Prof Pat Utomi, politician, businessman, academic and public intellectual, was in Imo State recently for a private function.
He spoke to Sunday Sun on the state of the nation; the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), his role in the formation of the party; and why the party has failed Nigerians.
As a member of the ruling APC, would you say that almost six years down the line that your party has kept its promise of making the country better than it met it?
You see, my views are not hidden. What has happened to Nigeria is that political parties have become an instrument for state capture. A group of people get together, hoodwink another group of people to found an instrument to use to capture the state for their own material benefits and call it a political party. Whether it is the PDP or the APC, they are all generally into that category. Some of us had thought that we are going to save Nigeria, when we got together and said that this Goodluck Jonathan’s government that is in power is doing so badly. But unfortunately, the APC is now worse than the PDP government that it replaced.
So, Nigeria seems to be in a desperate race to the bottom. It just gets worse by every regime. What Nigeria needs to do, is to recognize that there is a fundamental structural problem to governance within the country that makes governance difficult. The main reason is state capture. We have to purge ourselves of state capture.
You said very easily that “you people founded APC. Which people?
Have you ever heard me make any contribution to the APC since it started? Has the APC invited me to one meeting to say how should we do this? But yes, you’re right because “we” supposedly founded the party. APC had never invited me to any meeting since the party was founded. So, it was a criminal construct to use people to capture the state for the abuse of few individuals.
What is your take on the agitation for the presidency by the Southeast in 2023?
2023 will be useless milepost if we don’t restructure Nigeria. It will be a completely waste of time. This is because the same people will use mago mago and rig the election again and the country will continue going down and we will continue struggling saying what is happening? One of my friends, Prof Adebayo Adedeji reminded me in one of our Zoom meetings recently that 20 years that people keep saying the country will get to somewhere and that it cannot get worse. However, he said that the country will still continue to get worse and worse.
Source:- Sun News
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