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Tag: Oyegun

  • Oyegun seeks greater South East participation in APC

    Oyegun seeks greater South East participation in APC

    National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, has said that the party was working round the clock to ensure that the South East adequately participate in the workings of the governing party and the present administration.

    He spoke when he received former Ebonyi State Governor, Martin Elechi, at his residence in Abuja and assured that the APC led government will not repeat the culture of corruption and waste which was the trademark of the PDP administration.

    The APC Chairman said he was elated that politicians from the South East have decided to join the governing party, saying “I have that intense belief that every zone must and should participate effectively, particularly the South East zone that constitute one of the tripod in this nation. You cannot have a healthy polity if any part of it feels that they are not in the mainstream.

    “I have had the most wonderful few months receiving people from the South East who have made that wonderful and desirable u-turn to allow the Igbo race take their proper place in the scheme of things of this nation.”

    Oyegun said further that “Under the PDP, we became an economy that was totally built on corruption. State resources were diverted into private hands and pockets, the result of which the poor people of this country are feeling today… There is serious work to be done. At a time when oil was selling for over $120 per barrel, we neither built roads, railways nor did we maintain our airline, nor did we refine our crude to use, nothing.

    “The institutions and commonwealth of this country was totally run aground. We spent billions of dollars on the energy sector and we got no energy. It is so painful. When you see the revelations today, you really feel that sense of anger.

    “I am glad to receive you into the fold of the APC. The challenges are immense. There is serious work to be done. We are in the process of totally rebuilding this nation. We know the groans of our people, we know what they going through but given where we are taking off from, it became totally inevitable.”

    Speaking earlier, Elechi said he  decided to join the APC because “the party (PDP) got bedevilled by impunity, corruption, lack of respect for democracy, insensitivity to public opinion.

    “We think that the greatest joy in a democratic system is the right of people to choose who their leaders will be. That right to decide and determine our leadership has been destroyed in Ebonyi State under the PDP. And that was why a majority of PDP members protested and left that party to look for a new democratic space.

    “Our people have moved to the APC. I who swore that on leaving the PDP I will never join another party but I have now swallowed my pride to say I will sink or swim with the people I had laboured with. And that is why I joined the APC.”

    The former governor who registered for the APC at his country home in Echialike, Ikwo Local Government Area in April also disclosed that the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, amongst other APC leaders from the southeast zone, encouraged him to join the APC.

    The Director-General, Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, called for compromise among the party hierarchy and members in the southeast so as to strengthen the party and win elections in the zone.

    Also, APC National Vice Chairman (South East),  Emma Eneukwu described the former Ebonyi state governor as a “colossus in the politics of Igboland”.

  • Only Buhari’s doctors can decide on his return – Oyegun

    Only Buhari’s doctors can decide on his return – Oyegun

    The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie Oyegun, said on Friday that only President Muhammadu Buhari’s medical team can decide when he would return to the country.

    The APC chairman, however, said the President is recovering very fast.

    Oyegun, who disclosed these to journalists at the end of a meeting between the APC National Working Committee (NWC) and governors, also said the party would not be respond to claims by Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose, that the President was on life support in a London hospital.

    He said: “We are glad to inform you that President Muhammadu Buhari is recovering in a very robust manner. We hope he takes it easy and when he comes back, I have no doubt at all that we will have a new and active period of activities.’’

    On Fayose’s comment, he said “if I respond, I will be dignifying him. At the appropriate time, people will answer him; at the appropriate level and at the appropriate time. He is in a different world altogether.’’

    He said the party’s leadership has confidence in President Buhari.

    The meeting with the governors, he said x-rayed the state of the nation, ongoing agitation for its restructuring and inciting statements emanating from different parts of the country.

    He said inciting statements capable of causing crises are not good “for the nation`s health, insisting that such statements have to be stopped.”

     

  • APC didn’t promise restructuring, says Oyegun

    APC didn’t promise restructuring, says Oyegun

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) said yesterday it did not promise to restructure Nigeria, if voted into power.

    The party said what  it  promised is to ensure true federalism and devolution of power.

    It added that it was not unaware of the contentious nature of restructuring as a result of which it avoided it when putting together its manifesto.

    It vowed not to renege on its promise to the people.

    Its National Chairman John Odigie-Oyegun, who spoke yesterday on a television programme, dismissed the possibility of the APC government allowing the emergence of a Biafran Republic.

    He said issues in contention would be addressed by the government.

    Oyegun said the priority of the APC-led government was not restructuring the country, but how to address the economic challenges and how to put food on the table of the ordinary Nigerian and create jobs for the youths.

    He said: “When the APC manifesto was being put together, it was discussed extensively. We chose our words carefully in putting that manifesto together and we are committed to what we have said in that manifesto. But look at it this way.

    “If you ask a Nigerian youth today, will he say his number one preference is restructuring or will he say his number one preference is a job, food on the table, economic prospect, restoration of hope in the future.

    “Will restructuring be the panacea that will solve that problem. That is the challenge we are confronted with as the APC.

    “What is more important, to fix the economy or to embark on this political issue with all the contentious and different interpretation that the public give to it? It is very specific on the manifesto and we are not going to renege on it; no question about that. It is a matter of time.”

    Oyegun added: “The Acting President has spoken forcefully on this issue, the leaders of that area are beginning to find their voice, there is no question at all, there must be a conversation. Out of that conversation will come the answers.”

    He dismissed the possibility of having a referendum now.

  • We promised true federalism, not restructuring – Oyegun

    We promised true federalism, not restructuring – Oyegun

    The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie Oyegun, said on Thursday the party never promised to restructure the country if voted into power, but to ensure true federalism and devolution of power.

    The party said it was not unaware of the contentious nature of the restructuring and therefore avoided it when putting together its manifesto.

    He said APC would not renege on its promise to Nigerians.

    Oyegun, who stated these while fielding questions on a Channels Television early morning show, Sunrise Daily, however dismissed the possibility of the APC government allowing the emergence of a Biafran Republic.

    He said all contentious issues would be addressed by the government.

    Oyegun said the priority of the APC- led government was not the restructuring of the country, but how to address the economic challenges facing the country and how to put food on the table of the ordinary Nigerian and create jobs for the teeming youths.

    He said: “When the APC manifesto was being put together, it was discussed extensively. We choose our words carefully in putting that manifesto together and we are committed to what we have said in that manifesto. But look at it this way.

    “If you ask a Nigerian youth today, will he say his number one preference is restructuring? Or will he say his number one preference is a job, food on the table, economic prospect and restoration of hope in the future?

    “Will restructuring be the panacea that will solve that problem? That is the challenge we are confronted with as the APC. What is our priority at this stage? Is the nature of eye economy such that we can now embark on that very complicated issue? It is complicated, it is contentious and a lot of people talk about it without any commonality.

    “We have stated clearly what we want to do, devolution and true federalism. We really avoided the word restructuring because it means so many things to so many people. So yes, short answer to your question, we are coming to that but our priority for now, for today is to fix the economy and restore hope, provide jobs to the teaming millions of our youths in all over the country. So it is a matter of priority.

    “What is more important, to fix the economy or to embark on this political issue with all the contentious and different interpretation that the public give to it? It is very specific on the manifesto and we are not going to renege on it, no question about that. It is a matter of time.”

    Oyegun stressed that Acting President Yemi Osinbajo is already putting in place a process of conversation that will provide answers and solutions to the current agitations especially in the south east.

    He added: “The Acting President has spoken forcefully on this issue, the leaders of that area are beginning to find their voice, there is no question at all, there must be a conversation. Out of that conversation will come the answers.

    “It is a conversation that will lead to answers, as to what are the issues in contention, what did the youths at the people of that area want, all these conversation had taken place under the screen and eventually the nation will come out with answers to this problem.

    “I think in the process we will talk to everybody who is able to have an impact on the situation and everybody that claims to have an answer to the problem, including Nnamdi Kanu.”

    The former Edo State governor dismissed the possibility of the government allowing the emergence of a Biafra Republic saying “I think that is the most unlikely thing. I don’t think that their demand will ever get that far.”

  • Abubakar architect of Nigeria’s current democracy – APC

    Abubakar architect of Nigeria’s current democracy – APC

    The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, on Wednesday described former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (retd), as architect of Nigeria`s current democratic rule.

    He stated this in the party`s congratulatory message to Abubakar on his 75th birthday.

    Oyegun hailed Abubakar as a first-class nationalist, detribalised leader and a sterling example of statesmanship.

    He added that efforts at entrenching democracy in the country and indeed globally, would be incomplete without reference to Abubakar’s contributions.

    He said: “The party recalls with pride your role as the architect of the current democratic dispensation after a troubled and challenging period of transition.

    “Since your exit from office, you have worked tirelessly to ensure peace in the country and in trouble-prone areas of Africa.”

    Oyegun said in the lead up to the 2015 general elections, the former head of state endeared himself to many as a man of peace.

    This, he said, was as a result of his outstanding work as head of the National Peace Committee on the Elections.

    NAN

  • Oyegun needs more style and substance

    Oyegun needs more style and substance

    THE chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, is fixated on the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the same reprehensible way the former ruling party was childishly and hysterically obsessed with the former opposition party. About three weeks after he visited Udi in Enugu State to receive a former governor, Sullivan Chime, into the APC fold and made a highly tendentious political remark, he again on May 29 miffed everyone with his sweeping and insensitive political suggestions.

    In Udi, Enugu, Chief Oyegun, while rhapsodising the APC and the strides the party was poised to make in the Southeast political zone, had warned that the ongoing registration of new party members and the awareness rally his party had organised could be regarded as ‘the semi-final to the complete transformation’ of the PDP-led Enugu State into an APC controlled state. “I will come one more time to bury PDP in the state,” he said tersely, to which the former governor and new entrant sarcastically responded he thought the day of the rally in fact marked the final burial rites.

    Late May, while addressing the media in Abuja on the APC-led government’s midterm scorecard, Chief Oyegun pilloried the PDP extensively and asked, in a way that seemed distinctly and alarmingly theological, that Nigerians should repudiate the opposition party. He also subordinated the APC’s constitution to the president’s medical leave exigency by suggesting that no convention could be held until the president returned to Nigeria. He did not of course expressly say the president had right of first refusal in any consideration of the 2019 presidential election ticket, as some media establishments inexplicably indicated in their dispatches, but his statements led reporters to deduce that the president, whom he reverentially asked everyone to pray for to return hale and hearty to the country, would receive automatic ticket in 2019.

    In his midterm disquisitions, Chief Oyegun argued at length about the APC doing a great job undoing the horrific damage the PDP inflicted on the country’s economy. Should the president return from his foreign medical trip rejuvenated, the APC chairman will apparently ensure he gets the ticket. He did not say so openly, it must be admitted, but there is no national precedence for denying a sitting president the ticket. (Perhaps this was why the media took liberty with his unstated suppositions). Nor, given the excessive religiosity of Nigerians, not to talk of the APC chairman’s jeremiads and secret gloating over the PDP, did it shock or alarm anyone that the press quoted him mischievously as asking the country to pray against living under a government as dissolute, intolerable and inept as the PDP.

    Quite apart from his difficulty in reining in the contending elders of the party and imposing a strict and enduring modus vivendi on the party, Chief Oyegun has a fiery predilection for talking out of turn. When his party lost rerun elections in some South-South states, particularly the oil producing state of Rivers, he whined in February 2016 about the huge financial loss his party would have to live with. He did not speak about what his party stood for or represented. Nor did he indicate he trusted and aligned effortlessly with his party’s ideological posturing. He instead spoke animatedly in material terms, and grumbled that his party would be deprived of the sustenance which victory would have enabled.

    Except he is unrealistic, Chief Oyegun knows quite well that he is not presiding over a tightly knit and well-oiled political machinery. APC members and leaders have fought anarchically among themselves like Kilkenny cats, undermined one another, pursued contradictory and conflicting interests, shunned principles, hissed at values, and dissembled as heartily as the PDP did in the recent past. The APC has in fact been run in such a manner that it has become difficult to settle the precedence between it and the opposition, and in such a manner that it has used power contemptuously in defiance of sense, the law and the constitution.

    The party has two years to get its act together before the next set of general elections. It is enough time, albeit barely, for the party to reform and rebuild, should its chairman be capable of summoning the discipline and wisdom needed to stimulate the process. Given his present disposition, he seems dogmatically prepared, if nature gifts his party with a rejuvenated President Buhari, to organise a fait accompli pre-election convention that defies logic and common sense. Whether he possesses the character to stand up for truth and justice, and whether he seems inclined to coax a fractious party into the strange unity they only dream of and to embrace the lofty principles and ideas they appear to lack, is difficult to say. But if the APC is not to fall on its sword as bizarrely as the PDP did barely after 16 giddy years in power, Chief Oyegun will have to display the uplifting style, attitude, understanding and wisdom many observers have struggled to identify in him.

    Chief Oyegun cannot of course single-handedly determine the direction of the party. But he can drive the process. Indeed, he can initiate the process. But to initiate or drive the process, he must himself be persuaded about the futility of the party’s present course and misshapen values. It is a difficult task no doubt. It calls for him not only to redirect his efforts but also to recreate the party almost from scratch — from a contentious association to a unified organ, and from a cabalistic organisation exuberant with Camorra tactics to a truly democratic association capable of upholding the highest principles and concepts of democracy and the rule of law.

    The APC is divided; and worse, the presidency is also riven with internal dissension, with powerful, unyielding individuals determined to subordinate the party leadership to their wiles and whims. The only way Chief Oyegun can restore the party to its pre-government era unity and solidity is to control and subjugate the quarrelsome interests that are tearing the party apart. He can do it if he is able to summon the required passion and conviction. But nothing says he can summon either. However, he will have a gargantuan fight in his hands, if not embrace self-immolation in the process, should he attempt to summon anything properly describable as personal conviction. If he believes the party is worth saving, he will naturally make the right sacrifice. Yet, at the moment, no one can tell whether he believes in that sacrifice or that he has a vision of a great party, or even that he has the courage to make the sacrifice.

    All things considered, the future of the APC is fraught with danger. With a divided presidency, a considerably disoriented and weakened party leadership, and a party almost completely detached from reality and the principles and values it claims to stand for, there is nothing to indicate that the job of Chief Oyegun will be as tolerable and engaging as many would wish. Worse, there is absolutely nothing to indicate, despite the clarity of what Chief Oyegun needs to do and the resoluteness the party needs to acquire, that the party chairman will exercise the leadership required at this dangerous and defining moment.

  • Oyegun to Nigerian: let’s pray never to have a PDP govt again

    Oyegun to Nigerian: let’s pray never to have a PDP govt again

    All Progressives Congress (APC)National Chairman Chief John Odigie-Oyegun has urged Nigerians to pray never to have a government like the one led by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).The PDP, he said, did everything possible to destroy the nation’s economy for 16 years.

    Oyegun said contrary to belief by a cross-section of Nigerians that the party underestimated the nation’s economic crisis when it came into power, it actually knew what was ahead of it.

    Oyegun, who spoke with reporters in Abuja,He said Nigerians should commend the APC-led Federal Government for doing everything humanly possible to sustain the economy and save it from total collapse.

    He noted that it wasnot true that APC underestimated the severity of the economic situation facing the country before it came to power in 2015.

    He said contrary to the impressions in many quarters that the party lacked a comprehensive economic blueprint or vibrant and competent economic managers, the APC-led government has done well to sustain the economy from complete collapse.

    He, however, said only those gifted with the power of prophesy would have known the actual situation of the economy, saying the PDP government should bury their heads in shame for battering the economy.

    He said: “No, we didn’t under rate it neither did you nor anyone else, unless those with the gift of prophesy. None could have known what was coming; if I ask you to describe the situation in 2015, I am sure you won’t have added that the crude oil market was going to collapse. Did you foresee that?

    “We knew we were going to take over a battered economy, but we were glad that oil was still coming at 2.5 million barrels a day, we were glad that prices were still hovering around a $100/b occasionally.

    “During the years of PDP, it was going between $100 to $120 a barrel and we took over a totally ravaged economy and we were prepared for that because we also thought since we didn’t have the gift of prophesy that Nigeria will continue to be blessed with oil resources, 2.5 million barrels sometime three million at $80 a barrel, sometimes 100 dollars a barrel, we were ready to get the nation moving quickly.”

    Oyegun said: “When we took over, as if that wasn’t enough with a battered economy, the very next week or two, crude market collapsed at a stage that the price of production of a barrel and the price we were getting from the world market was almost the same; about thirty something dollars a barrel…

    “I am a trained economist, I am a development economist. You should look at the reality; forget the hunger, there is hunger in the land but you should wonder why this country didn’t collapse with virtually no income, no foreign exchange; nothing.

    “And we are still here today, that is the reality and it has nothing to do with incompetence. We had no revenues, we had no foreign exchange, and we were an economy that exists to function. I know the pain we went through to allow the price of petrol to go up.”

    “For a long time when we came, if you could remember the news was still on and off, but there was no other solution than to let go, you can’t continue that regime of subsidy which was one of the things that almost bankrupted this nation.

    “We had to bring in the Treasury Single Account, had to make sure every kobo was accounted for, had to go abroad and the press started telling everyone that he lives in an aircraft from one capital to another to draw up resources to keep the nation afloat.

    “Then came the recession and in a situation like that was inevitable, we had to spend to get out of recession; we had no savings. Honestly, if you people want to do this country a favour, you should tell anybody who was a main person in PDP that they ought to hang their heads in shame and you should pray that we never have a government again like what the PDP did to this country.

    “The signs were there, they fought over oil blocks endlessly. Nobody ever thought that this resource is one that will finish one day, nobody ever thought giving those 16 years of PDP rule that every day they were talking of renewable energy resources they were planning no longer to be dependent on this war-ravaged areas for their own industrial fuelling.”

    He added: “Our government for 16 years just kept importing petrol, export crude, sending away ship load of crude that was not accounted for, individual appropriating the money that belonged to me and you; to the nation. So please be a little bit softer, kinder and look at the details of how we got to where we are today.

    “I am not going to abuse PDP or anybody, but this is the reality, this is the truth of how this country is where it is today and we are labouring, the president is labouring now to diversity the country. It is a foundation that totally cracked and collapsed.”

  • Re: Oyegun and the Abuja disease

    Re: Oyegun and the Abuja disease

    Louis Odion’s recently published article entitled “Oyegun and the Abuja disease” in which he savages Chief John Odigie-Oyegun the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is very odious, indeed. In the article, he begrudges Chief Odigie-Oyegun for downplaying the roles of Oshiomhole and former governor of Lagos state, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his emergence as APC National Chairman in 2014.

    Political loyalties aside, any right thinking person would know that Mr. Odion’s account would have been unbelievable for a party like the APC formed by powerful interests and individuals. It is important to remind Mr. Odion that decisions like the appointment/election of the party chairman and other party executives require the consent of all the voting blocs or majority of them to be successful. Party politics and election usually involve negotiations and horse-trading.

    This is a legitimate component of a political process, which by the way the APC solidly stands for. Chief Odigie-Oyegun emerged as National Chairman through the collective efforts of a coalition of individuals and interests within the APC fold at the time.

    That is the fact and it is likely that if the same question is posed to Oshiomhole and Tinubu, their responses will not be too different. That Chief Odigie-Oyegun could not deliver his ward in either the presidential or gubernatorial election does not render him as politically ineffectual as Mr. Odion surmises.

    Jonathan simply swept the South-South votes in 2015. However, after the loss of the Edo South votes in the 2015 presidential election, Chief Odigie-Oyegun immediately put his political influence to work by ensuring that the House of Assembly elections in Edo South went to the APC to prevent the possible impeachment of the then incumbent Governor Oshiomhole as threatened by the PDP at the time.

    On the outcome of the Edo state governorship election of 2016, the point needs to be made that, it was demographically impossible for Chief Odigie-Oyegun to win in the polling unit (Oredo Ward 2, Unit 1 in the Government Reserved Area, Benin-City) where he voted, since he had to contend with the large families of Igbinedion and Ize- Iyamu who reside in the area. Naturally, their friends and associates voted for the PDP who had Pastor OsagieIze-Iyamu as the PDP governorship candidate.

    There are reports that the PDP in collusion with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ensured that Chief Odigie-Oyegun and his wife voted in separate poling units, in a bid to neutralise APC votes in the area, while concentrating PDP votes in the polling unit where Chief Odigie- Oyegun votes.

    In the larger context the plan failed. Although, Chief Odigie-Oyegun lost in his polling unit to the PDP by just 9 votes (APC-69, PDP-78), APC won in the polling unit his wife voted. In any case, Chief Odigie-Oyegun delivered in Edo South Senatorial zone including Oredo Local Government Area.

    So the bottomline is that the APC National Chairman delivered his state and particularly Edo south, home to his Bini ethnic stock. Don’t forget that he convincingly won the governorship election in the state in 1991! What Chief Odigie-Oyegun brings to APC is perhaps one of the most redeeming faces of the party.

    It’s an unquantifiable moral value addition. And the party is much better for that quality. One may ask, who made Chief Odigie-Oyegun one of the youngest permanent secretaries in our nation’s history after only thirteen years in service, or governor of Edo state in his first foray in politics?

    Duke Edobor Oshodin, Benin-City, Edo State.

     

    I have heard stories of pedestrian thinking in high places but I never imagined the drivel I read from Chief Odigie Oyegun’s camp being circulated in social media by way of response to a brilliant and courageous article written by Louis Odion with the entitled “Oyegun and the Abuja disease”.

    Among others, Oyegun’s hireling called Oshodin wanted us to believe that his paymaster, who could not saved himself the shame in the first round of elections on March 28 (2015) as APC national chairman losing his polling unit, was the one who “pulled the strings” that ensured that APC won the second round of elections in April so as “to stop PDP lawmakers from impeaching Adams Oshiomhole as Edo governor” then.

    Ha! All hail Oyegun the political physician who could not heal himself. Shameless political flyweight, Oshodin and his paymaster would not concede that Oshiomhole’s stellar performance within the context of Edo politics and the Buhari hurricane of March 28 combined to influence the pattern of voting in subsequent rounds of election.

    It is called bandwagon effect. As a mark of appreciation of Oshiomhole’s performance, Edo people voted massively for APC in the local elections so much that APC won 22 to PDP’s miserable 2. How can Oyegun, who could not win his own polling unit, now say he “pulled strings” to make that happened? Consumed by the web of his poor-quality lies, Oshodin forgot that new lawmakers elected on April 11 were not sworn in until June 2015.

    In Oshodin’s warped reasoning, it was as if there were no legislators with subsisting mandate on the ground as at the time elections held. (APC still had overwhelming majority in the state assembly up till May 29 2015.) Let us even assume that PDP had won majority in the local election, would that have empowered them to “quickly commence Oshiomhole’s impeachment”?

    Haba, even primary school pupils are too smart to think like that! In any case, through Oshiomhole’s inspiring leadership, Action Congress of Nigerian won 20 seats in the assembly polls in 2011 to PDP’s 4 (the same election where Oyegun similarly lost his polling unit, ward, council, senatorial zone and entire Edo state even as vice presidential runningmate to Shekarau on ANPP platform). Despite PDP’s heavy financial inducement and raw intimidation between 2014 and 2015, APC under resolute Oshiomhole was able to retain 16 seats while 7 PDP members, backed with “federal might”, took over the assembly complex under police protection. I believe Odion was even too charitable to Oyegun in the same piece. Or maybe Odion is not aware that virtually all the appointment slots due to Edo State have been cornered by greedy Oyegun to his family members. I challenge him to deny this. In fact, in one sickening instance, an appointment due to Edo indigene was given to Oyegun’s in-law who does not even hail from Edo State.

    What a shame!

    Stephen Igbinosa, Benin City.

    Odion, this article on Oyegun is my best breakfast ever. I just decided not to read it in a hurry. It aptly captures the hypocritical lives most of our southern politicians exhibit in a stupid rush to assure their northern masters of their loyalty. This even becomes more comical when they delude themselves that we do not have the memory of the recent past.

    When I read Oyegun’s interview, my below-average perception of his personality dipped further. I was not surprised because he has never impressed me politically. Tom Ikimi would have done better. As the National Chairman of APC, Oyegun has not been seen to do anything about the flagrant political alienation of some parts of the country by the President. No word from him concerning the state of the nation. He watched helplessly while APC under his watch mismanaged their electoral victory. Every day, Oyegun who is the Chairman of the ruling party diminishes politically in my sight. Although I never expected much from him, he should have done better than this if his hallucinatory claim of integrity is anything to go by. Thanks for this piece. I look forward to seeing more.

    Gilbert Nweke, Benin City: 08074614100

     

    That piece on Oyegun was dismal. Oyegun is principled. You want him to kowtow to other men?

    07031025925

     

    With a party chairman with self-declared “personality and integrity” like Oyegun in office in 2019, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, Chief Bola Tinubu and other genuine progressives should gird heir loins.

    Elder L. O. David, Efon Alaye, Ekiti: 08059096244

     

    Sensible politicians who know or have read you will rue the day you write their political epitaph. It will obviously be a sad irreversible final comment. A “curtains” call.

    D. Birmah: 08065508355

     

    APC should not follow PDP’s step of changing their party chairman at will after all the APC chairman has done well to remain the APC chairman. Those calling for his removal are not wishing the party well. From his assumption as APC chairman he has done well to deliver Edo, Ondo and other elections. They should allow him be because his removal might cause crisis in the party as it occurred in PDP. As 2019 is around corner let them be united to win.

    Chika Nnorom: 08062887535

     

    I hope Oyegun understands that what goes around comes around.

    Ayodele Jayeolatunde

     

    He has not learnt the lesson from the saying that never bite the hand that feeds you, no matter what. His end is very near. A real sycophant he is.

    Odion Okaka

     

    This wonderful writeup could easily pass for a parable about the Hubris inadvertently stalking ESAN progress and ultimately development. We have had seemingly emancipated sons and daughters from the legendary Air Hostess Ahabue (50’s) to the UAC magic, Abebe (60’s). However, it was the political miracle, Prof. Ambrose Alli, that actually sowed the seed, followed by yet another leader (the Esan naval chief). One very much hopes the way forward is this objective critical stance, not minding whether those in question are elderly Esans. More grease to your writing elbow!

    Pius S Omole

     

    This is a masterpiece and highly revealing. Nigerians, particularly Edolites are interested in this matter. Thank you Odion.

    Odidison Omans

    Oyegun’s is a political disaster to APC. A money-monger, he helped in the total destruction of our great party in Delta State. His time is up.

    Nathaniel Igwubor

  • Oyegun on Buhari’s second term

    Oyegun on Buhari’s second term

    IT is difficult to tell whether National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, was being perfunctory or serious when he reiterated to reporters in Benin, Edo State, that President Muhammadu Buhari deserved a second term. He had made the same suggestion sometime in the past, prompting reporters to ask him one more time whether he thought his suggestion was reasonable in view of the president’s obvious health challenges. Though reporters were sceptical, given the tone of their question on the matter, the ruling party chairman brushed aside their quizzicality and impressed his own political enthusiasm on his listeners. His logic was ingenious.
    According to him, “This is a free country. I have my views and I have expressed them. Why do I say so? I said so because the main gift President Buhari is giving to this country is what he represents and that is his absolute integrity. What Nigerians should aspire to be, the kind of country that we want Nigeria to be, a country where a man’s yes is his yes. A country with leadership that treats with respect public resources, a nation that is disciplined; a nation that is not wallowing in indecent corruption that we have today that is making one ashamed, that is what Buhari represents.”
    The question reporters asked him, however, was whether the president’s struggles with poor health could lead any top politician to lend untrammelled support. But the party chairman still evaded the question and pressed on with a recap of the president’s great qualities. “He (Buhari) is like a General leading a charge against the major ills of this country. The job is so enormous that one term cannot do it. The job is so enormous that two terms cannot do it. Even after President Buhari’s tenure, we still need people like him to continue in office. So, my prayer is that God gives him robust good health and once he enjoys that, of course as an individual, I will work that he should come back for another term.”
    Typically, highly religious Nigerians often respond with prayers in place of frank assessments and practical steps when they are confronted by desperate real life situations. Mr Odigie-Oyegun adds, “But those things are in the hands of God because we are not God and we cannot play God. I am only saying that because of the enormity of the task that we are facing, when we talk of change, a lot of people talk about physical change. The main one is the change in the mentality and ethics of Nigerians, especially the attitude of Nigerians to right and wrong. So, the task is enormous and we need continuity in principled leadership which President Buhari represents.”
    For an enormous task that requires enormous efforts, more than one term or even more than two terms are needed, in addition to a determined and knowledgeable general to lead the charge, as he elegantly put it. But it is remarkable that Chief Odigie-Oyegun was not struck by the irony of his answer. The thin veneer of religiosity notwithstanding, especially the fatalism he implied when he spoke of the ineluctability of fate in the hands of a distant and inscrutable God, the party chairman did not in fact have an answer. The reporters did not ask about the president’s endowments, some of which, especially the political ones, are controversially exaggerated; what they asked was whether the president’s health could withstand the constant buffeting of cabinet intrigues and policy miscarriages in the short run given the arduousness of the task at hand. Indeed, they were all but asking the party chairman whether he could indemnify the country against the certain and disastrous consequences of saddling a teetering leader with onerous responsibilities so demanding as to be nearly regarded as a fantasy even in the best of times and good health.
    Chief Odigie-Oyegun was also evasive in answering many other questions, including one on the mendicant state the party he leads had evolved into in less than two years of indifference and absent-mindedness by party apparatchiks. A solution had been found to the party’s habitual impecuniosity, the chairman said, even though that solution was long in coming. He described the president as a harbinger of change whose frugality meant the party had to take a fairly longer time in coming up with novel and sustainable ethos of political financing. Sounds sensible and fair. But whether the party can step up its game and engineer a better and deeper purse to replicate the accumulation of huge billions it spent in the months preceding the epochal elections of 2015 is a totally different ball game.
    What will, however, define the party in the months ahead, if the current confusion and pussyfooting unnerving partisans are anything to go by, is the challenge the president’s delicate health will pose to a party now seduced by its own penchant for evasiveness and indecision. No matter how deeply party leaders are probed on the president’s health matters and a putative second term, they are unlikely, as Chief Odigie-Oyegun has shown, to be forthcoming, not to talk of being precise.

  • Oyegun and the Abuja disease

    Oyegun and the Abuja disease

    ABUJA disease is a peculiar affliction in Nigerian politics. It refers to the tendency of an actor with otherwise modest endowment or from humble station to transmute to a monstrous creature once he/she enters the nation’s capital and begins to frequent the power circles. Intoxicated by a new false sense of identity, such upstart does not consider it abominable to now point at their cradle with the proverbial left hand, mocking old benefactors, before their new friends. Chief Odigie Oyegun would appear the latest sufferer of this pathology. With a straight face, the National Chairman of ruling the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been toiling hard lately to deny allies who smoothed his path to office.

    Perhaps the most audacious of such exertions is an interview published by Vanguard on Monday where he sought to disavow a known truth: the decisive role played by both Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in his emergence in 2014. Specifically, the interviewer asked: “Some are alleging that you’ve not been fair to those who assisted you to emerge National Chairman of the party, especially Bola Tinubu. Is this true?” Hear Oyegun: “Everybody assisted me to this position and I’m grateful to all of them. The only thing is my personality and integrity; I don’t joke with these two things because they’re the only currency that I’ve and I’ll defend them at any time. I don’t believe one particular person solely assisted me to this position.” And in what sounded more like a poor imitation of Buhari’s now famous inaugural “I belong to everybody and nobody” phrase, Oyegun added: “Some day, the story of how I became chairman of APC will be told. You will then see that everybody did assist me to become National Chairman. This means that I’m there for everybody.

    I don’t belong to any camp in the APC. I belong to all members of APC high and below.” With that, the APC chairman could, however, only be said to be deceiving himself in his desperation to impress a national following that does not exist. In the same interview, even more disturbing was his showcasing a poverty of ideas so blissfully over the reported insolvency of the party’s national secretariat. We shall return to this presently. Now luxuriating in a new-found glory, Oyegun must be assuming that the nameless – but nonetheless discerning – porters at Benin airport have forgotten the wilderness days of 2013 and early 2014 when they often would relieve an elderly man, regularly clad in French suit, of his little bag after rushing in from his hermitage on the sedate Reservation Road in Benin GRA to catch evening Arik Air flight to Lagos – tellingly at predictable intervals.

    Easily given away by the littleness of his luggage, no one needed further proof that his mission in Lagos could be other than political meetings, hosted by folks whose generous hospitality he now belittles. So, when Oyegun speaks in such imperial tone these days, he must also have assumed no one remembers how the Edo chapter of APC had unilaterally issued a statement endorsing his then arch rival, Chief Tom Ikimi, solely for the office in 2014, obviously to foreclose his (Oyegun’s) chances. Unhappy with what he considered “an anti-democratic maneuver” and “a crude attempt to close the political space”, then Governor Oshiomhole had to make a passionate appeal to the state party executive to shift ground. They were incensed that even with the convention barely few days away, Oyegun still had not thought it courteous to formally intimate them of his interest in the big job. Following Oshiomhole’s intervention, the Anselm Ojezua-led state exco backed down and granted Oyegun audience to make a presentation.

    Thereafter, the Edo APC recanted its earlier position by issuing a statement also acknowledging Oyegun and wishing both contenders good luck at the national convention ahead. That development would cost Oshiomhole his political relationship with Ikimi seen largely as the man to beat for his greater national visibility which he was too eager to flaunt to the point of hubris.

    If Oshiomhole ensured home anointing for Oyegun, Tinubu sold him to his allies at the national level, obviously out of a nostalgia for – and maybe over-romanticization of – their NADECO past. We are talking of the days of innocence of APC when key gladiators still related as comrades united by a shared resolve to oust Goodluck Jonathan from Aso Rock; when the atmosphere had not become poisoned by mutual suspicion and deep bitterness arising from a sense of alienation. Of course, it is open secret that over the years Asiwaju and Ikimi never got on well over the former’s memory of the brutal repression suffered as NADECO exile under dictator Sani Abacha in the 90s with the Oduma of Igueben serving as the voluble foreign minister. It is a measure of Tinubu’s blistering networking that Ikimi eventually faced stiff resistance from almost everyone who held the ace within APC then except Turaki Adamawa (ex Vice President Atiku Abubakar). Out-muscled, he had no choice than withdrawing few hours to the commencement of voting at the convention. In pulling out of APC eventually, Ikimi brought drama and a lengthy epistle dripping of bile and acid.

    Reminding the public how he had hosted several exploratory meetings that led to APC’s birth in 2014, Ikimi likened what happened to “someone taking away my pot of soup”, more or less dismissing Oyegun as a political merchandise with little or no electoral value. Indeed, in hindsight, Ikimi would now seem vindicated. At home, Oyegun has in the last three years been exposed as grossly impotent politically. In the 2015 general polls, not only did the APC national chair fail to deliver his polling unit in Oredo, his ward, local government and the entire Edo South senatorial district were also lost to PDP. It was only Oshiomhole’s rally in his native Edo North that ensured APC eventually deliver 45 percent to Buhari’s victory in the historic March 28 polls. Even more humiliating was the outcome of the state governorship primaries in 2016.

    Oyegun’s anointed in the shadow polls came a distant third to Godwin Obaseki. In the September 26 governorship polls proper, Oyegun, the great national chair, failed again as PDP won his polling unit right there in Oredo, the heart of Benin City. Back in 2011, even as the presidential runningmate to Shekarau on the ANPP platform, Oyegun’s showing at home was no less disastrous. ANPP performed woefully across Edo. In fact, on account of the sparse number of votes recorded in Benin City, it would not be exaggeration to say no one outside Oyegun’s family members and few loyal neighbours came out to support a ticket that supposedly had “the son of the soil” as the vice presidential candidate.

    Taken together, no one is begrudging Oyegun whatever super stardom he thinks APC leadership now confers on him. But what we only only expect of those whose palm kernel has been cracked by benevolent gods is simple – humility. While Oyegun now makes a fetish of self-declared “personality and integrity”, we only expect a demonstration of this very virtue in a fidelity to the facts of history, particularly when the memory is still fresh. Acknowledging those who provided you ladder to climb to a height will not in anyway dim your stardom. On the contrary, it confers greater nobility. Only those incurably afflicted by the Abuja disease would seek to belittle, without qualms, their key enablers of yesterday.

    On APC’s state of financial health, Oyegun also misses the point by dragging PMB’s name at all into the story of APC’s illiquidity. Contrary to his insinuation, no one is saying or expects Buhari to dip hands into public treasury to fund party’s activities. I think the issue is whether enough incentives are being created for party members or blocs to have a sense of ownership that will, in turn, ginger them into freely bringing their widow’s mite. How was the party able to finance itself before gaining power? Theoretically, a party is supposed to draw oxygen substantially from membership fees, dues and levies by those who subscribe to its charter of values. To be fair to Oyegun, party finance remains a sticky point even in the so-called mature democracies. In the United States, the corrosive influence of Wall Street was a big issue in the both the primaries and general polls last year.

    The challenge has been how to evolve institutional bulwark against kickbacks, influence peddling, embezzlement and extortion on party’s behalf. In the present circumstance, it is, however, debatable whether Oyegun has been able to draw on his much vaunted “personality and integrity” to provide an exemplary leadership that towers above the squalor of partisanship and therefore commands greater loyalty and trust of all and sundry. It then explains why the national secretariat appears increasingly deserted and the earth vanishing under Oyegun’s bare feet.

    Nothing illustrates graphically that loosening grip than the reported tumult in Abuja on Tuesday by state chairmen of the party. While Oyegun would typically choose to live in denial, the party’s chief spokesperson, Bolaji Abdullahi, was forthright enough to admit that the state leaders were bitter over Buhari’s “lopsided appointments” which have only succeeded in casting the government as sectional; a total negation of the promise of 2015. With the deafening rabble at the door, the question now is whether Oyegun, as the embodiment of the heart and soul of APC, has the courage and the gravitas to convey the message to Buhari with a view to winning back those who genuinely feel alienated. That may be a tough call for a pensioner feverishly afraid of losing his own share of the spoils of office in Abuja. Meanwhile, with his kinsman now appearing to totter under the weight of office in Abuja, I can see Ikimi taking another sip from his favorite cognac this moment, smiling mischievously.