Outspoken Senator representing Kogi West District in the National
Assembly, Senator Dino Melaye, has slammed the ruling All Progressives
Congress (APC) for failing to meet the expectations of Nigerians.
According to him, President Muhammadu Buhari failed many citizens who
defied the odds to vote for him as Nigerias President in the 2015 general
elections.
He said this after he was conferred with the Legislator of the Year 2017
at the Daily Asset Newspaper maiden annual awards and lecture in Abuja.
Melaye also charged Nigerians to conquer fear by rising up to ask critical
questions on governance and service delivery.
He likened the APC to the Public Complaint Commission due to its penchants
for blaming past administrations for its inability to deliver on some of
its electioneering campaign promises.
He said: If you speak the truth, you die. If you lie, you die. I, Dino
Melaye has decided to speak the truth and die.
The APC government has become Public Complaint Commission. I say this
without fear or favour. We have more complains in the APC and even in the
Presidency than service rendered. We cannot as a people continue like
this.
The President said two days ago we should all embrace peace but I want to
say without fear or favour that there can be no peace without justice.
There is hunger in the land, there is poverty in the land, and there is
unemployment in the land. A lot of decision has not been taken; yet we say
we want peace.
The primary objective of government is the security and welfare of the
people. There is no security, there is no welfare.
Nigeria is not only sick presently but equally suffers from regretful
congenital abnormality. There is therefore a serious need for
amelioration, palliation and correction. The question is: are you going to
be part of that correction? I want to say that in an unjust society,
silence is a crime, and every one of us here today, is the reason Nigeria
is sick.
It is not about the leadership, it is the inability of the followership
to check the leadership. Today Nigerians have become indolent, we are
suffering and smiling. We are not reactionary. We are not asking questions
and that is why we are where we are.
Democracy will continue to be government of the people by the people for
the people but what we have today is greedocracy which is government of
the greedy by the greedy and for the greedy, he added.
While decrying the squalid social conditions in which the people live in,
Melaye warned those in positions of authority not to forget that their
failure to make the most of their offices in the interest of the people
could turn out to hurt them, arguing that not even the rich would be
immune from the disaster that looms in the horizon.
2019 is around the corner again. Many of us are lackadaisical about the
future. I delivered a lecture recently at the University of Lagos and some
students from very wealthy homes, two of them said they didnt care who
the president of the country is and that it was none of their business
because their parents were very successful. I said to them that when the
poor have nothing to eat, they will start eating the rich.
A time will come when it will be difficult to drive your expensive jeeps
and cars on the streets. A time will come when it would be difficult to
switch on your generator because everywhere around you is dark. Will you
be the only one having light? There was no kidnapping before, and
kidnapping is seen as the redistribution of both ill-gotten and legitimate
wealth. People now take from the rich and they now appropriate to
themselves, he noted
The elites have divided us using tribal sentiments. When you go to the
hospital, there is a column for religion on your call card, a column for
tribe and local government as if this will in any way facilitate your
recovery. We have become too ethnic conscious. I sponsored a bill that is
about to go for a second reading. The bill is saying that we should
abolish state of origin and in its place; we should have state of
residence. This is when we will have a true Nigeria when you will not need
a Senators note to get job with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN or the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, he added.