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IZE-IYAMU: Nothing Will Stop Jonathan’s Victory In Edo

By EDITOR
15 March 2015   |   1:06 am

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Are you not worried that Gen. Buhari’s seeming popularity in the North and other parts of the country could make this election tough for your party?

BUHARI might be popular in the North, but even then, we make the mistake thinking that the whole of the North is one, forgetting that the North is made up of different ethnic groups, people of different religions. Even in terms of geo-political zones, we have three major zones in the North. In the North Central for example, Buhari will find it extremely difficult to win any state there. Even in the North West where he comes from, he cannot boast of winning all the states there. And of course in the North East, there are people that will vote for him, there are people that will also vote for Mr. President. But one thing you will understand is that Buhari’s popularity in the North is not enough to make him an elected President. There are issues that are more fundamental. And in Nigeria of today the North alone cannot win the presidency, just like the South alone cannot win the presidency. Buhari has contested several times and it is always the same story. He does well in some areas in the North, he loses woefully in the South and at the end of the day his so-called popularity is eroded and unfortunately he never takes this defeat in good faith.

Recently, I was reading a paper where they tried to ask him, what would be his attitude if he loses. And he said he could not lose. And they asked him again that in an election, there is always the possibility of you winning or losing, how would you react if you lose? He said he could not contemplate it. That is a very dangerous reply and it shows a lot of desperation. A man who cannot contemplate defeat cannot go into elections.

So how has it been campaigning for President Jonathan in Edo State?

It has been very interesting, when you have a sellable product, you don’t labour too hard marketing the product. But when the product is bad it becomes extremely difficult. Edo people see the President as their own. They appreciate the challenges, they appreciate his achievements and they believe he deserves a second term. In many of the places we have gone to, the reception has been very good. A lot of times they have spent much time praying for him and of course counseled him, that in his second term there are issues he needs to tackle more, like the issue of insecurity and ensuring that the power sector, all the projects that are ongoing are completed so that before the end of his tenure, Nigerians will have uninterrupted supply. So I am very confident that when the election is done, the President will win overwhelmingly in Edo State.
You don’t think it will be difficult for him to win Edo since Governor Adams Oshiomhole has told the people his direction?

If the Governor had distanced himself from Buhari’s campaign, may be Buhari would have done better, but by identifying with Buhari and by even saying that a vote for Buhari is a vote for Adams Oshiomhole, he has helped my job considerably in winning Edo. The truth is that if there is one man that Edo people do not want to see, he is the governor. You will recall that in his first term he used to do road walks, what has happened, is it that he is no longer physically fit or he has become too comfortable. He cannot do it because he knows that he will be alone. So, Oshiomhole campaigning for Buhari is a minus because Edo people voted for him truly because they wanted change and the change he has shown them has brought a lot of hardship, deceit, propaganda into Edo State. His second term has been a disaster, all the roads we were all singing about in the first term what happened to them in the second term? The University he promised the people of Edo South, what has happened to it? And when government resorts to lies people cannot be impressed. Look at the recent one; just because election is around the corner, he went to Okpella and pretended to be flagging off a road project, which he also did in 2011. Meanwhile, the water project he said PDP embezzled N800million in Okpella was embezzled when General Buhari was head of PTF not the time of Goodluck Jonathan. It is part of the state project for PTF when General Buhari was the executive chairman.

What is your reaction to the allegation of campaign fund embezzlement leveled against you by PDP youths recently?

I’m happy that he came, because it was an opportunity to see for himself the love the people of the state have for him. What you saw at the stadium that day was totally unprecedented. I have been in APC and we have done so many rallies there before, we never had that kind of crowd, the whole place was filled to the brim, the seats, running tracks and outside the stadium were jam-parked and of course, Oshiomhole could not explain because when Buhari came he went to the 18 local governments to mobilise people. His reaction was to say that people were brought from Delta, Ondo and Anambra states. Later, they realised that the President also went to Delta State that same day, so it doesn’t make sense. They also realised that even the Anambra they mentioned is not a PDP state or are they saying we went to hire traders?

When that story didn’t quite work, the next thing was to incite our youth that N1. 5bn was given to me. I can tell you clearly that common sense will tell anybody that there is no way that you spend N1.5bn for a state rally, even if it is mother of all rallies that will climax the entire exercise, such an amount is ridiculous. But we traced this story to the doorsteps of Edo State government and the boys were provoked to the extent that they demonstrated to the PDP secretariat. Later they realised that there was no truth in that information. The state chairman told them that there was no such money.

So Governor Oshiomhole recently confirmed his involvement when he mentioned in an interview that I was dragging him into what happened; that we were supposed to give the youths N3, 000, but we gave them N500, so where is the balance? The question is, when did Oshiomhole become a PDP member? Who are the PDP people that told him they got N3, 000; where did he get the story?

It will interest you to know that in their plan to frustrate the rally, he instructed the ECT buses not to ply the road that day, thinking that it will deny those that want to go to the stadium the opportunity, but he failed. The same youths that went to protest have since come forward to say we are sorry.  In any event, has PDP told anybody that money meant for PDP rally was mismanaged? Why is Oshiomhole now crying more than the bereaved? I am the coordinator of the Goodluck campaigns and everyday we are winning more converts, the moment he knows somebody in government wants to come and join us he quickly terminates his appointment. I can tell you that there is no truth or controversy in the President’s visit. The visit only opened the eyes of those in government to the massive support the President enjoys here and that support cuts across.

So I have no doubt at all that PDP will win Edo. I am not God, but if elections are to be done today in Edo, honestly speaking, APC will struggle to get 25 per cent. It is not a boast, I have lived here all my life, I have played politics all my life, we have gone round and it is clear to us that APC will struggle, but that PDP will win Edo is not in doubt. You see our people are very sophisticated, there was a time they voted PDP and when they thought that PDP was taking them for granted and based on our appeal to them they said they will vote another party and that party has been in power for six and a half years and Edo people are asking themselves if things are any better.


In this article:
IZE-IYAMU
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1 Comment
  • New Nigerian

    How is Jonathan saleable? Everyone is in on the take – more like a lawyer who would not say they’d not represent you even when they know that they can’t win a case for you. This is the only sane way to look at what Iyamu and Femi Fani kayode are doing.

    This is what Femi Kayode truly believe about Jonathan which is what every Nigeria agree with – and based on which he has already lost the election because I know Nigerians and Nigerians would vote this year to change the status quo.

    Fani Kayode, in his speech delivered in Ife Town Hall, Ile Ife on September 23, 2013 agrees absolutely with Tafida and he gave the reasons below, which all Nigerians agree with, read what he had to say:

    “””It is only under this Federal Government that, according to Rotimi Amaechi the Governor of Rivers state, two powerful, sophisticated, well-armed and highly efficient combat helicopters can be ordered and brought into the country to fight and bring an end to the massive oil theft that has gone on in the Niger Delta area for the last three years yet when those helicopters arrived the President simply refused to use and deploy them for reasons best known to himself. I have the utmost respect for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This is especially because I am someone who had the privilage of working in that office for three years before I became a Federal Minister when I was spokesman to President Olusegun Obasanjo. Yet even though my respect for that office remains intact I am constrained to say that I have nothing but contempt for the way that it is presently being run and I have no qualms about criticising the performance of our President and his government. As a matter of fact I consider it as part of my civic duty to do so. The truth is that this government is fast living up to it’s reputation of being utterly clueless and manifestly dishonest. Worse still their incompetence, whether it is to do with the handling of security matters or the economy has no bounds and knows no end.

    I say this because more people have been killed by terrorists under the watch of President Goodluck Jonathan and in the last three years than at any other time in our history outside the period of the civil war. 7000 Nigerians have met their bloody end at the hands of Boko Haram in the last three years and even as we speak today there are paerts of our country that are under lock down and in a state of emergency where innocent Nigerians are being slaughtered by our own security forces. Under this President Nigeria has become an abbatoir of human flesh and blood yet he still has the sheer effontry to say that he wants to return to power in 2015 and some around him have said that ”if Goodluck is not re-elected in 2015 there will be bloodshed”. Such threats and such words against the Nigerian people yet no-one in government has seen fit to call those that harbour such bloody and violent sentiments to order. What a government we have and what a country and what a people we are. The President has divided his own party and his own nation more than any other President in the history of Nigeria simply due to his lust for power and his blind ambition to succeeed himself at all costs in 2015. Yet regardless of his desperation and their threats this must not be allowed to happen. We must not allow it to happen regardless of the efforts of the fifth columnists amongst us in yorubaland that still support him for the crumbs that they are getting from his table. If he comes back in 2015, by the time he finishes in 2019 the yoruba will have been reduced to nothing but errand boys and slaves to others. That is the hidden agenda. Worse still Nigeria will be irretrievably destroyed and she will never be the same again. The challenge of every self-respecting yoruba man today is therefore simple and clear- we must stop Jonathan from coming back to office in 2015 and we must vote him out of power when the time comes. We must do this for the sake of our people in the south-west and we must do so for the sake of the people of Nigeria.

    It is with this background in mind and in the knowledge of President Goodluck Jonathan’s desperate and unholy intention to return to power at all costs in 2015 that I feel compelled to share the following words of wisdom from our Royal Father, the Alafin of Oyo, HRH Oba Lamidi Adeyemi with you. Just a few days ago he said the following- “My fatherly advice to those in authority at the federal level and especially our amiable President, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, is to learn from the mistakes of his very illustrious predecessor, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, by resisting any temptation to take the ‘west by all means.’” Kabiyesi has spoken well and a word is enough for the wise.

    A few more words on President Jonathan. Two days ago he reportedly asked the Nigerian people to ”leave him alone” and let him ”do his job” and challenged us to point out, with facts and figures, evidence of his corruption. I will do so here and now by simply asking a few questions which I had originally asked in another speech at another distinguished gathering in Lagos on April 2013 and which they refused to answer. Now that our President has thrown down the gauntlet and asked us to challenge him perhaps these questions will now be answered. The questions are as follows.

    When will our President and his ”today’s men” answer David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom’s, question and tell him what they did with the 100 billion USD that they made from oil sales in the last two years? When will they answer the question that many of us have asked over and over again about how they squandered 67 billion USD of our foreign reserves? When will they answer the question that Nasir El Rufai asked sometime back about how they spent over 350 billion naira on security vote in one year alone? When will they answer the many questions that Pat Utomi and many other distinguishedand courageous leaders and ”yesterday’s men” have raised about the trillions of naira that have been supposedly spent on oil subsidy payments in the last two years? When will they implement the findings and recommendations of the Nuhu Ribadu report on the thievery that has gone on in the oil sector? When will they cultivate the guts and find the courage to respond to a call for a public debate to defend their abysmal record? When will these ”today’s men” stop being so reckless with our money? Why would our ”today’s man” FCT Minister budget 5 billion for the ”rehabilitatioin of prostitues in the Abuja”? Why would he budget 7.5 billion naira for a new ”FCT city gate”? Why would he budget 4 billion naira for some kind of building or centre for the First Lady? Why would the Federal Government of ”todays men” budget 1 billion naira for food in the Villa? Are these the priorities of ”today’s men”? And all this when Nigeria is back in foreign debt to the tune of 9 billion USD and is still borrowing, when local debt has hit almost 50 billion USD, when 40 per cent of the Nigerian people are unemployed, when 80 per cent of our graduates are unemploymed, when 40 per cent of Nigerians do not have access to good food and are described by the U.N.D.P as being ”hungry”, when 50 per cent of our oil production is being stolen on a daily basis by pirates and bunkerers and when 70 per cent of Nigerians are living below the poverty line? Is this the vision of ”today’s men”? If so, may God deliver Nigeria.

    So much destruction and disaster all wrought in the space of three years and by just one man. That is the legacy of President Goodluck Jonathan and his ”todays men”. Yet just as it took one man to take us to these dingy and depressing depths so it will take one man to lift us up again to the heights of glory….””

    THAT ONE MAN WE AGREE IS BUHARI WHO ALL OF US WILL VOTE OVERWHELMINGLY FOR