News2023: PDP Will Form Government Of National Unity – Atiku

2023: PDP Will Form Government Of National Unity – Atiku

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Former Vice President and Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was at the Nigerian Guild of Editors Forum last Wednesday. In an interactive session with journalists on the occasion, he speaks on restructuring, his plan to unify the country, solution to the current insecurity among other issues of national importance. AYO ESAN brings the excerpts:

The economy of the country is bad. Many Nigerians are even finding it difficult to have meals in a day. If you become the president, how will you handle the economy differently?

Basically I intend to continue with the economic policies we embarked on between 1999 and 2007. Liberalizing the economy for private sectors to create wealth. Liberalising the economy is broad. Empowering the private sector is broad, and of course, continuing with the privatisation of our public enterprises. In other words, we will create a more private sector-driven economy.

If you look at the greatest economies of the World, you would find out that governments have invariably little to do with the economy. They allow the private sector to play its role. And you can see the prosperity and the developments that the private sector has brought about in those places.

If you see the amount of work the government has to do in this country like say, building and rebuilding our ports, constructing our railways lines, building our highways , the amount of money involved, let me borrow Dokpesi’s word , the humongous amount that is required . The money that the government doesn’t have. Rather than borrowing money to build roads and Bridges I would rather concession most of these to the private sector and give them tax grace, invest and get back their money and bring more developments and have jobs for the younger ones. This is what I would do.

You are known as a unifier. What plan do you have to unite all Nigerians and make them to see themselves as one people and one nation with one destiny?

You are asking what plan I have to unite Nigerians. I have answered that question before. In 1999 all the two major political parties had southern candidates. This is because when we rose from the Constitutional Conference of 1994, we all agreed that our next president must come from the South, irrespective of whichever party he belongs to. And we conceded the presidency to the South.

Therefore we had two presidential candidates from the South, Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu Falae. After the elections because the country was divided between the North and the South. We said to avoid division; we said we were going to have a government of national unity. Although PDP won overwhelmingly, we brought in members of the Alliance for Democracy and All Peoples Party as ministers. So with that move, the country immediately became one. That provided peace and stability that we have. Then we embarked on a number of reforms to make sure we provided the people of this country the good government they required.

So this is what I intend to do is that the PDP will form a government of national unity. We will bring members of the opposition who would have lost into government and then, of course, we will move on from there. This is one of the ways to unify this country and we will now begin to move.

Today, we have 17 heads of various security agencies. All of them come from the North; I will not do that. I will make sure that every geopolitical zone is represented in these security outfits. This is also another way you can unify this country and give every part of this country a sense of belonging.

What will you do about the insecurity in the country if you come to power?

There will be more votes, more equipment and more training. By the time you double the strength of the Nigeria Police Force, maybe you will be talking of about 700,000 or so. You will have reduced unemployment. So, we will extend that operation to the Armed Forces. By the time you finish doing that, you will find that you would have taken more than one million people out of the unemployment market.

Then, of course, there is the issue of devolution of power and issue of state police. That I will tackle when I talk about the issue of restructuring.

What are you going to do to ensure more women inclusion in governance?

We would have more women in our administration. We did that between 1999 and 2007. If you do your research, you would see that our government has the highest; I mean the PDP had the highest number of women in government. This I promise we will continue and we will do, at least 30 per cent.

There is this crisis in your party that involves five state governors. We know you cannot just jettison these governors. What are you doing to ensure you reconcile with them and free the party from the current crisis?

I can assure you that talks are ongoing and I believe we are going to reconcile. It is a family issue and we are taking it as such. We are talking to ourselves. And I believe we will resolve the issue.

You have been talking about restructuring. Are you still standing on it? Are you going to allow the states and the regions to control their own resources when you become president?

“It is rather unfortunate that a section of the media reported my remarks at an event yesterday, which casts doubts on my readiness to implement my restructuring agenda.

“Let me, therefore, use the opportunity of this gathering today with the gatekeepers of the Nigerian media to say that my restructuring agenda is intact and it will be implemented from my first day in office.

I have assembled a team of constitutional lawyers, I told them to give me a proposal on legislation which I can immediately present to the National Assembly on Day One after assuming office to facilitate the necessary amendments to the constitution to ensure restructuring.

“Already, I have received a report from a team of constitutional law experts, which I assembled to look into our constitution and highlight areas where there are items that can be moved to the concurrent and residual lists of the constitution.

I have a copy of the legislation, but I cannot share it with you. I want you to know that amending the constitution requires the Executive, the National Assembly and the state assemblies. It is a whole process.

Let me tell you that I will start work on the implementation of that report from my very first day in office, if I am elected president next year.

You also asked what type of restructuring? Of course, when we say devolution of power, obviously devolution of powers must go hand in hand with a measure of resource control. So it is just logical if your interest is in resource control. Then the powers will be devolved to states and local governments areas.

About the Author

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AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.

Ayo Esan, THEWILLhttps://thewillnews.com
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.

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