Alliance for New Nigeria will change the narrative — ANN nat’l chair

Your party alleged that 75 per cent of Nigerian electorate had been disenfranchised in past polls. How did you arrive at that figure?

The information is in public space, but what we used as a benchmark is the last general elections where we know that about 69 million people were registered but only about 27 million actually voted. We then extrapolated the population of Nigeria and placed it with the voting population; people above 18 years. So, what we are looked at was people that were eligible to vote but did not even register and people that actually registered and did not vote. If you put that together, close to 75 per cent of people that were eligible to vote did not.

Dr. Jay Osi Samuels is the National Chairman of Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN). In this interview, he speaks about what the party will offer Nigerians, among other issues. Excerpts:

Your activities show that the party is concentrating too much effort in the South. Isn’t that giving you away as a regional party?

That is actually not true. We are a national party. As we speak, our membership spreads across the states of the federation. Though we have done some media activities, but we have not yet done 10 per cent of our planned programmes. So, we are not leaving any part of the country out. We are very mindful of that. In fact, we are planning a road show in the northern part of the country. Our state coordinators from the North are eager for us to come over. We are not leaving any part of the country untouched. We are not unmindful that we need to do more in some certain parts of the country, but to say that we are neglecting some parts is not in our character.

Where is your stronghold because you have to be rooted in a certain part of the country?

We are a national party, and like I also mentioned in some of my interactions, we are coming to disrupt the political space of Nigeria; not to destroy it. We are going to change the narrative, the mindset and the way people perceive politics to be played in Nigeria. So, when people ask us, “Where is your stronghold?” that is part of the structure we will bring on board. We didn’t set up to say “we are a Lagos party and that is our strong base.” Our strong based is actually up in the air; not on the ground. They are that majority class of Nigerians in the social media that are aware, politically aware, educated and conscious of what role government should or should not play. Those are the people that we count as our support base.

For too long the professional politicians have ruled this country by relying on what we call the “grassroots” and we want to change the definition of what grassroots is. When a politician says “grassroots”, what they are saying is that semi-illiterate in the rural area that they can easily deceive to vote for them. And unfortunately, those are the people that don’t have the opportunity or the choice to query their actions or inactions when they are in government.

However, our own grassroots are those people that we have connection with and who rely on us for sustenance. So our stronghold is to be able to capture the hearts and minds of the enlightened Nigerian. People who know the rights and wrongs of governance because what we are trying to do is to have a party that for once will engender a government that is responsive to the yearnings of the electorate that put them in power.

The party’s manifesto talks about streamlining policies of past governments. What are those policies?

One thing about Nigeria is that we don’t lack policies. The major bane is lack of will power and commitment to serve dispassionately without entrenched interest in governance. That is one thing we want to bring on board. For instance, if we are to be objective, the anti-corruption that this government came on board with is not working. But it would have been a different thing if it was implemented without being bias towards one side or the other; that whosoever is found wanting should be made to face the anti-graft institutions or the guidelines for dealing with such instead of being selective.

Example, we learnt that the Chairman of the Niger Delta amnesty programme has been sacked and some monies discovered in his house. But what happened to some other people that did far worse things but are still going about free? The case in point is a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation. No matter what, that will send signal that the government is not being fair.

So, what our party is advocating for is governance that is free, fair, equitable and above all, not attuned to selfish interests.