P rof. Sylvester Monye was until recently the special adviser to the president on performance monitoring and evaluation, a job that took him round the country and gave him a vintage position to familiarise himself with the running of government. Before then, he was Executive Secretary of the National Planning Commission, secretary of NADECO UK, secretary of the National Conscience Party in the UK among other prominent positions.
Monye who is one of the governorship aspirants in the Delta State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP during a visit to the corporate headquarters of Vanguard Media Limited, took time to ventilate his plans, policies and programmes in a session with Vanguard editors.
Excerpts:
By Emmanuel Aziken, Charles Kumolu and Gbenga Oke
Besides yourself, who among the other aspirants do you believe is best qualified to govern Delta State?
This is a very interesting question that I have never thought about. I consider it as myself and others. I will say myself first before others.
What would you regard as your weak points?
Sylvester Monye
Sylvester Monye
My weak point as I have been told so far is that I have been too forthright. They say I am always telling it as it is to the extent that people are intimidated about how that will be brought to bear when I become governor. What they think is weakness for me is strength because we need accountability and character and not people who speak from the both sides of their mouth depending on the situation.
We are looking at integrity and character and I believe that we should be able to tell the people what we will do by the time we get to the office we are seeking. I can tell you that I am the only known aspirant in state with a social contract with the people. The contract spells out what I will do in office when I am voted in and after a period of time, I should be judged on the basis of what I said.
One weakness that stakeholders have linked to your aspiration is that you have no structure. They also argue that you are not known as a politician. What do you make of that?
I have done so much consultations clandestinely in the last two years because the President that I worked for said there should not be political campaigning. While other aspirants were jumping around and making their aspirations known, I was also doing my consultations. That does not mean that I am not on ground. My interpretation of being on ground means having a structure. You may not know that I have coordinators in every single local government area in Delta State. I have coordinators in 270 wards in the state. I have 20 canvassers in each ward making it a total of 5,400 workers working for me. If this is not a structure, then people should tell us what structure means.
As a student in the United Kingdom, I was president of the Nigerian Student Union in the UK. I was the first chairman of National Conscience Party in the UK. I was the secretary of NADECO for three years in the UK, So I have been actively involved in politics. If someone says I am not a politician or that I have no structure, I don’t know what they mean. Perhaps, what I have not done which other people have done, is that I have not told my story as I am doing today.
In terms of getting the delegates that you require, how far have you gone?
The delegates were elected to represent every ward in Delta State. In my local government we have 10 elected delegates. We have 18 statutory delegates. We also have super-statutory delegates, which include members of the National Assembly, former deputy governors and former speakers. Those are the people that make up the delegates. In Delta, every leader was allowed to determine how the election for the delegates would be.
And in doing so, it gave the opportunity to diffuse the control of delegates across the state. There is no aspirant that will tell you that he has fifty percent control over the delegates. What we are doing now is to use our structure to reach out to the delegates.
That is what the structure is all about. The structure is there to do the work. I cannot be in the 25 local governments at the same time. But I can be represented in every ward by my representatives. That is the nature of the forthcoming primaries. But with regards to the last House of Assembly elections, I did not contest and was not an aspirant. We tried to be careful about sticking out our chest for the House of Assembly aspirants. But naturally as individuals, we have our preferences, but that should not reflect.
Please could you clarify on the assertion by some of your rivals about a plan to impose a candidate, give specifics about your economic blue print?
What people are saying is that the indications are that the processes may not be as free and fair as it may appear.
Therefore people are raising alarm in view of the possibilities that may occur so that everybody will have a level playing field. I think that is a fair request by those who are asking. On the economy, it is a critical platform on which I am contesting.
I will use the platforms that the governor has provided. The first is the Asaba Airport which can become the centre piece of our economy, simply because the nature of trade in and out of our country. I visited China two years ago, and discovered that there were 6000 Igbo traders living and working in Guangdong Province.
Most of them ship goods on daily basis. One of the things that shocked me is that of the 6000, 5000 are from Anambra State, our next door neighbour. When they ship their goods from China, it goes to Lagos. If we develop and commercialize our airports properly and get airlines to fly Asaba, Dubai and China, it means we are creating a platform for cargo business and air business.
On Ogidigben EPZ controversy
Experience in governance is very important. If you look at the issues at stake, two communities that have always fought themselves over one thing or the other are saying that the land upon which the EPZ facility is going to be done, is domiciled in the two communities. And that the project is being named after one community. They are saying that it should not be called Ogidigben, they want it to be called Gbamatu/Ogidigben EPZ. Now who is right? I don’t know because there is ongoing discussion to establish the veracity of each other’s claim. In government there is what is called being carried along. So all stakeholders have to be carried along. It does not matter how trivial their request may appear or sound.
What is the disposition of the incumbent governor to your aspiration?
The most important consideration is for me to be able to articulate why I want to be governor. To be governor of Delta State is not just about the people of Delta State. There are too many interests.
It is not just about the governor or the electorate. It is not just what the governor wants alone, what other stakeholders want is also important.
What is your reaction to the claim by some of aspirants that the governor is trying to impose someone on the party?
I can’t speak for everybody. What I can tell you is that the governor has not told me that he is imposing anybody. However, the aspirants are stakeholders in the project. If they use their sixth sense to believe that there are moves that may alter the balance of play and that there may not be a level playing field, they have every right to shout. If you are in a football match and someone gives you a heavy tackle, you are bound to complain. Those are some of the things the aspirants may be talking about.
If your party decides to go for a consensus arrangement at the primaries, will you accept the decision?
The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria does not create room for independent candidacy. It means that to aspire to any elective position in the country, you must belong to a political party. And if the party has its rules and guidelines regarding elections, you are bound to obey them. One of the things that I signed during the screening in Port Harcourt was a document to say that I will be loyal to the party.
It is one of the requirements. It is not just signing alone, I swore to an affidavit in that regard. If my party decides for its good to go for a consensus arrangement, it is not just about picking people, there will be criteria for that. The three most important criteria will be someone who is acceptable to the president, the person must be acceptable to the governor who is an incumbent. The person must also be acceptable to the key stakeholders. Hence when that decision is made, because we are in the race in the interest of our people, we are bound to follow the decision of the party.
How do you bring your experience as a technocrat to bear and are you not worried about the number of aspirants from Delta North?
What the number of aspirants from Delta North portends is that the zone has a very credible reservoir of capacity that anyone of us can creditably become the governor and serve the people well. Being good enough is not what we are looking for.
Sylvester Monye
Sylvester Monye
It is not just about understanding politics, politics is not just an end to itself. It is not when you are elected that you will decide on the way to go. What matters is to understand that politics and governance must be built on some fundamentals. That is what I have provided. So, my experience, capacity and training must stand for something. I have it on record I am one of the longest serving Executive Secretary of the National Planning Commission. Of course there is a linkage between what I am saying now and an earlier question about Delta being a complex society. Never mind what you read about the rough and tumble of Delta politics, Delta politics has never been violent.
Therefore what you see does not mean that we are vicious. Everybody knows where to draw the line. We know ourselves, we are a mini Nigeria. It is the only state in the country where you have five major ethnic nationalities cohabiting. As Executive Secretary of national Planning Commission, I managed southerners, southerners and northerners. And I did that successfully over a period of five years. Therefore to manage the diverse interests in Delta are not as tough as we have at the national level.
I used Asaba airport as an example. If we mean what we say and we want to use the airport as a platform, it simply means that we have to have a mono rail linking Asaba airport to Onitsha through Ogbaru down to Upper Iweka. What that means is that a lot of people will live in Asaba and work in Onitsha. What I will like to do is to work closely with the administration in Anambra State to create a synergy and economic corridor between the two states using the rail link as platform. There must be an economic corridor. Onitsha is the largest market in West Africa. If you border the largest market, you must be able to provide warehousing logistic facilities in Delta. We will provide housing. If you look at the US economy, the barometer to measure the economy is through housing sector. We have what it takes in Delta to service that market.
Don’t you think that it is important for Delta North aspirants to present a common aspirant in order not to jeopardise the chances of the zone?
The fact that Delta South has two, Central four and eighteen in the North says a lot. PDP has arrangements. It is either formal or informal, written or unwritten. If I sign an affidavit that I will abide by the rules of the party, it means that I will abide by the rules. I believe the same thing applies to every candidate.
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