Jesutega Onokpasa, APC chieftain, lawyer and public affairs commentator was a veteran of the June 12 struggle and pioneer member of the Campaign for Democracy. In the build up to the last elections, he was noted for his supportive stance behind the All Progressives Congress, APC at both the national and at home in his native Delta State. Onokpasa in this online interview, however, expresses reservations with the pace and pattern of the Buhari administration.

AS someone who decamped from PDP to APC, would you say it has been worthwhile?

Unfortunately no. I probably would still be a committed PDP member but for the shameful shenanigans that PDP members shamelessly brought to bear on the state chapter of the party in Delta.

That is life – Nigerian style for you– and so I left the PDP for the next available viable platform, being the APC. Embarrassingly, the APC has so far only proved to be just as bad if not even worse than the PDP and you cannot begin to imagine how embarrassed many of us are with this promising party that does not keep its promises.

We feel stuck with a clueless political franchise that has all but entirely disintegrated under the relentless onslaught of its internal self-inflicted and self-conflicting contradictions. In retrospect, I have no regrets leaving the PDP even though I am very much tempted to regret joining the APC.

Can it really be that bad given your earlier enthusiasm for Buhari?

To be fair to Mr. President, his administration is still too young to reliably assess it. You cannot imagine how hungry I am to see our President succeed.

Nevertheless, I cannot shy away from the fact that the current APC administration has left so much to be desired that even diehard APC members are beginning to wonder if they made a mistake all along when they keyed into what may now be validly described as the APC’s phantom change agenda.

Unfulfilable promises

Unfortunately, President Buhari, himself has not helped matters much in this regard. He allowed himself to be misled into making unfulfilable promises by his Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, handlers to the extent that his administration is fast becoming a byword for broken promises and outright lies.

In many and indeed the most important and resonant ways, President Buhari now ever increasingly comes across as a dictator, willing to condone military atrocities bothering on crimes against humanity while simultaneously provincially displaying a preference for people of his home region in key branches of governance.

Must our party win everything? Was there even a remote way of the APC winning Bayelsa? Must everyone go to Boudillon to bow down to a so-called lion that resides there? In Niger Delta, there are sharks and whales that can swallow any lion.

Was there even the slightest chance that Timipre Sylva could have defeated Seriake Dickson in Bayelsa? What did Sylva do? He is a failure. The people voted for Dickson both because of what he had done and because of President Jonathan. Must Tompolo join our party or be hunted down like an outcast.

No one in the entirety of Nigeria ever opposed or criticized Tompolo as my humble self during the last elections.

As a Deltan, what in your view is the problem with Delta APC?

What is wrong with Delta APC is what is wrong with APC national. It is now a question of “I want to rule, I want to rule” – “oya rule” and when it is given to you, you simply keep groping in the dark.

Can I say I regret joining the APC, I really don’t know. I can however say that I became so disgusted with Delta PDP.

It is O’tega Emerhor who co-opted me into APC. To be fair to him, I was entirely exasperated with PDP and had seen the APC as a credible alternative. Unfortunately, O’tega remains unwarrantedly committed to the execrable platform he induced me to join.

You seem very angry?

If you are a Nigerian and you are not angry by now then you are not a patriot.