The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress ( APC) on Thursday berated critics of the Federal government policy promoting the consumption of home grown rice.
He therefore called on Nigerians to celebrate the existence of abundant Nigeria’s home grown rice during Christmas and New Year.
Speaking with State House Correspondents after leading members of the APC National Working Committee to present a “ New Year Card” to President Muhammmadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, said, “ I think we ought to be able to celebrate that our people have rice everywhere that were not imported from other countries- Nigerian made rice.
“I bought some quantities of rice to share in line with the tradition and all these were Nigerian made rice. They taste better, they are not expired, they are more nutritious and for me this is how a nation grows and eventually becomes self-reliance, self-sufficient.
“We think that was quite significant but like you know, in Nigeria when good things happened they don’t command good headline news. For example, consistently under this President, people are now used to going for Christmas without having to worry whether or not there is petroleum product in the market.
The APC leader disclosed that unlike the previous situation where people were always afraid of what will happen during the Christmas season, Nigerians had a more peaceful Yuletide celebration
“ In previous years, you spend all your money, all the little money you are saving to take back home to celebrate with your people, you end up patronizing ‘Black Market’ to buy a liter of PMS at two, three, or four times the value and some times it is adulterated.
“And we see pictures of people who are stranded across the country because they cannot access PMS. Again, these are things we are now able to with pride, take for granted.
The embattled APC National Chairman however berated critics calling for his resignation, saying that such calls are baseless
The APC Chairman stated that on the contrary, his achievements have created more grounds for envy and open attacks against his person
According to Oshiomhole “ It’s a tree that bears fruits that attracts stone.”
“You hardly see people throwing stone at a dry tree palm tree. But if you see a mango tree when it is its season, people throw stones at it when passing. I think that is my lot but my report card is also very very clear.
Oshiomhole who avoided making reference to the raging political battle in Edo, his home state, urged party members to objectively interrogate the performance of the National Working Committee under his leadership.
“I think the evaluation should start mostly from how many elections you lose, or lost.
He drew attention to British Labour Party Leader who he stated accepted responsibility to step down following the crushing defeat that the Labour Party suffered under his leadership.
According to him, “ he offered in principle having accepted responsibility, that he will not lead the party in the next election, so he is going to resign because under his leadership the party was rejected by the British electorate.
“In my own case, and I challenge anyone to say that any of these things are not true”
Oshiomhole while reeling out the performance of APC under his leadership , noted that the executive members of the party were sworn in on the 3rd of June 2018, adding that , “two weeks later, we went to Ekiti to contest election against a PDP incumbent governor Fayose and we won. And Kayode Fayemi today is the governor of that state.
“Few months later, we went to Osun State, we contested a by-election, we won and we had the Osun State governor elected for his first term.
“Then we went for the national elections, you know all the tensions in the country at the time. The gap between President Buhari and the former candidate of the PDP Abubakar Atiku was about four million voters. The one between President Buhari and former President Jonathan in 2015 was about three million.
“So under my leadership this President has more votes than the first runner-up, we would like to claim credit for that because if it went the other way so we would be crucified”
On the National Assembly election, Oshiomhole boasted, saying that he is proud that his party won more senate seats and more House of Reps seats.
“But even more outstanding if you ask me, it’s that, we also had the majority in both chambers of the National Assembly in 2015 but the party didn’t have the capacity to handle the majority and make good use of it. The result was that you had a Senate President that was of APC and a deputy senate president that was of PDP even when APC had clear majority because we could not manage our numbers”
He declared that the party achieved stability under his leadership which led to the emergence of Ahmed Lawan and Ovie Omo-Agege as president and deputy while in the senate, as well as in the House of Representatives, with Femi Gbajabiamila and Wase emerging as speaker and deputy respectively,
Oshiomhole, while also commending the party for achieving victory in the November 16th Kogi governorship and senatorial election, added that “ we went to the heart of the Ijaw nation and won so convincingly the governorship election in Bayelsa State and as you can see in the newspaper, it’s PDP that are asking themselves ‘how did that happened?’
“So how we can get opposition to work with us to deliver APC in the heart of the Ijaw nation under our chairmanship, I want to think that is something that is positive. “
Going forward in 2020, there are things we have ironed out I don’t need to share all of them, that we are going to do differently, to ensure that we take into account all the mistakes we made in 2019 so that in 2020 APC will be more stronger, more coherent, more peaceful. But don’t make mistake there will always be some internal discontent because we are talking of 774 local governments and in each of these local governments you have activist pacifists, horse the dogs all within the same family so they are bound to happen but what matter is our capacity to talk through them and have them resolved.
