.’Incumbency factor driven by election rigging’
A journalist and one time Minister of Information and Communication under the administration of erstwhile President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Mr Labaran Maku has said that incumbent factor in Nigeria is driven by election rigging and that in a free and fair elections, a lot of incumbents will collapse.
The former Minister who said that incumbent factor is not driven by performance however identified restoration of peace and security, good governance and the development of vast land in Nasarawa State as part of his areas of priorities if elected as the next governor of the state.
Maku said this after submitting his expression of interest and nomination forms for the governorship of Nasarawa State at the headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Abuja at the weekend.
The PDP governordhip aspirant, who had served as Commissioner for Information as well as Deputy Governor in the State at different times, told newsmen after submitting his forms that he is in the best position to restore peace and security in Nasarawa, offer proper leadership and good governance if given the mandate during the 2023 general election.
These, he pointed out, would be achieved by connecting with leaders, traditional leaders, community leaders and professional leaders across board to see that we are able to bring peace to our state.
According to him, “When you have free and fair elections, a lot of incumbents will collapse. The incumbent factor in Nigeria is driven by election rigging. It’s not driven by performance. Incumbency in Nigeria is often driven by the process to rig elections. Government prefer to rig an election rather than win election. That is Where it is. In terms of performance, I can tell you very clearly that I don’t know about others but in Nasarawa state, incumbency will be a major disadvantage now. Because incumbency means you are performed and the people love what you have done. Once a sitting government has not performed the incumbency becomes a disadvantage.
“And I think that is where we are in Nasarawa particularly, and I know that if God gives us a chance in these elections are free and fair you will see that this factor of incompetence, as far as Nasarawa is concerned is right now a disadvantage because there is no performance. There is no major development that has taken place in Nasarawa State and I believe that PDP will not even need to say anything. When we have that that ticket, people can see the gap between us and and what has happened subsequently.”
He said that peace and security are very crucial because without that you can’t really achieve anything as it is all over the north and even all over the country.
His words, “I believe I am in the position to bring peace back to our state, offering proper leadership and good governance by connecting with leaders, traditional leaders, community leaders, professional leaders across board to see that we are able to bring peace to our state, that is very crucial because without that you can’t really achieve anything.
“As it is all over the north and even all over the country now, you need peace and that will be at the forefront.
“I know that everybody loves peace, I know this but we need to work hard at it with vision, with capacity, with strength and with experience, I believe this is feasible and a lot of the people here are also committed to the project.
“The second one is to restore governance. If you go to our state now, hardly will you see any institution properly functioning. You need to retrain the entire civil service and reposition it to be able to execute the programmes of government because the civil service is the engine room of governance.
“You can’t implement anything successfully without a competent, coherent, trained, focused and result oriented civil service.We have a lot of training to do, we have a lot of work to do.
“In fact, local governance has collapsed, hardly is any local government functioning in Nasarawa state today, I don’t know of other states, but honestly, there is no local government in Nasarawa state right now, none is functioning, you can go and make a survey by yourself because nothing is given to them”, he said.
Maku equally promised to harness the abundant natural resources available in the state for the overall benefit of its people.
In his words, “Nasarawa state is the richest state in the country. It is one of the richest in agriculture, it has one of the most fertile lands for agricultural production in Nigeria.
“Now we need to work in the area of agriculture to prepare our farmers, just like Sardauna (Sir Ahmadu Bello) used to do in the 50’s and 60’s and was producing so much food for the north and selling to develop the north”, he said.
