Buhari should seek help outside APC – Okwesilieze Nwodo

President Buhari

•Nigeria must restructure to survive
•Obasanjo was the biggest problem PDP had
Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo was born on July 28 1950 in Nsukka, Enugu State. He is a Medical Doctor, a Surgeon, an Administrator, a politician. The Medicine and Surgery graduate of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, was elected governor of Enugu State in 1992 under the platform of the defunct National Republican Convention, NRC during the third Republic.
Nwodo, as a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was twice elected the National Secretary of the party and in 2010, he became the National Chairman of the party following the forced resignation of former National Chairman, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor. Nwodo was later forced to resign as National Chairman because his policies for the party e- registration of members and his fight against imposition of candidates did not go well with the Governors.
In this exclusive interview with Vanguard, Nwodo speaks on issues in the country, Restructuring, President Muhammadu Buhari's Administration, the 2014 National Conference, the PDP, among others.
Excerpts:
By HENRY UMORU, ASSISTANT POLITICAL EDITOR
You have been quiet for some time, what is happening to you sir?
Well I have been enjoying my retirement, but I won’t call it sabbatical holiday. I am enjoying my golf, I am enjoying my family. It had been a long time I have had the opportunity to spend time with my family.
When you look at the situation in the country now, will you say it is the kind of country that our fore fathers envisaged?
Well, I want to be very blunt; I don’t believe that anybody ever contemplated, wished, hoped or imagined that the situation in our country would be as bad as it is today. When we had an economy that depended basically on agriculture, our founding fathers were able to do a lot when it came to development of this country. With the cocoa in the West they were able to build the first television in Africa.

We never planned to meet the needs of this population as far as the power industry is concerned and the same thing goes for every other aspect of our life; we didn’t plan for the health care of this population, we didn’t plan for the educational care of this population, a lot of things were taken for granted and today we are suffering all of this. The infrastructure of our country is very weak and that is why the economy is very difficult to turn around.This is 17 years of unbroken democracy in which we have our ups and downs. In your candid view, do you think the present government has the capacity to lead us out of this present economic crisis that we are facing?To be honest with you we have all prayed for democracy in our country and as you have said we are enjoying 17 years of unbroken democracy. We have put a lot of blame on military intervention in our governance and that is also true but then with the advent of democracy and the lessons that politicians are supposed to have learnt about the truncation of democracy by the military, one would have expected that we would organise ourselves better.When we formed PDP, one of the cardinal things that we said which we believed in was that no Nigerian should go to bed hungry. This country had the capacity to make sure that this didn’t happen because our country is a rich country, but what has happened is that the people who managed our affairs in these 17 years haven’t been as frugal as those who managed it in the first republic and even in the second republic.It is easy to look at the personal wealth of people like Aminu Kano, Amadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa, Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, M.I. Okpara, look at what they left behind in terms of material possession and look at what state governors, senators and people who are just in the periphery of power in our country now have. You look at the amount of wealth that is going through their fingers and you look at what they are doing for the people in terms of services.Now coming specifically to the present government, this government came in with a lot of high hopes, Nigerians had a lot of high hopes and I think their biggest problem also is that they were responsible also for raising the hopes of Nigerians;  so the people felt that all the problems of Nigerians were going to be solved in day one. But at the time they came the price of crude oil came crashing down.Secondly, the bombing of gas and oil pipelines have made it difficult for them to meet their targets. So the price of oil is down and the quantity you are selling is down and we are a mono economy nation after so many years of saying that we are going to diversify our economy.You can imagine the problem the government has in its hands. What is disturbing Nigerians is not that the government has this problem because other governments have come at a worst period; when Obasanjo came, crude oil was selling at 30 and he still managed the economy very well, he was able to get a debt relief from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which gave us a window and he was able to grow the economy.Therefore it is a question of do you have a strategy that will work? Now in the past one year, we have been watching the government and we have been co-operating with every strategy that they have brought but things are getting harder and harder for our people.Secondly, when the price of petrol has gone so high, almost double of what they met now even the farmer in the rural area who has to transport his farm products to the city is paying more for transport. We are therefore paying more for the things we are cultivating in our land. The biggest problem is that people are not having more income; the minimum wage hasn’t changed, the sources of income have not changed and then there is high inflation. This is why out there, people are hungry, people are angry, people are saying when is government going to solve this problem and they are impatient .So I think that what•Nigeria must restructure to survive

•Obasanjo was the biggest problem PDP had

Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo was born on July 28 1950 in Nsukka, Enugu State. He is a Medical Doctor, a Surgeon, an Administrator, a politician. The Medicine and Surgery graduate of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, was elected governor of Enugu State in 1992 under the platform of the defunct National Republican Convention, NRC during the third Republic.

Nwodo, as a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was twice elected the National Secretary of the party and in 2010, he became the National Chairman of the party following the forced resignation of former National Chairman, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor. Nwodo was later forced to resign as National Chairman because his policies for the party e- registration of members and his fight against imposition of candidates did not go well with the Governors.

In this exclusive interview with Vanguard, Nwodo speaks on issues in the country, Restructuring, President Muhammadu Buhari's Administration, the 2014 National Conference, the PDP, among others.

Excerpts:

By HENRY UMORU, ASSISTANT POLITICAL EDITOR

You have been quiet for some time, what is happening to you sir?

Well I have been enjoying my retirement, but I won’t call it sabbatical holiday. I am enjoying my golf, I am enjoying my family. It had been a long time I have had the opportunity to spend time with my family.

When you look at the situation in the country now, will you say it is the kind of country that our fore fathers envisaged?

Well, I want to be very blunt; I don’t believe that anybody ever contemplated, wished, hoped or imagined that the situation in our country would be as bad as it is today. When we had an economy that depended basically on agriculture, our founding fathers were able to do a lot when it came to development of this country. With the cocoa in the West they were able to build the first television in Africa.