Hon Samson Osagie represented the Uhumwonde/Orhiomwon Federal constituency in the House of Representatives between 2007-2015 and was one of the most vibrant lawmakers in that Assembly. He ran for the Edo South senatorial seat of Edo state in the last election but lost to the PDP candidate, Pharm. Matthew Urhoghide. In this interview with Vanguard, he spoke on the leadership crisis which befell his party, the All Progressive Congress (APC) in the National Assembly, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and other national issues. Excerpts:

By Simon Ebegbulem

What is your take on the crisis that bedevilled and National Assembly over choice of leaders? 
I believe it is a challenge and the party will find a way around it like you saw the way the House of Representatives case was resolved.
I did say then that those you see that are fighting today in parliament are not enemies, it is just a difference of opinion, difference of political tendency.

In future, there could be other issues, more pertinent to bring them together contrary to those ones that are separating them now so I believe that in the course of human endeavours there must be agreements and disagreements and that is part of the dynamics of life itself.
So nobody should think that that is the end of APC no, not at all. It is a party that has just come in to governance at the national level, these are some of the challenges it must have and it will surely overtake it.

Suddenly, we are hearing that our refineries will soon be working, what will you make of this?
That issue raises the character of a leader, with the greatest respect, the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan did not offer Nigeria, the kind of leadership that must not only be respected but feared.

What you see happening today in different spheres of our national life is because of the perception of the character of the president of the country and that is why people will tell you that a leader must be one who is not just popular and who is respected, he must also be feared and he can only be feared for what he stands for.

Anti-corruption leader

Now in a country where impunity has been elevated to the status of state policy, in a country where corruption is always carrying banner headlines in every newspaper, in a country where people just do whatever they like with national resources, the perception of President Buhari as an anti-corruption leader, is sending jitters to the spines of hitherto corrupt public officials; not necessarily politicians now, even civil servants because like I have often said, the civil service constitutes a large chunk of the high level manpower in this country that encourages corruption. So you can see that it is the perception of the leadership of the country that is making a few things to work.

We now hear that refineries are working beyond the capacities we used to hear, yes it is not as if these refineries were actually beyond redemption but because the system and the leadership we had at that time was not even interested in ensuring that the refineries work.

The leadership was more interested in importing fuel because there lies the dollar money, there lies oil rents for the government and its cronies to steal from and that is why you can hear so many figures being bandied about as having gone down the drain.

It is the character and the perception of President Muhammadu Buhari as an anti-corruption leader.

But some critics say he is too slow?

Those who criticise him of being too slow are those who want to stampede him to continue to do things the way the previous government was doing even without getting good results. For a regime that promises change, it cannot take the same steps, the same formula that previous governments that have run the country aground.

So those who are criticising him, particularly of the PDP stock want to stampede him into losing focus but he is focused and he will not be stampeded. 

We are poor students of history in this country. We have forgotten so soon that President Olusegun Obasanjo when he became president in 1999, did not constitute his cabinet until after six weeks, President Goodluck Jonathan, even late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua did not constitute their cabinets until after about two months.

President Buhari has not done anything different from what his predecessors have done in terms of taking time to constitute his cabinet. Like in Edo State here, when Governor Adams Oshiomhole came in, in 2008, two months later, he was already being criticised for not doing anything but in less than one year of his administration, his impact was felt in all the local governments of the state.