The National Chairman of Labour Party, LP, Alhaji Abdulkadir Abdulsalam, in this interview with Vanguard in Abuja, took a swipe at the All Progressives Congress, ACP administration which he said has failed to provide purposeful and desired change Nigerians yearned for.

By Chris Ochayi

You had claimed that the country is under siege. Can you shed more light in this direction?

Siege defined is the encirclement of a fortified place with persistent attempt to gain control and overcome opposition. The system entails the isolation of a territory and people from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making dominion possible.

In a simple context, a nation under siege is bombarded by series of troubles, annoyances, illnesses and general dissatisfaction with great inability to widen the scope of understanding of neither travails nor simple solutions needed to forestall gargantuan depreciation.

Siege mentality

APC’s “CHANGE” has only been successful in the furtherance of the siege mentality, a shared feeling of victimisation, defensiveness and defencelessness-a collective state of mind whereby Nigerians are being oppressed, isolated, manipulated, disoriented, dejected and disjointed in the face of the negative manoeuvring of the ruling party.

What is your assessment of the APC administration so far?

*Abdulkadir Abdulsalam

The last 10 months of the Buhari administration in retrospect has not brought “joy” to the land but instead dramatic element of fear and trait of political and economic siege that has created a nation without a coherent practice of ethics, values, processes but excessive action, taxes and laws that prevent growth with the appropriate amount of government intervention in the economy remaining highly controversial.

The APC government despite purposeful intervention by well meaning Nigerians, Labour Party, civil societies, the NBA has created a corridor of consistent flouting of the ethics of good governance, participatory democracy along sacred laws of the land in the pursuit of perceived and contrived idealism, thereby making effective opposition low and multi-lateral thinking deficient, consequences being a siege mentality with a black and white pattern of thinking, social non-conformity and lack of trust within the populace.

This inadvertently, has polarized the country, created social disconnect and broken the necessary cohesion needed at this time of our history to enable derived greatness and catalysed economic growth with greater dimension of public welfare

What we see is the efficacy of the government’s propaganda bakery which has consistently manufactured and produced excuses and lies to defraud the people’s mentality, cover up economic misfortune and give reasons for the appointment of misfits into government in a bid to satisfy local and regional pressure of party block-heads at the expense of the greater interest of the country.

Social disorder

Thus generating a social disorder of ideological isolation arguably and purposely encouraged by the leadership to help justify their continuance in power despite poor showing in managing the economy and the peoples several unquantifiable need.

But the administration has many times pleaded with Nigerians to be patient. Are you saying government is not aware of the situation?

Perhaps the president does not know that poverty in the country has reached “unprecedented levels” with the number of Nigerians living in “deep poverty” almost doubled.

As at today, more than 46 percent of public sector employees do not have enough money to meet their basic needs, with 53 percent of households reporting decline in their incomes.

Equally,  you would not know how difficult it has become for peasants and the majority of the populace to send their wards to school particularly when his acolytes have succeeded in destroying the quality of education in their desperate and wicked desires to make their private schools thrive.