Presidential aspirant blames godfathers, cabals for keeping Nigerians poor on purpose

The business consultant said poverty is a deliberate strategy by the so-called cabals to influence the electoral system in the country by giving people the least bit of inducements to stay dependent on their generosity.

He said this while speaking during an interview with Starr Radio UK on Saturday, June 16, 2018, when he was asked what he thinks is Nigeria's greatest problem.

According to him, if Nigeria is able to break the power grip of godfathers in Nigerian politics, all of the country's problems will be solved as they keep an unhealthy hold on power to the detriment of everyone else.

He said, "If you ask me, the root cause of Nigeria's problem is the structure, the power brace, the godfathers, and the cabals that decide to hold power to themselves and because of the way they decide to hold power to themselves at the detriment of everybody else. The idea is the way that elected officials are selected by those godfathers and the way that the system is designed to ensure that people are impoverished so that they can reduce the cost of elections.

"I tell people that poverty is not something that is natural to Nigeria, it is the result of a deliberate strategy that is there to keep people poor and hungry so that they can bring out a little bit of N1000 or N500 or N300 to be able to influence elections."

Durotoye further called for an end to the delegate voting system in electing party candidates, a decision he said would strenghten internal democracy which should in turn eliminate corruption and promote people-oriented governance.

He said, "The day you make internal democracy work in all the parties where the people are the ones who vote for who becomes the candidate, then you'll break the back of the power of godfathers because they can't bribe everybody; but right now, you have only a delegate system and that delegate system makes sure that it is the people who own the delegates that you have to go and beg.

"So if I want to run in one of the conventional parties, I have to go and prostrate to the godfathers. When I go and prostrate to the godfathers, guess what happens once I become elected? It is them that I owe my allegiance, not the people and so you find out that that's where corruption comes in.

"Corruption can never leave Nigeria until true democracy comes into Nigeria. What we have today is not true democracy, it is selectocracy. It is the ability of a few people to select who will go and serve everybody else and that's not how it is done in the countries that we admire like the United Kingdom and the United States where we borrowed democracy from.

"If we solve that problem and just get every party to be able to allow every member of the party to vote for who will become the candidates of the party, the rest of the problems will be solved."

The leadership expert also pledged to work with other aspirants, when the need arises, to overthrow Nigeria's current political class that has kept it poor and ineffective with inadequate governance.

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Durotoye's 10-point plan for Nigeria

In a 10-point agenda document he released on May 29, 2018, Durotoye noted that if he's elected president at next year's polls, he'll focus on power, security, education, healthcare, infrastructure, business and industries, the economy, enforcing the rule of law, creating jobs and reducing the cost of living.

He vowed to create three million jobs for each year of his administration and reduce the country's unemployment rate.

He also promised to make Nigeria the number one destination for investors in Africa by creating an enabling environment for locally-owned businesses and foreign investors to thrive and maximise profits.

He further assured Nigerians that he'll degrade, dismantle, and defeat terrorist group, Boko Haram, with human intelligence and return internally displaced persons (IDPs) to their homes or reabsorb them into a reconstructed community and 'safe cities'.

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Durotoye will contest for the presidency in next year's election on the platform of the Alliance for a New Nigeria (ANN). He'll have to beat Dr Thomas-Wilson Ikubese and Dr Elishama Ideh to emerge the party's flag bearer to be able to face incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari and a host of other contenders.