TheCable

Doyin Okupe, the senior special assistant to the president on public affairs, says he thought the All Progressives Congress (APC), would have gone into extinction by now.

Okupe had mocked the opposition party during its formative stage, saying it was suffering from leadership deficiency.

“What kind of political party is that and you are taking them seriously,” he had said in December 2013.

“It is a politically defective and weak organisation, and by coming to the national stage, the wind is going to blow them open. If they don’t crumble and disappear by 2014, don’t call me Okupe. The APC boat is destined for the Red Sea.”

There were even reports, about the same time, which he has denied, that he boasted he should be called “a bastard” if APC survive more than one year.

But speaking on Monday during a programme on Silverbird Television, Okupe congratulated APC, saying his criticism contributed to its growth.

“I said if APC survives for a year, I would change my name,” he said.

“People have said I meant bastard but I never said so. What I said as a political pundit was that if APC survives , I would change my name.

“If Manchester United want to play with Man City, and I say Man United would score three goals in first half, if they don’t score three goals in the first half, it means that my statements were wrong.

“Maybe I have actually helped them, because they were very annoyed at my predictions and they tried to make sure that they remain the same.”

Okupe claimed that the media is dominated by people who are sympathetic towards the opposition. He rated the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan highly in terms of performance, urging Nigerians to support the re-election bid of the president.

“This government has achieved so much and we are not deceiving people because our achievements are verifiable,” he said.

“All the 24 airports in the country have been remodelled. The Benin-Ore road used to be a death trap and people used to spend 24 hours on it, but now they spend three hours.

“The Lagos-Ibadan has been built since 1976 and since then nobody has done anything about it until this government decided to extend it to seven lanes.

“If people deliberately refuse to see and the media continues to underpin the achievements of this government, we would keep trying and God will justify us. We don’t have the media behind us but we have God behind us.”

When told that it was an indictment on the media managers of the president, Okupe contradicted himself.

“It’s not that the opposition has taken over the media, no,” he said

“But the elements within the opposition and the sentiments concerning the opposition have dominated the media prior to this event of Jonathan coming into power. Which media organisation in Nigeria can you say the government owns? The government does not own any media but the opposition has tremendous influence in the media and that’s unarguable.”