Singer Banky W has said the people who should be in jail or
in exile are the ones seen on campaign posters during election season in
Nigeria.
The singer who ran for House of Representatives on the
platform of the Modern Democratic Party in 2019 said this on Nigeria Info FM’s
Daily Digest programme on Tuesday.
He said his political ambition was driven by frustration
with the political status quo and the plight of young Nigerians who don’t even
know who their representatives in government are.
On why he ran for office, he said, “The first person I spoke
to was my wife. I said we can’t sit around during election season and people
who should be in jail or on exile are the ones on the campaign posters around
and also the ones who keep getting into these powerful offices in the country.”
He said his wife expressed belief in his ambition but
pointed out that politics is dirty and dangerous.
The singer continued, “I said, well, it will always be dirty
and dangerous if everybody who is good, credible and with good interest at
heart forever sits out of the process. This will leave the scum of the earth
that we have here to occupy the seats and then we’ll turn around and complain
that Nigeria is bad.”
He also spoke on why he didn’t run for office on a popular
platform like the All Progressives Congress, the Peoples Democratic Party, or
rely on a godfather
According to him, “The battle in Nigeria is not between APC
and PDP, it’s between the political class and everybody else because APC and
PDP tend to be the same. Their members are just jumping back and forth, and the
parties don’t have ideologies per se, they are just platforms that people use
to leapfrog into power.
“So, there was that frustration with the political status
quo. Also, wanting to stand up for something, represent a different set of
ideas and reach out to the younger generation that does not believe in either
of those two platforms, to try and put ourselves together and push back against
these things to show what is possible and what can be done.”
On the Independent National Electoral Commission
deregistering the Modern Democratic Party, Banky W stated that it was a good
thing.
He said, “I felt like there were too many political parties.
Having 90 political parties is a little bit ridiculous. The deregistration
forces us to either come together or start to infiltrate the major political
parties and start to make those changes from within. But if you have over 90
platforms of people pushing, invariably we’ll just empower the two major
parties to continue the way that they are.”
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com