TRACKING >>Prince Preye Aganaba, a leading member of the All Progressives Congress in Bayelsa State, in an interview with select journalists including OSA OKHOMINA speaks on his party, the APC, the forthcoming governorship election in the state among other matters
There are talks about your governorship aspiration with some saying you do not have the required experience for the job. What is your take?
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 it. 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. When they see young men and women of vision, they feel threatened and device such means as 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 vainglories rather than squarely confronting the development challenges that are staring at our faces as a people. Perhaps they need a 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 mind set 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 an 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 about? 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.
Let’s veer into the issue of zoning in the politics of Bayelsa which has become topical. What’s your view?
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 given every component part a sense of belonging. Anyone with the frame of mind to jettison that concept is more or less inviting 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 imperative for the peace, unity and prosperity of the state. Every geo-political zone in Bayelsa State has 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 governorship ticket to Kolokuma/Opokuma LGA based on the glaring indices of marginalization over the issue of governorship. 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 Oshiomhole, 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 the APC. 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 Oshiomhole-led APC has changed the narrative by entrenching discipline and restoring the much cherished values of party supremacy, a practice all over the world where liberal democracy thrives. That is the offence of 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 Oshiomhole-led leadership of the party asserted itself in enforcing party decision over the emergence of the leadership of the National Assembly. The Oshiomhole leadership also ensured that the APC won the governorship elections in Osun and Ekiti states. These are no mean achievements. Some of the states that the 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. Oshiomhole has demonstrated the fact that such sad events do not reoccur. Even the blind can view through that Oshiomhole has the capacity to reform the party and place it on the level of an institution in the formation of a responsible government.
