Nigeria will survive beyond 2015 – Ashiru

In this interview with SUCCESS NWOGU, a former Kwara State governorship candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, Mr. Lola Ashiru, who is currently a chief of the Peoples Democratic Party, speaks about the current political tension in the country

With the political tension in the country, do you share any fears about Nigeria’s survival beyond 2015?

Nigeria will never break up. I am from Kwara State, I live in Lagos, I have business in Abuja, I have very good friends of eastern extraction; I have a lot of people I can call my family in the North. Will I ever want to be separated from those people? I am just a typical Nigerian. You can find millions and millions of my type everywhere. Everybody knows the beauty of this large country. Everybody knows

the advantages of belonging to a great economy like Nigeria. I am sure these are the things that people will all protect. For our elite, they are more conscious. So, a majority of Nigerians want this country to remain united and it will be so.

There is this perception that the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government, has performed woefully, do you agree?

I will rather say that there is this campaign, from the opposition party, the All Progressives Congress, that President Goodluck Jonathan is not doing well. Dr. Jonathan is so far the first President of Nigeria with a Ph.D. His high educational attainment is greatly reflected in his entire way of life.

There is no doubt about it, Nigeria has myriad of problems. Having problems is not exclusive to Nigeria. All nations in the world are going through the teething dynamics of the day, with problems rearing their heads all the time. I am sure that Mr. President is doing his best to surmount the nation’s problems.

Sometimes, it may take a little bit of time for problems to be solved. It is not an arithmetical thing where you add two and two and it becomes four. I am sure given a second term for Jonathan, we are going to see a new Nigeria.

But people feel President Jonathan is very slow in his decision making and approach to governance?

I would rather say that President Goodluck Jonathan is not a rash decision taker. I have been confronted with a situation where I felt he should have acted faster than he did. But sometimes when you take a decision without due consultations and a lot of underground work, you will never get good results.

The schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram at Chibok, in Borno State are still being held by their captors… (Cuts in)

It is the most pathetic thing ever. Each time I watch the television, and see the reactions of the world on this, I get extremely sad. I pray that very soon our girls will go home and that Boko Haram should be reasonable enough to know that these girls are not the part of the problem and that they should not be touched. Civilians should be respected even in an extreme war situation.

Should the Federal Government enlist foreign support to address the insurgency?

There is a limit to how solutions can be imported from abroad. The Federal Government is a wise government. What they do not have the capacity to do, they will always enlist the support of friends in the world and they are doing that. There is always collaboration and cooperation among all security organs of the world because the world has become a unipolar place. The menace of Boko Haram is not restricted to Nigeria. It happens in Nigeria and the adjoinning countries. All the adjoinning countries have relations; the world is cooperating and I am sure that we will get the solution soon.

How do you assess the political governance and leadership of Kwara State?

I am very sure that the next dispensation in whatever form it happens will provide better governance than we have in Kwara State currently. The next dispensation will definitely perform better because so many lessons have been learnt. Definitely what we have today is very difficult to define; I mean, whether we are running democracy or autocracy, it will be difficult to define, and we all know this. Where is the power coming from? We know it is difficult to answer the questions in Kwara State. But lessons have been learnt that there is limit to how long you can hold the will of the people.
http://www.punchng.com/politics/nigeria-will-survive-beyond-2015-ashiru/