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If PDP returns, fraud probes will be covered up – Lai Mohammed

Alhaji Lai Mohammed is the Minister of Information of the All Progressives Congress (APC) led government. In this interview with journalists in Lagos, he speaks…

Alhaji Lai Mohammed is the Minister of Information of the All Progressives Congress (APC) led government. In this interview with journalists in Lagos, he speaks on the crisis rocking his party, the failure to replace the PDP members in sensitive positions and other issues. 

 

The Customs DG recently said 50 per cent of people in the administration are from the PDP. what is your response to this in relation to the failure of the APC to fill vacant board positions?

President Muhammadu Buhari actually explained that as early as 2015. He did direct that they should bring nominations for board appointments. The directive was very clear as to who should make the boards and who should qualify – I remember he said anybody that seems to be a frontline actor in the run-up to the election, anybody who had either contested for primaries within the party but had lost, or we agreed at a consensus and he was asked to step down, anybody who actually contested election either at governorship level or National Assembly level or even state level against either the PDP or Labour Party and had lost. These are the main stakeholders in the party. They are the people who ought to be recommended for appointments. Mr President himself cannot do all these. All politics, as they say, is local. The President cannot know who in, Akwa Ibom for instance, contested the National Assembly seat but lost against the PDP or who in Borno State contested primary for Senate with a fellow APC candidate but lost. those who are charged with that responsibility failed and that is why we are in the mess we are now. He has promised that there will be a fresh look into it. It is one thing to dissolve the boards, but you can’t leave them vacant. You are going to see a lot of progress in that area very soon.

 

But do you believe the PDP members are making money to fight your government?

I wouldn’t know where they are making the money from. But clearly in politics, we always say never empower your enemies. 

 

But are there not people, apart from the governorship aspirants, who worked in the presidential campaign team?

That is why the example I used is not governorship. I used the example of National Assembly. Again, don’t forget like I said, all politics is local. If I am the chairman of Delta State APC or I am a leader of Delta State APC and I am given criteria, I decide to bypass those criteria, the President is too busy to look at all those ones. I know many states, for instance, where people are complaining that it is not those that should be compensated that are compensated. But again, it is not possible for you to compensate everybody at the same time. Certain boards are not due for dissolution because some of them are tenured and certain boards need specialist people. Certain boards are governed by certain rules.

 

The APC finally held its NEC meeting and National Caucus meeting which should have been held earlier. Were those meetings convened out of pressure?

Frankly speaking, there is no party that came to power like the APC that is not bound to have a kind of challenges we have. If you go back to the ANC in those days, I don’t know what ANC is facing today. Our case is like we were a rainbow party. People often forget that the APC didn’t come into being until 21st of July, 2014. APC did not elect its Executive Council until June 2014. Within two weeks of the election of the executive, we had to face election, first in Ekiti, then few months later, Osun. Now, if you look at the APC, it was made up of disparate political parties – ANPP, CPC, ACN, DPP, part of PDP, part of APGA. It takes time for this to jell and for you to work together as a party. Now, within eight months of being a political party, we had to face elections. When we won these elections, some members of the APC had not even known one another or seen one another. So, the hiccup that we experienced is normal. And before we could settle down, our first test was election of National Assembly leadership which showed the political fault lines of the party. We thank God we are gradually mending all those fences. The party is working more together as a whole. The major gladiators now are back on the same page as you could see from what transpired in both the caucus meeting and the NEC meeting. 

 

Are you not afraid that the APC may not last beyond 2019 and that the PDP would come back?

You don’t even contemplate it because it would be a tragedy for Nigeria to fall back in the hands of the PDP. Look, we have very painstakingly taken this country through hell. They dropped us in hell and we are taking people out of hell. It is not about the APC or President Muhammadu Buhari. The kind of revelations, that kind of rots, you want those people to come back and preside over the affairs of Nigeria again? Now, let me ask you, what will happen to the investigations we are carrying out if the PDP should win election again? Of course, they would be swept under the carpet. This is the first time in the history of this country that we are making real recoveries. Only few days ago, we signed a MoU with the Swiss Government to return $US321m that was stolen in the country. This is the first time this country is actually looking at her problem from a very realistic and pragmatic viewpoint. We are not talking about what we are going to achieve in two years or few years for instance, we are thinking about getting a solid foundation for a Nigeria that my children, your children would be able to thrive. Unfortunately, the reform agenda is always longer than the political agenda. In many parts of the world, they plan for eight, 10 and 15 years. Nobody plans for four years again. And if you look at our MTEF (Medium Term Expenditure Framework), we are talking about 2020 even though we know there is going to be election. You do not think in short time. 

What I am saying is that Nigeria should never, never pray for the PDP to come back. I am being sincere because I know as a Minister the kind of challenges we are going to face. Do you know that when we negotiated with the Swiss Government to return Abacha’s loot, they gave us conditions? One of it is that we must identify what programmes we want to use the money for and that the World Bank would supervise what we are using that money for. When we now argue that we are a sovereign country, you can’t dictate to us how we are going to spend the money that was stolen from our country and we are returning, they said, ‘yes, when we returned part of it to your country, they re-looted it under Jonathan’s government, which is true. So, having said that, we have delivered. We are winning.

 

When your party won elections, there were so many expectations from the party. In all honesty, would you say your administration, your party has fulfilled the promises you made to Nigeria? Beyond the issue of anti-corruption, what are the specific things your administration has done that would make Nigerians to say, ‘oh, let us vote for you again?

Honestly, I am not being condescending. Nigerians have never looked at what could have been the alternative. What could have happened if the APC had not come in? I think you must look at it from that perspective. If the APC had not come in, we would not be investigating the Dasukigate today. If the APC had not come in, I can assure you the Boko Haram insurgency would have probably taken over the whole country. If the APC had not come in, not only would we be in recession, we would be in depression by now. Now, unfortunately, what we inherited, we never even thought it could be that bad. How much does a Minister earn? Just N922,000 and I am supposed to pay my rent and bills from that 922,000. In their own time, they have ministerial quarters, we don’t have any. No Minister bought a new vehicle for himself. They can’t even appreciate the amount of sacrifice this government is making. 

Let me go to facts and figures. In 2015, the Jonathan’s administration spent N18bn on all the roads in Nigeria, the facts are there. In 2016 budget, this government spent N260bn on roads. In 2015, the Jonathan’s administration spent N5bn on power, we have spent N90bn on power. In 2015, the Jonathan’s administration spent N1.8bn on housing, we have spent N70bn on power. When we came in, the entire power that was generated in Nigeria was 2, 690 megawatts, today we are generating 6, 770 megawatts. As a matter of fact on September 14, we generated 7001 megawatts. Look at social welfare, when we came in, we had no school feeding programme at the federal level. Today, we feed about four million students every month and in the process we have created about 50,000 jobs for cooks. We have Conditional Cash Transfer for about 50,000 families today and our Government Entrepreneurship Programme (GEP) has affected the lives of about 60,000 cooperatives. When people say what has this government done? We have stabilized the polity. we have stabilized the microeconomic environment. We have given work to Nigeria. We have lifted the name of Nigeria in the comity of nations. Today, our President is the African face of fighting corruption. No decision is taken in Africa without recourse to Nigeria. That is why today, we have not only come out of recession, but we are making ample progress in resetting the economy.    

 

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