Opposition with APC is within ―El-Rufai

GOVERNOR Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai of Kaduna state has said that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has no effective opposition among other political parties ahead 2019 general election in the country, adding that opposition with APC is within the ruling party.

Speaking as guest speaker at the first public lecture of the Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, Kwara state on Wednesday, the governor said that the APC would win next general election because the party is a 21st-century miracle.

“We are a party that is just five years old. We are a miracle. We are truly a 21st-century miracle. A party that was formed a year to the election and ejected a party which had been for 16 years is a miracle. We will solve our problems and we will win the next elections even in more states. Because we are capable of solving our problem and the other party is so disorganized, misinformed.

“If you look at the Nigerian political environment, the APC has no opposition, PDP is totally destroyed as a brand. We have no effective opposition. The opposition with APC is within APC. We have people that are unhappy, there are many unhappy people, some of them legitimately, there are some disgruntled people that are unhappy without basis, and we also have rascals and troublemakers who think politics is rascality and to each one there is a different solution.

Governor el-Rufai, who said that President Muhammadu Buhari was aware of the crisis in the ruling party, said that the president was addressing it.

“The President has established a committee under Asiwaju to reconcile. The president recognizes that there are people that have worked for the success of the party and they have not been adequately recognized. There is the need to recognize those people, apologize and do something and he said Asiwaju go and do it.

There are people who are disgruntled because they are used to the PDP thing of distribution; every month bring money to give them. There are people like that. Those ones there is no solution. They will remain in opposition until you find a way to annihilate them politically, There are rascals. They do things so that you will negotiate with them. Well, you can keep negotiating depending on the level of rascality. You can choose and say I am wiping you out of the political map,” he said.

He also said that the reason Nigerians voted out the PDP in 2015 was that people were tired, adding that everyone saw that the country was heading towards collapse.

“So many people voted not really just APC but against PDP. And since then the various federal and state governments, both APC and PDP have got the message and are trying to govern justly but they can not overturn the baneful legacy of governments overnight.

It took us many decades to get where we are and to get into the hole that we are and we will not be able to get out of the hole overnight in spite of the best efforts. There is the need to articulate a proper national consensus on what our goals are as a country and what standards, the majority of the citizens will subscribe to rank out Nigeria as a justly govern polity. There must be a consistent, unwavering focus on delivery security, peaceful coexistence and human development goals that will deliver justice to the vast majority of our people.

“Nigeria is here to stay. We will negotiate to solve our problem and I am of the view that if our report on true federalism is adopted, and even tacitly implemented by our party and the government, Nigeria will be a better place for everyone”, he said.

Speaking on statistics on Nigeria human development indices, the governor said that:

Nigeria has consistently been ranked No 122 out of about 189 countries in human development index since 2013. It has been behind other smaller African countries. The giant of Africa is Africa’s 20th in human development ranking even in African we are No 20 and in the world, we are 152. Countries such as Seychelles, Mauritius, Botswana, and Tunisia all of them are much smaller than Nigeria and are consistently attaining better ranking.

Our poor ranking is not surprising, our country is confronted with a legacy of high poverty, high illiteracy, and low standard of living, all stemming from bad governance over the decades.

In 2017, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that Nigeria has some 29m unemployed persons and the unemployment rate is 18.8 percent. However, youth unemployment, ie unemployed among the age group between 18-35 years of age was as high as 61.6 percent, meaning that the segment of the population that constitutes the vast majority of our population and the most active is mainly not at work.

About 65m Nigerians are said to be illiterate and about 10.5m children of school age are out of school according to UNESCO and most of these out of school-age children are in northern Nigeria.

When you see the young people and ask them to work hard and that that is the route to success,  they tell you that the root to success is to be dishonest, lazy and take advantage of the system and that is the fastest way to be rich and you get chieftaincy titles, honorably degrees, nobody cares about  the basic value of honesty, hard work and

integrity we have at the federal and state levels, governments that are striving to govern justly.

All hope was not lost.