BY CHARLES KUMOLU

Dr. Jay Samuels is the interim National Chairman of Alliance for New Nigeria, ANN, a political association seeking to be registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. In this interview, he speaks on some topical national issues.

Dr. Jay Samuel

What informed your decision to register the Alliance for New Nigeria, ANN, as a political party?

When we started Alliance for New Nigeria, it was not borne out of personal ambition. It was borne out of love and service for the country. Before we start to talk about political ambition, we thought about having a platform that is entirely new where the average Nigerian can see hope for tomorrow’s platform.

We started as a group of like-minded Nigerians, most of us are professionals, technocrats, and experts in our own areas. We can’t afford to continue to grumble and complain in our homes and offices. Something needs to be done and the current generation of leaders has failed us. They have been recycling themselves and they keep on telling us what they have been telling us for many years now that we are the leaders of tomorrow.

Most of us are in our 40s now and some are reaching 50. So when will tomorrow come? So we observed that they lack the idea to really move the country forward but they are not ready to relinquish that chance to us. We came forward to actually push them out. When we started we didn’t have the 2019 elections in our calculations.

We are forming a party built on ideology because we didn’t like what we’ve been seeing in Nigeria where there is no difference between APC or PDP. You can be PDP today and jump back to APC tomorrow. It is a shame that our leaders don’t have shame at all.

That also shows that they don’t have regards for us. But we are coming forward to say that enough is enough because what has been keeping them going is that most of us have been too busy with our businesses. We want to make sure that we do things differently and make sure that we are the vehicle for getting rid of the current pack of leaders.

So, right now we have members all over the country because our membership is open as long as you identify with our ideas. On our website, we have a registration portal, where people can register and we have members all across the country. Beyond that, we have also invested in technological infrastructure to do massive recruitment of members in every local government in Nigeria.

Would you say that the leaders in this dispensation are living up to expectation?

I have come to the conclusion that our current crop of leaders does not care about us. All that they care about is their selfish interests because if they cared about us, some of these things that we have that are causing problems would not have arisen in the first place. A situation where people go into public service for pecuniary gains, instead of serving the people is wrong.

The fact that they spend so much money to get a political office and come during an election period to distribute money for people to vote for them tells you they don’t want to be held accountable.   You can imagine recently that somebody in the National Assembly moved a motion to grant amnesty to treasury looters. We have been hearing about plea bargain this is a back door way to legalise corruption. This is not fighting corruption because if they had passed that bill into law, it would have made things worse for the country. We are actually entering a phase when we should be fighting corruption from the roots, we should not be encouraging it.

On fighting corruption from the grassroots

Corruption is not peculiar to Nigeria, even in matured democracies, there is corruption. What differentiates them from us is that their systems fight corruption and prevent it, but here we don’t have strong institutions that fight or prevent corruption. How many people have really been tried and convicted for corruption? How many years of imprisonment and other penalties can be given?   We can make corruption unattractive and the first way is making people well paid and making sure your take home can actually take you home.

That also takes us back to the issue of health insurance and mortgage. That is what the government should do and not just constructing roads and borehole. When people are well paid they can take care of their basic needs.

If the government can make the housing and mortgage affordable, the average Nigerian will not be thinking about corruption as a way to make ends meet.   If the government makes houses available by mortgage, the average Nigerian will not be looking at corruption as a way to make ends meet. I was born here and I grew up in this country, my dad was a civil servant, he did not have any business and he trained us with his earning because it was enough.   But now how many civil servants can live on their salaries?