Hon Mascot, Alexander Mascot Ikweche, Deputy Chairman House of Representatives committee on Poverty Alleviation, represents Aba North and South Federal Constituency of Abia State, has lamented that the harsh economic policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has inflicted hunger and insecurity in the country, adding that his frastructural development has scored him higher than his predecessors in office.

In this interview with IGNATIUS OKOROCHA, Hon Ikweche who was making an indepth analysis of two years of President Tinubu’s administration said the development strides of the FCT Minister, Barr.Nyesom Wike and Minister of Works, Dave Umahi in Infrastructural development have raised the score card of Tinubu’s administration.

He speaks on, insecurity, state of the economy and other issues of national importance

Excerpts:

Hon, the APC-led federal government will be two years in office in the next few days. What is your assessment of this government?

Well, as you all know, when this government took over, dollar was at seven something.

Today, dollar is at 1,620 Naira. So, if that’s an achievement, you tell me. We know what fuel was selling for in the past.

We know what it’s selling for now. I mean, I appreciate the removal of subsidy. I just feel that something could have been created to cushion the effect that that removal would have cost Nigerians.

Anybody who says there’s no hunger in the land will be telling a big lie. People are suffering. People are struggling.

To eat is a problem. To feed families is a problem. But in terms of infrastructure, the government is really doing well.

I would give it to them. You can see how Abuja looks. This is where we are all stationed.

So, I’ll start by talking about Abuja. The minister for FCT has done absolutely well. Some people argue that he’s overbearing, but I think he has brought a lot of value to this government.

He is not a sycophant. Another problem that we have in this country is psychofancy. You know, ineptitude on the part of individuals that have been appointed to assist whoever it is in the helm of affairs.

It has literally become a non-psychofancy. But it seems the FCT minister is doing well. Abuja is rapidly developing.

Yesterday, he brought his budget. He came here to the parliament to defend his budget. Like I’ve always complained, that most agencies and ministries that come here for appropriation, they always tend to have high recurrence expenditure and then low capital expenditure.

So, it has been a problem because when you spend on recurrence, these are invisible projects that you do not see. And we’re still where we are. We should be investing on capital, on infrastructure, on education, power, security.

These are the things that help to propel development. So, when you keep talking about salary, keep talking about fuel, keep talking about generator money, keep talking about servicing of this, servicing of that, at the end of the day, impress estacodes, traveling abroad for this and that while the country remains in a derelict state. That puts us in a very precarious situation.

And if you check the poverty index, you can see that we aren’t doing so well. But in terms of what the FCT… The truth is that if you’re working, you don’t need to advertise that you’re working. You don’t need to praise yourself.

People will praise you. No matter what they say about Wike, Wik is working. No matter what they say about the governor of Abia state, the governor of Abia state is working.

No matter what you want to say about the governor of Enugu state, the man is working. The man is on fire. So, the truth is when these things are contagious, when you are working, people will see that you’re working.

You don’t… You wouldn’t require a soothsayer. It doesn’t require deep intuition to extrapolate what somebody’s doing. Okay? So for me, the APC has done well in some areas they haven’t done well in some areas.

Then again, the president is far more experienced than me politically. And I don’t believe any president will want to fail naturally. But sometimes the king must have council of men that surrounds him.

The ability of that king to identify within his council, the ones that are not protecting or representing the image of that king or carrying out that overall objective of that kingdom, you know, judiciously and credibly. Then the king should be able to find a way to sideline that individual that isn’t doing well within his council. We have seen the level of insecurity that has confronted us in Borno State.

The governor of Borno, Babagana Zulu, has complained bitterly about the security situation in the state. The number of lives that were lost when the state confronted Boko Haram aggressively and fiercely a couple of years ago and recaptured most of the already occupied local government areas within Borno State and sort of restored peace. And they moved people to IDPs and been trying to train them, feed them, cater for them and all that.

This has been a serious problem, a serious conundrum for not only the federal government but for the state government. Now, having these people relaunch to hijack the state once again is worrisome, is sad, because when you check the collateral damage that we endured or incurred just a couple of years ago while the fight was really fierce and then now knowing that these people are coming back and we have remained, our security structure has been, permit me for a lack of a better word to use this word, complicit, has now hijacked again most of the local governments. It’s really sad and it’s painful.

And this is something that is literally happening in almost every section of the country. In the Southeast, it’s not entirely safe, Anambara, Ebonyi and Imo State. These are places that you can’t really move around freely.

It has affected business activities in the region. It’s bad. Every Monday, we still don’t go to work.
People don’t go work, children don’t go to school. Banks don’t work.

What do you think is the solution to the insecurity in the Southeast?

We all believe is the release of Nnamdi Kanu.This is another very huge problem within the Southeast, which is where I come from. Then if you go to the South-South, you just recently heard of the Northerners that were massacred in the Edo region. So, I think this is, we need to really pay attention to some of these challenges.

The NSA needs to pay attention to these challenges. The president is not a military man. The president is not a security personnel.

But the president should be able to exert his authority by having these people go out there and do the job that they have been assigned to do. If you are not capable of doing it, then you can resign. You can resign because people are dying every day.

And it’s as if it’s an open secret. Nobody wants to talk about it. But this is happening.

And these are Nigerians. The primary responsibility of the government is to ensure that there is protection of lives and property. Government is actually a transactional engagement where the citizens are supposed to be loyal to the government, loyal to the constitution, loyal to the rules that have been enshrined in the constitution for people to go by, while government is supposed to provide infrastructure, provide security, provide basic amenities so that life can be made easy for our citizens.

Hon, looking at the aggravating state of insecurity in the country, don’t you think that it has gotten to a point where the country should seek external assistance?

Well, the country has the capacity to tackle some of the security challenges. It’s just a strong political will. I can beat my chest because I am here.

Before I got here, I was a businessman. You see, in business, we don’t really care how we look. We don’t care how we are perceived.

We roll up our sleeves and we get to work. That’s what we do in business. If you don’t roll up your sleeves and try to reach optimal expectations, try to ensure that you’re sincere with the people that you’re doing business with, try to make sure that you under promise and over deliver.

Okay? You will not earn money. You will not make money because the competition is always fierce. In part of the punitive measure or consequences that come with not rolling off your sleeves is that you won’t make money.

And when you don’t make money, you won’t compete. When you don’t compete, you’re out of the market. You are irrelevant.

Now, in politics, people seem to be complacent. People have responsibilities to carry out and they just don’t carry it out. They are rather more concerned with making good speeches, sounding believable, and not actually getting the actual job done.

Not getting the actual job for which you have been elected or appointed done. Look at us here talking about Wike. Look at us here talking about the Minister for Interior.

We’re also here talking about the Minister for Works. These are people that are making the president look good. The Minister for Interior, the Minister for Works, the Minister for FCT.

These are the Minister for Health. These are the people making the ministries look good. We have a Minister for Education.

Our children are still sitting on the floor learning. I never experienced that in the 80s. We have an IG of police.

We have people in the military. We have people in the Navy. Yet, people are busy doing bunkering every day and stealing our oil.
Do we blame Tinubu for that? Are we supposed to blame Tinubu for the ineptitude of the people in the Navy not doing their job to make sure that there isn’t oil theft? Are we supposed to blame the president for the fact that our boys in the Sambisa Forest fighting are not receiving what they are supposed to receive as allowance? To be able to fight insurgency the way they ought to? Are we supposed to blame the president because their firepower is not as sophisticated as that of the Boko Haram? But we can blame the president for not coming out to inspire these people. For not visiting Borno to truly show that he’s committed to fight insurgency. We can blame the president for not visiting our hospitals but the national hospital.

Look at our national hospital in Abuja. There are hospitals in Uyo that are finer, more sophisticated, more effective than that one in, is it Maitama or Asokoro? Where it is. We can blame the president in some areas.

We can fault him in some areas but we can’t fault him in every area. However, this is only two years in the administration and it is only right that we give him some time. I think, I would say the government has performed averagely well.

But in terms of really strengthening our economy, a lot of work needs to be done. It still shocks me. I mean, this thing is not rocket science.

If we have power, constant electricity, manufacturing would just naturally pick up. In 2025, I don’t understand why we’re still talking about power. Can’t we, if we were to get foreigners to come and look, then let’s bring the Chinese.

They know what to do here and we’ll have electricity. 24-7. Okay? Why are we not doing these things? So, I think the APC government has a lot cut out for them.

I think it’s too early to begin to play politics. Naturally, if you’re doing well, channel the energy. That’s political energy.Channeling towards governance. Let us work for the people. The people will say, no, this man is working.

We want him to come back. We want him to keep performing. He’s already doing the work.

He’s on a path. If you go to Abia state now, nobody is arguing about electricity running for, people are saying it should do 24 years. Why? Because he’s working.

You don’t need to overstretch yourself politically if you’re performing. Part of the reasons why subconsciously you think you have to exert your authority politically is because you know somewhere, somehow, there is deficiency in delivery.

Hon there is this worrisome trend in the nation’s political space at the moment and that is the drifting of the country towards a one-party state.
You can see what the opposition members are doing. They are flocking to the ruling party. Is it healthy for our democracy?

Well, it’s a tricky situation. First of all, PDP is a party that I know very well.

PDP is a party that can be considered to be a formidable opposition party with structures everywhere in the country that should have been able to rival APC. But remember that APC was formed out of PDP. So, most of them have a preponderance of PDP members who eventually moved into APC.

Right now, APC is in power. PDP is not. But the problem is that APC is still PDP.

So, you have a lot of moles in the PDP, okay? These people are literally sabotaging the PDP because they are PDP and APC. You can see that Wike is also PDP and APC. We actually don’t know where he belongs to.

His state is a PDP state. He’s an FCT minister. He attends PDP governance forum engagements.

In fact, PDP stakeholders meetings he attends. He also attends APC, maybe quietly, but he also attends. So, it’s a confusing situation for the opposition.

And they’ve not been able, like I said, people don’t want to do the work. People just want to come out looking as if they are doing the work. So, I’ve ruled out PDP from the number of parties that is considered to be opposition.

My party is a party that tends to, that’s the All Progressive Grand Alliance, (APGA). It’s a party that tends to always identify with the center. Okay, that’s the APGA.

When Obi was there, Obi was the governor of Anambra State, but he was identifying with Goodluck Jonathan. He was working with Goodluck Jonathan. When Obiano was there, Obiano was the governor of Anambra, but he was working with General Muhammadu Buhari.

Today, our governor has said, that’s, sorry, our only APGA governor, Solu Solutions, Charles chukwuma Soludo has reiterated on the fact that all progressives need to come together, embrace the concept of progressivism. He made it absolutely clear that the APGA is more or less, you know, a subsection of the APC. So that is it.

However, that position of the governor of Anambra State is also his own personal opinion or position. Some of us, we have a few things that we believe that the president needs to, you know, do for us. He needs to listen to us.

Like, you know, the release of Nnamdi Kano will really help, especially to bring peace in the Southeast. A lot of people have died. A lot of people have died.

When Nnamdi Kanu was free, people were not being killed the way they are being killed in the Southeast. Just that alone should at least compel the president to release this man. Do you understand where I’m coming from? Because our parents are dying.Our brothers are dying. Our sisters are dying. They are being killed every day because there are people that now engage in illegality, violence, terrorism, and all what not, in the guise of this IPOB business.

So, we want the president to listen to our cry and help us to release this man. In terms of infrastructure, I still say that the president has done well. He seems to understand that without infrastructure, this country cannot move forward.

So, I like to be as objective as possible. The president inherited a country that wasn’t working. To some degree, things have gotten worse.

Things have gotten better. In terms of infrastructure, we’re doing better. In terms of cost of items in the market, we haven’t done so well.

And it doesn’t seem as if there’s an end in sight to be able to economically and technically tackle some of these problems that will eventually warrant a Nigerian walking into the market and being able to cook a pot of soup with five or ten thousand like it used to be in those days. Corruption appears to be one of the greatest challenges of this era. I did speak of Labour.

Labour Party is another very formidable opposition party that the entire Nigerian citizenry would have really loved to embrace. However, the internal problem of Labour has caused Labour to lose about 80% of its legislators here in the National Assembly. They’ve lost a few of their senators here in the National Assembly.

It has demoralized most of the members and Nigerians that are considered to be obedient followers. So, I don’t know if this has been orchestrated by anyone, but all I can tell you is that that problem is something that needs to be resolved if we will have opposition. For democracy to truly work, there has to be opposition.

Opposition is not a bad thing. Opposition tends to remind the ruling party of areas they are not doing well. For instance, I’m here telling you the President has done well here, the President hasn’t done well here.

I want the president to succeed. I admire the man. I think he’s highly educated.

Forget about the stories that they are telling you about the Chicago Certificate or whatnot. I think he’s a very intelligent man. I think we need to study how he does his own politics because the man is truly a politician.

I want him to succeed. I’ve admired him for years, for decades. I want him to succeed, but the areas where he’s not doing well, I’m not a psychophant.

We’ve talked about psychophancy here. The areas where he’s not doing well, we have to tell him, Daddy, you’re not doing well here. If this is my own channel of having that information conveyed to him, then I should do it.

But I admire his courage. I admire his pertinacity. I admire his audacity.

I believe he has grit. Very audacious. And I respect him.

I respect him highly, immensely. But I also know that he’s just one man. Competence is what helps people to succeed.

You can be a winner, but if you have a bunch of losers around you, the tendency of you not reaching full potential remains there. But if you have a bunch of winners around you, then you’ll be able to succeed. And that is where meritocracy comes in.

Meritocracy is a very huge problem in our country, where people are giving political positions based on preponderant considerations rather than meritocracy. Okay? You bring the best surgeon and put him in a court room and tell him to defend a criminal. The criminal will go to jail, probably be hanged.

You bring the best doctor, the best lawyer, and put him in the theater and tell him to perform surgery on a patient. Definitely that person will die. But if you take the doctor and put him in the theater and take the lawyer and put him in the court room, they will perform well.

That is why we’re saying, if you have a particular responsibility that should be appropriated to somebody who has the knowledge, who has the experience, who has the stamina to do the job, give him the job regardless of where he’s from. He can be an Anambra man, he can be a Niger Delta man, he can be a TV man. Give him the job.

Let us not say, oh, I’m going to use people from a particular region and surround all the juicy positions so that other people will not have access or not know what we’re doing or I can’t trust other people. All you need to do is just show leadership. If you show leadership, even your enemy will be happy to work with you knowing that this man is going somewhere.

There’s a direction. It’s contagious. People like good things.

Naturally, human beings like good things. When you walk into a place that is clean, you respect yourself. You walk into a place that is unkempt, you throw your own fishes.

Our economy has been on downward trend over the years. What do you think should be done to resuscitate it?

Let me tell you what I think should be done to resuscitate the economy. No matter how you look at it, it’s simple rocket science.

And I don’t know why nobody’s seen it. My brother, we have about 200 and something million people as it has been popularly announced, but I think we are more than 200 and something people. I think we’re about 300 and something million people.

And the things we consume here, literally 70% of what we consume here is imported. There’s pressure on the dollar. There’s pressure on the dollar because the man in Aba wants to buy dollars and import goods from China.

The man in Onitsha, the man in Kano, the man in Borno, the man in Lagos. Everybody’s buying dollar to bring in goods into this country because almost everything we consume here is imported. But imagine if everything that we are consuming here, at least 70, 80% are produced here.

Not only that it will be produced cheap because we have cheap labor here. Not only that we have the energy, we have the capacity to do it because we have a preponderance of young people living in this country. The young demographic is actually huge in number.

So you have the energy, you have the intellect, you have the capacity, but what you don’t have is electricity. If you solve the problem of electricity, there’ll be small, small factories in every backyard. One person creating this, one person creating that.

Go to Aba and see what these people are building. You think you’re in Italy. Onitsha the same thing, Kano.

How are we encouraging manufacturers? Why can’t we produce electricity here? Then importation will drop drastically. Exportation will shoot up drastically. Monies will start coming in and monies will stop going out.

Simple mathematics. But the reason why dollar is so high is because there is pressure on the dollar. You know the rules of economics.

The more the demand, the higher the supply.
So, by the time we are able to establish consistent 24 hours, uninterrupted electricity, then subsidise it; that’s where you need subsidy. We don’t need to subsidise fuel and people will start going for electricals. There is electricity everywhere, then businesses will start moving and there will be employment because when you come out from school, there is factory everywhere. And remember all these things have different facets. You have the production department; you have the sales department, you have the marketing department, you have the people that consume, you have the transportation and all kinds of different segments that come into play, and everybody will have access to money, and you won’t have this problem of when you wake up in the morning you see more than a hundred text messages everyday from both people from your village and primary school calling you to give them money. They will go to work; they won’t need to bother you and people will live longer. Why are we not seeing it? What is the problem? This is our problem.

So, forget about coming to tell people to vote for you. Just do the work. Show people that you are even interested in doing the work. If I were the President of Nigeria, don’t get me wrong, the President is a brilliant guy, I know that it’s not easy; why are the ministers of health not interested in visiting our various hospitals to see how well we are doing? Why is the education man not visiting our schools to ascertain the way things are? I remember when I was younger during the military days, Ike Nwachukwu would come to our school and shake our hands. It used to inspire us. I saw Babangida in 1986, and I said I would want to be like this man, and I kept that picture, that imagery of him in my head. He was a young clean Head of State. I kept it in my head. Eventually, my father’s younger brother, Lieutenant Commander Amadi Ikwechegh, became the Governor of our State, old Imo State. I kept it in my head and said I wiuld be like this man, and today am hear. How are we inspiring the young ones. We have forgotten what leadership is all about.

Leadership is actionable; it’s not just sitting on the table. You take actionable steps; you move around to see what is happening. I remember in those days, most of our Presidents, governors, military administrators, including my father’s younger brother, will show up to our schools 7 O’clock, 8 O’clock in the morning unannounced. They will find out the headmasters and headmistresses that are coming to school early and keeping the schools clean. They take all the appropriate steps to make sure that everybody sits up, as punitive measures are immediately dishes out. Are we doing it today? So, let us go back to the drawing board. The advisers of Mr President should advise him correctly and leave paycophancy.

I like Wike a whole lot because he is a high performer. What we need are high performing politicians, people that understand what the job is all about. The time is to six O’clock and am still here preparing bills and motions that we will push out there, for Nigerians to know that we are ready to work for them. It’s not about driving nice vehicles, blowing siren and wearing white and white. We have to make sacrifices. That is why we are here.