By Tom Moses

Banking and Finance Management expert, National Patron, the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, South-South and General Overseer, Christian Central Chapel International, Bishop Emmah Gospel Isong, in this interview slams the APC-led Federal Government over the controversy trailing the 2016 budget. He also criticised the Federal Government for abandoning the Calabar-Itu Road for decades leading to avoidable deaths on the road that links Akwa-Ibom and Cross Rivers states to the rest of the country. Excerpts:

On the deplorable state of the Calabar-Itu RoadI believe Calabar-Itu Road was one of the reasons the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP was kicked out at the national level and I am praying it should not be the reason the All Progressives Congress, APC would be kicked out in 2019. That is how angry our people are about the Calabar-Itu Road, which is very crucial to the socio-economic development of Nigeria. It is the oldest road in the South-South and the road that links the two sister states of Akwa-Ibom and Cross River. I pray that the Federal Government should look at it as the major reason it should continue to conduct elections either for PDP or APC.
His assessment of the APC-led Federal Government so far.

The APC government is still basking in the euphoria of winning election forgetting that you can win an election and you don’t win the people. And as I am speaking now, I am one of the leaders of the people, one of the school of thoughts in this part of the world and if this is the government of the people, by the people and for the people, a voice like mine should be heard.

The APC-led Federal Government should stop playing politics of regions and look into the South-South and make the people feel their impact, if at all they are there for the people or else, the continuous cry of these people may cause South-South Spring.
As I am talking to you now, I am going to ply that road within the next one hour. I have not been able to move since morning, I am waiting because when I was coming from Calabar to Uyo, I used six hours for a journey of 45 minutes drive. I had four hours hold -up at 8 Miles and when I came to Odukpani Junction, I spent another two hours. How can I spend six hours for a 45-minute journey in a country that has oil from the South-South, a country whose economy depends on the oil from the South-South? It is unfair and insensitive.

As a banking and financial guru, what is your comment on the 2016 budget brouhaha?
The tune of any country’s budget is the tune of the music the citizens and the entire economy will dance throughout one full budgetary year.

The budget is not only the instrument of planning, the budget is an economic prophecy of the boom or doom that will happen in that country for one year and if we use six months to deliberate on the prophecy, how many months then remains for the prophecy to come to pass?

As for me, the intrinsic intricacy that surrounds the communication in budgetary passage is highly political and the delay in the passage of the budget shows the lack of preparedness of the APC-led federal government to take over power, to take the bull by the horns. This shows that the APC government was not ready, they won election by surprise.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/04/budget-controversy-apc-not-prepared-leadership-bishop-isong/

APC is an evil conspiracy and nothing good shall come out of them!