 Governor Wieke says Abbas and Jor's endorsement of Pete Albi speaks volume as the former president publicly announces support for the presidential candidate of the Labour Party and also would discuss with the House of Representatives candidates of the Accord Party in River State, Nackle, Paul, Burabi, as he talks about his plans for the federal constituency of Kana and Gokana. This is Plus Politics and I'm Mary Annacol. A much touted cleanup of oil pollution in southern Nigeria is yet to start in parts of the hotspot, especially Oguni. Almost three years after contracts were handed out and residents remain without proper drinking water according to reports. Nigeria's Africa's biggest crude producer, we have struggled with oil spills for decades, triggering social unrest and even militancy across the Niger Delta. Now the kingdom of Oguni land in River State, home to about a million people, is still in chaos even after several allocations. Well, joining us to discuss his plans to revive Oguni land tonight is House of Representatives candidates of the Accord Party in River State, Nackle, Paul, Burabi. Nackle, so good to have you join us. Good evening. Great. First things first, there are a lot of people who would look at you and ordinarily not see someone who's a career politician but you might correct me if I'm wrong. So my first question is why did you decide to go into politics? The thing is I have to remind myself what I'm doing this for. Having spent 15 years in and around government in Nigeria, I have seen firsthand what can be done when people in power have the best interest of the electorate at heart. So I suppose for me it's just about giving back, but giving back in a way that can be amplified. You don't need to be in power to effect change on your community or your society, but being in power actually amplifies that effect by a thousand fold thereabout. So it's having responsible representative leadership that can drive forward policies and programs that influence the people and the lives of the people, the everyday lives of the people. I have spent, as I say, spent time in and around government. I worked as a legislative aide in the Biosas State House of Assembly. I was responsible for corporate communications in the River State Sustainable Development Agency. And then I worked very closely with His Excellency Governor Leal Imoké for seven years in Cross River State. I'm responsible for a brief which covered things ranging from the environment to MDGs, now SDGs, education, policy, as well as my, you know, run on the bill roll as his administrative support. So as I say, I've seen firsthand what good benevolent representative government can do. And that in a sense is my reason for that. That's why I'm getting into this. It's interesting that also this 2023 elections has presented an opportunity for a lot of newcomers, especially young people, to pick up tickets in different political parties across the board. But let's talk about the newcomers part of it. It's very, very difficult, I must say, especially being that Nigeria has for a long time had two, for a long time, one major political party. Then, of course, the APC came. And so it's now two major political parties, even though the other political parties will say what makes them major. But how easy has it been for you as a newcomer to break grounds in terms of running for an office as, you know, as high as a member representing, you know, Kana Angokana in River State? I would say that it's been tough, but I never expected it to be easy. I say this, the game wasn't designed for people like me to win. So we can't play according to the rules. We've been fortunate in this electoral cycle that the electoral act has been passed. And if properly implemented, the will of the people will prevail. We're hopefully going to eliminate a lot of electoral irregularities around ballot books, snatching, accreditation of voters, that sort of thing. I think it presents a great opportunity for people like me to come up, present their case to the people, try and convince people, and see if I can win the hearts and minds of the electorate and get their votes, and as a result, get the mandate. Coming from a small party, obviously, you know, we've got challenges in terms of finance and structure. But what we lack in terms of those challenges, we make up for significantly in effort. And I actually think it's a great sign of the maturity of our nascent democracy that people are given a choice. People can understand that they can choose some other party apart from the two big joggernauts that we have. And to be fair, the last how many years, those two big joggernauts haven't really represented the needs of Nigerian people. So I think this is the sort of time when we can start looking elsewhere, and it's having the bravery to look elsewhere. It's having the bravery to say, OK, those two parties don't reflect me. Let's look for a candidate in a party that we can support that reflects me. Okay. Let's talk about a court. Why a court? Because, you know, a lot of people would wonder, the newest baby that seems to be, you know, a movement of sorts that's created a movement is the Labour Party. And a lot of people have gone in that direction. And then the next new thing is the NNPP. Why the Accord Party? In a state that is mostly a PDP state, even the APC has only held sway just, you know, a little bit. But it's been a PDP state for the longest time that we can remember. Why did you choose the Accord Party? Well, I'm not one to jump under the bandwagon. I subscribe to a path that reflects what I'm trying to do. So just because the Labour Party is popular now doesn't mean it's going to be popular in four years. And it also doesn't mean necessarily that it's going to be an electoral success across the country. So it's not about jumping on the bandwagon. For the other party you mentioned as well, yes, okay, they might be trending in certain parts, but that's not really the substance of what I'm trying to achieve with this representative democracy. The Accord Party in River State is quite flexible, so it gives the candidates the opportunity to present themselves in a way that is unique to their constituents. So there's that direct connection between the candidate and the people he's looking to represent. So there isn't like a top-down instruction coming from central office somewhere in Abuja telling you you must do this, that and the other. And I think it's really about bringing democracy, a representative democracy, closer to the people so that people can feel the fabric of the cloth of their representatives. And for me, I was looking for a party that could give me that flexibility, that could give me the platform to be more in touch with the people. And I suppose that's the Accord Party. Again, still staying with the issue of the Accord Party. For someone who's lived in River State for a couple of years, I would say, in fact, it's a Nigerian thing where people have been acclimatized to voting in a certain direction. What are you going to do to sway the average river's voter, especially people in Kana and Gokana, to vote the Accord Party? Again, where do you start from? Because I'm curious. For example, you're running against the Edumna, you know, what's his name, Dekor, who's a member of the PDP and he's been there for how long. So how do you even start to sway the people of Kana and what do you bring to the table that's different from what every other member of the House of Representatives who's run for that office has brought to the table? That's a serialized question. So it comes in episodes and I'll try and take it as you asked it. So first of all, I think people are disenfranchised from the two big parties in River State, particularly. I think people are looking for an option. Yes, they've got the strengths. I'm not denying that they are very powerful. PDP has run this state for, you know, since the onset of this new democratic dispensation. So it's going to be a uphill task. But I think that they also carry a lot of baggage of disappointment. So people have tried them. They've been tested. The electorate has tested them. And more often than not, they have disappointed the electorate. So, I mean, if we sort of project this macro to the whole country, the reason why the Liberal Party is enjoying as much support as all attention as it is now is because the two big parties have failed to meet the expectations of Nigerians. When you granulate it to River State, the party here has dominated, but monopoly is not necessarily a good thing. People have to have a choice. People have to have that option. And I think people are willing to exercise that option now. Again, supported by, if properly implemented, the electoral act. So that's that part of your question. How do I plan to unseat someone? I don't know. The real challenge here, and if I flip the question is, what has that person done in the time they've been there? It'd be interesting if my opponent could come up with his legislative report for the last four years. We haven't seen anything. It'd be interesting if he could point to a constituency project and constituency. We haven't seen anything. It'd be interesting if he could talk about the last time he held a town hall meeting with his constituents. I haven't heard anything. It'd be interesting if he could talk about the last time he stood on the floor of the house to talk about anything regarding the constituency. I haven't seen any video clips anywhere. So what is representation? Who is he representing himself or his people? That's the question I would ask. It's a challenge, and that's why I'm the challenger, because I'm challenging his record. I'm looking at his record and there's nothing to see. So in that sense, my job is to show people that you just have a figurehead. You don't have a representative. Because if you did have a representative, a lot of your problems would be solved. Since he's not here, I'm going to play the devil's advocate. So sometime in 2021, he had said, I'm talking about the PDP member representing Canada, Canada Federal Constituency, that right honourable, I hope I didn't kill his name. He said that the PDP has no opposition. He has no opposition in Canada. Now he's also gone ahead to talk about federal government interventions in the Niger Delta, especially in Canada and Gokana, especially in Oguni land. He's talked about the federal government not intervening in the situation that Oguni land is experiencing. And he talked about this also in 2021, when he was making a case during the PIB, I'm the devil's advocate right now. He's also talked about the fact that the president, President Muhammad Buhari, he pushed for the president's accent for the electoral act when the federal government was dragging its feet to pen its accent to that particular bill. So these are some of the things to mention, but a few. I'm not in any way trying to hold brief for him, but these are some of the things that have been recorded that he's talked about. He's also talked about his legacies as a member representing that constituency. But who am I? I'm not from Gokana or am I from Canada, but I just wanted to put that out. Well, he's talked about it, but can he articulate it? Is there a constitutional report anywhere we could read this? What's the accessibility to the electorate? And you can talk about all these things, but what do you do about them? Talking is cheap. What do you actually do about them? It's not about outcomes. It's about impact. So you can say all these things, but what is the impact on the lives of the people that you represent? How do they connect with you? What are you saying, really? What's the subtext of all these grandiose speeches that you make? I mean, I have nothing against the man, and I'd rather play the ball than the man. So that's why I'm playing the ball. And the ball is what has he done in the last four years? I'd like to see it so that I can challenge it so that I can scrutinize it. That's what I want to do. And the onus is on him to say that he's done well and show that he's done well and prove it as well. The onus isn't on me to... The onus on me, rather, is to call him out where I think he hasn't done well. And I've just said that. You can't represent people you're not talking to. So how does he know what the concerns of the people are at home if he hasn't held a town hall meeting or a constituency meeting? It's not about being to people's thanks-givings or funeral calls. It's about connecting with the people in a forum that gives them the opportunity to voice their concerns, to voice their priorities for development. And that's what it is. I think we must tell ourselves the truth. If we're not being adequately represented, we must stand up and hold our leaders to account. And I actually think the problem here with our representative democracy, it is in the politicians, right? They'll do whatever they can get away with, really. No, I mean, turkeys aren't going to vote for Christmas. It's actually not the electorate. Because a lot of our electorate aren't really educated or exposed enough to be able to ask the right questions. It's the thought leaders and opinion formers, like me and you, right? You know, those of us who are the commentary at, who aren't equipping the electorate with the right information to be able to ask the right questions and who also aren't asking the right questions of our leaders. And you have this sort of middlemen, an industry of middlemen who profiteer of this asymmetric information. And that is why whenever you go to a community, you have to see certain people before you can enter. What stops you from walking on the street and actually interacting with the people who would vote for you? And I think we, this new generation, this new crop of politicians, have to tell themselves the truth and we have to find a way to connect with the people that really matter. So in that sense, you know, we can talk about it all we want, but we have to show what we are willing to do. And what I'm willing to do is simple. For Greenland at the moment, there's a disconnect between our educational attainment and our level of development. And that disconnects leadership. That gap. And it's about a qualitative leadership that impacts on the lives of the people. So I'm looking at things, I'm looking at interventions around education, for example. So you go around most of the community secondary schools in the constituency and they've got no roofs. I mean, I could have sent you the pictures if I wanted to be controversial, but anyone could go investigate. That's not really difficult to solve. That's not rocket science. That's not rocket supposed to study in an environment that isn't conducive for learning. You know, it's simple things. And that's, I suppose, the most frustrating thing about this is that the opportunities you have to really impact on the lives of people require very little effort. They just require thought and political will. But that's mostly the job of states, local governments, not necessarily legislative duty. I mean, they have additional duties in that direction, not necessarily... The job of a representative is to represent his people at all levels. So there's nothing wrong with the House of Rep members talking to his state governor about the plight of schools in his constituency. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That is what he should be doing. And I think this is the crux of it and not to get too philosophical about it, but we loan our leaders power. Every four years, it's like a bank. You go to a bank, you take a loan. You are supposed to use that money, invest it, whatever, get your returns and pay your loan back, right? We loan our leaders power every four years. We say, take this power, go and represent us. But if they default on that loan because they're not representing us and they're representing special interests or their pockets or whatever the case may be, then we have a right to call back that loan after four years, right? And we have a right to not give them back that loan. And for me, I think, as I say, I want to play the ball, not the man because he's a great guy. I mean, I have known him. In fact, we spent part of Christmas together. He came to the House to see my father and we had a conversation and it was actually great that two contenders could sit down and parlay and break bread without any animosity. So it's not about him, in every family, when you have someone who isn't playing their part, you call a family meeting and you say, Bruce, you know, it isn't quite working out. So someone else is going to have to do this. There's no bad blood, no ill-feeling. It's a family. We're all, as a group of people, we're a family. But we have to tell ourselves the truth as a family. And there's nothing wrong with saying you've done your turn. It hasn't quite worked out because you haven't really met the expectations to let someone else go. Okay, let's quickly talk in the next few minutes about your Organic Revival Plan for Kana and Gokana. I scrolled through it. I saw agriculture, education, economic opportunities and job creation, consolidating democracy. That actually stood out to me because you know, anybody can tell me that they want to help develop the education sector and blah, blah, blah. But how do you consolidate on the gains of people who actually have done the job before you? Well, not those who are just there to hold power, but those who've done the job well. And how do you consolidate? It's interesting you say you've done the job well because a lot of what I get as a young candidate coming in, and I'm not really young. I'm in my 40s. But you know, in Nigeria, the old men like to infantilize us young men and make us feel like we're still in our nappies. The point is a lot of these people got power, way younger than I am right now. But they've refused to move on or hand over the baton to the next generation. And that's why I said the game isn't designed for young people. The game today isn't designed for young people like me to win. And going back to your point about consolidating democracy based on experience, I suppose criticism thrown is oh, you're inexperienced. Well, I'd rather take someone with new ideas than someone who has bad experience if you get what I'm saying. Because what we've seen thus far has been a great deficit between what is promised and what's delivered. For me consolidating democracy means you're bringing power closer to the people. So the people have a direct impact on who represents them. They have direct access to who represents them. And they are mechanisms in place for their voices to be heard. Which is why I talk about the citizens assembly, for example, in the constituency. Where my plan is every quota non-political members of the constituency. So no one in the political party, I'm talking about farmers and fishermen. I'm talking about school teachers. They come together as the voice of the constituency to prioritize their needs. And that's fed through to their representative, hopefully me, through a town hall session where I say yeah. Because if you aren't talking to the people about what their needs are then what are you doing in Abuja? Who are you talking for if you're not talking to the people? And I think this is a very simple concept. It's not rocket science. It's what happens right across the world in a bit more mature democracies. But there's no reason why we can't leap from. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We've seen these things working. They're a great way to get people participating in democracy. One of the things I would like to institute and I think perhaps for a different conversation is the recall. So people should be able to put in a petition and recall their representatives. They don't feel they're doing well. That's a conversation for another day trust me. It's indeed a whole other conversation for another day. So that's about consolidating democracy. It's about reinforcing the confidence people have in their representatives and the system of representation. Agriculture. We're going to use a massive... Sorry, let me just make a point. We're going to use a massive agrarian society, right? For such a long time our curse has been that we've exploited the resource under the ground and we haven't done as much with the resources on the ground. So we've focused a lot on oil and not enough on agriculture. And we've got huge swathes of arable land that could be cultivated. Unfortunately the resource under the ground so it makes that difficult which is why the work of my prep is really important and I wish the federal government would hasten that up because that would actually show people that there's more to life than the dependency on crude oil. So we're talking about producing food for mass production of food basically. There isn't a single cassava process in planting agoni. Not one. Not a single one. There isn't necessarily an outgrown scheme for any cash crop. I mean it's just a complete and utter addiction to oil. And in the next few years the EU passed the policy a few years ago saying I think it was by 2045 or something like that. They were going to ban combustion engines or something. Something to that effect. But the world's dependency on oil is reducing with the emergence of electric vehicles. So what are we going to do when there's no market for the oil in the way, in the magnitude of the quantities that we require to sustain ourselves? We have to pivot. There's nothing we can chew gum and walk at the same time. So we can still be exploring the oil but we can also explore other economic activities for agoni. And in fact the proceeds from the oil should be funding a more sustainable development in the constituency. And that I suppose leads me into the industrialisation strategy. It's against not rocket science. You have jobs, you have industry that create jobs that employ the youth that make them more productive economic agents in society and it makes them less vulnerable to nefarious acts of violence or you know what I mean. If you don't see what to do you do what you see. And I think hands that are occupied aren't going to be ill occupied with something else. But as I say it's seeming to be a deliberate ploy to keep people in a state where they are dependent on handouts by from politicians and once you have the power and once you are sorry once you are economically empowered as an individual because you've got a job, you can pay your bills you can take care of your kids feed your family, take care of your dependence then you are less dependent on politicians handouts and that creates a more a more healthy politics a politics without thuggery, a politics without you know boys you know we really really need to move on. The world has moved on and we're still in the dark ages in our politics and it requires people, young people getting more involved to actually push the dial in the direction we need to move. Well I want to say that there's so much to discuss I would have loved to talk about more things but then of course I'm sure that you would come back sometime soon and we'll have more I'm happy to come back whenever you want. Okay well Naku is the member well he's a House of Representatives candidate for the Accord party in Rivers State Naku Paul Barabi, thank you so much for speaking with us unfortunately we have to go now. Thank you very much Mayran. Thank you. Alright well thank you for staying with us, we'll take a short break now and when we return we'll be discussing the endorsement of Pitobi by former President of Lucia-Gone Bassenger and claims of the G5 Governors meeting up for the APC presidential candidate stay with us.