A former Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, on Tuesday has revealed that the protest about fuel subsidy renewal that occur during Goodluck Jonatham tenure was due to political Interests
Fayemi made this statement during his keynote address at a national dialogue held to commemorate the 60th birthday of Professor Udenta Udenta, the founding National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy and a Fellow at the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, in Abuja.
The programme was attended by Jonathan, former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili; former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, among others.
While condemning what he described as the “winners take all” style of Nigeria’s democracy, Fayemi said the challenges facing the nation today cannot be solved unless the country embraced proportional representation, where the spoils of elections are shared between contestants.
According to him, the last time Nigeria experienced economic development was during Jonathan’s administration
Fayemi said, “Today, I read former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s interview in The Cable saying our liberal democracy is not working and we need to revisit it, and I agree with him. We must move away from the political alternatives. I think we are almost at a dead end with that.
“What we need is alternative politics, and my own notion of alternative politics is that you can’t have 35 per cent of the vote and take 100 per cent. It won’t work! We must look at proportional representation so that the party that is said to have won 21 per cent of the votes will have 21 per cent of the government. Adversary politics bring division and enmity.
“All political parties in the country agreed, and they even put in their manifesto that subsidy must be removed. We all said subsidy must be removed. But we in ACN at the time, in 2012, knew the truth, Sir, but it was all politics.
“That is why we must ensure that everybody is a crucial stakeholder by stopping all these. Let the manifestos of PDP, APC and Labour Party, be put on the table and select all those who will pilot the programme from all parties.”
