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Dr. Dakuku Peterside

The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, in this interview with CHUKWUDI AKASIKE, speaks on his plans for the state and other issues

If you had not emerged the governorship candidate, would you have defected from the APC to another party?

I did not join the APC to become the governorship flagbearer. I joined the party for two reasons. The first reason is that I believe in the philosophy of the party. I believe in the leadership of the party in Rivers State as having the capacity to represent Rivers interest. I believe that Rivers State interest would be best served under a better arrangement in the All Progressives Congress. So, it is only incidental that being a member of the APC, one person must be chosen as the flagbearer and the lot fell on me to represent our collective interest on the ticket of the APC in Government House, Port Harcourt.

You talked about your four-point agenda for the prosperity of Rivers State. How do you intend to achieve this when the revenue of the state is dwindling?

We have what we call the Rivers State Financing Strategy. In that document, we captured in numbers what should be our budget in the first year up to the third year and sources of funding. We have looked at diverse sources of funding and we dovetailed to four major sources.

One is the federation allocation account that will come from the centre. This is going down because of dwindling oil price. The second is the fund we access from multinational agencies at rock-bottom interest rates. The third is the fund that will accrue to us in the course of doing public-private partnership.

There are some programmes that would best be funded by public, private sectors working together. There are things governments currently do now; social projects, capital projects, economically viable projects that can be undertaken by the private sector. We will also look at this and provide the robust framework for private sector participation.

The final thing we are looking at are ways of boosting our internally generated revenue. That stream of income is about the most dependable. But two things must be in place if you must maximise benefits from internally generated revenue: the first is provide conducive regulatory environment and the other is provide a conducive fiscal environment. These will help you to attract more businesses and this means more people paying tax. The second one is that you boost current businesses and block leakages and loopholes in the current tax administration system so that we can maximise the current tax regime without introducing new taxes.

The issue of the monorail project embarked upon by the current administration has always been on the front burner. Do you intend to continue with the project if you are elected the governor of the state?

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Anyone that thinks I belong to cult should prove it Peterside, Rivers APC governorship candidate