Chief Ede Dafinone is a onetime senatorial aspirant for Delta Centre senatorial district under the All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview with Okpalaume Mary, he assesses President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration so far, saying that it is much too early to criticize him; and he clears the air on why he did not run for a political office in the last elections. He also sheds light on the Dafinone Foundation, a foundation set up to empower youths. He speaks generally on even developement in the state. Excerpt:

Excerpt:

Since you lost in the last senatorial bid, you have not participating much in politics. What does 2019 hold? Will you be running for an elective position?

Chief Ede Dafinone

During the last 2015 elections, you will know that I was a participant. I did not go for any political office. But it’s not only when you are going for office that you participate in politics. So as a member of APC I supported the party. I organised the huge crowed that welcomed Otega Emerho when he came to Sapele for his campaign. So politics is not always about when you are running for political office; that is so wrong. And as a politician, I just think that anytime they blow a whistle I have to line up or if they are doing elections tomorrow it must be me. There are other capable people in my party. They too can also have opportunity to contest. So it’s not about one person. I am a member of a team; member of a party.

After the dismissal of the case by the tribunal brought by the APC house of assembly candidate, Chief Felix Anirah challenging Hon. Monday Igbuya’s election to represent Sapele constituency in the state house of assembly, there has been mixed reaction from both ruling and opposing party. What’s your view on that case and what are the plans of the APC?

That question is better addressed to Chief Anirah. The party’s position depends on his position. If Chief Anirah is not willing to go on appeal, then the party cannot go on appeal without him. So he is the best person who knows the strength of his potential appeal to decide whether the party should go on appeal or not. I have not spoken to him on the matter so I cannot drop a comment on that.

It’s been over a hundred days since President Mohammadu Buhari assumed office. As an APC chieftain, how would you assess his administration as far as change is concerned?

There is clearly a new wind blowing across the country. The war in the north east is clearly taking on a new dimension. Our soldiers are clearly winning the battle against the insurgents and we pray that before Christmas they would have rounded them completely.

On the corruption battle, there is a change in attitude in government offices both at state and federal levels. It is very obvious to a Nigerians that government is trying to do things differently compared to four or five months ago. There are some cases that are coming at the EFCC.

For me, the change in attitude in terms of governance and even in the private sector is a bigger victory. One important aim of the APC government is to improve on the economy and I have to say that the problems in our economy that the APC government met on ground are enormous. I expect that we have a new economic policy put in place before the end of the year. We are preparing; this government is preparing the budget for 2016 now and that will spell the new direction in the economy. Although, in the meantime, manufacturers, exporters and traders are a going through terrible times but I believe this administration. When the new ministers are announced within a few days now, the portfolios will be given and they will be sworn into office. We should see the ball start to roll from there.

Given President Buhari’s stand on being the president of all, do you think his recent political appointments have tried to breach the gap or further divided the gap between gender appointments, ethnic and religious. We have not really seen an Urhobo appointee. Do you think they are not been appointed because Delta is an opposition state.

I don’t want to say that the president or this administration is not giving Urhobo any appointment. The number of appointments the president has made since he was sworn into office may be less than thirty or forty. So if we are yet to have an Urhobo nomination from the federal government, it’s much too early for that. I believe there are up to three thousand or four thousand appointments the president will make in his four years in office. So if we only have thirty or forty so far, I don’t think we should be getting excited. Moreover we should bear in mind that our governorship candidate in Delta State is an Urhobo man. So Urhobo have a permanent position within the party already. God willing, if we have a successful verdict at the tribunal, things will flow on from there.

It’s too early to say that he is hued one way or the other. I will much likely say that he is trying to put the best people into positions that are available as they arise. When the retirement of Professor Jega came up and a lady was appointed I don’t think anybody went to say “hurray, that’s one for the girls.” And that was the president’s appointment. So to say that he barred the women it’s much too early for such critics.

Deviating from politics, we must commend your initiative for setting up the Dafinone Foundation. A lot of youths in Sapele have benefitted from it. However, given the capacity of the foundation, we expect that the permanent site for the foundation which the construction is on hold should have been completed by now. What’s keeping it?

There were errors in the construction so we put it on hold until a those issues are resolved. That is to be the permanent home of the foundation but to be fair also, the foundation is not all about a big office with official cars everywhere and then nothing is happening to our youths. Rather than renting big offices and buying cars, what is more important is that we use the available funds to empower the young people. That’s the first priority. If we have said that the first priority is to build the office block and furnish it we won’t achieve much. But we started this thing eight years ago and it is better to empower people.

The foundation never started as a political too. People start foundations for political reasons and when they do that, they use big offices and sign post but that is eye service. We only started doing publicity on the foundation so that other people will hear about it and start their own. And if you go to any of the graduation ceremony, I always every year challenge Deltans to start theirs. If a hundred and fifty people are graduated from Dafinone Foundation, you can graduate ten or five people. If every Deltan can empower people, Delta has changed already. That is really the target of the foundation.

I am trying to expand the field. For seven years we have graduated a lot of people in hair dressing, tailoring and catering. But there are not so many opportunities for them within Sapele. By the time you have graduated about three or four hundred, unless they are a going out to other areas, they have saturated that market and every corner you look there will be hair dressers so we need to find some other skills to impact on the younger ones.

Your family is influential in Sapele/Okpe community and you have contributed your path towards the developement of Sapele. But looking at Sapele, it’s like there is a divide between Sapele and other major metros in Delta. Places like Warri keep growing but Sapele keeps going down in terms of developement. What measures have you and your elite brothers and friends taken in bringing permanent developement to Sapele?

You are very correct that having a foundation and empowering some hundreds of people every year really does not stand to address the problem. Yes you commend me and it is a good thing, it is better than nothing but the problem is so much bigger. Really the empowerment should be a government mission. For example when we started the foundation, the Uduaghan administration set up its own empowerment programme and empowered thousands of people but because its government’s, people saw it saw it as dividend of democracy and it did not last long. However, my role or my family’s role cannot be to replace government. One of the ways to bring developement is to lobby the government to do that. If we have better roads, and we have better power, industries will follow. But it is for government to take the lead role. So through different organizations that I belong to, we have lobbied the past administrations to correct certain faults like the widening of the roads into Sapele. Then the traffic on the entrance of the town was astronomical. The unfinished market after so many years, the stadium project; these are little things that will bring developement. We need better power. We are not talking about turbo generators; we are taking about steady power. If in a month of thirty days you only see power for three days, what work is the vulcanizer going to do? Yet, if we have a Delta Steel Complex in Sapele, employing ten thousand people it will be wonderful but those are hard issues to crack. Let us focus on the easy ones. If we have five thousand people working in this town; people who know how to do gas welding, under water welding then will Sapele be a commerce centre for welding. That will create empowerment and wealth and development for the town.

All the groups I belong to were not able to really make any impact in the past government. Really, it should not matter whether you are PDP or APC to make that impact. If you have a PDP government in power and you advise them to bring developement. It will even help in their reelection. So if am not in the right party of the state government, it does not mean that my advice is not partial to me. I did not say do my road but do the roads in Sapele, give us better life. I am hoping that under this administration, we are able to have a better conversation with the government that will lead to developement. That is if they are not able to do it on their own. Government can engage few people that can also develope and bring ideas without the advice of the opposition. But I hope that Senator Okowa will bring his wealth of experience to bare, not just to Sapele but to the whole twenty five local government in Delta State. We are also praying for an APC victory at the tribunal (laughs).