Rep. Johnson Agbonayinma represents Egor/Ikpoba/Okha Federal Constituency, Edo State on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. He was before now an associate of President Muhammadu Buhari, having been his coordinator in the 2003 presidential election on the platform of the All Nigeria People’s Party, ANPP. In this interview, he describes the leadership crisis in the All Progressives Congress, APC as disgraceful and urges the party to redirect itself for the good of the country.
HOW do you describe the crisis in the House where some members were throwing punches?
It is unfortunate, appalling, disheartening and pathetic. It is very disgraceful, unacceptable and I was very worried especially when my children called me and said “Daddy we were watching you fighting on the floor of the House”. As a father, I have to try to do whatever to correct my children and make sure that they are responsible children, to guide them and direct them. So, for my children to be telling me about men and women, adults fighting, I was embarrassed.
I had to try to educate them and tell them, well, it happens sometimes but I think we have to get it right, we will work at it to make sure that it does not repeat itself because we are sent here to represent our constituency, we are elected by the people to represent their interest. So, we must put Nigeria’s interest on the first burner and it must be an utmost priority, we shouldn’t circumvent that.
What happened is an unfortunate situation and I pray it doesn’t happen again.
Some are of the view that going by the way the APC is sharing political positions, the party is undemocratic, do you share the same view?
Their only agenda was to make sure that they removed President Jonathan, they never had any plan, they say if people fail to plan, they plan to fail, they never had any policy or to say these are the things we are going to do.
The change they were talking about, they came up with name change, we are coming for change, but they are changing from good to bad which of course is what we are experiencing now. Things were going well but what we are experiencing now is politics of catastrophe whereby they cannot even get their house together.
They have succeeded in defeating Jonathan, now they cannot even come together to share the food. They are not able to come together as one because they did not plan prior to getting this victory. Success has extended family, it has great grand parents, failure is an orphan. Yes, we lost the election, but guess what, we are more formidable as ever now in PDP. So, all the changes that they have been talking about, they now found that they are more in a deep shit let me use the word.
They are more in a deep problem they never expected. Now, people believe that they have been ignored, they have been used and dumped. They used the people and dumped them. That is the reason they are fighting among themselves because they never thought that it was that easy.
So it is their problem. You see their blame game. They are claiming that their National Chairman, Chief Oyegun collected bribe. I am not holding brief for Oyegun but I know that man, I know him very well, he is a man of integrity. I am of PDP, he is in APC, but I will tell you, that man is a man of integrity for years. I worked closely with him and Buhari in 2003. I was the coordinator of Buhari in ANPP in 2003 presidential election. And again Oyegun was one of the leaders.
He is very meticulous. So, when you are now blaming such man just to castigate him and mess him up, that is their brand of politics.
If you don’t want people to know how you were born, how your grand father, how some of your parents stole bicycle, don’t join politics because there are so many lies in it. They will lie against you just for cheap blackmail. You don’t blackmail people because of your selfish interest, we should be selfless.
Source: Vanguard
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