Akpatason Has Not Done Enough For Re-election, Says Bankole-Balogun

HOW have you been campaigning and what are your chances in the election?

  This is simple mathematics, what we need to do is to use our resources to split the local government into two or three constituent parts and that will increase our income from the federation accounts. 

  That is already development on its part so rather than having one headquarters, we will have two or three that will create more employment. That is where you are going to have more capital projects. 

  So until we do that, every other thing will remain secondary. People are already buying into that rather saying vote us in and we will continue what we have started when it is clear they have not started anything. Can you complete what you don’t have? 

  I am a lawyer, with true jurisdiction to my pocket, the first thing is that I have been able to sort out what the problem of Akoko-Edo is and that is the reason why I have not promised anybody that I am going to do all their roads. 

   The first thing to do is to pool all our resources together, use the constitution of Nigeria and create additional local governments. That is our priority; that is what we must do because that is the basis for our future development. Akoko-Edo is the largest, is the most marginalised and probably the most impoverished local government in Nigeria and it will continue to be like that until we change its configuration and the only way to do is to create additional local governments. 

  The constitution of Nigeria clearly states what steps need to be taken so what I need to do is to use my own influence, gather my people together, gather the traditional institutions together, gather all pressure groups together and march to Abuja to have this thing done. We are going to march to Abuja; we will march to Abuja.

How do you think you can conquer the incumbency power, which your opponent currently has? 

  The issues are very clear, when you have a power of incumbency and your performance is clear for all to see, yes of course, no problem but if you have a power of incumbency and you performance is short of expectations, and then you have an electorate that is even though impoverish, are increasingly becoming very alert as to what is the right thing to do, then your incumbency is very shaky. 

  Everybody knows that my opponent has not done anything for his local government; everybody knows that, even the ordinary person knows that. He has not attracted any meaningful iota of development to this local government.

What are the chances of your party and the APC in the February 14 presidential election? 

  The truth of the matter is if you want to rate anybody’s chances, you have to look at what his performance has been and in real terms, you know that the economy has grown, aviation sector is doing well, the agriculture sector is doing well, you know that our economy is growing. 

  All sectors of our economy are doing well and we have relative stability in the country but for this Boko Haram of a thing that is threatening our collective security. So on the scale of one to 10, I will say the president has eight out of 10 and therefore, I think if we look purely at his performance. 

  He deserves to win and then secondly, any reasonable Nigerian who is interested in the continuity of Nigeria as one indivisible entity must vote for Goodluck Jonathan.