{"id":5175,"date":"2017-09-25T14:43:09","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T14:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=5175"},"modified":"2017-09-25T14:43:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T14:43:09","slug":"prof-itse-sagay-is-our-rogue-elephant-says-apc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=5175","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Itse Sagay is our rogue elephant, says APC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nBy <strong>Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi<\/strong>,\u00a0National Publicity Secretary,\u00a0All Progressives Congress (APC)<br \/>\nOur attention has been brought to an interview published on pages 46-47 of The Nation Newspaper of Sunday, September 24, 2017, granted by the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-corruption (PACAC), Professor Itse Sagay (SAN).<br \/>\nIn the said interview, Sagay described the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as \u201cthe most unprincipled group of people\u201d who are \u201cencouraging and accepting rogues\u201d in the party. He said: \u201cWhen I say \u2018rogues\u2019, I don\u2019t mean stealing. In literature, when you say someone is a rogue elephant, it means people who are running riot and destroying the party.\u201d<br \/>\nThe Webster dictionary defines \u2018rogue elephant\u2019 as \u201cone whose behaviour resembles that of a rogue elephant in being aberrant or independent.\u201d Clearly if we have today, anyone in our government or, by extension, the party who feels accountable only to his own ego; who does not feel the need to bridle his tongue for the sake of anything that is higher than himself; who feels independent of everyone and every institution; that person is Professor Sagay.<br \/>\nAsked by the interviewer if he would stop speaking if the President asks him to stop speaking, he said: \u201cYes, he is my employer. If he tells me to stop talking, I\u2019ll stop talking. But I have certain rights too that I can exercise in addition to that, because I\u2019m not going to be in a position where I am impotent. So, I must obey him, but I can go beyond that and obey myself too. That\u2019s it.\u201d \u00a0Framed in another way, what Sagay is saying here is that, no matter what is at stake, he would rather resign than obey the President if the President tries to restrain him. This is the quintessential rogue elephant behaviour.<br \/>\nIn his sheer arrogance, he forgets that it is impossible for him to call out the leadership of the party as \u201cweak\u201d and \u201cunprincipled\u201d without indicting the President, who is the leader of the party and has the fundamental responsibility to build the party. If Sagay had any iota of respect for the man who dug him back from inevitable oblivion and puts him in a position in which he now feels superior to everyone, he would channel his opinions and advice to the President on how to make the party stronger and more principled. It appears however that Sagay does not have anything constructive to say about anything. He only knows how to tear down and assault everyone and everything.<br \/>\nWe want to remind Sagay and all other appointees of our government that the only reason they occupy their current position today is because the APC won the election. There is, therefore, a matter of honour to show decorum and respect for the party and its leadership. You cannot love the fruit and hate the tree that produced it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; By Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi,\u00a0National Publicity Secretary,\u00a0All Progressives Congress (APC) Our attention has been brought to an interview published on pages 46-47 of The Nation Newspaper of Sunday, September 24, 2017, granted by the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-corruption (PACAC), Professor Itse Sagay (SAN). In the said interview, Sagay described the leadership [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}