Why I want to lie low in politics for now, by Edebiri

Solomon Iyobosa Edebiri was a gubernatorial aspirant on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party in the last primary election of the party. He is also the national president of the Nigeria Institute of Welding. In this interview with IDRIS UMAR MOMOH during a two-day training with the theme, ‘Welding Education and Workforce Development’ in Benin-City, Edebiri, who said he has decided to stay away from politics at the moment, also spoke on the importance of welding to economic development of the country and how expatriates have taken away the jobs meant for Nigerians. Excerpts:

Since after June 20, 2016, the People’s Democratic Party governorship primaries you have been silent and there have been rumours surrounding your resignation of membership of the party. What is the position of things at the moment?

You recalled that I gave two active years of campaign to PDP primaries. You will appreciate the fact that in the history of primaries PDP has the longest transition. Campaigns for the primaries started as a matter of fact before the presidential election. You also recalled that I started my own campaign from May 1, 2014 when I joined the party. As we carried out the campaigns we all pledged to cooperate beyond the primaries if we found out that the election is free, fair and just. My understanding on the way the primaries were conducted was that it was not free, fair and just. There were cases where people reported that the party’s institution gave instructions to chairmen across the state to vote for a particular aspirant and that is the person of Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu. I will not blame the governorship aspirant (Osagie Ize- Iyamu) because his intention was to win the primaries and become the party’s candidate  but the leaders who have claimed or promised us that the process will be free and fair are those I will blame in all the process. It is in that circumstance that I felt the dishonesty in PDP is too much and I can no longer continue.
In the second vein, I also didn’t want to jump into any other political party, what I have done was to resign from the PDP, sit back, reappraise the political setting, adjust myself and review all my political activities, discuss with all my associates, stakeholders in my political system and thereafter come up with a solution and a way forward in the next dispensation. So for me I am not going to be active for a while, and because I don’t want to fight anybody, fight Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu or fight any one I refuse to join any other political party. So, that is where we are.In all of these, has the party leadership waved their olive branch trying to reach out to you for settlement?In fact, Chief Tony Anenih has made various attempts to reach me and at a point we agreed that we can even meet at his house in Abuja but I declined because of what happened in 2012. In 2012 they offered me money to dump my aspirations and join PDP of course I refused. In 2016, he still referred to 2012 that having refused his money I went to join Adams Oshiomhole to fight against the PDP. Even after swearing with my father’s grave he didn’t seemed to still believe that I didn’t do it. I am a man of integrity. I will not take money from anybody to work against another person. So, not knowing what he might also say after my meeting with him tomorrow I told myself in order to keep my sanctity and integrity the best thing was to avoid any meeting with him and any leader of PDP. That was why I didn’t honour the invitation or also honour his request to come and see him in Abuja.

Because of what you stand for, the development of the state and the people peradventure the good people of the state now come together under whatever guide in truth to now appeal to you to come out from your “sabbatical” will you in sincerity oblige them?

At the moment even though I am on sabbatical I will still be working for Edo people in another way. I have a lot of foundation. I carry out a lot of public activities; I am still going to continue to do that. But politically, if by  tomorrow the people of Edo State still decide that they need me of course I will oblige them but I will take the lesson I leant from this last exercise and be sure I am not going to be hurt again. So that is the only condition I am going to give myself to just watch and be careful. That is the way I am going to look at it critically to see that whatever the case maybe if the people want me to serve I will serve them. What happened in the last dispensation is too awful and highly discouraging, completely abused all tenets of internal democracy, it dehumanised every system that we put in place. It showed a party that has no human feelings, no human thinking, they reason beyond human level because you will allow people to campaign for two years and waste their resources only for 24 hours to thwart all the efforts. To me, I better take a back seat than to go fighting. That is why I personally decided not to play active politics for now. So, for me I have resigned from PDP, I am not going to be involved in active politics for the next foreseeable future; if I change that position I will still inform my associates,

What is your message to the good people of Edo state, your associates, and supporters?

My appeal to the good people of the state is to please eschew anything that will lead to violence in the next election. No human blood is worth any person’s aspiration to become governor of the state. Our fathers and mothers should advise and warn their children to be very careful. People are projecting that this election might be very rough, tough, and rugged but I also want to admonish them that no one is bigger than God. That everyone should pray very hard and God will take control. As for my people, followers they should remain intact and election will come they should follow their hearts and do what is right. But I have told them on several occasions to eschew politics of money and bitterness. Just like I have done, I am taking a back seat, I will not fight or quarrel with anybody, I refused to go to Ali Modu Sheriff group, and I refused to join any other party; I decided to stay on my own.

First of all, the workshop was to look at the welding education and workforce development in a bid to marry the training of welding personnel with the demand of the industry and how we will be able to place them vis-a-vis measure it against the import of welding and related fields into Nigeria as well as how we can also put measures in place to stop that or near eradication of the activities or the practice to bring people to Nigeria to do what Nigerians can actually do.

Realizingthat welding is the bedrock of engineering courses or basis for every industrialisation, every industrialised nation has to make sure that they have enough competence in welding. That is why the Nigerian Institute of Welding (NIW) is working with the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) and Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) under the interventionist agency to ensure that we produce welding personnel that are of international standard to ensure that at the end of the day we are able to meet the demand of the industry. I think that is essentially and part of the agenda the workshop intended to achieve.

The workshop was principally for institutions that are offering welding training and we have about 20 institutions who that participated. It is not an all-comers’ programme. Basically, those institutions that are providing welding training are the ones that were there and in this workshop we have over 20 institutions represented.

It is a good thing for government to continue in its bid to work with institutions- Nigerian Institute of Welding and other training centres- to ensure that people are trained to standard, quality and to be able to provide the needed requirement to support the industry. We can go into fabrication, manufacturing among others and with that we will have everything locally made and because these things are locally made we will stem the importation of finished products and basically Nigeria will now produce and export. I think that is the bid and without welding you cannot manufacture, produce and transport anything. Basically, everything about welding and I think the Nigerian government, through its interventionist agencies, is doing a lot to ensure that this country is well positioned to support the manufacturing and industrialisation bid.

We are doing infrastructural upgrade, we have laboratory and workshop and you can see the environment is different from what you saw when you came here last time. The institute is positioning itself to make sure that we can provide the needed support for the country. We provide support for the academia, for the industry and government. That is the idea. We are not just a training centre but provide and regulate welding activities in Nigeria.

Already, we have surveillance team; the team tells us what is going on in the industry and once they have told us we now know how to follow it up; but we need government to support us and that is the essence of working in synergy with the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, Federal Government, Ministry of Labour, Minister of Interior, among others. It is a synergy, we must all work together so that our people who are trained can get employment here rather than bringing in people from India, China, Pakistan and other overseas countries to come and work here. All those things and others will stop. We want to bring in expatriates in only critical areas where we don’t have competence. But for welding, we have the competence and the used of Indians, Chinese and other people will have to stop.