Opposition has been claiming that Nigeria is drifting towards a one-party. But the President has maintained that a one-party system is not possible in Nigeria. What is your take, do you think the opposition has failed us?
The opposition has failed itself. The call for a one-party state is actually a cry-baby call of surrender. It is also a way of trying to detract from their own failure as an opposition group. You have to understand that most of the mainstays of this opposition, whether PDP, ADC, LP or whatever, many of them who are prominent members have never had any tutelage in opposition. They have always been people who are in charge. So they don’t know how to do opposition. They only know how to stand and wait for people to oppose them.
They are neophytes in the age of opposition. So, they have to reverse the psychology and say someone is responsible for their woes. Instead of focusing attention on their own failures, they are focusing on others. That is what is happening. It is actually a cry of surrender and a cry for help. But the fact is that the help cannot come from the President, it cannot come from the centre. That is why they are crying. These are people who do not know how to form a political party, or write a manifesto; they don’t even know how to name a political party. They named one called ‘ADA’ which sounds like the name of a neighbour or neighbour’s sister then they discovered that there has been one grown up ‘ADA’ already. They don’t know how to obey the law or hold conventions.
The law says ‘status quo ante-bellum” and some lawyers, prominent lawyers, want to make us believe that you cannot say anything because you are not a lawyer. ‘Bellum’ means war. And ‘ante’ means before. So, where did the war start? Lawyers should stop obfuscating issues. It is a kind of miscues or stumbles, rhetorical, political, theological or even organizational stumbles that have happened to them that they did not even know where their problems come from. They are blaming the President that he went to PDP, LP, PRP and ADC. I imagine that he must be an Octopus, therefore. That’s very laughable.
There is no evidence of a one party state. There is freedom of speech, movement, association, nobody is stopping anybody from doing whatever he wants. Nobody is muzzling anyone. They should understand that they have to come with the proof.
With so many bigwigs, governors, senators and so on moving into the APC. How do you see the APC being able to manage the development without it leading to implosion before 2027?
Well, it is part of the capacity to manage crises. You cannot have that kind of a thing and not have tensions. A governor comes from PDP and comes into APC, a person who is already dominating the state and he comes to APC with all the structures; things will naturally yield to the Hobbesian logic. It depends on the capacity of the governor to embrace and also the admission of those who were there that they are junior partners. You are a junior partner if you don’t have power. It is a question of power and you don’t expect there not to be tension. The party, starting from the National Chairman, has to negotiate and maneuver to make sure that the tension in the party does not reach an implosive level. But we have not even seen anything like that in any state where there are real profound, fundamental tensions that are capable of shaking the foundation of the party, we have not seen any one.
What of the case in Ondo State and a couple of other states?
The case of Ondo has to do with the idea of tenure and I think they are handling it. The tension in Ondo is not the threatening type. The National Party Chairman, Prof Yilwatda was talking about foundation in his media parley use he wanted to show that there are foundations. Like the Bible would say “The foundation of God remains sure having this seal.” There has to be a blend of cultures. There has to be a blend of personalities and there must have to be a management of egosystem because the egosystem itself is not blending with the ecosystem of the polity. So, the egosystem and the ecosystem will have to find a meeting place or else there will be neither ego nor eco.
What do you think is the point the opposition is trying to make? At a point in the past, 32 governors were in the PDP and former President Olusegun Obasanjo defended their right to be in his party. Today the people who were defending the development in time past are now crying foul.
Yes, that is true. The people in government at that time are the people now in opposition. They were used to being in control of things and affairs. Now they are trying to turn the table and force an amnesia on all of us that, oh we don’t even forget the things in the past. You see that is why I am wondering about these lawyers talking about ante-bellum and what have you. You see this playwright, George Bernard Shaw, said “The vocations are a conspiracy against the laity”. They want everyone to believe that if you are not a lawyer you cannot think anymore or read to understand the Constitution. If you are not an engineer, you cannot say that this is how I want to work my phone as if I cannot learn it, and that I cannot live a learned experience. When you go to school, the idea is to open your horizons so that you can face any issue. Now, the point must be made like I pointed out earlier that it is an act of surrender, cowardice and lack of organizational genius that is worrying them. If you go to that period that you were talking about when Obasanjo was President, this same President now, Tinubu, was in the AD. It had governors all over the South West. They lost all their governors in the 2003 general elections except Lagos. Lagos was the only one standing. Even then, AD was divided. Who divided it? Obasanjo. He created what was called the faction. The Mojisola Akinfenwa faction versus the Bisi Akande faction. Tinubu did not shout the way Peter Obi was shouting. They divided the party, even the National Chairman Abdulkadir Ahmed, turned out to be Obasanjo’s man because immediately after the election he went to take up appointment as the Special Adviser on Manufacturing after he finished manufacturing confusion in the AD. So they were plotting that the AD will not have a candidate in the 2007 election. But lo and behold, the strategist shocked everyone including OBJ himself because he thought he had finished the opposition. Tinubu, just before the last minute, came up with an Action Congress. Before OBJ could react, it was a fait accompli. That was how Fashola came out as Governor. He didn’t complain. So these people should go and do the work and stop this cry-baby and going round TV shows in the evenings, screaming and when I look at them, I just shake my head and say this people should go and read.
On attack by the opposition on INEC
We should be very wary in this country not to put things down because they are not working in our favour. There are two ways they are doing this. One is to undermine the law, the other is to undermine security. The Kaduna State Governor, Senator Uba Sani, warned recently that it is unacceptable to exploit insecurity in the name of election. What he said is very significant because we have a nation. After the election there will still be a country, unless you don’t want a country. The country does not belong to anybody or any group, it belongs to everybody. We must make sure that the country follows the law. ADC has been told, for instance, that “Don’t do anything until the case is determined in court.” Now, ‘don’t do anything’, you can say you want to eat amala and ewedu; that is not what they are talking about, unless you want to trivialize the issue at stake. Don’t do anything that will compromise the decision of the court as to the identity of the party. That is what it means. So, when you go and hold a convention you are not only undermining the rule of law, you are undermining peace in the country, you are undermining the constitution, you are undermining the court and democracy. So, people should understand that we have a country after the election.
And because of the ego of some people, the country should not be dragged down. As Emerson said, “there is properly no history but the biography of men; great men or bad men”. So when you know that you have a great following in the country, and people listen to you, it should be an act of responsibility and not an act for exploitation.
Could it be that they went ahead to hold the convention as a strategy in the hope that the Supreme Court will vindicate them?
You want to break the law in order to affirm the law? You cannot break the law in order to make the law. That is not justice. That is a Machiavellian attitude. If you believe in the law, you wait for the law to take its course. Asiwaju didn’t break the law, all he did was follow the law. In fact he followed the law so well that those who wanted to break the law got broken. We should not break, we should break ourselves open and be transparent, and otherwise we would be broken. And that is why I am saying that we should be very careful so that we don’t make our personal interest conflated as national interest.
Could it be that the current set of opposition were so used to being in power that they don’t know how to play opposition?
It is like a bully who bullies everybody until suddenly a new boy emerges. He is not used to anybody challenging him because he is used to beating everyone. So, when such a scenario occurs you don’t even know how to fight him. The guy just comes and gives you an uppercut and you are down. In the ADC they don’t have a manifesto, they don’t have a vision but they have an enemy; that is all.
And the issue of who will be the standard bearer
That is another issue that is coming. What is going on now is that the ego is so strong and their followers are so insistent. That is what is playing out now. Obi’s followers do not want anything less from him. Atiku believes that this is my party, so you guys cannot take it away from me. As for Kwankwaso, it is like I cannot leave all that Kano team and come here and be a boi-boi to anybody; Rotimi Amaechi will do his own thing, too. So all of them are there trying to say I am somebody, I have my own pedigree. It is going to be a very interesting thing.
