My Intention To Run For Bayelsa Governorship Seat, A Divine Project”– Aganaba

PRINCE (Engr) PREYE AGANABA has become a household name in the politics of Bayelsa State. He contested for the Bayelsa Central Senatorial election in 2015 but narrowly lost. This time around he has indicated his intent to run for the office of governor in the November 16, 2019 governorship election in Bayelsa State. He is widely known in bringing the ruling All Progress Congress, APC, to Bayelsa State against all odds whose platform he intends to contest the governorship primary in Bayelsa. In an interview with selected newsmen including OSA OKHOMINA in Yenagoa, Engr. Aganaba spoke on the storm in the party, his relationship with the former Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Ameachi and other issues of the moment.

Prince Aganaba, your intention to contest the governorship election in Bayelsa State under the APC come November 16, this year is no longer a hearsay. Your massive campaign office in Yenagoa the State capital have become a beehive of activities which speaks volume. Is your governorship project still on course?

There’s this saying that action speaks louder than the words. The ears have heard and the eyes have seen. Even though I’m yet to make any formal declaration to that effect, my ambition to become the next governor of Bayelsa State is a divine project and it is very much on course.

Though I’m not desperate about it but no one can subvert the will of God. I have spoken in several fora and chat with the media that power is given by God. David was a shepherd pasturing sheep in the forest. What happened? God in His usual way, whose thoughts are higher than man’s thoughts, went straight to pick the young lad and coronated him as king of Israel.

When you look at the history of governorship in Bayelsa State, they didn’t emerge because they were so powerful or so wealthy or so popular. They were all dark horses whom God by His design threw them forth.

We have a lot of moral lessons to draw from that narrative. So, if God says yes, who is that person that would say no.

I have unconditional and absolute faith in the almighty God, the higher than the highest and the greater than the greatest, the Ominipresent God and the Ominiscience God. His will shall prevail in the fullness of time as far as this project is concerned.

Some say you are two young to be governor, that you don’t have the experience to manage the office of State Governor. Mr. Aganaba do you have the experience?

Hahahaha (burst into laughter). I have the experience, I have the educational exposure, I have the experience as employer of labour and manager of human resources spanning over a decade. Statements like that are laughable in the true sense of experience. Such statement can only come from little minds. Some people right from the beginning of their life have no single vision for themselves and the people around them. So when they see young men and women of vision they feel threatened and device this means as a pull down syndrome.

The holy scripture says, “my people perish for lack of vision”. Bayelsa today is under arrested development because of lack of vision by successive administrations. They run after vain glories rather than squarely confronting the development challenges that are staring at our faces as a people. Perhaps they need Methuselah, the oldest people to form a government of gerontocracy-that is a government of old people before development can be delivered. That is absolute nonsense and poverty of the mind.

That’s why I have said it time without number, that education will be my key priority to liberate the mindset of our people from thoughts of darkness to that of light.

I have often quoted late Dr. Walter Pussel of the University of Science and Philosophy that“In vain we build the City, if we do not first build the man”. Together we will use education as a tool to refocus our sense of direction. It may interest you to know that I’m 45 years old. Are they saying I’m too young to manage the resources of the state? I’m engineer by profession and a member of the prestigious Nigerian Society of Engineers.

I have my personal company and have been in the murky water of business. I have successfully managed it. I’m an employer of labour. All the people who have governed Bayelsa State from 1999 to date were either in their early forties or late forties and I fall within that age bracket. So what are they talking? I have both age and exposure in business and management of human resources as well as in politics. So what are they talking? Some of them making such remarks that I’m too young to run for the office of governor are just saying all that out of inferiority complex and intellectual complex.

By the grace of God I have traversed the globe with a lot of lessons on comparative development and development models indeed. I’m aware of the fact that in politics there is nothing one’s opponents will spare in manufacturing this kind of issues.

In other climes, they are moving towards generational shift such that young men and women are taking the centre stage of governance. It’s painful that here in Bayelsa people constitute themselves into band of dream killers. Don’t allow anybody to kill your dream.

I have a dream that Bayelsa must be placed in the competing world of good governance. We can’t be left behind in the competing development among the constituent states.

It is sad to mention this but I have to say it here for our good. When some politicians talk about experience, you have to be mindful of the perspective they are talking from. Is it experience in looting the treasury to amass the common wealth while you were entrusted with the privilege to serve and provide good governance? Or experience of a man who has built himself without a record of stealing public treasury and have survived the murky waters of private sector. Bayelsa people should shine their eyes over the two classes of people.

There is this issue the political class have raised against you that you are an ally of the immediate past Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, that he is using you to destabilize the APC governorship primary in Bayelsa. what’s your take on that?

This is another laughable issue created by a few and insignificant members of the political class within the APC in Bayelsa State. Ordinarily I don’t respond to petty talks and gossips. Politics to me is a contest of ideas and not a contest of petty talks by petty and little minds. We can play politics without mudslinging.

However, if I don’t respond to this issue, those peddling or manufacturing this baseless and unfounded story, will make people to believe the story and take it hook, line and sinker. First, I cannot deny the fact that I have a personal relationship with Right Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, a relationship which we have built over the years before the birth of APC. It transcends the pedestrian sentiments being pushed out.

Just like light attracts light, Rotimi Amaechi represents light and I am one of the many positive lights that have been attracted by the Amaechi fold of light. Amaechi is a principled, disciplined, morally dependable, very God fearing and with a very strong character. Those who cannot fit into his cardinal principles have often accused him of arrogance and call him all kinds of names.

I am not surprised he is being linked to the governorship primary in Bayelsa State. Unlike some of the politicians in Bayelsa who are making such wild allegations against Amaechi, he doesn’t patronize cult boys to pursue his political agenda. They are just afraid of the moral credentials of Amaechi and it’s a matter of a combination of mischief and complex.

My governorship ambition is divine and has nothing to do with Amaechi. But if you say I’m inspired by him to replicate his dividends of democracy or good governance, then I have no hesitation to say yes I do. And I have no apology to be associated with a man who has become a model to many people who cherish good governance. Besides that, I’m an adult with an independent mind. Unlike some people who just found themselves in the corridors of power, without any adequate preparation, I’m well prepared to frontally confront the development challenges in Bayelsa and fast track the sustainable development dream of the founding fathers.

Amaechi is a progressive and will never get involved in the politics of Bayelsa. Those linking him to my ambition are simply doing so to malign his ever shining political profile. APC as a political party was brought to Bayelsa by my humble self and few other comrades in the struggle. Those who joined later are the people who have assumed the status of chieftains of the party and same characters who have can’t manage even themselves much less of a party are the ones concocting the story that Amaechi is using me to destabilize a party that I have also invested my scarce resources to keep alive in Bayelsa state. So calling the name of Amaechi in my governorship ambition is totally misplaced.

Let’s veer into the raging issue of zoning in the politics of Bayelsa which has become topical. What’s your view of the issue?

In my candid opinion, Zoning is a home grown democracy system which has not only become part and parcel of our democratization process but also in a broad view gives every component part a sense of belonging. Anyone with the frame of mind to jettison that concept is more or less an invitation to anarchy and instability in the system.

In Swaziland, zoning is an integral part of their political process, conditioned by their own peculiar political history. In Nigeria Zoning as a principle is as old as the country. In Bayelsa Zoning has become an imperative for the peace, unity and prosperity of the state. Every geo-political zone in Bayelsa state have produced either Governor or Deputy Governor except the Kolokuma/Opokuma L G A. That is why there is this growing agitation all over the state that all the major political parties including APC should zone the governor ship ticket to Kolokuma/Opokuma LGA based on the glaring indices of marginalization over the issue of governorship. All the LGAs have produced either Governor or Deputy Governor except Kolokuma/Opokuma LGA. So Zoning has become a principle and practice for the people of Bayelsa state.

What’s your view about the storm the National chairman of the APC comrade Adams Oshiomole is going through, especially the call on him to step aside.

Honestly, I believe in the pursuit of truth as only the truth shall set us free and let me place it on record that, Adams Oshiomole is God’s gift to APC. Last week I took the pain to write in a full page of the Sunday edition of Nation Newspaper on the so called issue of calling on the national chairman of the party to step aside. Let me summarize it here that those calling for his resignation are the reactionary elements who are used to the old order. They are finding it difficult to fit into the new order.

In the old order, governors and powerful party chieftains were like lords of the manor, who wielded a lot of power to undermine the supremacy of the party, they removed party leadership at will. There was also grotesque indiscipline. Today, the Comrade Adams Oshiomole led APC has changed the narrative by entrenching discipline and restored the much cherished values of party supremacy, a practice none all over the world where liberal democracy thrives. That is the offence of Chairman Oshiomole.

It may interest you to know that only recently and for the first time in the history of party and the formation of government, the Comrade Oshiomole led leadership of the party asserted itself in enforcing party decision over the emergence of the leadership of the national assembly. Oshiomole leadership also ensured that APC wins the governorship elections in Osun and Ekiti States. These are no mean achievements. Some of the states that APC lost were not the fault of the national Chairman. It was rather caused by the crude politics of greed, anti-party politics and indiscipline of the old order which played out in those states. And Chairman Oshiomole has demonstrated the fact that such sad events do not reoccur. Even the blind can view through that Comrade Adams Oshiomole has the capacity to reform the party and place it on the level of an institution in the formation of a responsible government.