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From Adetutu Folasade-Koyi, Abuja
Former presidential candidate in the 2019 election and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim reveals why the ruling party opted for consensus in choosing the new leadership of the party and why no region can be shut out from contesting for the presidential ticket, among other issues. Excerpt:
Why was consensus forced on candidates who aspired for the national chairmanship position?
There’s nothing undemocratic about consensus. The issue is that it should never be forced if it’s going to be an enduring position. Democracy is based on consensus-building. It’s a very integral part of democracy. Democracy is usually never ‘either, or,’ but, a bit of many positions. That is what is called consensus-building, its guiding principle is that it should be voluntary, it should be negotiated, it should never be forced, then, people would feel compelled to honour an agreement that they were part of the process of negotiating.
Isn’t consensus shutting out loyal party members from being voted or rejected at the poll?
Probably, because we had our national convention and we didn’t have the luxury of time to go into details of some of the things we would, ordinarily would have been very detailed about. We had the convention; to save the party. We must have a convention , first, for members of the party to enjoy the rights of the party. So, I believe that the question of urgency, of the need to have the convention, could have been responsible for trying to summarise processes that we should have been detailed about. I believe that, in the future, we won’t have such.
You said something about processes. Was the NEC meeting, which should ratify the national convention held before the convention?
For your information, a NEC meeting was held on Thursday, March 24. The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, was part of the NEC meeting. Most of the leaders of the party want the organ of the party to function, but unfortunately, some of these processes were circumvented in the last two years, but that is behind us now. The good news for the APC is that we have the opportunity to do things better, going ahead and that I’d what we are doing and concentrating our energy on. I look forward to a party that would be robust in internal democracy. Now, going ahead, I look forward to a party that aspirations of people would be respected and be competitive. One of the things that made APC to win in 2015 was the democratic nature of the Lagos presidential primary where you had Rochas Okorocha contesting from the Southeast, even though the chairman of the party was also from the South. You had Alhaji Atiku Abubakar contesting from the Northeast, you had (President) Muhammadu Buhari contesting from the Northwest, you had the late publisher of the Leadership Newspapers, (the late Sam Nda-Isaiah contesting from the North-central. So, there was a level-playing field. People contested and were defeated fairly and they accepted the result and, thereafter, everybody went out and campaigned for the party. Now, I believe that is what the APC will do, to achieve victory in the next general election. You cannot shut out people’s aspirations or circumvent them. The best way is to create a level-playing field and, then, people would express their aspirations and feel that they have been fairly treated and, they would be obliged to put in their their resources and energy at the party’s disposal at the general election.
A section of the country wonder why the APC is handing over the party structure to those who defected from the People’s Democratic Party?
That is an unfair position. Three parties, in 1998, were the PDP, the All Progressives Party and the Action Congress of Nigeria. The major players in the APC are the legacy parties of the nPDP, the ACN, a faction of APGA and the Congress for Progressives Change. Everyone in APC came from one party or the other because the APC is a young party and nobody can lay claim to being original APC. These legacy parties were aboriginal creators of a party of non-defectors. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was originally in the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and was even in exile when the AD was formed, which was even a breakaway from the PDP. We were all supposed to be in PDP with the late Chief Bola Ige and others. I had meetings in Prof. Jerry Gana’s house in 1998, which included Chief Ayo Adebanjo and then, they walked out of the meeting one day because there were disagreements! Then, they tried to go to APP and I also heard they walked out of that one and formed the AD. They were part of the PDP and the APP in the formative stages until they got to the AD. Asiwaju Tinubu was not part of all these processes because he was out of the country. I was a part of these processes. He later came back and became a part of the AD, which had been formed and used the platform to contest for governor. After he became governor, he left the AD and, then, formed the ACN. I was part of those who left PDP and formed Democratic People’s Party. We worked in DPP and we all worked against the Third Term agenda and Tinubu, eventually brought the ACN into APC. It’s not like the parties before. The president, himself, was in APP, which later became ANPP. He ran on those platforms for president and when he later formed the CPC, he ran on its platform for president before he ran on the APC platform. So, there are no aboriginal members in APC. In APC, everybody came from somewhere. This might be enticing to young people who are not more than, let’s say, 18 years old, to say this. Look, everybody came from one party or the other into APC, which is a major player. Nobody can say some people are defectors.
With that in mind, then was APC formed to contest and win elections?
Well, that’s your own point of view. The point is that, now, it has to evolve, this process of evolution is what is happening; what you are seeing. Most Nigerian parties were formed as a vehicle to take power. The PDP itself was formed to take power, it was formed as a mass organisation of people with diverse ideological beliefs, to take power from the military. And, that was why, when the PDP was formed, you had almost like seven potential parties that could have been independent on their own. APC has had the same history. Now, we are at the point where if political parties would be the vehicle of national transformation, they now have to evolve from a collection of people who came together to take power, to become platform for national transformation and, therefore, they must evolve unique ideological platforms and policy platforms that are capable of transforming the country, urgently. Transformation in terms of ethics and values and these are tangible issues to create things that you want to see, to create jobs, to deal with the energy crises and all that. So, this is not a problem for the APC. It’s a problem for other parties, it’s a problem for PDP, for virtually all other parties, they are not distinctly separated, based on the ideologies and policies frameworks. They are a collection of different people who just want to take power. General Buhari says he doesn’t want corruption. At least, he stands for something and says he doesn’t want corruption, but are there too many people in various parties who can you really say stand for something, apart from the fact that they just think they want to be president? I come from an ideological background and my bent is the socio-democratic platform. I’ve done that for 30-something years and you cannot say so for many people. As a party, this is the challenge and it is the challenge for the entire political system.
Would it be fair for northern candidates to slug it out with southern candidates for the APC presidential ticket, after the North would have completed eight years with President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023?
My problem with all these northern candidates or southern candidate is that this is not a discourse that helps the country at the state where it is now. The most important conversation we need to have now is the president that would secure Nigeria, inspire our troops and inspire our people to defend themselves. We need a president that would unite the country, proposer the economy, deal with the energy crises facing the country. This is the president we need, not a tribal president or a regional president. In the APC 2014 convention, everybody from every region participated in the contest. I’ve said that earlier. Remember that Rochas Okorocha also contested in that presidential primary. Now, if he has won that primary, he would have been president. So, if it was fair for him to contest, back to back, because he did contest the presidential primary when former President Goodluck Jonathan contested, so, why are you saying other people from other regions cannot contest the presidential primary now because Buhari would have been president for eight years in 2023? That’s not fair! People have to be consistent with their logic. When it benefits you, it is fair and when it doesn’t, it is unfair. You have people from the Southwest also talking about fairness, after (former President Olusegun) Obasanjo has done eight years from the Southwest and now, Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo would have done eight years in 2023. Are you saying other people from other regions cannot be president? And, if they are not president, it is not fair?I think it’s time we stop this nonsense and focus on things that would develop this country. The real issue is about getting the demography that is between 18-35 who have no jobs and getting the economic policies right for them to have jobs. That’s the real issue. We should look at the programmes of those who want to be president, what do you stand for, where are you coming from, your history, your character, your ideals, what do you believe in? How would the new president secure Nigeria? Those are the issues that should engage us right now! In 2023, we need a president that can rally the armed forces, defend the country and save our democracy and stop it from falling into the hands of terrorists. To me, these are more important than which region the next president is going to come from. We should be concerned about the survival of our country. This is what it is all about. I hope our party, the media, the electorate would make this conversation about these real issues otherwise, we could wake up and see that we don’t have a country again.
