…Says They’re Responsible For Country’s Present Woes
By Wole Adedeji, Ilorin
A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in Kwara State and one-time presidential aspirant, Comrade Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has said there cannot be genuine application of the tenets of democracy until political parties come up with logical ideologies in Nigeria.
Comrade Olawepo-Hashim said this during a chat with newsmen in Ilorin, Kwara State, lamenting that political parties and their respective candidates have ignored the basics that led to the nascent democracy.
He insisted that rather, they continue to foist directionless agenda on the people.
Olawepo-Hashim, who even as a young man was a member of the G-34 that fought the military to a stand still and subsequently formed the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, said that he left the party for obvious reasons, when the falcons no longer heard the falconers.
He insisted that Nigeria today needs to go back to the basics in politics and make it ideology-based so much so that we will practise politics the way it is done in other climes, where chaotic situation as we have nowadays in the country is absent.
Olawepo-Kashim said, “What we have in Nigeria now is an aberration. Not even under the military was it this bad. Democracy is all about accountability, unlike now that governors have become emperors. This is not the kind of democracy that we fought for.”
Comparing governors of today with the governors of the Second Republic, who in their time had larger size of the states they governed, but yet, recorded landmark achievements, he said that governors of today are dangerously deviating from the true tenets of presidential democracy.
He cited the examples of late Sam Mbakwe of the old Imo State, who built an airport among other notable achievements in a state that is now split into Imo and Abia states; as well as Governor Jim Nwobodo, whose then Anambra State is now Enugu, Ebonyi and Anambra states, yet he also recorded good achievements.
Calling for a review of the present situation where the governors of today arrogate to themselves the position of the party leadership as against the practice in the Second Republic, when party chairmen were the leaders of their respective parties, Olawepo-Kashim canvassed for a return to that order, pointing out that there is nothing wrong with the presidential system of democracy that we borrowed from the United States of America, saying that the experience in the Second Republic when development was massively recorded under the system has become a pointer that it is good for us if only Nigeria will practice it accordingly.
Asked for his choice President come February 25 general elections, based on the much agitations for zoning arrangement, Olawepo-Hashim said, “I am not interested in where the next president comes from now. All I want is a president whose absolute loyalty will be to the constitution.”
Speaking on Kwara politics and the ‘O to ge’ mantra that brought the present administration to power, the comrade-politician said for once in about half a century, Kwara State is free now from the clutch of a system controlled by an individual and a family.
He said, “I like what is going on in Kwara now. It is one of the states where democracy is encouraged. Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq is not the worst governor in the country. He is presiding over a state where those who put him there ask questions.
“I am proud of the democracy in Kwara of today. We started this orientation in the old Kwara College of Technology, now known as Kwara State Polytechnic, where as youths, we train ourselves the arts of democracy.”
Also speaking on the ongoing naira redesigning and swap imbroglio in Nigeria, the former presidential aspirant said, “I feel sorry for this country. I support the CBN naira redesign policy. There are too much money in individual hands, amounting to threats to security. Only that the CBN should have thought of the people in the implementations.”
