₦airaland Forum

@gohashim2019

PT: What message do you have for Nigerians as we inch towards the election?

Olawepo-Hashim: My message is that everyone should be prepared to make this last attempt to sacrifice something to save Nigeria. We must all make up our minds that whether it is your time or it is your money or is your effort, Nigeria is worth taking a risk for. At least let’s give ourselves another self-imposed duty to make the last ditch effort to save this country.

The killings in the land are just too much. There is too much division, there is too much hatred. We can have a better country and People’s Trust is the platform for that better Nigeria. It is a platform of people with history that have been tested, that have put have put their lives on the line for the country before, people who fought and sacrificed for democracy.

They are the ones that know the value of it and that is why we are all saying okay if almost 30 years ago we sacrificed everything and a lot of hoodlums who didn’t know how democracy was put together started exercising power, without any sense of direction, then we will be doing a lot of disservice to ourselves if we don’t step into the arena and save the situation. So, my message is: everyone out there who has something to do to make Nigeria’s situation better, step out right now so we give Nigeria a better deal in 2019.

PT: Are you saying that if Buhari returns, we going to find ourselves in a worse situation?

Olawepo-Hashim: Right now Buhari is not the one ruling the country and so what you are talking about is even far-fetched. Buhari is not in control of the country right now. So, you can only be talking about if the forces that are micro managing him return.

To be honest with you, I don’t think Buhari himself in his best elements will like the state of the country as it is today. I will accuse those who are micro -managing him of abuse of trust. You see I am not talking so much about Buhari in this interview.

I am talking about the APC and that system because Buhari I know is a gentleman with some integrity. But Buhari has not in the past three years been in his elements. It is such a shame that this man is being abused and the country too is being abused.

PT: Who are those ‘abusing’ him?

Olawepo-Hashim: You know them.

PT: I don’t sir

Olawepo-Hashim: Well find out, you are a journalist.

https://www.premiumtimesng.com/features-and-interviews/294982-interview-how-ill-defeat-buhari-atiku-others-peoples-trust-presidential-candidate.html

PT: When you were coming back after some years in Britain, you were returning to politics, the expectation was that you were going to return to your own party, the PDP which seemed at the time to be preparing very hard to dislodge the APC in the coming election. What changed?

Olawepo-Hashim: They were preparing to dislodge APC but they were not preparing to solve the problem of economic under-development; they were not preparing to deal with the ethical crisis that the country is in right now; they were not preparing to fix education; they were not preparing to fix infrastructure.

As a matter of fact, these ones preparing are parts of the problem. You know that I left PDP in 2006. You knew the circumstances that led to me leaving that party and you also know, because you have been around as a reporter for a while, that the PDP that we formed is not that PDP that we have today.

You know the PDP that we formed was led by honest Nigerians who wanted the military to go and who wanted to build a humane society. These were leaders who were accomplished, cerebral. I was one of the youngest of them at that time. We were inspired by their examples.

For instance, Solomon Lar. He had been governor. A lot of the infrastructure in Plateau State were developed between Dan Suleiman governance and Lar’s After that you could hardly count anything until Jonah Jang came and also did some infrastructure. But those intervening periods, there was just nothing in Plateau.

You can imagine that Solomon Lar died without having a piece of land or a house in Abuja. That is to tell you the selfless style of those leaders. They were not really taken into material accumulation and we were inspired by their good examples, by their courage for the country, by their discipline.

But immediately after we formed government in year 2000, there was a clique in the Presidential Villa headed by the man who wants to be president again now, who was running riot to make sure that all the founders of the party were sacked from the party. And then they created alliances with people who were not part of our struggle to end military rule, people who lacked values, people who lacked ethics, but who could support them to just do anything they wanted to do.

So the PDP became another party entirely. It was not the party that we formed. And then it continuously degenerated until the country was tired of it and justifiably most of the electorate removed the PDP from power in 2015 because it did not deserve as a party to continue in government.

Unfortunately there was no prepared alternative to replace the PDP. The anger against the PDP was such that people who were saying anyone but Jonathan. That was what people were saying. And that is how the APC came in. So I told myself right from 2015 that as long as I live in this country, I think it will not be nice to put the country in such jeopardy where election will be ‘any idiot but the incumbent’.

There must be clear choices based on programme, based on history, and based on policy platform that the electorate should be offered. But if they choose not to take the credible alternative then it will be fair for them to live with the consequence of their choice. But for those of us who have had the benefit of having proper education and who God has been good to and who are in the position to offer alternative, we will not be doing our duty to the country not to offer the electorate the opportunity to make such alternative. I think this is one of the driving force.

PT: Were you not one of those ‘Atiku boys’ back then?

Olawepo-Hashim: No, I was never an Atiku boy. How can I be an Atiku boy? I can’t be an Atiku boy. If you know my history then you will not even venture to say “are you not one of Atiku’s boys?” Number one, we had never been in the same political platform. When we were in PDP, I was of the progressive stock and he was in the Yar’Adua group and they have their own philosophy which is just to organise and take power for whatever reason – just take power, anyhow just take power. We are progressives. We don’t share the same political history.

PT: What is your history?

Olawepo-Hashim: Well, you have sufficient materials on that.

PT: But people who want to vote for you want to know.

Olawepo-Hashim: Well, you know it is a fair statement; your question is a fair question. Why it is a fair question is that like we have said one of the problems of the discourse right now is the lacuna on history which is very deliberate.

In 1984, this man Buhari started the rationalisation of courses, decree. It was one of the reason why Shola Mike and co and some of the patriotic student union leaders then brought up some concerns that why should military people who hardly have secondary education be changing curriculum in universities and schools. And they were very angry.

The military people remove the teaching of history, teaching of some social science courses completely from the syllabus and they were more interested in making everybody become mechanics through the 6-3-3-4 system. They actually assaulted the intellectual base of the country. The product of that is what we are having today.

A lot of graduates don’t even know Obafemi Awolowo not to talk about Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim. They didn’t know Zik or Herbert Macaulay. When you even talk about Obafemi Awolowo they will say is he the one that is playing football, Obafemi Martins? So it is this historical void that makes charlatans to become celebrities.

A large segment of young people don’t even know what happened yesterday. But you know that the kind of education you and I had, you knew what happened 400 years ago. You knew Herbert Macaulay even as a secondary school student, even though you didn’t do history as a major course. So one of the things we have to do today, one of the first assignment is to restore the curriculum to that development oriented curriculum.

Most of the students and young people who went through the 6-3-3-4 system were actually programmed not to be able to think beyond two years back by this set of military elite who didn’t have education, who wanted to impoverish the whole of society. As a matter of fact they were angry with the intellectual base of the country. They were sacking lecturers for teaching what they were not paid to teach and then they assigned themselves the role of changing the whole academic curriculum.

That is one of the most important issue in the crisis of the Nigeria society today. That is more than money matter because when you assault the way a people think, it is the most dangerous wound that you can inflict on a society.

PT: That might be one of the reasons you will have difficulty selling your candidature. How many people know you and what you stand for?

Olawepo-Hashim: I have a lot of advisers now who are working with me and sometimes they caution me. When I say ‘let’s make this statement, they say it’s too long. If it is more than three paragraph, they will not read it’. So they are teaching me how to make it into two paragraphs.

You know the kind of education we had. We will deliver a 15- page paper and even compete with our professors at seminars and symposiums. They will say ‘no, no, no, when it’s just more than three paragraphs, nobody will read it; oga, we have to make it concise’. So I also acknowledge my limitation and I am allowing a lot of them to run the show.

We are getting the messages out. Yesterday, we trended and we are trending now more. I am also humble enough to listen people who understand what is going on in town. We have a lot of them around so I am confident that we will get our message out.

PT: You ran for governor twice in Kwara on the platform of DPP. Can you win Kwara in this coming election?

Olawepo-Hashim: Let me say this, number one, I am (from) Usuman Ward now. I changed my constituency. I registered in Usuman ward in Abuja. That is where I am doing my politics now and that should not surprise you. If it didn’t surprise you that Gov. Aregbesola can leave Lagos and go and politics in Osun, it’s the same thing or that Mrs Hillary Clinton can finish as first lady and go and be senator in New York or that Zik was elected into the Western Regional Assembly and still went to… this should not surprise you.

You know these issues about changing constituency. Any Nigerian should be able to run election anywhere he feels comfortable to do so. This is not a local election. I am running for presidency, not to be governor of Kwara State. It is a different election.

Even Obasanjo did not win his ward and still became president of Nigeria. So, these issues are quite different. But we have substantial support in Kwara, even in those towns you are talking about. In 2007, I was the first runner in Bukola Saraki’s election in Kwara and that election was widely rigged. I got about 70,000 votes. The next person to me was Senator Suleiman Ajadi on the platform of AC which had all the big wigs that are in APC today, including Lai Mohammed.

They didn’t have as many votes as I had in 2007 election. They had about 47,000 votes. And then you have Colonel Bamigboye who had about 28,000 votes. Now if you add all those legitimate votes of the three of us together, you will be thinking about 150,000 votes plus and that was the lacuna.

They ‘manufactured’ one million votes for Bukola Saraki in 2007 and they declared him the governor. But in the last election, the total votes in Kwara both APC and everybody was less than 300,000 votes plus. So what happened to those one million votes 10 years ago? Did they die? Did they migrate? So talking seriously, as at 2007, we had the biggest political machine in that place. We still have relatively our solid support in Kwara. We will do well in Kwara. That, I can tell you.

PT: Despite the Bukola Saraki factor?

Olawepo-Hashim: Even when Bukola’s father was the political kingpin, his father never won my base before. In 1999 when we were doing PDP, Irepodun LGA where I was, was PDP. We had a council chairman, we had state assembly, we had majority of councillors and his dad was in APP. And the PDP then in Kwara, in local government election, had 33 per cent of the votes, the AD had about 19 per cent of the vote. His own dad with Gov. Mohammed Lawal and he had about 40 per cent. He didn’t even have up to 50 per cent votes.

So, his dad who was more into politics and more loved never claimed he would defeat everybody in their local government. He was very smart with the way he did his own. For Bukola who is just less than 13 years in politics to come and say that we do an election and everybody will lose in their area because he is the kingpin….. You know he never schooled in Kwara; he doesn’t have friends in Kwara. I schooled in Kwara, secondary school in Kwara. I was a prefect. I was in the School of Basic Studies before I went to UNILAG. Are you saying I don’t have friends?

PT: But wouldn’t you be described as a politician without a base?

Olawepo-Hashim: Right now North-central is my base. As I said to you all that is not important about the way you describe or categorise anybody. Whether he has a base or not does not really matter. It depends on the election that you are running. Obasanjo never became a councillor. But if you don’t put a time limit he would have continued to be president of Nigeria. So, when you are running a presidential election, it is a different thing from the local election.

Those who have local base, how far did they go in the party primaries to become presidential candidates? How far was Bukola successful in his bid to pick the ticket of the PDP? That is a different election completely. So you have to be focused on what you are doing. I am not running to be senator of Kwara or to be governor of Kwara. So, don’t bother me about Kwara issues.

PT: Who are your political godfathers?

Olawepo-Hashim: You know that I have never had a godfather. God is my father who is heaven. Most of the people who inspired me really that I draw good examples from are even late now. Chief Solomon Lar is one of them. They are people that I will say I learnt somethings from.

There were people like Alhaji Abubakar Rimi who were leaders of the progressive segment of the PDP that we were in. Then probably when you were in a radical movement, people like Alao Aka-Bashorun who was leading us and who helped us, who supported us, who guided us. He is also late now.

I have been around in the political terrain for about 30 years. I started early anyway Very few people have my political experience. So none of them is qualified to be my godfather. Is it Bukola Saraki that joined politics in 2003 that will be my father or which one of them will be my political father?

The truth of it is that I am more senior in terms of experience than most of the actors on the political scene. The governor of Sokoto State was a legislative assistant when we were leaders of the PDP. Is he the one that will be my political father now? Which one of them?

PT: A few political parties came together to form Peoples Trust. What was the arrangement for sharing positions and how did you emerge?

Olawepo-Hashim: The thing about Peoples Trust is not about sharing arrangement. This is my natural home. Olisa Agbakoba, Nasir Kura, who is the secretary are people that we were in the trenches together in the struggle against military rule. I have had long standing association with them. So discussion of the People’s Trust is not about sharing arrangement. It is about how to create a new Nigeria where integrity will rule, a new Nigeria with a plan to bring the people out of poverty.

When we were fighting against the military, it was not about what are we going to get because what we got then was being locked up in detention. There was also the possibility of also being killed. As a matter of fact some of your own colleagues like Bagauda Kaltho were killed in that struggle. What brought us together is not sharing.

What is driving the Peoples Trust is an uncommon determination that is rare in this environment right now – to create a new Nigeria and we are set to make a political revolution. Peoples Trust is not about sharing. It is not APC where there are people looking for office to share; it is about how to make a better Nigeria.

PT: But the federal government has been giving credit for at least rescuing Nigeria from recession and for this…………

Olawepo-Hashim: Who is giving them credit? Are you formulating a question or you want to engage in a debate. Which one do you want to do?

PT: People are praising government and I am saying…………

Olawepo-Hashim: Those people must be living in another Island, not where we are.

PT: The point is there are people who are praising the government for taking some steps to rescue the economy and to put on a path of progress.

Olawepo-Hashim: You know one of the causes of recession in Nigeria is that we have a generation of people who always have very short memories. Anything that happened more than two years ago, they cannot remember.

That is one of the predicaments of this generation – short memory, lack of historical insight and shallow mindset. Since year 2000, Nigeria’s economy only grew consistently at 6 -7 per cent interest up to July 2015 when it went into recession under the APC government.

And as at 1999, it was not exactly that oil price was high. Oil price was as low as $15 in 1999 and Nigeria had foreign debt of over $27 billion and the reserve that was handed over by the military was less than $7 billion reserve. That was how bad things were when the military handed over and the economy was able to sustain 6-7 per cent growth consistently for about 15 years.

When the APC government came in 2015, things were not exactly as bad as they were in 1999 when the military left. The foreign reserve was as high as $30 billion. The foreign debt of the country, in terms of external foreign debt when Buhari came was less than $2 billion.

He was given a very robust economy comparatively to what was handed over by the military in 1999. All the hues and cries of low oil price, oil price under Buhari never fell below $30. In 1999, it fell as low as less than $15 dollars. So what I am saying is that the APC government mismanaged the economy and bankrupted the economy.

There was no reason in the first instance for the economy to go to -2.4 per cent negative growth in July 2015. They mismanaged the economy. Number one, they had no strategy. Number two, they lack the comportment to even seek good advice because people who are running this government are small-minded people who are driven by so much bloated ego over nothing. I mean it’s so disappointing.

PT: Even with people like Osibanjo advising?

Olawepo-Hashim: Osibanjo is a ‘careerist’ who has always offered his good knowledge to advance power around people who are powerful. I remember he was advising (Bola) Ajibola (a former attorney general of the federation) during the military era. They were the ones who prepared my detention under the Decree 2. He is not a democrat. He just survives and he gets whatever he can…

PT: Are you saying that the APC government has brought no value to our country?

Olawepo-Hashim: What value have they brought? They have been spreading misery and poverty.

PT: So we have not made any progress?

Olawepo-Hashim: What progress has Nigeria made under Buhari? You saw the balance sheet from the Brooklyn Institute just this past four months, 1.1 million Nigerians again climbed into acute poverty and yet oil price is as high as it is. So, what is the excuse?

When I was engaging with some of my supporters from Niger State around March this year and they were commenting about my statement on insecurity and how people are being killed. They said ‘Oga, this insecurity has a new dimension in our area, that you know that right now ordinarily people should be planting their yam around Shiroro area.’ They said ‘do you know what happens now? That farmers mark their yam leaves with paint before they bury them undergound because the practice now is that people will go and unearth the yam, go and eat them and some will take it to the market to go and sell.

So in order to prevent people from selling, you have to mark them with paint so that when those yams show up in the market, they will know they are stolen yams.’ Now, the question is – are you going to send policemen to be providing security for farms? That is to tell you how horrible, how terrible the country has fallen under APC. At least we didn’t have a situation where people were unearthing yam.

But when the Brooklyn Institute came up with their statistics which is a product of serious empirical study and merged with the report of people unearthing yam seedlings because of poverty then you have no reason to even doubt that we are in a very desperate situation. That is what the Buhari APC government has brought Nigeria to.

PT: But at least they say they are fighting corruption. Can’t you see value in that?

Olawepo-Hashim: Rule number one, we have very serious ethical issues in this country of which corruption matter is just one of it. I don’t know what you mean by people fighting corruption. I can’t see any corruption they are fighting.

But to be honest with you, I think there are issues that we don’t have to adopt the pedestrian approach to. I think the approach to the issue of corruption is very pedestrian and sometime hypocritical and laughable.

Number one, we need to first of all understand what is sustaining this new corruption lifestyle and attack it with policy at the root and not turn it to a very ridiculous song that sometimes could even be embarrassing for the country because the way they are doing it. Sometimes it appears like they are even de-marketing Nigeria and making Nigeria to look more ridiculous than what it is.

When I was growing up, I grew up at a time when women who were selling things by the road side will indicate by the roadside the price of their wares by putting numbers of stone. People will come, pick those wares and still put the correct value of the money and nobody will take those wares without putting the correct value and nobody who is not the owner of the wares will pick the money and there won’t be anybody there.

So those were Nigerians and it shows that ordinarily Nigerians have integrity. But the society is a bit different now, that they even ready to kidnap the woman selling the ware and ask the community to come and pay ransom before they will release her. That tells you about the complete value environment and this is what we need to deal with and you need a whole comprehensive policy of reform, ethical reform measures, and also political reform to be able to create a new environment that will stop our original value system that drove integrity, that drove accountability, that drove transparency.

So the way they are approaching it is very pedestrian and it cannot be effective. Sometimes, it is in fact hypocritical. One core area I think they have been confused even in their approach to dealing (with) this issue is their unwillingness to decentralise power. There is nothing that fuels corruption like over centralisation. Any system where everybody has to go to one man to get a signature, that man becomes extra-terrestrial. Any system whereby it is only a monopoly institution that offers one given service, that system is prone to corruption.

For instance, when NITEL was the only one offering telephone services, we had only about 400,000 lines to about 80 million Nigerians. Every NTEL territorial manager was extra-terrestrial. He was like an emperor both to extract money, both for recognition in society with people lobbying them. But the moment we allowed other carriers, the price not only crashed.

Do you even know who the MTN territorial manager is? They are the ones competing for your own attention as a subscriber to their network and they are even doing promotion. They even try to know what your birthday is and send you birthday messages in order for you to feel important and you become King. That is the value of decentralisation.

So it is contradictory to me that people who want to fight corruption are so keen on centralising power to the extent that they were even making bills to control power supply and take it to the federal government. So it shows that number one they don’t have a basic understanding of society and that is the number one problem with this government.

They don’t have a standard philosophy; they don’t have strategy for the economy; they don’t have even a coherent understanding of the social problem not to talk about the remedies. I quite understand that they are an array of people that were brought together by the desire to retire Jonathan from the villa. There is no philosophy driving them. They are not even a serious party; they are not a real political and you can see three months to election how much in shamble that contraption called APC is.

PT: I know other candidates, including Tope Fasua of ANRP have also been talking about how they will bring prosperity to Nigeria.




Olawepo-Hashim: It is not just about talking about the economy. You are not just critiquing. Look let me give you for instance why our economy agenda is different. The conversation even for a long time has been how to do balance of payment issues, how to eliminate corruption.

These to me are the small issues in the economy. The big issue in the economy, the elephant in the room is that the size of the economy is too small for the size of the population. GDP of $510 billion even at the time when we celebrate that mark in 2013 is nothing for a population of 180 million people.

And even if oil price should be $100 per barrel such as at when we saw some years ago, we had a situation where the total revenue you will take will be less than ($)50 billion. For instance in 2013, Nigeria had about $48 billion from sale of crude oil. Disney World, a company that is marketing entertainment in Florida made the same size of revenue that Nigeria made and there was so much celebration.

That tells you how ridiculous the size of the economy is. So even if an angel were to be managing that economy and no cent is stolen, Nigerians will still be poor because it is a small economy. Nigeria needs at the minimum $4 trillion economy for majority of the people to be able to exit poverty and that is what we have in our new economic development plan. The new economic development plan is to make Nigeria a $4 trillion economy within 10 years and the elements are clearly spelt out.

PT: We haven’t seen any document.

Olawepo-Hashim: You reported it. I did a public lecture six to seven months ago at the College of Post Graduate studies in Obafemi Awolowo University where I laid an agenda for all round development. Eighty per cent of this was about the economy.

Even before I was formally declared, it was spelt out. In 2015 I spoke at the Imperial College London. It’s online, clearly defined, spelt out. So, what blueprint are you looking for that you cannot find? It’s available online.

We have been very clear on our road map to build the economy and to make it a $4 trillion economy. We have been clear with our strategy to build infrastructure. We have been clear with our strategy to build indigenous technology which is key to being a self-reliant economy otherwise even when you have all the money, from sales of primary products assuming the price is even high, it is going to be a logistic nightmare for you to be importing everything that you need.

The critical issue is to have the technological base to be able to produce majority of what you consume locally and at relatively competitive costs and that means a lot of reforms even in the financial sector. I mean you have to deepen the financial sector. Investors and local industrialists and manufacturers should be able to access money at single digit interest rate.

A Chinese manufacturer cannot be taking at four per cent and a Nigeria manufacturing taking at 25 per cent and you want to be competitive. So there is already a 21 per cent differential in terms of your own cost of money. An important part of this strategy will be also from day one when I am going to be making my appointments of who is going to be the governor of the central bank when I become president.

The governor of the central bank must be somebody who aligns with the vision to restructure completely the Nigerian economy, to make it a productive economy. You cannot be a central bank governor that is beholding to the interest of money lender almost in the past 20 years and the bankers and money lender have been controlling the central bank and the central bank has been ordered along their interests rather than along the mandate of building a solid productive economy and creating employment.

So they only see employment creation as CSR (corporate social responsibility) to demonstrate that they are intervening. You are not just supposed to be making tokenist measures of those issues, it should be the core of their mandate. They should manage the monetary policy in such a way that the employment is high, interest lending rate is low, manufacturer expanse, infrastructural expanse. This must be what they are doing but right now they are taking money from the economy and just financing bonds and crowding out the real sector.




Manufacturers cannot take money because all the real money has been taken out in bonds at high interest rates and then civil servants take this money and go and change it in the dollar market. That’s what has been happening

Alert: This is a very long post...not for the faint-hearted. But if you read it through to the end, you would be glad you did.

Refreshing insights on how we may go about fighting corruption in Nigeria, expand the economy and a whole lot of positive change.

Enjoy!

Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim is the presidential candidate of the Peoples Trust in the upcoming 2019 election. He discusses his chances at the poll, why the Buhari administration has failed, Kwara politics and why he left the PDP where he was the deputy national publicity secretary, in this interview with PREMIUM TIMES’ Musikilu Mojeed and Festus Owete. Excerpts:

PT: The election is just a few months away. How prepared are you to defeat the ruling political party and incumbent president?

Olawepo-Hashim: We are very prepared. First, for almost one year now I have moved quietly all over Nigeria establishing the Gbenga-Hashim Organisation and we have members in virtually all the 36 states of the federation.

Anytime we met that time with my friends and allies drawn from literally every ward in Nigeria, they would say ‘we are making progress but this thing is not in the newspaper.’ And I said ‘deliberately so, I don’t want it to be in the newspapers.’

This is because I didn’t want what we were building to be destroyed prematurely because the people I am engaging are very viscous. So we shielded our work at the grassroots from any media attention.

Today you can see the benefit of it. Of the 28 new registered political parties, Peoples Trust put up the highest level of nomination. You must have grassroots structure to be able to achieve that.

Whereas you will see a lot of candidates who have had a lot of attention as new entrants into the polity and are mentioned every day in the media, polling 10 per cent of what were able to poll. That is structural superiority.

Secondly, I have been in partisan politics actively for almost three decades and therefore I am not essentially somebody you will say does not know how to organise a political party. One other thing we have going for us is that there are about 9 or 10 states of APC where they will not be voting for APC candidates, yet they will not leave the party. They will vote for us.

There are also states controlled by the PDP that will not vote for their presidential candidate, yet they are in their party. So, you cannot evaluate our strength simply by the strength of the party but also the strength of our friends who are committed to this presidential bid.

A lot of people may not have the courage to go out of the established parties, but they have made up their mind they are not going to vote or their party’s candidate. So this is going to be a unique election where presidential election people would vote for party A, in governorship election, they will vote for party B. We are organisationally prepared.




The other point is that there are about 15 million Nigerians right now who are going to be voting for the first time and who are not supporters of PDP or APC and who are unlikely to vote for the PDP or APC presidential candidates. So we are targeting this category of voters. So this is not a fluke, it is a very serious thing.

PT: What gives you the impression that these voters will not vote for APC and PDP?

Olawepo-Hashim: Number one, we have engaged them. Two, we have done surveys and you can also do your surveys. Some months ago when we did a survey in Lagos and we were pulling across board, only five per cent were ready to vote for Buhari while only three per cent were ready to vote for Atiku.

I know the political leader of APC is throwing everything into the works. Maybe that five per cent will increase a little bit especially when they rally their political base. We know what their political base constitutes but it will not lead to victory in Lagos and majority of South-west states.

We will take majority of South-weest States and we will take majority of the North-central states. APC will do well in North-west and North-east. PDP is going to do well in a number of South-east states and mainly South-south States but they will find it difficult to win even three states in northern Nigeria.

PT: What of your party?

Olawepo-Hashim: I have just told you. We will do very well in the north, particularly in our base, North-central. We will do very well in the South-west and we will have some good showing even in the South-south and South-east even if we don’t win it at first ballot.

PT: You are very confident given the way you speak and the way you analyse the possibilities of the election. Why do you think people will vote for you? What is new that you are bringing in?

Olawepo-Hashim: Number one, there is no candidate that is contesting that has told Nigerians how he is going to bring prosperity to this country and economic front. I am the only one and people are discussing it.

Lol

Hashim is the man for 2019

Naughtysite:
A policy based reformist Power Decentralization is the answer to fighting corruption

True

Are you alright?

What popularity does someone in 30 constituencies have compared to someone in over 200 constituencies?

For integrity, it appeared you don't really know much about Hashim. Pls, type Gbenga Olawepo on google and read. The integrity is unquestionable and the competence is unrivalled.

Optional09:
I don’t know why this guy can’t merge with Sowore. Sowore is popular and credible than all this guys. They should rather work with him than pitching all these small small tents

How can someone who is actively present in over 200 constituencies as shown by INEC step aside for someone in less than 30 constituencies?


What opularity are you talking about?

When we are talking about credibility, Hashim has it far better than any other candidate. This is the only candidate who brought in a government and walked away from that government without looking back due to ideological difference. He walked away even though he his supposed to be a beneficiary of the system.

soulpeppersoup:
Your wrong.

Buhari said he will fight corruption but didn't tell you how.

This one just told you how.

This is a clear difference. Anyone who understand basic issues around corruption would know that the method proposed by Hashim will definately produce better solution

WritePal:
Lol. I think Nairaland's front page is for sale. .

Seun's bank account is already fat from Hashim's generosity. Everytime Hashim this, Hashim that, yet it doesn't go beyond page 1 and he doesn't really say anything new. Lol. Some of us know what's going on .

I was liking this guy, but his new approach is becoming nauseating.

You are such a funny person. Atiku and Buhari's news are always in the fp like 5 10 times a day, but because Hashim has little attention due to his consistency and thought provoking engagement, you find fault in that.

ajl:
Here are the facts based in my observations.
-Successfully registered a newly formed political party within 6 months of coming on the scene.
-Successfully traveled to 30-32 states within 5 months on grassroots campaign and firsthand familiarisation tour.
-Successfully held over 100 town hall meetings.in 30 different states of the federation.
-Held town hall meetings in multiple foreign countries and cities which was locally organized by Nigerians in diaspora with a rule of minimum of 200 local participants for him to accept the invitation to visit. These include far location like Australia.
-First Nigeria to fund presidential election campaign via crowd-funding on GoFundMe, and local Nigeria bank account where Nigerian donates fund. He has transparently raised more than N60 million through these avenues with all names of donor announced on social media with thank you messages.
-Successfully raised funds via multiple fund-raising dinners in most foreign cities he visited. For example, he raised N5 - N6 million in Australia alone just about a week ago
-Successfully held party primaries without any drama and stories of cross-carpeting among party candidates.
-Held so many media interviews including one where he faced current minister of communication whom he told "you won't be laughing this time next year" and just few months after Mr Adebayo Shittu,, the minister of communication is surely not in laughing mood and would very likely loose his ministerial position and all political aspirations and his political career because it was revealed that he never did NYSC.
- And he successfully "navigated" and avoided political suicide by not participating in PACT, which was deliberately set up by old school political parties in collaboration with some new aspiration in order to target few aspirants like Sowore and Moghalu. Unfortunately Moghalu fell for it. Sowore only attended first meeting and stopped coming after heard some young aspirants saying the old politicians requested that they come up with a single aspirant and report back to them (e g. Obasanjo).

This show that Sowore is the new political gladiator. I am a newly registered member of his party, African Action Congress, and I fund his campaign with weekly donations via GoFundMe.

This is why i said we have gone pass that stage.

While He his talking about 100 town hall. Hashim to my understanding have had over 500 town hall meetings in local governments, not just states.

The result is what you see..

ajl:
Sowore is the most popular new breed candidate. Who is Hashim. And more so, his African Action Congress is the most organized party.

What do you mean by most organised?

We have gone beyond making baseless claims. INEC has released it's list,there was no place AAC

So far, PT is the most organised and most structured. This is a fact beyond any doubt.

How do we achieve that national consensus?

I told you that in 1989, we had a national consensus among the civilian elite who were opposed to the military on how to reform the Nigerian State and we didn’t have just Yorubas or Igbos or Hausas. We had everybody. We had Mahmoud Waziri. We had Alhaji Tanko Yakassai. We had from the South, Chief RBK Okafor. We had people from the South-South. We had Madaki coming from Kaduna and all these people. So, we had a national consensus on how Nigeria needs to be reformed. It is the quality of the political leadership that the country is producing now that is making national consensus to be impossible. It’s not as if Nigerians cannot achieve a national consensus. Nigerians in this country once voted for a Muslim Muslim ticket. They had no qualms about that. They elected Abiola and Kinkibe. What national consensus for development could be greater than that, ignoring all the divisions and saying we will cast our votes even for a Muslim, Muslim ticket? The people of Benue had once elected Sir Kashim Ibrahim a Kanuri man to be their representative in the Northern Assembly, in a predominantly Christian State. Our people had no qualms about that. Some Igbos were Chairmen of Council in Lagos. Our people had no qualms about that. This generation is more illiterate, even though a lot of us have assembled a lot of certificates than our forebears in matters of national unity and matters of state and have conducted themselves as people who were ready to forge a united Nigeria, rather than what we have now. One of the problems is the quality and substance of education. When people don’t have a sense of history, it’s very difficult for them to resolve very simple problems.

One of the indices of development is job creation. The World Bank and so many agencies have told us that to stabilize Nigeria, the country needs to create not less than 4 million jobs annually for the next ten years. As President, how do you think you can make this happen?

When we grow the size of the economy, jobs are automatically created. The Oxford economy in Pricewatercooper study of available funds for infrastructure worldwide, there is $78 trillion US Dollars to be spent on infrastructure worldwide in ten years. Nigeria is a country with massive infrastructural deficit that returns above average on investment and therefore naturally should be a destination for infrastructure funds from Edmonds funds, from pension funds globally. The problem with Nigeria is that we have public servants as regulators who are putting stops on the way. They can do road shows to you in France because they will collect estacode to do the road show . The day you take your ticket and come to Nigeria, they will say okay he has come. They will show you pepper. They have an attitude that you have come to make money. They have a belligerent attitude towards investors to start with. I know that as a businessman, when you go there and you are trying to build a project, they are arguing to you why it is not possible. They are looking for all the rules in the book to stop that project. That’s one of the problems.

Investors are also interested in sanctity of agreement, that once an agreement is concluded, it will be followed through, and if there is any deviation from the agreement, the dispute resolution mechanisms will be so swift. It’s not like somebody has violated a business agreement and we are going to court for 50 years. No investor has time for that kind of thing. That’s why we must have a very robust arbitration system. These are things that the Ministry of Justice can handle in collaboration with the Chief Justice of the Federation and the……. So, some of these things are not just simply political. We will rejig our legal infrastructure to make sure that Nigeria is more business friendly so that when an investor brings his money, he knows that there will be sanctity of agreement.

So, the issue of the ease of doing business, why Nigeria has scandalously fallen to 145 in the world is fundamental due to our inability to net infrastructure funds, in as much as we have a high rate of return. If we can net just five percent of infrastructure funds, that’s $3.3 trillion in ten years alone.

Secondly, you have a lot of remittances that have happened in the past from Nigerians abroad, even though we have not had a deliberate, organized investment oriented networking with the Nigerian diaspora, which can contribute a lot of capital for Nigeria’s development and job creation. In 2013 alone, over $27 billion, almost competing with our oil revenue, came from foreign remittances. With an organized strategy, we can up it to a hundred billion dollars in a year. In ten years, that is $1 trillion, just from infrastructure investment alone, and by rejigging remittances, I’ve told you how you can have $4 trillion investments in ten years. $4 trillion investment in ten years will bring Nigeria to become a middle income like Thailand, Chile, Malaysia and other places. It’s not necessarily going to take us to become like United States or Germany. So, it’s a very modest target that will create jobs. Infrastructure creates job .

The other point of job creation is also to integrate agriculture with industry and manufacture. Agriculture does not create value when it just lands in the stomach and he one that cannot land in the stomach is thrown into the rubbish bin. It becomes more meaningful when its tied to industry and manufacture. That’s where the value and jobs are created. So, we have to organize agric and integrate it with solid minerals and industry.

We have a financial sector reform that will deepen the amount of capital available in the financial market. A lot of guys got banking license in cooking books. Some of them were former AGMs and all that. They have been using their banking license to take a mileage on the economy and all they do is to crowd out real investors by collecting all the deposits and giving money to governments through bonds, just funding government borrowing and the private sector is crowded out.

We must reform the financial market in such a way that at some point in time, industrialists gets to access funds below double digits. In China, the lending rate is like 4 percent. In some other countries, it’s less than 4 percent. So, when someone wants to set up a factor in Nigeria and he goes to take money at almost 30 percent, you know that he’s out of the business globally. So, where to start is the reform of the financial sector and to deepen the amount of capital. Reforming the financial sector also means that I want to have more economists, more intellectual, more businessmen on the board of Central Bank, not just bankers who are money lenders. They cannot have effective regulation. Therefore, the Central Bank Governor that you will see me nominate will be the Central Bank Governor that shares the perspective to grow the real sector. What we have had in the past two or three decades is that the Central Bank has been captured by money lenders who are supposed to be regulated. So, the policies that are coming here are not focused on economic growth, job creation, industrialization and development. They are focused on looking after the interest of those who have banking license. You cannot have that continuing and you will have growth. I’m quite aware that the CBN has autonomy, therefore I cannot interfere with the day to day monetary policies because they have independence and autonomy to run that. But I have power as a President to nominate a Governor that will be in alignment with my own perspective for growth. Therefore, I will give you a very good Central Bank Governor that will drive growth, development, job creation and the expansion of the GDP of Nigeria. I will not give you a Central Bank Governor that is going to be captured or that is a representative of money lenders.

The current government keeps arguing that the problem with the country’s power sector is not about generation but about distribution and that in the last 50 years, Nigeria has not built infrastructure. What they have been doing in the last three years is to put infrastructure in place so that they can evacuate what they generate and distribute. How true is that?

These guys are jokers.

This government has been burdened by rising debt profile. Is that not an issue?

There is nothing wrong with borrowing, but what you use the money for. Nigeria is not a heavily indented country. Nigeria’s debt stock is still less than 20 percent of Nigeria’s GDP. Before, it was about 12 percent. Now it has risen by about 8 percent and most middle income countries in the club of Nigeria, their debt profile to their GDP is above 40 percent. United States is almost about 102 percent. Their debt profile is bigger than their GDP. The issue is what you do with the money that you take. Is there a cash flow from where that investment is going? If you take money and go and build a road to nowhere that will not generate any economic activity, that is a negative borrowing. So, it’s not borrowing that is the problem but what do you use the money for.

I will rather, for instance, use a lot of sovereign instruments to give comfort to investors who are naturally positions to do good investments than public institutions and agencies. Whereas, they have refused to provide sovereign guarantee for people who have brought money to invest in the country to back their uptaking counter parties , they are taking loans and bonds directly. When civil servants and politicians take loans, it ends up at the FAAC. The foreign exchange market will go and take it out of the country. But when you back investors who are putting money with sovereign instrument to say if everything fails, you have my back. First, they are spending their money and your liability is contingent liability. That spurs investment in a very harsh environment like that. So, my strategy will be to use my sovereign instrument to give comfort for real investments and benchmark those investment portfolios, rather than just continuously taking money directly and distributing it to civil servants and politicians who will not manage them well. That’s the problem and I don’t know why they are not using their sovereign instruments to give comfort to investors. They will rather be taking money and spending it directly as the government. So, taking loans is not the issue. I actually believe that Nigeria is not heavily indebted, given the size of the GDP. But I have problems with what they are using the money for that we cannot see it.

The campaign train will be hitting the road in a matter of days, not many Nigerians understand the dynamics of economics. Nigerians understand what a candidate has to promise in terms of dividends of democracy. What are going to be telling the ordinary Nigerians to break down this issue of economy ?

It’s so simple that for the past 27 years, I’ve been creating jobs as a private entrepreneur, locally and globally. So, when I’m in government, I will create jobs. Once of the reasons why President Buhari does not understand how to create jobs is that he has been living on government for almost 50 years. He rides on government car, doesn’t buy petrol, so he cannot feel what the ordinary people are feeling. But for the past 27 years, I pay salaries. If you see me ride a car, I bought it with my money. I fuel the petrol . I run my energy sources. So, I feel what the ordinary people feel. So, those who have never created jobs in their life cannot now get into government and begin to learn it. So, I’ve been creating jobs and they can believe me that I know how to do it.

Secondly, I’m going to unite Nigeria, which the APC government has not been able to do. Nigeria now is more divided than at any point in time in our history. I will secure the country and I think most Nigerians are really very worried about security. Security is key to many people, even before economy because without security, you cannot even do your farming. Farmers cannot even go to farm in many states of the federation right now because there is no consequence for those who have been killing other people. They don’t see them punished and therefore there is no deterrence. It’s looking like the lives of the average Nigerian does not count. I will make the life of every Nigerian to count as President and Commander in Chief and it starts from day one. When there is killing and there is consequence , the killers are punished immediately, other people will be careful to run in excitement to want to take other people’s lives. What we have seen is after killings have been done, public officers come to justify why those killings happened. They come to explain to us why those people had to kill other people. There is no explanation for why anybody had to take any other person’s life. What we should be explaining and showing the people I what we have done with the murderer. Your body language as President and Commander in Chief is important for the kind of security environment you are going to get. From day one, I will leave nobody in doubt that I will be a President and Commander in Chief for all Nigerians, not some Nigerians. So, some people have to feel that they have a special privilege to take other people’s lives

What is your take on restructuring?

The word restructuring has been so politicized that even the content of the discourse sometimes is lost. There are people who are generally scared when they hear that and for some, because it is the new fact that everybody wants to hear, they have to mouth it. The point for me is the content. When you are talking about decentralisation, you are talking about devolution of power. We have been talking about that for more than 30 years now. Senator Mahmoud Waziri was the Treasurer of our group then, the National Consultative Forum, led by Alao Aka-Bashorun. The group that first talked about decentralisation of power and we attempted organizing a national conference under the army and the army brought armoured tanks to stop us in National Theatre. It was a well-articulated and well thought out position. We had the people who we called the technocratic group who were people who have been Super Permanent Secretaries in the days when the military came into power for the first time. They themselves came to the conviction that an over-centralized Nigeria was unworkable and that we needed to decentralize and devolve power. Then we had those of us who came from the Human Rights Movement led by Alao Aka-Bashorun, Beko Ransom-Kuti. I was the National Administrative Secretary. A lot of people who are talking restructuring today were with that military government opposing us. Some of them were contesting under them. They said we were talking rubbish, that we should allow them to do their elections, while we were focused on the issues that were germane, which was the structure of the state. But because a lot of Nigerians don’t have a sense of history, anybody can just appear during elections and open his mouth and then he will get attention. Those who created a lot of political illiteracy in the air right now did it deliberately because they removed history from the syllabus. So, for some people, whatever they just read in the internet within two weeks, because they don’t even have memory to remember what happened five years ago, not to talk of what happened 30 years ago.

This also encourages a lot of political fraud. Sometimes, we transport ourselves to be defrauded politically. I would have expected a good research on this issue. One of the things you see in academics first is that you pay tribute to the originator of a given idea. There is lot of intellectual fraud in this country. People are talking about restructuring. There is even no tribute to Alao Aka-Bashorun who died fighting for this. There I no remembrance of Mahmoud Waziri. There is no mention of Anthony Enahoro. Some people just get up and open their mouth and they want to look they are the originator of such idea . The media has the responsibility to do more than just reporting fraud. They need to dig deep and refocus public discuss.

How will you fight against corruption?

I’ve told you that we have to deal with corruption from a point of view of an integrated policy for it to be effective, by removing the root cause of corruption. One of the reasons why people were bribing NITEL official was that you had 400,000 lines to 80 million people. But once you allowed competition in that place and now you have over a hundred million lines and the lines are now even almost for free. It is the network producers that are trying to induce you with all kinds of packages so that you can buy their own. We eliminated corruption in the telecom sector through competition and policy. Nigeria’s corruption which takes place mostly in the public agencies is as a result of over centralisation. Wherever you have a long queue, people will do anything to jump the queue. Once you have a system where only man can sign a piece of paper, he becomes like an emperor. Everybody is lobbying him with money, with language, with sentiment , with religion. But once he is not the only emperor in town who can do the same business, your reduce all those corruptive tendencies around him. So, it is not just only through punishment.

President Muhammadu Buhari recently said that the economy is looking good and he will make it better. That seems to have taken sail out of a number of candidates like you who have been hammering on the poor state of the economy. Don’t you think so?



Anybody who read O.A Lawal or Teriba on O/Level Economics will know that the economic management under the APC government is a disaster. Even if you didn’t go to school, you can relate to some credible data immediately. The Brooklyns Institute just indicated that just within the past four months alone, over a million Nigerians joined the category of those who are acutely poor. That is to say they have fallen below that bracket of those who live on two dollars a day and there are 88 million Nigerians in that category right now. This has never happened before.

Secondly, it is a big tragedy that under a regime of high oil price as we have now because the excuses before was that oil price was low; we have a very high oil price regime now and poverty is on the rise, there is a run on the reserve of the country. It looks to me like the APC as a government has made a covenant with poverty and they are irredeemably committed to impoverishing Nigerians. The truth of it is that the President does not understand basic economics. Otherwise, he would not say that the economy is looking good.

There is no way the economy can grow without appreciable electricity supply. What will your party do to improve the electricity?

Interestingly, that’s a sector I’ve invested in globally. The first thing we need to do for infrastructure generally is that you have to be able to sustain investment in that sector. Once investors are able to see a pathway to profitability, you don’t need to wax record for them to bring their money because what they are looking for is profit. They will invest, either it is in the generation sector, distribution or even concessioning or transmission.

Right now, there are lots of obstacles that have grown on the path of the investor and that’s why you are not seeing the needed investment in that sector. Some of these obstacles are not to do with the law because Nigeria has one of the best electricity sector reform Acts in the world. What you have is manifest incompetence in implementing the provisions of the Act. You also have a situation where some regulators even think that their job is to stop investments. That’s their perception of their job as regulators. When you appear as one who wants to invest in the sector, they want to prove to you that what you have set out to do is not doable. They don’t have an attitude of how do we ensure that this investment comes true. So, they start writing letters and quoting all the rules that will make impossible to do the investment.

From a practical point of view, these are some of the things that can be dealt with through executive actions within 90 days and once you remove those obstacles that will make an investor to stay four years before he gets license or ten years before he concludes an agreement with an off taker, when he needs only 18 months to deliver a power plant, once you boot out all those obstacles by the right appointment and you generate executive orders that can give standard operating procedures as to tenor of applications.

Most importantly too is that we have to decentralize power for Nigeria’s infrastructure to grow. For instance, we should be able to have local transmission grids that the states can have under their own jurisdictions and I tell you that just be merely amending and rearranging the distribution of power in the legislative list and we have states being able to participate in the local transmission, a state like Lagos plus Ogun State within four years will net about $100 billion investment in the power sector and they will be able to get the needed investment that will generate about 18,500 megawatts of electricity, which in my estimate is a reasonable need for the capacity that those two states have right now, based on their population.

You know that it’s scandalous that Nigeria, based on its population, needs about 160,000 megawatts of electricity and we are not just ten percent of it. South Africa which is a country of about 50 million people, has more than 50,000 megawatts of electricity. Even Heathrow Airport generates more electricity than the whole of Nigeria. That’s to tell you how terrible it is.

So, I understand the issues and one of the things I will be bringing to the table as the President is my 27 years’ experience in the private sector as an investor that has invested all over the world. I know why investors put money in one country and why they refuse to put money in another country and I can fix that in a matter of months and return Nigeria back to growth and expand the GDP of the economy.


For a long time, we have concentrated on inanities. It’s good to fight corruption, but you can better fight corruption when you decentralise. Any system where only one man can sign a piece of paper has inbuilt corruption in it because that man becomes extra-terrestrial; and because centralisation creates bureaucracy, that is where all kinds of lobbyists come in to collect bribes on behalf of public officials.

For instance, when we had only NITEL, Nigeria had only 400,000 telephone lines. They were always having tax forces in NITEL to fight corruption and sharp practices. But it never worked. In fact, those tax forces became the centre of corruption because in what legitimate manner will you allocate 400,00 lines among 80 million people at that time. It’s either the person is from your village or you have taken money from him because there is no legitimate reason to treat one application over the other. But the moment we decentralized and we have a number of carriers, it’s the operators who now lobby to find out who you are. They are looking for your economic data so that they can target you with their products. So, decentralisation, competition drives efficiency and naturally reduces corruption.

So, one of the major failures of APC is that APC was resistant to devolution and decentralisation of power and at the same time, they said they were trying to fight corruption. When you decentralize, it will lead to rapid infrastructural development. So, decentralization and devolution of power is not just simply a political discourse. It’s a fundamental requirement for rapid economic growth to reduce and completely eliminate poverty.

What is your take on restructuring?

The word restructuring has been so politicized that even the content of the discourse sometimes is lost. There are people who are generally scared when they hear that and for some, because it is the new fact that everybody wants to hear, they have to mouth it. The point for me is the content. When you are talking about decentralisation, you are talking about devolution of power. We have been talking about that for more than 30 years now. Senator Mahmoud Waziri was the Treasurer of our group then, the National Consultative Forum, led by Alao Aka-Bashorun. The group that first talked about decentralisation of power and we attempted organizing a national conference under the army and the army brought armoured tanks to stop us in National Theatre. It was a well-articulated and well thought out position. We had the people who we called the technocratic group who were people who have been Super Permanent Secretaries in the days when the military came into power for the first time. They themselves came to the conviction that an over-centralized Nigeria was unworkable and that we needed to decentralize and devolve power. Then we had those of us who came from the Human Rights Movement led by Alao Aka-Bashorun, Beko Ransom-Kuti. I was the National Administrative Secretary. A lot of people who are talking restructuring today were with that military government opposing us. Some of them were contesting under them. They said we were talking rubbish, that we should allow them to do their elections, while we were focused on the issues that were germane, which was the structure of the state. But because a lot of Nigerians don’t have a sense of history, anybody can just appear during elections and open his mouth and then he will get attention. Those who created a lot of political illiteracy in the air right now did it deliberately because they removed history from the syllabus. So, for some people, whatever they just read in the internet within two weeks, because they don’t even have memory to remember what happened five years ago, not to talk of what happened 30 years ago.

This also encourages a lot of political fraud. Sometimes, we transport ourselves to be defrauded politically. I would have expected a good research on this issue. One of the things you see in academics first is that you pay tribute to the originator of a given idea. There is lot of intellectual fraud in this country. People are talking about restructuring. There is even no tribute to Alao Aka-Bashorun who died fighting for this. There I no remembrance of Mahmoud Waziri. There is no mention of Anthony Enahoro. Some people just get up and open their mouth and they want to look they are the originator of such idea . The media has the responsibility to do more than just reporting fraud. They need to dig deep and refocus public discuss.



So, I don’t want to deal with the noise. I want to deal with the content. The content is that we need to devolve power. Over centralisation is unworkable. It leads to corruption and inefficiency. To be quite honest, when mwmade the campaign on that note, it was not ethnic. That’s why we had Mahmoud Waziri as our treasurer. Alhaji Tanko Yakassai was part of us. They didn’t see any qualms with what we were talking about. But when you regionalize it and you begin to evoke ethno religious sentiment around that issue, you cannot have a consensus around such an issue.

So, punishment alone does not deter corruption. As a matter of fact, when a practice becomes something that almost everybody is engaged in, then you have a huge social problem. It’s no longer something that you can deal with police action. It’s something that you have to deal with policy, attacking it at its root.

You also have the other level of corruption where people are programmed through extreme and acute poverty to cope and survive. If you give a policeman about N20,000 and you give him a gun, can anybody survive on N20,000 in Nigeria? He leaves work, sometimes he gets shot, he has no insurance and all that and then you come and start talking that people are too corrupt. I’m not justifying people collect bribes because I’ve never taken bribe in my life. But I’m telling you that more than just shouting and mouthing it, you have to deal with it through policy for it to be effective. I am not one of the people who believe that Nigerians are innately corrupt. When I was growing up, women will put their wears by the roadside and they will indicate that they are selling that product with three stones. People will com e and they will drop the exact price of money. Nobody will take those wears without putting the money and nobody will come and take the money. I saw it. So, are you saying that Nigerians are innately corrupt? A system that will produce a group of people that will pay for wears without being supervised? What do you call such a system? A system that produce people of high integrity. So, everything has to be put into proper context.

How did we get to where we are now that even if the woman sits down, they will kidnap her and ask for ransom? That’s a Nigeria than the Nigeria that I saw. There have been some kind of economic and social change that have programmed people to behave in such a way and it’s the comprehensive social engineering programme that we have to do through policy to turn Nigeria back to a path of sanity. It’s not irreversible. But it’s not something that anybody will begin to brag as you are the champion of anti-corruption and every other person that is successful must be corrupt. We have always had successful people in Nigeria and they were not successful because they were corrupt. They were not even in the public sector and they were not government contractors because there is also a dangerous narrative which is making people who are lazy to feel important, to assume that people who are successful, all of them are corrupt. Not every successful person is a corrupt person and the fact that you are not successful, you are not rich does not mean that you have integrity. Poverty is not the badge of honour . Poverty is a curse that we must remove from this land and nobody should run a political campaign of trying to say that you are trying to save poverty. We want more people to leave poverty, to become prosperous. So, we must not run an anti-corruption campaign that tries to make every successful person to look corrupt because it’s also encouraging indolent people. We have to be careful about the narrative and the way we are putting out there.

I have never collected a bribe from anybody in my life. I have not collected money from government in my life or allowances from anywhere. So, nobody can talk to me about being corrupt or whatever. I fought in this country and put my life on the line. I have my own integrity too. There are a lot of Nigerians who have integrity and they are rich people. They are not poor. So, it’s not only “poor Buhari” that has integrity. There are many Nigerians who have integrity. But what we are saying is that we will reform this country from the point of knowledge, from the point of information, not from the point of illiteracy. The problem that we have with mass corruption in the land is something you can resolve through police action. You need a comprehensive social reengineering programme that will deal with corruption at its root.

There is no way the economy can grow without appreciable electricity supply. What will your party do to improve the electricity?

Interestingly, that’s a sector I’ve invested in globally. The first thing we need to do for infrastructure generally is that you have to be able to sustain investment in that sector. Once investors are able to see a pathway to profitability, you don’t need to wax record for them to bring their money because what they are looking for is profit. They will invest, either it is in the generation sector, distribution or even concessioning or transmission.

Right now, there are lots of obstacles that have grown on the path of the investor and that’s why you are not seeing the needed investment in that sector. Some of these obstacles are not to do with the law because Nigeria has one of the best electricity sector reform Acts in the world. What you have is manifest incompetence in implementing the provisions of the Act. You also have a situation where some regulators even think that their job is to stop investments. That’s their perception of their job as regulators. When you appear as one who wants to invest in the sector, they want to prove to you that what you have set out to do is not doable. They don’t have an attitude of how do we ensure that this investment comes true. So, they start writing letters and quoting all the rules that will make impossible to do the investment.

From a practical point of view, these are some of the things that can be dealt with through executive actions within 90 days and once you remove those obstacles that will make an investor to stay four years before he gets license or ten years before he concludes an agreement with an off taker, when he needs only 18 months to deliver a power plant, once you boot out all those obstacles by the right appointment and you generate executive orders that can give standard operating procedures as to tenor of applications.

Most importantly too is that we have to decentralize power for Nigeria’s infrastructure to grow. For instance, we should be able to have local transmission grids that the states can have under their own jurisdictions and I tell you that just be merely amending and rearranging the distribution of power in the legislative list and we have states being able to participate in the local transmission, a state like Lagos plus Ogun State within four years will net about $100 billion investment in the power sector and they will be able to get the needed investment that will generate about 18,500 megawatts of electricity, which in my estimate is a reasonable need for the capacity that those two states have right now, based on their population.

You know that it’s scandalous that Nigeria, based on its population, needs about 160,000 megawatts of electricity and we are not just ten percent of it. South Africa which is a country of about 50 million people, has more than 50,000 megawatts of electricity. Even Heathrow Airport generates more electricity than the whole of Nigeria. That’s to tell you how terrible it is.

So, I understand the issues and one of the things I will be bringing to the table as the President is my 27 years’ experience in the private sector as an investor that has invested all over the world. I know why investors put money in one country and why they refuse to put money in another country and I can fix that in a matter of months and return Nigeria back to growth and expand the GDP of the economy.

For a long time, we have concentrated on inanities. It’s good to fight corruption, but you can better fight corruption when you decentralise. Any system where only one man can sign a piece of paper has inbuilt corruption in it because that man becomes extra-terrestrial; and because centralisation creates bureaucracy, that is where all kinds of lobbyists come in to collect bribes on behalf of public officials.

For instance, when we had only NITEL, Nigeria had only 400,000 telephone lines. They were always having tax forces in NITEL to fight corruption and sharp practices. But it never worked. In fact, those tax forces became the centre of corruption because in what legitimate manner will you allocate 400,00 lines among 80 million people at that time. It’s either the person is from your village or you have taken money from him because there is no legitimate reason to treat one application over the other. But the moment we decentralized and we have a number of carriers, it’s the operators who now lobby to find out who you are. They are looking for your economic data so that they can target you with their products. So, decentralisation, competition drives efficiency and naturally reduces corruption.

So, one of the major failures of APC is that APC was resistant to devolution and decentralisation of power and at the same time, they said they were trying to fight corruption. When you decentralize, it will lead to rapid infrastructural development. So, decentralization and devolution of power is not just simply a political discourse. It’s a fundamental requirement for rapid economic growth to reduce and completely eliminate poverty.

President Muhammadu Buhari recently said that the economy is looking good and he will make it better. That seems to have taken sail out of a number of candidates like you who have been hammering on the poor state of the economy. Don’t you think so?

Anybody who read O.A Lawal or Teriba on O/Level Economics will know that the economic management under the APC government is a disaster. Even if you didn’t go to school, you can relate to some credible data immediately. The Brooklyns Institute just indicated that just within the past four months alone, over a million Nigerians joined the category of those who are acutely poor. That is to say they have fallen below that bracket of those who live on two dollars a day and there are 88 million Nigerians in that category right now. This has never happened before.

Secondly, it is a big tragedy that under a regime of high oil price as we have now because the excuses before was that oil price was low; we have a very high oil price regime now and poverty is on the rise, there is a run on the reserve of the country. It looks to me like the APC as a government has made a covenant with poverty and they are irredeemably committed to impoverishing Nigerians. The truth of it is that the President does not understand basic economics. Otherwise, he would not say that the economy is looking good.

How I will fight corruption, by Olawepo-Hashim


The Nation Nigeria
How I will fight corruption, by Olawepo-Hashim
Our reporter by Our reporter November 9, 2018
Olwawepo-Hashim
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The presidential candidate of the Alliance for Peoples Trust (APT), Gbenga Olwawepo-Hashim, spoke with reporters in Abuja on how he will reposition the economy and fight corruption, if elected as president in next year’s election.

How will you fight against corruption?

I’ve told you that we have to deal with corruption from a point of view of an integrated policy for it to be effective, by removing the root cause of corruption. One of the reasons why people were bribing NITEL official was that you had 400,000 lines to 80 million people. But once you allowed competition in that place and now you have over a hundred million lines and the lines are now even almost for free. It is the network producers that are trying to induce you with all kinds of packages so that you can buy their own. We eliminated corruption in the telecom sector through competition and policy. Nigeria’s corruption which takes place mostly in the public agencies is as a result of over centralisation. Wherever you have a long queue, people will do anything to jump the queue. Once you have a system where only man can sign a piece of paper, he becomes like an emperor. Everybody is lobbying him with money, with language, with sentiment , with religion. But once he is not the only emperor in town who can do the same business, your reduce all those corruptive tendencies around him. So, it is not just only through punishment.

http://thenationonlineng.net/how-i-will-fight-corruption-by-olawepo-hashim/

Gohashim2019

2019 Presidency:Why Madam Oby, Sowore, Moghalu,others should support PT's Hashim- Mr Rights

In Mr Rights candid observation, Olawepo Hashim is the only new breed politician that is truly capable of challenging the dou of Buhari and Atiku and it would be in the best interest of the country for other candidates to support him to rescue Nigeria


The 2019 general election is around the corner and the coast is getting clearer, especially with the release by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), of the list of political parties participating in the upcoming election.

Recently, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) released the list of 89 political parties, participating in the 2019 general elections and out of the political parties fielding candidates across various positions, 79 of them have presidential candidates.

The focus here is on the new breed presidential candidates, majority of whom are expected to understand the importance of teaming up to project a formidable third force to challenge the duo of President Muhammadu Buhari and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

It should be understood that for the new breed politicians to disrupt the system or stand a chance of making any strong statement or truly seizing the political space, they must first and foremost learn the act of making alliances. There is no other way out.

This is necessary because, even the old and established politicians that have amassed so much wealth and continued to recycle themselves in government are still making alliances because they understand that without alliance and re-alliance, there is no politics.

So, if those who have the billions to spend, the long term structures as well as large political networks are making more alliances to brighten their chances of victory, what other option does the new breed politicians have to make head way in the battle for the soul of Nigeria?

Although, with the release of participating parties by INEC, many young and vibrant aspirants who had earlier indicated interest in the number one job are no longer in the race, notwithstanding, there are still considerable numbers of excellent new breed such as Dr. Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili of ACPN, Omoyele Sowore of AAC, Kingsley Mogalu of YPP, Tope Fasua of ANRP and a host of others.

However, apart from the above listed candidates who are individually capable, another extra ordinary new breed politician is the Presidential candidate of third force movement and Peoples Trust (PT), Mr. Olawepo Hashim who was recently adopted by 10 other political parties and the Olisa Agbakoba’s led National Intervention Movement (NIM).

In Mr Rights candid observation, Olawepo Hashim is the only new breed politician that is truly capable of challenging the dou of Buhari and Atiku and it would be in the best interest of the country for other candidates to support him to rescue Nigeria

Don t believe me? Check the available facts.

Firstly, there are about 460 political offices to be contested for at the federal level which include the Presidency, Senate and Federal House of representative. For any one running for president to stand a chance, his/her party must strongly contest a considerable number of seats at both senate and House of Representatives. However, this is not the case for many of the new breed presidential candidates.

For example, while Sowore’s party, AAC has 30 out of possible 460 candidates across the country, Madam Oby’s party, ACPN has less than 60, Durotoye’s ANN has above 20, Fasua’s ANRP has below 20 and Kingsley Moghalu’s YPP has about 70.

However, Olawepo Hashim’s Peoples Trust (PT) has about 200 candidates across the country, making him one of the most formidable new breed politicians.

Out of all the newly registered political parties in the country, People’s Trust (PT) of Hashim is the number one with the highest candidates running for offices across the country, indicating their level of grassroots structures.

Also, it is important to equally note that, Olawepo’s Peoples Trust has more candidates running for offices than older political parties such as APGA, Kowa, Accord Party, AD etc.

It is worthy to mention that, out of the 79 political parties fielding presidential candidates, only about 8 of them have up to 190 candidates out of possible 460. Olawepo’s Peoples Trust is one of those 8 political parties. This goes to show that, in terms of his party’s national spread, there is something concrete on the ground for the candidate to bank on, making him the real third force.

Secondly, apart from the party’s spread which can be verified on the INEC list, it has been stated that Gbenga Olawepo Hashim’s (GOH) campaign structure is actively present in all 774 local governments of Nigeria. It was reliably gathered that due to the earlier hijack of ANN by vested interest at the presidency, which later led to an alliance with Peoples Trust, many of his associates could not submit their forms to enable them stand as candidates in their respective constituencies. What this means is that, beyond the party strength as seen on the INEC’s list, Olawepo Hashim actually have a more formidable structure which rightly made him a strong contender for the presidency against the duo of Buhari and Atiku.

Thirdly, while the Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT) initiated by Mathias Tsado, former aspirant under the Action Democratic Party (ADP) could not see the light of day, with several of its members backing out, Hashim on the other hand have been able to get endorsement from 10 other political parties. This is in addition to his adoption by the Olisa Agbakoba’s National Intervention Movement (NIM).

Fourthly, based on INEC’s requirement, each party should have at least two (2) agents at the polling units across the country and from record, there are about 120,000 polling units in the country, meaning that each party is expected to have about 240,000 agents. If we are to be honest to ourselves, none of the new breed politicians have the capacity to have half of this number except Hashim.

It was also reliably gathered that even as we speak, the GOH structure of Hashim already has these agents ready in all of the 240,000 polling units, in readiness for the general election.

It is therefore imperative that all new breed candidates consider working with Hashim to brighten the chance of the third force and truly position it to take over the country come 2019.

https://mrrightsng..com/2018/11/2019-presidency-why-madam-oby-sowore.html

Mr Rights has obtained a video of an angry Nigerians who blasted Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Muhammad over claim of feeding Shiite leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaki with N3.5million.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9wZFFLEQEM


https://mrrightsng..com

adeoba2008:
Go Hashim. I believe you.

We are together

very impressive

speedyGonzales:
Trump is an idiot and a liar, Dangote is better than him and richer! Nigeria needs a "Lee Kuan Yew" figure to transition the country from third world to first world!

Hashim is already offering us that. He has offered to expand our gdp from $510billion to $4trillion. This is the starting point

Ijaya123:
The only serious candidate I see is Oby. Unfortunately, her people would rather follow and worship a Fulani man called Atiku.

Willing slaves to northerners.

Hashim is far more serious than Oby. This is actually the only candidate capable of ending the reign of the 2 devils

baysol:
This new offering of this new guy will test Nigerians willingness to leave the shackles of slavery for real freedom and genuine power of the the people rather than the lies peddled by Atiku and the lifeless one who have turn Nigeria into a death field.

You are very correct. Nigeria can't claim not to have a choice in 2019. Hashim is certainly a credible and capable alternative

Chosen1984:
Nigeria needs a Trump!!

Hashim is the trump

Gohashim2019