Emmanuel Enesi Ozigi is a financial consultant and real estate developer based in Abuja and the governorship candidate of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) in the November 5 governorship election in Kogi state. In this interview Ozigi who emerged as a consensus candidate after his two opponents withdrew from the contest spoke about his ambition and mission for Kogi state. Tony Akowe, reports.
You were in PDP. Why did you move to another platform?
Moving away is not the issue. The issue is the platform on which it is convenient for you to run an election. I look at the election not on the basis of party, but on the candidacy of individual. That is what matters and not the platform. Actually I used to be a card carrying member of PDP in Kogi state specifically from Okene and because of the call for a change in the governance system of my state, it was highly impossible for me to get a ticket under the PDP and that informed my movement to PPA.
You will be contest with two heavyweights, Abubakar Audu of APC and Idris Wada of PDP who is the incumbent governor. Both of them are from Kogi east which has the numerical strength. In the light of the incumbency and ethnicity factor, what are your chances?
As I said from the beginning, there is a yearning for change even in the eastern part of Kogi state. There is a desire for change in the governance and the way things are been done. The fact that both flag bearers are from that particular area doesn’t give the platform for a success. Like I said, it is the desire for the whole state not just because I am from central. My ticket is not a singular desire but a collective desire.
By its location, Kogi State serves as a gateway to the many parts of the country. The present status of the state in terms of infrastructure isn’t encouraging. How do you hope to improve the condition of the town especially Lokoja, the state capital?
Like you rightly said, Kogi is a central point like a convergence point either to the south, east, to the north even to the western part. I am not here to condemn anybody but the issue is that it is obvious that there are governance issues in the state. There are lots of issues that happened. With my experience, there are things that I can bring to bear that will elevate the state. Firstly; the poverty level of the state. Secondly the decay in the infrastructure of Kogi. Thirdly, you look at the potentials of Kogi which hasn’t been tapped, not in terms of human resource I am talking in terms of natural resources, terms of tourism, in terms of education, all other sectors that we can galvanize to turn around the economy of the state. When you look at all these indices, you will ask have they been present in the state? Yes. They might be present but it is possible that they are not the priority of whoever is governing the state. So, that is why I said I
don’t criticise because I don’t know how they run their programmes but my own programme will be basically citizen-driven. At the same time, we want to open up the economy of the state to the wider world. Generally, I think Kogi needs urgent attention as we speak.
Have you considered the place of money in the project, knowing full well that politics apart from being a game of numbers, also involves money?
As you rightly said, this is a game that we are all going into and it is a collective issue. You see, we are going away from the politics of money gradually. I am not saying that you are not going to spend but it is not like before. It is now politics of ideology, your plan, what exactly are you bringing to the table, the credibility, the integrity at stake. These are what actually matter now and in my acceptance speech in Lokoja after winning the primaries, I told them that I will be held accountable for every penny of the state. The reason being that it is going to be a bottom-up approach we are going to use and if you are going to have that as part of your campaign plan; that the decision to govern the state must lie in the citizens, that means you are citizen friendly with your programme then the citizens that have been yearning for change from poverty, lack of opportunity, unemployment, lack of basic infrastructure and amenities that make life
meaningful, I think that people will have a rethink whether to risk their votes again. So, that is our strong point. If you notice, the west part of the state and centre have been yearning for a change and there have been alliances, independent assessment of who and who should come up and who should run first and even within the eastern part that has been ruling the state, they want a change because they have been asking themselves ‘we have been having our people rule for the last 16 years and we can’t see any meaningful change, let’s try other areas and see whether we will benefit from this’. The state is a bit sensitive in the sense that we are not looking at religion or where you come from but who will deliver exactly what will suit the citizen of the state and that is the strong point we have. We might not have the finances to confront all these issues at once but the issue is that people will not vote wrongly this time around again and we
are out of the era where people smuggle ballot boxes. Card readers are there for you to be able to evaluate. I am not saying it is full proof but to a large extent. You can see in the air if you travel to Lokoja from the feeling and yearning of the people; they need a change.
So, how do you intend to fund the campaign since you are downplaying the relevance of money and why the choose of PPA?
I am not downplaying the fact that you don’t need to spend money but it is not going to be as heavy as it used to be. The fact that it used to make people scared even good people who don’t have enough doesn’t mean one can’t try. It is not everybody that is a thief. Money is not going to decide who wins the election. It is your integrity and competence. One of the key things is that you might be very intelligent and very strong capacity to do something but because you already know that from the beginning if I don’t have so, so amount of money, they will not even listen to me which has been the mentality. But our key driving now is vote for what will develop you, what your children’s children will enjoy because if I have to give you money now, it is like paying for the future. I will have to get the money back which is an investment. So, we are not going into business with the mindset that we are going to recoup; no! We are going to serve. We are
going to organise a fund raising for sure. We will raise funds externally; friends, family relations, even the party people will be ready to fund because it is not something I alone can bear. I must tell you the truth, I don’t have the financial strength to come out and say that I am going to fund it 100 percent but what I am saying are the basic things you must do. People are keying into the project and I am sure it is a viable project that they are willing to participate. Secondly you talked about the platform; the platform like I rightly said the platform might look virgin but it is not the platform that is the issue now it is who is on the driver’s seat. Is it someone we can count on, someone we can rely on, someone that has the credibility, someone that will not fail us? That is one and I can assure you that that is the wave in the country now. Every one of us in the old party the PDP has now shifted from PDP when they lost to APC. But all of
us can’t be in the same party that is why it is democracy and that PPA is not PDP or APC doesn’t mean it is not a registered party in country. Are you saying that people that have the same intentions like me shouldn’t run because they have lost out? They should still come out. That should be the more reason why they should come out and get these other parties.
Why is Kogi underdeveloped?
Kogi state is underdeveloped today because we have had a very poor governance system in the state and it is not because funds are not available. Funds are given to Kogi state like other states that receive funds from the federal government. The problem is how do you apply these resources into use? And one of the key things is when you see breakdown in terms of development is as a result of corruption, misappropriation, mismanagement of funds. Not only public funds, even the IGR that is been generated in the state can be used to do something good. You have 4 years in the first, you have 4 years to run your government. It is not compulsory that you must drag everything at the same time because, firstly, you don’t have the resources to do that. Secondly, you don’t have the time so you prioritize. If you are concentrating on health, education and something like road, water, electricity, you prioritize it. People would say yes when this person was there,
A, B, C was done and this is now the road map and the next person will take it from where you stopped and move on but the norm has been because it is APC or PDP or it is because it is this person, I am not going to go that way; no! When something is developmental, it is a stage by stage process and that is how developed countries came to where they are now. They passed through processes. Mr. A will come and do the bit they can do then the next person will come and take it from where Mr. A left off and it is a continuous process. But ours has been the opposite. The moment you are on a different platform you terminate it and the fund that has been spent is now lost and that is greed or corruption i must let you know because it is procurement and in that angle again you start issuing contract, people will start getting money from there again and you too will abandon it then you move on again. That is where you see this underdevelopment. I can bet you that
if the funds had been channelled properly right from the beginning of the state when funds had been coming in and development is prioritized, you will see that probably if they have taken on health, you would have seen something tangible. Now you would have said ‘oh even the state is like this but their health system is perfect’, ‘the state is like this but all their road networks are fantastic. These are things that we should be talking about.
Most states in the country today cannot generate their own revenue, but wait for hand outs from the federations account. When you become the governor. How do you intend to address this and what are you giving to the people differently from other candidates.
Funding is a big challenge globally now and not peculiar to Kogi state alone. If you noticed the revenue in the country has been dwindling and this has affected our expenses. One critical thing we need to look at instead of depending on releases from federal allocation is the potentials we have internally. What are the potentials we have that we can tap into internally? To achieve that,we must do an assessment of the revenue windows that we have in the state. Even though I have started doing that, I cannot reveal them to you now because that is part of the strategies. We need to look at the revenue windows that is available that the state can take advantage of. There are leakages in the system and these leakages can be blocked to a reasonable level that the IGR can take care of a lot of things through out the period you will be in office. But because there are leakages in the system which is often times deliberate, people capitalize on it. When you block
it, you have sufficient revenue to run the state. Another thing that is causing that in the revenue agencies is that it is not well intensified. Somebody is collecting revenue in your behalf and you are paying him peanuts. He is not even sure of his or her tomorrow; he is paying heavy school fees and does not even have an idea of what the future of the children are, he cannot afford proper medical care and is thinking of how to build a house and yet he is collecting money for you. When we were growing up, our parents could see the future. But when the future looks bleak, there is tendencies for corruption, there is tendencies for people to do what they are doing. Even governors that won elections, often times, people go there because they want to grab money because they don’t have an idea of what the future has in stock for them. But if you do things properly and the system is right, you don’t need to do things that endangers the future. So, there are leakages in the system and it is those leakages that is making the system not to work well.
