The Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige, has asked
the South-east to stop complaining of marginalisation by the President
Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.
He lamented that all his efforts to persuade the Igbo to wisely
invest in Buhari’s presidential bid in 2015 failed because of lack of
co-operation by many South-east leaders, who threw their weigh behind former
President Goodluck Jonathan.
“This is not a question I should answer because I’m a politician.
But before these things happened, before the government of Jonathan failed, I
went to all the Igbo fora to tell them that the Jonathan government will fall”,
he told Thisday.
“I went to our Ohanaeze
Ndi-Igbo in Enugu twice.
They could not even reply to a letter written by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari,
seeking for a meeting with them”, he added. Ngige, revealed how he went to
Lagos and convened an Igbo stakeholders forum in William Nwodo’s house in
Ikoyi, Lagos in 2014, where he analysed the voting pattern in Nigeria and told
them that even if they did not want to support Buhari, they should give him 25
per cent of their votes.
“They refused to listen to me, and to make matter worse, there was
no voting in most of the areas in the South-east; they just allocated 5 per
cent to APC. “It was that bad, it is too late to cry when the head is off.
Politics is business in a way, you invest in business and you reap profit.
“Yes, that is what it is.
But all I want to tell you is that we played bad politics; we made a bad
investment because they invested in the Jonathan presidency. They invested in
Jonathan more than the South-south, where he hails from.
“I am not saying that is
enough to marginalise them or not allow them come in but we are there. I will
continue to speak for them and when there is anything to be distributed, we
will make sure that the South-east gets its own portion.
But they will not get excess portion. “Even in a family where the
head of the family goes to the farm to harvest his yams those who accompany the
farmer to the farm get more share.
“When they bring back the
yams some of them will be damaged, and the pieces are put out in one section.
Then the whole yams are put into the barn and some will be sent to the market
for sale. And some will be sent to the family centrally for distribution among
the family units.
“Those ones that are in pieces, the extras, will be shared among
those that went to the farm. We did not benefit from the extras with people who
went to the farm. We didn’t go to the farm in the south-east”, he added.
On what the All Progressives Congress (APC) will be campaigning on
ahead 2019, Ngige stated: “Oh my God, so you are in the group of those who are
pessimistic, who have refused to see the wonders of this government?
“Well, I’m from the South-east, so when we get there we will show
them that first and foremost we have fought corruption to a standstill and that
people can no longer steal at will, much less keeping such monies at home.
“The movement was from the bank to the house, but now that homes
have been raided, maybe they will go to the farm to keep them. But people
cannot steal money because there is no hiding place anymore.
“They cannot steal
primitively like it was done before. The poor people of Nigerian are happy
about this,” he said. The APC chieftain said he has no regret for his role in
helping to bring Buhari to power, saying if the opportunity presents itself
again he will do exactly the same thing.
“If not for this
government, the government of Muhammadu Buhari, government of change, Nigeria
would have been worse than Venezuela.
“The crisis you have in Venezuela today, the demonstrations in
Venezuela, are as a result of the collapse of the whole economic firmament of
that country. Venezuela, like Nigeria, did not plan for the rainy day.”
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