Channels TV Exclusive Interview #SunriseDaily Today: Key Notes - Segun Showunmi

The Spokesperson of Atiku Presidential Campaign Organization, Hon. Segun Showunmi was on Channels TV this morning, on #SunriseDaily. The following are highlights of his words during the programme;

"- I know Uche Secondus very well. And I know he is usually very guarded. He (Uche Secondus, PDP National Chairman) must have credible intelligence that is suggesting that people are getting a bit meddlesome in the affairs of our Party (PDP).

- You know, there are few things that are tolerable and I think we can tolerate their (APC) shenanigans.

- Knowing fully well that our Party (PDP) is older than theirs (APC), it is stronger than theirs. It has been around for a longer period and can withstand that shock.

- I want to go back to the issue around whether we are nervous about the Electoral Act being signed or not and why they are seemingly so confident on why they want to do the election on the premise of what happened in 2015 of course, to people who have benefitted from a weak law, they will get excited to want to go with that same process.

- Look at the elections in Kano, everybody know about the accreditation, the number of incident forms that were used in some of these locations was a bit on the high-side.

- The whole idea of an incident form as it was conceived, is supposed to be to accommodate the minimal number of people whose fingerprints cannot be easily verified by the card reader and all of that.

- When the incident forms now become the majority reason by which you are able to do accreditation, we can clearly see the challenge there. One of it is that you are not able to know and verify underage voting. You are not able to eliminate the number of people who take other people's voters cards via voter cards "mopping up" and sharing to fans and getting them to use them.

- So before you even get into the PDP/APC conversation, the first conversation that needs to be on the table is that *we have a duty, and the President himself has a bigger duty to ensure that the processes are improved upon and I want to advice the President and I am being honest here; you cannot be President for four years in Nigeria and not be interested in deepening any of the laws.*

- In 1999, an announcement of a President created the EFCC Act, ICPC Act and all of that. Yar’adua created the Amnesty Act to solve serious problems at that time. Jonathan did the Administration of Criminal Justice Act to improve the situation of trying to get us to go through the judicial process faster.

- What exactly is this President going to bequeath for his time? It seems to be that what he could have done or the opportunity he should have taken is the Electoral Act and to work with it and make it work and give us a tidier and tighter one.

- The nations of the world are moving to get their people out of poverty. In that regard, China has been able to move about 700 million people out of poverty. India has been able to move people out of poverty, and Malaysia has done same.

- What we find in this APC government and their so-called TraderMoni is that common sense and intellectual engagement has departed from that (APC) government.

- No serious government can go into the market, take the Vice President, the exhorted Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, reduce him to a thrift-collector to be collecting PVC Numbers of people, to be giving them N10,000 that will not impact them well.

- What serious governments do is to come up with a framework that will help them to have financial inclusion, that will make sure that the banks do their duties and lend credit to them (market traders), that will make sure that they have a sustainable design that can get anybody gainfully employed and anybody in need, to get access to capital; (A framework) that can ensure that SME is the backbone which they get people out of poverty.

- This joke that they are calling TraderMoni, that they are going to the market with the Vice President, not just a junior Officer of that Government to be sharing N10,000, asking people for their PVC, subtly manipulating them and encouraging them towards the election. You know what? Nigerians are smarter than that!*

- This is a country where people make up their own minds and take their own decisions. The indices do not suggest that they (the APC government) are doing anything right. We had 8.7% poverty level before they came into Government, same as unemployment level; Now we have about 18.8%, double digits.

- We had single-digit inflation before they came into Government, now we have double-digit. The number of people that have gone into poverty is a lot. The number of people that are not able to find anything to do is a lot. The number of businesses that we have lost is a lot.

- We had about 578 million US Dollars economy before, now we have 73 million between 2015 and 2018. These are statistics by the CBN and by the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics. Fact of the matter is that they are in Government. They have a right to run their programmes. They have a right to go about it anyhow they know, because that's why they got elected and they have all the term to govern.

- But we are saying to them, 'this is not sustainable'. You have to put investment in education. You have to put investment in social stabilisation. You have to put investment in financial inclusion.

- If they do not know what to do, they should go and learn from Rwanda, and Nigerians can be sure that when we get in charge, when Atiku Abubakar gets in charge, four things will happen quickly;

- The first is that we are going to create jobs, we are going to open up the economy so that big players can come in and create growth within the economy.

- We are going to unify this country, because they have divided it ridiculously. We are going to secure the country because more people have died under this Government, than died before. Right now, they have insurgency in the North East, it has gone to the North West, we have it in the North Central and obviously you remember the "Crocodile dance" of the South East.

- We are going to ensure that whatever happens in Nigeria, everybody would be able to know. If you want work, you would be able to find work. If you have a business, you would get access. The banks would be made to comply with the issues of doing core-banking which means the banks cannot be posting profit that is outperforming the real sector. That means they are not lending into the real sector.

- Those are some of the things that we would be doing. *Whatever is it that they are calling TraderMoni is just a gimmick for Election, so that they can transfer money to people and hope to get a profit from that, but I can assure you, Nigerians know that they cannot sell their votes, let alone the Vice President; the 'Almighty' Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, that is now found distributing money on the streets.