Davidson Isibor Akhimien, a businessman, retired military officer, minister of the gospel and president, Association of Licensed Private Securities Practitioners in Nigeria, is the presidential candidate of Grassroots Development Party of Nigeria (GDPN) in the 2019 general elections. In this interview with MICHAEL ANI and BUNMI BAILEY, Akhimien speaks on his foray into politics, why he wants to be president of Nigeria and how he will tackle the country’s myriad problems if elected. Excerpts:
Why are you in the 2019 presidential race? What’s your motivation?
So many people have asked me in the past about my motivations for going into politics and running for the post of president. I tell them that growing up in this country, we had a lot of expectation for our nation and I belong to that generation of people that today constitutes what can be called a bridge between the old and the new. Being 53 years old, I have hope for a better nation – a nation with good infrastructure, a nation with high moral value, a nation where development will be seen to thrive in the entire landscape of the country, a nation that will be stirred by visionary leadership, especially given the abundant resources we have been blessed with by God. But when you look at Nigeria in retrospect and you do a comparative analysis of nations that got their independence shortly before and immediately after Nigeria, such as India and Malaysia, you will discover that Nigeria is lagging behind these nations. Today, these nations have attained giant strides in the area of technology; they have been able to move their people from poverty to attainment of good life. Look at a nation like Singapore. You begin to ask, what is it that is missing in Nigeria? In terms of terms of resources, we are there; human capital and materials are in abundance. Nigerians perform very well outside of the country in their different spheres of interest and endeavour but back home, the story is different. It will appear that successive governments have not been able to inspire the average Nigerian. Look at the ratio of unemployment of our youths today, look at the number of out-of-school children. It is very difficult for an average family to afford three square meals in a nation that is blessed with abundant resources and arable land. So, there is just no reason whatsoever for Nigerians to be going through what they are going through today except for the fact that there is a lack of visionary leadership to galvanize people and resources for the attainment of a common goal, and that is why I am stepping in because I will always say that it is not rocket science to bring all these things to bear. Other countries have done it, countries that do not have as much as we have. Just a few years ago, Rwanda was a country that was going through turmoil but today, they have been able to rise up from that, but we are still crawling. The nation has so dwindled that we need to pick it up at the domestic front before we can be recognized again internationally the way we were recognized before.
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If elected president, what are you bringing to the table?
After a thorough analysis, one has been able to discover what the problems are for us as a nation. One of the problems we need to fix, because you cannot build on faulty foundation, is on our ability to harmonize relations across all ethnic and tribal groups. The fault-line in our nation is found in the area of ethnicity and religion. This has brought about social misconstructions and so, everything we try to build comes crumbling like a pack of cards. We need to address this problem; that is why the cry of restructuring is so loud today. So, we are going to be looking at the issue of restructuring but restructuring in the context of national cohesion. We are going to be looking at the areas that we need to restructure without necessarily affecting our being together as a nation. All of these years, it is sad to see a state, for example, that is so agriculturally endowed yet there are no processing plants or even a storage facility for agricultural products. This issue of sharing money has spoilt our governors that they don’t think productively any longer. It has made them so lazy, that is why today you can see that states cannot afford to pay salaries to their workers because they are waiting for federal allocation, when resources abound in their states. They are not business-minded. Beyond oil and gas that we are depending on today that has made us a monoculture economy, the largest asset that we can tap in is human capital. As I said earlier, Nigerian professionals are found to be excelling in their different areas of endeavour in the diaspora. Some of the best doctors in America are Nigerians; some of the best scientists in America who have recorded feats are Nigerians. The rate of youth unemployment today is almost 18 percent and these are persons that have great potential but opportunities are not given to them to excel. Some of our youths have come out with innovative products, innovations of local technology, but they have not been encouraged by the government. So, my administration will try to see how to bring Nigerians together because as it stands now, we are not together if the truth is told. There is what is called ‘the business of government’, which is running government in a routine manner with proper standards to ensure that there is good governance. Beyond that, my administration is going to be a government of business and by this I mean that every sector of government must be productive for themselves. My government is going to ensure that we yield maximum dividend even from governance. There is not going to be waste of resources, both human and material. The civil service is so bloated. We are going to see how to redirect the energies and capacities of civil servants in other areas and maintain a slim, functional, virile civil service. A situation where civil servants just go to work and sleep on the table should not be encouraged. Also, recruiting people into the civil service as political patronage should not be encouraged. Every single Nigerian must be seen to be productive in whatever they are doing.
Looking at the civil unrest that we have seen in the country, how do you intend to drive an inclusive government?
Politicians have brought about this feeling of animosity between groups, ethnic and otherwise. The Nigerian project has become elusive as a result of selfish interest of our politicians. As I said in the past, growing up, we had civic education as part of our curriculum in primary and secondary school. The spirit of patriotism was driven into us as a result of these teachings imparted into us by the curriculum and so we saw Nigeria as a common ownership, but not anymore. That is why I said today, there needs to be a paradigm shift and that paradigm shift is going to be a shift from the old order to a new order, a new Nigeria where though tribe and tongues may differ in brotherhood we will all stand as one. So, we are raising new Nigerians that will begin to see their country with pride and must continue to hold new values of nationhood. The spirit of a true Nigerian resides in me and I will bring that to bear in governance. One of the problems that we have had in the past is that some persons from different groups feel short-changed and disenfranchised as a result of the actions of government. Hence, we need to imbibe national character in education, making appointments, allotting positions. Some government actions are not justifiable within the context of our plural nature as a country.
Two things that are very dear to the masses are education and health. Over the years, allocations to these sectors have been minimal. How are you going to change this?
Education will need an emergency intervention. My position on education is actually very radical because I am one who has been very educated and I went to public schools, not private schools. I can tell you that the standard of education while we were growing up is nothing compared to what we have today. I go through social media communications and as an employer of labour, I have the privilege of interviewing graduates of tertiary institutions that are seeking jobs and I can tell you that I see degradation and devaluation of our education. It is sad that graduates cannot construct simple tenses. I read all of this and I ask myself, where have we got it wrong as a nation? Human capacity development is one of the greatest investments you can give to any nation. They say show me the nation of tomorrow by showing me the youths of today. What our nation will become tomorrow depends on the quality of the youths that it has today and that quality is determined by the quality of their mental capacity (their education). What is the quality of our education today? Infrastructure, education facilities and educational instruction are below average. So for me, it is critical and it is going to be an emergency intervention. We are going to ensure that we make education compulsory and there are going to be sanctions. In building a new Nigeria, we are going to have to start with the youths of today who are the future of this country. We will revisit our educational curriculum and bring in certain subjects that tend to build patriotism and unite us, and we will make our curriculum suit our needs as a people and as a society. The 21st century is a digital economy and so, we have to lay emphasis on science, engineering and technology in order to be competitive in the international community with regard to scientific development. Our research institutes have not been given any attention by the government. Researches drive development, but here there is no focus on research. Researchers have been frustrated and most times results of researches have been put to use by foreign governments for development but we never pay attention to research. So, our approach to education is that we are going to ensure that the ivory tower contributes meaningfully, directly by way of research to government programmes and policies. There must be a direct impact of research from tertiary institutions on governance. The academia must play their role and find their place in governance and national development. There is also going to be a de-emphasis on paper qualifications. So, we are going to set up more vocational institutions. It is not compulsory that everyone goes to the university. We have university graduates riding motorcycles, tricycles today in Nigeria. We are going to emphasise skills, more vocational and technical institutes and a deliberate policy on ensuring that persons from these institutes, upon graduation, are empowered by way of funding to start small-scale businesses, meaning that our economy will be private sector-driven.
Talking about health, it is sad that we have this poor healthcare delivery system and as our population continues to increase in geometric proportions, our healthcare delivery system and planning need to catch up, if not overtake, for us to be in good standing with the United Nations standard. We are going to be looking at three things when it comes to healthcare – accessibility, availability, and affordability. With regard to
availability, there is going to be a boost in primary healthcare facilities because the greatest numbers of vulnerable persons with regard to healthcare are low-income earners, people living in rural areas. Middleclass Nigerians and the rich are able to afford healthcare overseas. That is why my party is all about development. So, for us to improve the healthcare system, we are going to expand the number of healthcare facilities in our rural areas and ensure that they are properly staffed and equipped, and it is not just to talk but we will see it done. This is not campaign talk, we will see it through. And you will notice the high cost of drugs as well. The number of people dying because of lack of affordability of drugs and treatments is so much. So, we will begin to look at what to do.
Being a security expert, what will you do to tackle the insecurity issues in the country, especially Boko Haram insurgency? What will you do differently?
The first thing I must mention here is that the genesis of the issue of Boko Haram is more of a political matter than a religious one. And that is why, when I become president, I am going to be adopting a political economy approach to resolving the Boko Haram crisis while not also forgetting the approach of military action. By the political economy approach, I am asking certain questions: where are the resources that are sustaining the Boko Haram coming from? So, for me we will get to where the resources are coming from and block them. There is also the ideological aspect of the Boko Haram. It is difficult to win an ideological war with a military approach because the ideology is planted in the soul of the man. So the approach we are going to adopt is a psychological-operations approach which in civilian term means massive de-radicalization exercise of foot-soldiers. In carrying this out, we are going to use the instruments of the mass media appropriately, the religious faith houses and the instruments of welfare. This de-radicalization exercise is going to be sustained at very high tempo. Then with regard to military actions, we are going to be looking at our borders which are sill porous even till today. We are going to put in place better effective methods to secure our borders and bring about redeployment of our armed forces to better defend the territorial integrity of our nation. So, as I said, we will adopt the political economy approach, military approach and psychological approach.
What reforms are you going to put in place to create an enabling environment for private sector investments?
One of the mistakes we have been making as a nation for long is that government is taking on everything – employment creation, the burden of having to take people off the streets, etc – that is why the budget on the recurrent expenditure is so bloated because the workforce in the government is so bloated but yet not as productive as it should be. My government is going to take a different tangent to create enabling environment for the private sector to thrive. Most economics that have done very well in the world today, especially the recent Asian Tigers – Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and all others – have been private sector-driven. But the requisite infrastructure necessary for this industrialization to take off, especially energy, has to be in place. It is a sad thing that over the years, billions of dollars have been spent, yet we didn’t get much to show for it. So, I am saying, why settle for traditional hydro method of power generation? If the hydro method is not giving us enough, why don’t we explore other sources of power generation, transmission and distribution? For example, you have the option of solar. We have very clear skies and very sunny lands, and we can harvest sunlight even better than most European countries that are using solar in some part of their power generation today. So, why not us explore solar? China has one of the biggest solar farms and wherever you go in the world today, you see solar as a form of power generation working properly. Why can’t we import that technology, develop it here in order to increase our electricity distribution? Apart from solar, you also have wind. The technology is available in other climes. We can borrow this technology, adapt it to our environment so that we can have more power generated in order to drive industrialization. You also have gas and we have gas in abundance. In sum, what I am saying is, let us explore all options available to us. The political will to do it is what is required and in the spirit of restructuring, we can decentralize this power generation and transmission techniques and each state that can afford to take up the power project on their own for their state, they should be allowed to do so.
How do you intend to achieve all these given the country’s limited resources?
Having identified what the problems are, the solutions are what we are now after, how to bring about these solutions with the limited resources. I said we are going to run our government like a business. We are haemorrhaging in almost every aspect of our society. We are going to identify the areas for revenue generation beyond oil. First, we have a five pillar point that we are addressing. One is agriculture. It’s our belief that a nation that cannot feed itself cannot do anything else. If you cannot feed yourself as a nation, then you have not started. So for us, agriculture is not going to be for subsistence alone as it is today, it is going to be expanded with policy thrust and implementation on massive mechanised agriculture with the introduction of agricultural technology. We have all it takes to feed Africa and indeed the world. We have vast and arable land, favourable climatic conditions and we have the knowhow; all it now takes is for leadership to leverage on this. We intend to become an export-dependent economy using agriculture as a launch pad. Agricultural commodities that abound in the nation are very widely and highly sought after in the international market. We will identify those, make sure that we invest massively in them, open up markets for these products and see how we can make agriculture compete with oil in terms of revenue generation.
Today, industrial capacity production in Nigeria has fallen to almost -2, -3 percent, from about 13 percent that we used to be in 2015 or before that. Industries are leaving the country in droves to other countries where there are better conditions for doing business. People are losing their jobs in hundreds of thousands. Hence, we need to embark on massive industrialization in our rural areas so as to be able to engage our youths and reduce the burden of unemployment on government. Our approach to Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) is going to be such that we go into international commitments looking for industries that can make use of raw materials that we have in different parts of this country, situate the industries here, give such business conglomerates tax holidays so that it will encourage them to invest here. That way, it is a win-win situation for us and the foreign partners. With this, our youths will be employed, technology will be transferred, our people will be empowered, and our economy will get a boost again.
