
pity my people, the Kogites, and I’ve been saying that this time around,
Kogites should wake up; we should all wake up and do everything
possible to take out PDP from that state, because they can never do
anything tangible or reasonable in that state.
How are you people planning to wrest power from PDP in the state come 2015?
We’re talking about joint party now,
APC, which we’re coming together. I said to people that apart from the
APC, Kogites are tired of PDP. Ordinarily, without joining any merger,
our belief is that Kogi State will be taken away from PDP at all cost.
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