Presidential election|: Why I’m backing Jonathan –Soludo

Posted by admin CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria), Elections 2011, NNP Elections 2011 Updates Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

Former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, has been on the political turf a great deal these past few years – and it is not just because he was the flagbearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (DP) to the last gubernatorial election in Anambra State.

The controversy that preceded his choice, the events that followed thereafter, the implosion within the local PDP, up to the presidential primary of the PDP (where he backed the candidacy of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar), all had the former CBN governor in the tick of things. But politics is only one aspect of the Soludo phenomenon, the other leg is steeped in the economy where he had been having a running battle with the incumbent Finance Minister Olusegun Aganga, over what he describes as a seeming attempt to rewrite history.

In this interview yesterday, Soludo carefully avoids talking about the economy and the CBN. Instead, he speaks on his political convictions and why he thinks Jonathan deserves to be elected president. Excerpts:
We have been scheduling to interview you on the state of the economy and the way forward…

Cuts in: We are in the season of elections and I do not want to discuss the economy now. We can do so after elections and a new government settles down: then, we can focus on the agenda before it.
OK. Now, to politics! You are known to have publicly supported Atiku Abubakar during the PDP presidential primary, and we read all sorts of things in the newspapers. Do you people support Goodluck Jonathan and PDP in the forthcoming election?

What do you mean by ‘you people’?
I mean, Atiku, yourself and others in the group?
Yes, I supported Atiku during the primary. Intra-party competitions and differences are usual during party primaries. However, once primaries are over, every party member has an obligation to support whoever emerges as the candidate or candidates of the party. Whatever the differences, which are common in every political party worldwide, can be sorted out within the party. Since after the primary, I believe Atiku has shown faith as a party man: he refused to succumb to pressures to either go to court to challenge the nomination process or decamp to another party or support another candidate. To the best of my knowledge, Atiku remains a member of the PDP. I remain a committed member of the PDP.

So, will you vote for President Jonathan on Saturday?
Of course, Yes! Don’t forget, I remain the flagbearer of PDP in Anambra State, and although I did not go to court or tribunal to challenge the election result, it is still the subject of litigations and anything could happen. I will not only vote for the big umbrella, but have also asked my supporters and members of the PDP to do the same.

But a few months ago, you vigorously criticized the government on the economy. How can you ask Nigerians to now support the same government?
You must make a difference between my patriotic role as a citizen of Nigeria with a civic duty to point the government in the right direction, and the issue of elections. On elections, one is obliged to support his political party. You can disagree within the party on alternative means of doing things and yet remain a member of the party. Hilary Clinton was Obama’s fiercest opponent during the primaries of the Democratic Party in the US and she fundamentally disagreed with almost every aspect of Obama’s policy proposals but once she lost, she campaigned for him and is now the Secretary of State under the same Obama. That is how this politics should be played.

There are things that bind people together within a party and policy differences should not be taken to mean personal quarrels. While I am entitled to my views on how things ought to be done within the party or about the economy, and I believe we still have a long way to go on these matters, but I remain convinced that the best way to effect the change is from within the party and not outside of it. Since I remain a member of the party, it is a matter of honour and principle that I should support it and its candidates. Internally, we have a lot of work to do to reposition the party to serve Nigeria better and also a lot of work to do to fashion a credible economic policy agenda to usher in a new Nigeria. But that is for another day….

Are you convinced that the PDP can usher in the new Nigeria?
As of today, I have not seen an alternative. I have taken time to study the manifestoes and programmes of the other major political parties, and I regret to say that none presents a credible alternative to the PDP. I have copies of the manifestoes in my library. Indeed, if you cut out the cover pages of the various manifestoes/programmes and remove the names of the political parties and give them to an independent person to evaluate, he will have difficulty distinguishing between them in terms of content. I am sad to say that none of the manifestoes excites.

What you find are essentially wish-lists which anyone can draft in one night, but without any statement as to how those beautiful wish-lists would be implemented or more fundamentally, how they would be funded. I read the manifestoes/programmes of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party in the UK before the last election, and each of them would tell you upfront that their programmes were fully costed and therefore implementable. As we speak, no one has told us how much any of the beautiful promises would cost and where he would get the money to fund it. So, I do not yet see the alternative to PDP, because there are no differences of ideologies or programmes.

The only difference between the political parties is the individuals in the parties. Come to think of it, many of the chieftains of the other parties today were the chieftains of the PDP yesterday. We still have a long way to go in developing or building political parties that present Nigerians with alternative paths to development. Unfortunately, the political parties of the second republic (NPN, NPP, UPN, PRP, and GNPP) were light years ahead of the current political parties in terms of alternative ideologies and manifestoes. We now have politics of personalities and bread and butter.

I am in PDP because I still have an abiding faith that we can reinvent it to become a true political party to serve the greater good of all Nigerians. What I urge all Nigerians who have anything to contribute is to get involved and actively work to engineer genuinely transformative political parties. Doing nothing or complaining from outside is not an option because as I often ask: if not you, who? If not now, when?

Now, let’s go to the general election. What is your assessment of the on-going exercise and the performance of INEC?
In summary, I think that in spite of the initial hiccups, the performance of the Jega-led INEC in last Saturday’s National Assembly election deserves commendation. My admiration for Jega actually soared. Of course, every human operation will experience hitches. I expect that the remaining elections will remedy whatever may be the shortcomings of last Saturday. If this happens, Jega would have written his name in gold and a new Nigeria will be in the making. Once votes count, and the voter becomes king in a democracy, a genuinely accountable and responsive governance system will emerge. So, I congratulate Jega and INEC, and also all Nigerians who insisted on moving our democracy forward.

How is Anambra? I mean how is the election going there?
Anambra is great. The election went relatively well. Winners have emerged, although there are complaints. However, relative to our history, this was probably the best in the last decade. I wish to use this medium to congratulate all those who have been declared winners, and to also urge the other contestants to consider the noble path by congratulating the winners.

There will be another day. I believe I set the pace in Anambra politics by being the first to publicly congratulate Mr. Peter Obi after the last governorship election. In my press briefing I catalogued the details of the hi-tech rigging that disenfranchised 84% of the electorate and created what the Financial Times of London, described as elections without legitimacy but despite all those, I went ahead to congratulate him. We know what happened in that election and the election last Saturday has vindicated us that in a transparent election any day where every voter is allowed to vote, Anambra State is a PDP state. I urge others to emulate my example: accept the results and let our state move forward. The world won’t end with this election!

So what next for Soludo? What are you up to these days in terms of politics?
Soludo: I am busy with sundry matters, getting on with my life. Politics for me is charity, just an avenue for service. It is not a full time vocation for me. As one American politician said about two centuries ago, it is impossible to make politics a full time job and yet remain honest. There is time for politicking and time for business.

I am not contesting for any office, and while I support my party, I devote greater chunk of my time to my academic, consulting, charitable, and business interests. I am getting increasingly busy at the international level. I serve as a member of the chief economist advisory council of the World Bank; a Board member of the South Centre, Geneva; a member of the External Advisory Group of the IMF Triennial Surveillance Review; member of the Technical advisory group of the Natural Resource Charter; etc. It is exciting out there. So, I am quite busy.

-Sunwp_posts

Short URL: https://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=6507

Posted by admin on Apr 13 2011. Filed under CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria), Elections 2011, NNP Elections 2011 Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry