Adams Oshiomhole, chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), says dividends of democracy is a mistake as dictatorship also comes with dividends.
Oshimhole said this while fielding questions from journalists after his meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday.
Asked to react to the criticisms from members of his party on both the ministerial and senate committee chairmen lists, the chairman of the ruling party said people have the rights to pass comments even when such are not valid.
“Why should we be worried? Nobody wants graveyard silence. It is not for nothing that we asked for multi-party democracy, I have said to people when they talk about dividend of democracy, I have said it is a mistake, even dictatorship has dividends,” he said.
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“What differentiates democracy from dictatorship is that free people have the right to make observations and to complain even if there is no validity in those complaints, feeling that they have spoken truth to power. It doesn’t mean they are right nor are they wrong, it shows that in our party we want to entrench the culture of contesting issues that people feel they are not comfortable about. It doesn’t mean that they are right.
“On the committees of the Senate and House of Reps, this question should rather be put to the leadership of the two chambers. But if you have fewer numbers of committees relative to the number of members in the Senate and House of Reps, however you do it, guess you will always find someone complaining.”
He said the problem with the media is that focus is only on those who are aggrieved, and not including those who are happy.
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“Even in business, you have profit and loss, that is the balance sheet. Any balance sheet without those two headings is not complete. I will be surprised if in a democratic setting something is done and everybody is singing, something is wrong,” he said.
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