..Says youths’ fixation on social media worrisome

…Hardship, cause of social unrest among Nigerians

..Instability in country at a surface

By Chris Ochayi 

Prince Mustapha Mona Audu was a governorship aspirant on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in the 2019 governorship election in Kogi State

The youthful politician, in this interview with Vanguard in Abuja, laid bare issues, hurdles on the ways for youth participation in partisan politics, which according to him, is unprecedented.

He said, “But we are not actually serious, we spend time on social media thinking we can influence things from social media, all you can do on social media is what social media is best for, propaganda, but you don’t win election with propaganda.”

The son of the ex-governor of Kogi State, Late Prince Abubakar Audu, who has seen it all, revealed that “Not too young to run legislation is fake, disillusion and confusing because without money, you can’t get anywhere politically.”

He spoke extensively on other burning national issues, including the worsening insecurity situation in the county, agitations for secession, farmers and herders’ clashes, and the failure of the APC led administration to offer quality leadership.

My political debut

For young people getting into politics, they assume politics is in a certain way. I can say from my own experience what I think politics is all about and what I really saw. There’s no guide for anyone. Nigerian politics is dynamic. It had changed a great deal from when it was printed in the books or back in the day.

Without a proper guide or an understanding of how people keep making the same mistakes, this is to help young people remove the illusion of entering politics and thinking it is a bed of roses. They need to understand the ways, so this is like a guide.

There is a world of difference between the theoretical part of politics and reality. There are a lot of theoretical aspects in politics; you talk of maxims and so on.

But the reality is between the electorates, the voters, political parties, godfaherism and so on. These are things that you don’t see in books but they affect and impact politics.

These are people behind the scenes that run government, how do you know these things, how do you know these challenges.

Also, the financial implication in politics is tremendous it is not what you anticipate. Most people think when you start a new political party you have the ideals or ideas.

A new party cannot win anything, if a new party wins election it would be they chose a strong candidate or an incumbent. All 99 percent of political parties are there to make money from their candidates. What I’m saying is that, two or three party system will serve us more than a 100 party system. They are all multi-parties. If young people are actually serious and put their energy on one or two parties everything will change.

But we are not actually serious, we spend time on social media thinking we can influence things from social media, all you can do on social media is what social media is best for, propaganda. You excel on social media with propaganda.

Social media and propaganda

But to win an election, there is no polling unit on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter so how are you going to win from behind your laptop or phones? Young people don’t understand, all these not too young to run, it has confused us.

It made us think not too young to run is a thing. It’s not a thing, it’s fake, just another way of blinding us, because no one will ever give you power you must take it.

Whether they tell you not too young to run or not it is your right in the first place to seek for electoral office, so needing community or an event or group to tell you to run you are just wasting your time you are not ready yet.

It’s to showcase the government allows young people but in reality there’s no chance for any young person. The finance or requirements to run for any serious office is huge, where is the young person going to get that kind of money from?

The way it is, it’s a financial transaction between the electorate and the politicians, you give them money and in return you expect votes. So if you are not giving enough money they would tell you are not serious. So, if you were to spend this tremendous amount of money as a business man you are definitely going to want to recover your money, even worse is politicians because they borrowed the money to run.

So that is it, the cost of running for an elective office is so high, so young people don’t really have a chance. The easiest way to this is to have more competent financial able people decide to run for office. Because if you have a business that is doing very well, you have a lot of disposable income.

Without disposable income you can’t run for this office and be comfortable. You are going to face challenges, lies, losses, losses is part of winning. Most people in office don’t have a target, so if a minister doesn’t have a target he is allowed to do anything. This is why again it is more important for people in the private sector to have positions in the public sector.

Ranching way to go

What we are saying is that take money from the Federation account, take money from the money you give to us and use this money to invest in ranches.

If you invest in a ranch, people in that ranch can move about freely you can now have premium meat. Nigerian beef is not premium because they flog them, they move around, these things reduce the quality of the meat, they stress the cow, people don’t understand once the cow is stressed the quality of the meat is reduced.

A free ranched cow that goes about an area that is been monitored, they are not flogging it, it is not dodging traffic those kind of cows produce the best kind of meat. So ranching is a source of business.

For the individuals moving the cows they can make money from the government, they can tax, apart from the beef, there is can-beef, you can make corn beef, you can make milk.

So the whole range of dairy from milk to cheese to butter you have a full range of things you can make from there, there are so many by-products from there. So ranching is of benefit.

So if you look at the human cost, you see a 5 year old boy flogging a cow, this can be the next Albert Einstein or next best mathematician. But you have stopped that child’s future completely by allowing him flog cows for 30 years and he/she is not going to know anything else other than to flog cattle. So you see people lose their potentials to becoming cattle herders.

Condemns secession agitators

There are many mistakes many people make along finding nationhood. We want to make our mistakes as a people, we don’t want to see you on TV telling us the best way forward is to break up Nigeria, we don’t want to separate, and we want to fix Nigeria.

It can work; we are actually one and the same people. What we are suffering from is not so good leadership. So, critical government positions are occupied by people who don’t have the capacity. How many of our ministers today have the real capacity to be ministers.

Look at our leaders leading outside of the country, people like Okonjo Iweala, fantastically doing well. But in Nigeria we talk of no certificate, you can’t change anything, they cannot speak to you properly, they don’t know how to think.

North Central zone backward

Quick default mode is loan, you have billions and billions but if you drive from here to Niger State to Kogi State around the North Central states and back to Abuja you cannot see one single infrastructure that is worth N2 billion.

With all the loans that have been taken. You cannot see more than three viable projects. And these three projects, I don’t even know what they are. You can’t see these projects employing thousands of people.

 El-Rufai’s face off with Labour Unon

But again, there should be communication and dialogue, these are characteristics of good leadership. Just like what Mallam Nasir el-rufai is doing in Kaduna he is 100 percent correct.

The issue is just implementation. You are letting go of 3,000 workers, what they are trying to say is that yes it is cutting down the wage bill and the state has more money but it is creating its own kind of problem on employment, insecurity. He is trying to save cost but what he doesn’t understand is that opportunity cost is also a big factor.

 They were at a point saying let the Labour Union go on strike to support the people in Kaduna. You haven’t saved the money because of the approach you took; all you have to do is sit down and dialogue.

You will dialogue with them in such a way that not all of them will certainly have jobs but most will. The issue here is the labour leaders didn’t get money. So a lot of these issues have to do with corruption. Civil service corruption is the highest level of corruption in this country.

On political jobbers 

We need quality people in leadership. You must follow the same way these guys got access through patience. You get there you lose, you will be cheated and you lose a lot of money.

But you see the difference between these guys is that they’ve taken politics as an everyday thing, they sleep politics, eat politics, they do everything politics. They don’t have any money but they are there morning till night, but the way it works is one day they will call them for their opinion.

And there are so many like that are not qualified but just waiting for their turn. They can order thugs for you, and they will keep at it till you ordain them Special Advisers and so on.  From there they will use that position, the network of people they have to elevate themselves to another position.

Agitations for secession

Again separatism is another big deal in this country, people are not happy with what is going on and they feel to separate is the next thing. But you see countries like America weren’t created perfect, the same with other countries. The people worked hard to bring their own country to where it is today.

Unfortunately there are so many things today that causes people to have this thought and the most critical one is a feeling of not been carried along. A feeling I do the work and you do the enjoyment a common Nigerian saying that “monkey dey work baboon dey chop.”

So that’s the main feeling here. A lot of people in the APC feel that way, they feel they have sacrificed a lot in the party and the party has not recognized their effort.

But wherever you go the problem will still be the same. If you look at the US the original inhabitants are the Red-Indians the American Indians. Today after their culture was decimated and so many of them were killed, but today, they are the largest Casino holders.

So they own 60 percent of Casinos in America. So the Fulanis have the same opportunity, they have the opportunity of owning all the abattoirs the dairy products, it is a big industry. But no one is translating this to them. Government is taking as it is North vs South but it is not. There is no North, South, East, and South West, there is just Nigeria.

So until you have a government that truly understands this you are going to have an issue. The President has the best interest of the country at heart from my perspective but some of the way he is handling things will leave people to doubt his intentions.

APC led government not focused

Forget about the opposition, in-house what are we doing to put Nigeria in a better position. Nigeria was once a secured place, so it is the same Nigeria, what is different is people are not doing well anymore. So all these solutions are not the solutions, the solution we need are good and real leaders.

There is no plan to Islamize Nigeria. Abuja, the North is the safest place to stay. Leadership approach is the difference here, no Minister has been sacked. So how are they going to perform? So if you look at this Nigeria is headed to one direction, instability.

We are unstable. We are unstable at the surface because none of us have a true hatred for each other. As we speak there is a Southerner ready to marry a Northerner. That hatred is not real it’s at the surface. So that’s what Nigeria is experiencing.

It’s just that things are difficult and when things are difficult we turn on each other and that’s the way human beings are. As a nation we have a lot of work to do, but young people don’t understand the part of politics to come in. We all think when it is election time you just come and pick form and run. The politics starts from the political party, convention.

If you are not there to ensure that people of unquestionable character are not your party officials you are not going anywhere. So that’s the critical thing young people need to know.

They need to be involved in party politics. They need to know once you get to the battlefield if you are not planning with your party officials how to rig people out they have already planned to rig you out.