LIVE UPDATES
High Chief Aimanerimi Victor Arogunyo is the spokesperson for Akoko-Edo Security Network and the National Publicity Officer of Edo North, comprising six local governments in Edo State, South South Nigeria.
He has served as a Senior Special Assistant to the Honourable Speaker, House of Representatives, and Office of the Majority Leader (2007 - 2011) and also as a Special Assistant to the Honourable Commissioner, Public Complaints Commission between 2012 and 2015.
Arogunyo is actively into community organisation and mobilisation. In this interview with BENEDICTA BASSEY, he speaks about the challenges of insecurity in the country, the ugly trends of hunger, among others, and how the Federal Government can manage the situation to promote growth and societal development. Excerpts:
Looking at the just concluded governorship election in Edo State, how would you rate the conduct?
What happened is…well, I would not want to say what the court will say. Whatever we say now is going to be biased because the issue is already before a competent court of jurisdiction. So we must allow the courts to do what they want to do.
But there are so many reactions concerning it, don't you think this will be a threat to democracy in the future?
Right! As I said, because the case is now in the court, we are trying not to say anything until the court comes up with what the issues are. This is because whatever we say now will be seen as being biased and it will look as if we have taken a position already.
Looking at the state of the nation's politics, with the alarming rate of buying forms to vie for a political position, do you think the youth, who are ready to contest political offices will be able to cough up the huge cost of forms?
Basically, I think the problem is that the youth are not ready. Now, we expect that young people should be able to come together and support one of them. But rather, they will allow a powerful person with plenty of money to buy all of them, to support them.
If all of them can come together to support, i.e bringing one of them out and channel their full support towards him, they can make it. That's the only way the youth can get out of it. It is not the money.
If the youth come together, they can produce the money to buy a form for one of them. But the problem is we have not been able to get a youth that can provide leadership for the rest of the young people. So, that's where we should focus our attention on for now.
We need youths that can provide leadership that can bring other youths together, so that they can remove these people who are oppressing them.
The rate of insecurity is alarming, would you say the current administration is doing well to address it?
Well, at the level of Edo state, they have done fantastically well. So, we have been able at that level to bring vigilantes, hunters together. And we are doing everything to curb the insecurity within this area. That's what we are doing.
Also, Edo State Government has done well. You can see the outfit I am wearing now. It actually belongs to Edo State Security Network. And we are doing that at the level of Edo State to curb insecurity. But at the level of the federal government, we are appealing to the federal government to do everything possible to nip insecurity in the bud. Like Lampese where we are, is a boundary community between Edo and Kogi states.
We need barracks. We need the presence of the military and special policemen between Magongo and Lampese because on a daily basis, they kidnap people here. As I speak, just three days ago, we gave out N10 million as ransom for our man who was kidnapped.
So, if we have Army barracks or police barracks between Lampese and Mangogo, I am sure all of these menace will be taken care of.
With the general situation in Nigeria's political space, would you say of a certain that elections have been free and fair?
Well, elections so far are subjective. Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, during his time, did everything to ensure that elections were free and fair. Jonathan took over from late Umaru Yar'Adua, who admitted that the election that brought him was not free and fair and that he was going to do something about it. Yes, during Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, there was a problem. We had thought that rigging of election had gone with Obasanjo, but unfortunately, what we are witnessing now, we are gradually returning to the Obasanjo era. I believe that President Bola Tinubu is not aware of what happened in Edo.
So, the president should now be aware of what will happen in Ondo State this November. They will be able to correct what happened in Edo. And I hope that the Judiciary will be able to stand up and do what is right so that young people can also aspire, because people have spent money, people know they have won election, but overnight, a few persons turned it over. And I think that the President has a role to play in all of this.
I believe that the president is not aware of what is happening. But we are now calling on him to be watchful of the election that is coming up in Ondo State by November.
There have been a series of protests in recent times regarding bad governance and the heightened level of hunger in the land. What's your reaction and how best can you advice the federal government on that?
There is hunger! There is no doubt people are hungry. Even the president has admitted that he knows there is hunger. People should have patience with him.
But the question is for how long are we going to have patience? For how long are we going to wait? The protest about bad governance is hunger. If people can eat three square meal in a day, nobody will protest.
My mother in Lampese here has nothing to do with what President Bola Tinubu or Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki is doing.
So long as she wakes up, she can get food to eat, she can get water and there is security. So my advice to government is to ensure that the current prices of goods and services are crashed.
How they will do it, is what I don't know. But I think they can crash it through price control. For example, somebody who has built a house for over 30 years is increasing house rents. Somebody who has priced all kinds of foodstuff in his store before this entire crisis has increased it. I used about N98,000 to buy a bag of 50kg rice. And I was wondering.
The highest school fees I paid when I was in the university was about N38,000. And I'm now using N98,000 to buy a bag of rice that will not even take us two months. It's unfortunate! Governments must rise up to check these charlatans who are unnecessarily hiking the prices of goods and services for Nigerians. People are dying, people are hungry, and it's only government that can resolve the issues.
