The Presidential candidate of the National Conscience Party, Mr. Martin Onovo, tells GBENRO ADEOYE about his political aspiration and
why he is confident of winning the February presidential election..He told Punch
I am obviously the most prepared candidate as you can see from our vision. We have witnessed misgovernance in Nigeria. We have identified with Prof. Chinua Achebe, Prof. Wole Soyinka, the Hon. Justice Muhammed Uwaiz, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, and so on. We have the solution to Nigeria’s problems.
But some people say the contest is between President Goodluck Jonathan and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and that other aspirants like yourself are only adding up to the number.
We think differently. The majority of Nigerians see the two candidates as the problems with the country. Their parties have been indicted for rigging elections in the past. They have brazenly violated Section 91 of the Electoral Act on election finance. They both deploy slush funds. Jonathan, globally reputed to be clueless and Buhari, an old grandpa, cannot win in a free and fair election. Nigerian people have openly rejected both of them but the corrupt power brokers in the country still wish to impose one of them on us by manipulating the process. We are sure they will fail.
Why are you so confident of your chances in the election?
I am supremely confident because I think properly and I believe that most Nigerians think properly and will do the right thing by voting for the National Conscience Party. We have promised to reduce fuel price by improving domestic crude oil refining, which translates to lower cost, but the incumbent oversaw the subsidy fraud.
We have also promised to increase minimum wage by decreasing the maximum wage while maintaining the wage bill; meanwhile, the incumbent government has been delaying salaries and owing pensions.
We will spend about $9bn to double power generation in two and half years. Since 1999, Nigeria has spent about $51bn on power, according to the Financial Intelligence Magazine report, but generation has remained at the same level, which is about 3,000MW. So, every reasonable voter will vote for NCP because the NCP is committed to serving the Nigerian people and has done so since it was founded.
During the 2011 general elections, you also said you would sacrifice your life for the development of your people (Nigerians), if the sacrifice involves you leading soldiers to Sambisa forest to rescue the Chibok schoolgirls now, are you ready?
We will all die sometime. Nobody lives here forever. Can you confirm that the girls are in Sambisa forest today? We will first determine where the girls are, who is detaining them or keeping them from their families and then, we can take appropriate actions for their rescue or ransom. There is a story that they were sold or married off. We will acquire intelligence information, confirm it and then act appropriately.
You said recently that if elected as president, your government would expel Boko Haram, don’t you think the target is too bogus?
Bogus? We need to expel Boko Haram from our territory. We can expel them. We will most definitely expel them when elected. Our forces are larger and better trained than the senseless rag-tag band of Boko Haram cowards. We will motivate, equip and arm our men better to defeat Boko Haram if they do not surrender after a stern warning. Only a bad government like the illegitimate and corrupt one in place now will tolerate Boko Haram after the incident at Federal Government College, Buni-Yadi, Yobe State where about 59 of our children were killed in horrific circumstances
