All Progressives Congress (APC) should learn some decency from the Peoples Democratic Party.

All Progressives Congress (APC) should learn some decency from the Peoples Democratic Party.

I am almost tempted to write a long article on my experience with Lai Mohammed who is the National Publicity Secretary of Nigeria's main opposition party APC, but I will keep it brief, I will hold back and give him a benefit of doubt.


Meanwhile I am impressed with the Peoples Democratic Party's ‘Director of Publicity’ Tony Okeke for having the decency to contact us on the programme #PolititrickswithKO. Mr Okeke was invited to the programme so as to balance the debate with the APC.

Okeke called in to thank us for the invitation, gave reasons why the PDP was unable to attend, stating the PDP was at the moment preparing for elections in Anambra State and also that rather than have a Skype interview they would like to send in a representative. He also went further that he was unable to speak for the PDP on a live programme as he was not an elected official, shortly after Okeke dropped the phone a National Executive of the PDP called in to thank the producers for the invitation and he went further to state that every platform is important for the PDP to ‘engage Nigerians’ and thus would be willing to participate anytime he was in London.

Compare the attitude of the PDP to the APC, the programme contacted Alhaji Lai Mohammed six days before going live, he gave his word to take part via skype and even asked for the topic, he was provided same, we decided to be careful and waited 4 days to get reconfirmation from him just to see if his busy scheduled would change, Lai assured us everything was ok and we could go on and advertise his name, that we did, it took Lai Mohammed two days to provide us with a Skype ID. We continued to engage Lai even getting a text message confirmation that he was going to take part on Thursday 9th August 2013.

We arrived at the studio with Profesor Okey Ndibe an award wining Nigerian writer who came from from the United States of America.

Four hours to the show Mr Mohammed called hinting at wanting to have prepared questions, his request was politely rejected, but he still gave his word that he would be taking part in the programme, one hour to the programme we decided to do a studio test run, went on Skype and was glad to find Lai on line.

That was it, we called on skype, he rejected our calls, twenty minutes before going live we tried Lai 16 times, 16 times his Skype ID stated “call rejected” we decided we could just opt for a live phone interview, giving him the benefit of doubt that Skype might be playing up.

We called Lai’s phone numbers it rang, and rang and rang and after 19 calls we got the message “phone switched off”. We went live apologised to the viewers and had the one hour session with Profesor Okey Ndibe, not only did it turn out to be one of the best episode so far but for some reason Professor Okey made sure Lai Mohammed was not missed.  The National publicity sec of a party that intends to take over from the PDP neither called, e-mail, or send a text message to apologise or give reason for his absence.

On our way home after the programme, Professor Ndibe mumbled a word, I couldn’t hear him well and he repeated the words again saying, “I hope APC does not intend to run Nigeria with the Lai Mohammed attitude” I replied Professor Ndibe by saying Maybe APC needs to learn some decency from the PDP.

Kayode Ogundamisi

PolitrickstodaywithKO is a live TV programme, it runs every Thursday on BEN-TV UK Skype Channel 182 and live in Nigeria on Star Time and on line on www.bentelevision.com