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Professor of Political Economy and governorship aspirant, All Progressive Congress, Delta state, Prof. Pat Utomi has described Nigeria’s political parties as weak and devoid of a good system for picking capable people to run for political offices which he said is the most important role that political parties play in a democracy.
Utomi said this while fielding questions from a team of The New Narrative newspaper in Lagos. The erudite Professor who was founding member of the All Progressive Congress (APC) also said that Nigeria’s political parties should strengthen their fundamentals to be able to articulate set of ideas that will enable whoever it is that comes through their system to own and use to drive society forward.
He warned that except that is done urgently, society would always be captured by those he described as undesirable elements. “So you find invariably that state capture is easy, a group of criminals can very easily control anybody or government in Nigeria if they want” he pointed out.
Asked what experience he will bring to governance if elected governor of Delta state, having not held political position for a long time, the Pan Atlantic University don, said that the capacity to run things is not a function of being in a government position, noting that it could be a detriment to being able to run things.
“Many of the people who are in public life are completely disconnected from the people, they don’t even know what the people feel because for the last 30 years they have been going from rigging election to being appointed and they are doing recycling and booking appointments and they have not learnt anything about life, about how to run anything except just being named something in the government” he said.
For the Nigerian youths, Utomi counselled them to change the narrative of their anger and rather look for a more matured ways of registering their opposition to what is happening to leadership in Nigeria instead of confrontation. He said that youths can take up leadership by showcasing how they understand their world, while exhibiting good values that can sustain and provide leadership with globally competitiveness.
He said that Nigeria needs ideas, policies and passionate leadership that can enable it reap a democratic dividend from the huge youth population but regrets that right now leadership is moving towards anarchy from not being able to invest appropriately in the young people.
