The Lawmaker representing Kogi West Senatorial District, Senator
Dino Melaye, has taken a swipe at the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC,
for failing to meet the expectations of Nigerians, many of whom he said, defied
the odds to vote for Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s President in the 2015
general elections, Vanguard reports.
Melaye who spoke after he was
conferred with the Legislator of the Year 2017, at the Daily Asset Newspaper
maiden annual awards and lecture, in Abuja, also charged Nigerians to conquer
fear by rising up to ask critical questions on governance and service delivery.
Prefacing
his remarks with his usual coinage: “If you speak the truth, you die. If you
lie, you die. I, Dino Melaye has decided to speak the truth and die”, the fiery
Senator wowed the audience with his vitriolic against his own party, which he
likened to the Public Complaint Commission, apparently due to its penchants for
blaming past administrations for its inability to deliver on some of its
electioneering campaign promises.
His words: “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”, he said.
According to the Federal
Lawmaker: “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 why (sic) 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 did not 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, even as he urged the masses to be wary of
the elites whom he accused of polarizing the rest of the populace.
“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
Senator’s note to get job with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN or the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC”, he added.
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