By Newsmata
A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) Nigeria’s major political opposition party, Segun Sowunmi, has fingered President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the brain behind the crisis plaguing the party. Sowunmi said what is happening in the party “is the hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob”.
The former governorship candidate of the party in the 2023 general elections who spoke Wednesday night on Channels Television’s current affairs programme, ‘Politics Today’ anchored by Seun Okinbaloye and monitored by Newsmata, lamented how low the National Security Adviser, Nuru Ribadu, had brought his office when he appeared on national television deifying President Tinubu.
A very emotional and visibly agitated Sowunmi, bemoaned how successive All Progressives Congress (APC) administrations in the country had reversed the successes of the PDP in the area of the economy such that Nigeria’s currency has become worthless, and people live in abject poverty.
Situating the factors responsible for the protracted unrest in his party, Sowunmi said “Even if there are problems in the PDP, there are rumours that it is the hands of this government that are in it. It is the hand of Esau, the voice of Jacob.
“People would like to say Wike, (Nyesom, minister of the Federal Capital Territory and former governor of Rivers State) but I will rather say President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He has no business appointing our member into his cabinet without talking to us. He has no business picking Nyesom Wike from our party. When Obasanjo (Olusegun, former president) wanted to form a government of national unity, he wrote to the elders of the parties. But what did he (Tinubu) do? He took one of us, put him in a strategic position and suddenly, the whole thing is complicated.
“If he wants our party to be okay, sack Wike and let him return to PDP and see whether the party will not get stamina and will not move fast. But of course, you know he’s not going to do that. So, stop asking me where the meat you put in your mouth is when you know that you ate it and swallowed it”.
Standing by his allegation, Sowunmi said “My position is very clear. I am not speaking Greek; hence I explained it and justified it”.
Expressing disgust at the perceived denigration of his office by Ribadu, a once celebrated chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) Sowunmi retorted: “Imagine the other day, I am seeing a whole security adviser of a country saying Tinubu gain, Tinubu gain. I literally wanted to scatter my TV. When did this country become like this? A national security adviser would come and do an address calmly and step away, not converting himself to a poster boy, a lickspittle, a dobby yoyo. Do you know what that means? These boys are making sure that everything that this country is known for we are no longer able to do it”.
On the country’s economic trajectory, the former PDP governorship candidate of the PDP in Ogun State, stated regrettably that “We (PDP) gave them an economy that was a little bit robust. We gave them a nation that had a food bank in the silos filled with food that was put there during the regime of Jonathan (Goodluck) and Akinwumi Adesina; filled up. What have they brought back to the country? Nobody forced them to devalue everybody in Nigeria into poverty. They did that all by themselves. Nobody told them to float the currency and make our currency become so worthless without a commensurate thought as to how you are going to ensure that the citizens of the country would have the capital to even participate in simple commerce.
“If anybody is sitting in G. 5 where one of my very great friends, President of Braziil who also respects me is, and they are going to be talking about G. 5, G whatever, to go and talk about how to solve the problem of agriculture in Africa, do you not know that they have failed? Let me give you some policy direction and make you know they failed.
“Before President Buhari (Mohammadu) would leave, he had arranged some money for them to be able to do seedling repair programme in this country. The money was dovetailed in the ministry of agriculture. Ask the men that you are saying that they know how to run the country whether they are able to do it.
“What did they do? They left the money there, they carried all the money; instead of generating the seeds in the country, they parked it to one country to go and buy their wasted seeds that would reduce regeneration and brought it here, and their minister of agriculture is still there.
“Ask them, when they said they were going to remove subsidy, what were they thinking was going to happen to the extremely poor people of the country? Do you know how many farming seasons they have missed? We have had three farming seasons. Why have they not been able to rack up food production”.
Asked if there was no policy of the present administration that he liked, Sowunmi admitted that the proposed tax policy was good, but was quick to add that “If they are creative and they are calm, and they are quick, that their taxation policy may work. But again, they have their history of saying that they want to give us an efficient tax collection system only so that most of our taxes will end in their pockets. That is where our fear is.
“If you don’t have fidelity of how you have used other people’s money, if the wealth you produce, and project and show that you have is beyond what you had in 1999 in any other way that you cannot explain other than through government till, when you tell us that you want to put all our revenues and our taxes under you, we’ve got to be very scared because tell me, how did we end up with the Alpha Beta nonsense in Lagos? Is that what we want to happen in Nigeria?”