Banky W, musician and filmmaker, who contested in the recently held National Assembly election to represent Eti-Osa constituency, Lagos at the House of Representatives, has revealed why he didn’t contest on the two popular parties in Nigeria.
In an exclusive interview with Punch, Banky when asked, with his popularity as a singer, one would have thought he would have contested on a stronger platform but you opted for a relatively new party. Why? he said;
I was looking at the political landscape about a year ago, and I was a little frustrated that everyone around me seemed to only be focusing on the presidential and governorship elections.
No one seemed to know or care much about the National Assembly seats, or even state Houses of Assembly. Even the “smaller” parties who really didn’t have the structure or ability to deliver the presidential mandate seemed to be mostly concerned with attempting it.
And I felt that as a generation, we needed to dream big, but start small. So while I doff my hat to all the alternatives or young candidates running for President, I felt like we also needed to focus on the smaller races, focus on putting the brightest minds among us in government at lower levels and prove that we can break in at that level and build up from there.
I had multiple conversations with Bukunyi Olateru-Olagbegi (National Chairman of the Modern Democratic Party), and we both agreed that we wanted to put the spotlight on the National Assembly; these legislative seats have so much power and responsibility, but very little-to-no accountability and transparency, because we aren’t really paying attention to them.
We agreed that our strategy as a party would be to focus on entering government at the community level and building a movement that will allow credible like minds to do the same across the country; that way we can infiltrate the government and build up from there. MDP was the only party that saw things the way that I did. he told Punch.
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