In Southwest, Tinubu not as popular as Buhari was in 2015, says Akinjide

Former minister of State for Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, Oloye Jumoke Akinjide is the deputy director general (South), National Women Campaign Council of the Presidential Campaign Organization, PCO, for Atiku Abubakar and Ifeanyi Okowa Presidential Campaign for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview with SEYE OLUMIDE, she said Atiku will defeat Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) in the February 25 2023 presidential poll.

• No inherent inequity in North retaining power after incumbent president 

People are asking, why should another northerner, succeed President Muhammadu Buhari?
I am a member of the PDP. We had a very long and deliberate process before we came up with our presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.  At first, the position of the North and Atiku in particular was that if the presidential ticket must come to the South, then it must be zoned to the South-east. That was Atiku’s position. For the reason that South-west had done eight years and the South-south had done six years, it is only the Southeast from the South that has not had the presidency. But certain people who wanted to contest for office of president said they should zone it to the South and not to the Southeast, at which point the North now said if that is the case, then it should be thrown open to the whole country because if it is a question of equity or who has not had the presidency, then the Northeast too has not produced a president, neither has the North-central.  So, that was how we ended up with it being thrown open to everybody. And of course, in a democracy, you have to live with the results you get. The delegates looked at all the aspirants and Atiku got the majority votes.

As you know, the North-east has never had the presidency. In fact, the South, since 1999, has had it for 14 years. People don’t like it when we say it, but it is the truth. The South has had it for 14 years. When Buhari finishes, the North will have had it for 10 years. So, stricto sensu, yes, it is North handing over to North. But strictly, if you look at it in terms of the number of years, there is no inherent inequity in the North retaining it because if a southerner had won it, the South would have had 22 years to the North’s 10. So, it was a toss-up.
   

You have been on the Atiku campaign train; do you think the Southwest has been receptive to his message, especially in Oyo State?
Let me start from Oyo State where we actually started the campaign quite late. We started in December because we gave the G-5 governors, of which our governor is one, the chance to come to a resolution over the various peace efforts intensifying at that time. Regrettably, December came and they were still at a logjam, which was when I decided on my own to take up the Atiku campaign. Up till now, we still don’t have a state presidential campaign committee. It has been a coalition of the willing in the state that has been campaigning for Atiku. 
 
When I started talking to the party, because that is where it starts since the party owns the candidates and has the structure, I realised that 95 to 99 per cent of the party in Oyo State was solidly behind Atiku. That is the truth. They were very happy to see somebody step forward to mobilise for the road-walk and you know how successful the road-walk was.
 
It was followed the next day by Governor Seyi Makinde’s re-election flag off. And on that day, when Governor Nyesome Wike tried to insinuate that Atiku may not be the candidate that the G-5 governors will support, he was shouted down unabashedly by the Oyo State people.
 
The people have seen that APC has failed Nigerians. APC has taken Nigeria to destitution, insecurity, division, despair and desperation. Nigerians have been almost dehumanized and they hate APC.
   
APC is an anathema in Oyo State. The people don’t want to see them; they don’t want to hear of them. The false narrative that seems to have gained traction when PDP was not campaigning for its candidate, that is the emi l’okan, omo wa ni, has now disappeared completely. As I said, it is something that can’t stand the test of time. 
   
Tinubu has offended Oyo State people’s interest and the South-West interest because when our daughter, Mulikat Akande Adeola, was nominated by the PDP to be the Speaker, Tinubu instructed his party members who were in the majority in the South-west at that time to vote against her and vote for the North-west candidate. 
 
When Tinubu was pro-chancellor of LAUTECH for eight years, all through that time, the university was in crisis. The university was on strike for a long time, it had financial issues because it was jointly owned. We appealed to him several times, but he did nothing as the leader of the institution. He was derelict in his duty. And now, the PDP government has taken over and we have managed to come to a peaceful negotiation with Osun State and Oyo State now owns LAUTECH 100 per cent and the school has now regained its place as the number one state-owned university in the country.
   
The person that is our own and that we know is Atiku Abubakar because he is the one that has advocated and committed to the number one agenda of the Yoruba people, which is restructuring of the polity in a way that will work for all and unleash the potential of each zone to develop in accordance with its values, resources and talents.

If you are talking about restructuring, the APC also promised the same in 2015. What some people are saying is, if Atiku cannot resolve the issue of the national chairmanship of the PDP and ensuring equity in the party, how do we then trust him on his promise to restructure the country?
Atiku has been a champion of restructuring for a long time. As I said, the various PDP governments have attempted it. They just for different reasons could not actualise it. We believe this time, it will be done. Atiku said he will start it from day one, not until he has settled down. We believe he is committed to it.
   
The issue of the G-5 governors has expired. I think it has lost speed. I don’t think we are hearing anything about it anymore. It was overblown. My governor, Seyi Makinde, has said he has no problems with Atiku as the candidate. There was a convention and Atiku was validly elected. He recognises that and has no problem with his brother governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, who is the vice presidential candidate. Atiku has the right to choose his running mate. Governor Makinde is asking how can the candidate be from the North and the chairman of the party will also be from there too? The other people are saying it is a question of timing and that you don’t remove somebody in the middle of the game. Let the chairman see the election process through and the day INEC announces Atiku as the winner of the election, he says he will step down. I don’t see the issue there.

In any case, as a South-westerner, I am not convinced that the South-west has met and decided that they want the national chairman’s position. We have six top positions, the president and the vice president, which go by election, then we will zone the rest: senate president, speaker, SGF and the national chairman. The South-west has never met to say it is the national chairman that we want.  Why can we not have the senate presidency or the speakership or SGF? When it was our turn to have the national chairman and when it mattered, it was taken to Rivers, when Uche Secondus took it. That was the South-west’s slot. Now that all the important things have been done and the duties and powers of the chairman have been exercised, what do we want the position for? I am not sure that is what the South-west wants under the incoming administration.

What do you think is the attraction for anyone to want to be president at this time when the country’s debt threshold has reached N77trillion and people are skeptical about the next president being able to perform any magic under the circumstances he will be assuming office?
First of all, when you are on a team in a field of sports and you are on the bench and you are watching your team playing football or basketball and the team keeps missing the goal and losing the game; you’re like ‘I can do better. Coach, put me on.’

Atiku headed the economic management team of the Obasanjo presidency. He has done it before. He brought in Charles Soludo as CBN governor, brought in Ngozi Okonjo Iweala as Finance Minister, and Nuhu Ribadu, el- Rufai. He is a talent spotter. He knows how to create wealth, how to make the economy run and he is the highest employer of labour in his private capacity after the state government in Adamawa State. He is a very successful businessman. I think he keeps looking at it and feels like Nigeria can run better and he can do much better. That is what I think is motivating him to run.

Nigeria is now ready for restructuring as a country and he has been campaigning for it. In 2004 when Atiku started this campaign for restructuring, the campaign was a very unpopular concept in the North. The North probably saw the Federal Government and the unitary system that we have, which is disguising, as federalism as being in their favour. They understood it and have been part of it and are not threatened by it. So, when the South-west kept talking about restructuring, the North thought we wanted to pull away and keep them behind. But now that they have tried the Buhari’s administration, which has made it difficult for them to go to farm or sleep in peace in their villages and everything has taken a turn for the worse, the North is now ready to listen and embrace restructuring. 
 
They know it can’t get worse than this. So, it is a divine purpose now that God has set the stage for the restructuring to take place now. Atiku is telling the North: ‘what are you afraid of? Every region in this country has its advantages and every region has something to offer.’
 
I agree with you. The country is in a shambles economically. This again reinforces the point I made at the beginning that this is the time we need people with a vision, experience and who will have the support of the National Assembly.
 

The North and the South-west may determine the outcome of the coming election. People are speculating that the Igbo will follow their own in Peter Obi. In Oyo and Lagos states, PDP is divided. In Osun, we don’t know how the Adeleke-Oyetola tango will end. In Ogun, PDP is trying to resolve the issue there. So, if you look at Atiku’s chances in the South-west, do you think he has a chance of defeating Tinubu?
If you look at it the other way, I will say that in Osun, the APC is divided between the factions of Oyetola and Aregbesola. In Oyo State, I will tell you that APC has already split into APC with Teslim Folarin and Accord of Adebayo Adelabu. If you look at Ogun, I will tell you that Senator Ibikunle Amosun is not working with Governor Dapo Abiodun there. So, the same thing goes everywhere. Yes, the South-west is a turbulent place for politics. I don’t agree with you that the South-west is going to determine this election. If you look at the past, the South-west does not determine any election. We cancel each other out in the zone. Even at the height of Buhari’s popularity in 2015, by how many votes did he win in the South-west against Jonathan? It was very close. If you put together all the votes for the six states in the South-west, the margin of victory is not up to one million votes. So, the South-west actually does not determine the victory in Nigeria’s presidential election. So, people who think that the APC candidate will run away with victory in the South-west are just dreaming.

In the South-west today, Tinubu is not as popular as Buhari was in 2015 in the zone. That time, it was ‘change, change’ that the people were chanting in 2015. Go and look at the results, the South-west was not the one that made the difference. Even if you look at all the votes by which they won, it would have been neutralized by the votes of Rivers State at that time. In the South-west, I think there is going to be parity between Tinubu and Atiku and then we have the third force, Obi, who has taken votes from both parties. So, it is not the South-west that is going to decide. You are going to find out that the South-south votes will matter in the election quite a bit. Tinubu will get nothing in the South-east. I reckon that the PDP and Atiku will come first or second in all the 36 states of the federation. I don’t see any state where PDP will come third, not even in Kano State. But there will be states where APC will come third for sure in the South-south, the South-east and even part of the North-central.

Are you in any way bothered whether the ruling APC will relinquish power if it loses the election?
I don’t have that fear at all. I think President Buhari has got the message loud and clear from Nigerians and from the international community; that the only legacy he can leave after eight years and which will be undisputed, is to do a clean, free, fair election and commit to peaceful transfer of power like he enjoyed in 2015. That is the legacy and place in history that he can have that nobody can’t even dispute. Everything else can be disputed. He can say he did infrastructure and people will say he was just completing projects started by PDP. Everything else can be ruined.

When Jonathan lost the election, even though there were issues and strong suspicion that things did not go well in the election and there was over voting, voting by minors and ballot stuffing, Jonathan said his ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian and he told the party not to take Buhari to the tribunal. That was the first time such a thing happened. He said the PDP should allow Buhari to settle down without distraction and govern the country.

So, if Buhari enjoyed that, he owes it to Nigerians to do so too. I think from his utterances and actions so far, he has said he will not allow anybody to mobilise resources and thugs to intimidate Nigerians, that Nigerians have a right to choose their leaders. I believe he will stand by that and he will make it a personal project and not just give instructions, but to be alert and be on point and be on the ball and warn all the security agents and INEC that he will not tolerate anything, except a level, fair playing field. If he does that, and I believe he will, then Nigerians will have nothing to complain about. He may even find out that Nigerians will forgive him a lot of the things he did to hurt them.

Are you confident that INEC will do a good job?
I am hopeful INEC will do a good job. I know INEC people too want to serve the Nigerian populace well. I believe they know everybody is watching. I understand that Thabo Mbeki has been chosen to lead the Commonwealth monitoring team for the election. Other people from all over the world are going to send election monitors. The whole world is watching Nigeria because our population and place in Africa is so important and with the cooperation of President Buhari, I don’t see any reason why INEC won’t do a good job. INEC has not complained about lack of money. Anybody who is agitating for postponement of election for any reason is not a friend of Nigeria. I urge the President and INEC to go with the will of Nigerians, which is to have this election and transit peacefully. The President has set up a transition committee and this shows his resolve to do the right thing before he retires to his beloved Daura. He can only have a peaceful retirement if he has a good election and hands over peacefully to the next president.