2027: Governors can’t save APC from defeat –Olawepo-Hashim

•INEC, NASS can’t legislate how parties run internal affairs

•I don’t think INEC boss can conduct free, fair election in 2027

From Ndubuisi Orji and Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja

In the run-up to the 2027 general election, there has been an influx of opposition governors to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). So far, a total of nine governors, with eight of them from the major opposition party, the PDP, have joined the APC, bringing the number of governors in the APC to 30.

However, a chieftain of the PDP and presidential aspirant on the platform of the major opposition party, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, says the number of governors in the APC will not save it from defeat in the forthcoming election once the contest is free and fair.

Olawepo-Hashim insisted that the PDP is still a potent force, owing to its strong support base at the grassroots.

There are fears that the PDP may not be able to field candidates for the 2027 elections…

((Cuts in) And why would that be?

Because of the crisis in the party. INEC recently released the timetable for the 2027 election

The timetable of INEC is not law. The law is the electoral act, even as signed literally to favour APC and that electoral act says that there are a specified number of days to election, when parties should make nominations and I think it should be 90 days or so.  So, that is September by my own calculation. So, any party that nominates candidates 90 days to the election is in order.  The chairman of INEC cannot just wake up and try to use his timetable to amend the electoral act. His timetable is not law. That is his own wish.  But it is not law.

The electoral Act states that parties should submit their register to INEC, 21 days to the primary. And INEC has fixed conduct of primaries from April 23 to May 30.

I am saying that the primaries of parties are the internal affairs of parties. It is not INEC’s business.  INEC’s business is to take nominations. And, if the electoral Act says you submit your nominations 90 days to the election, parties can submit their nomination even 24 hours before that deadline. It is in September. It’s not the business of INEC to seek to use its time to amend the electoral Act.  It doesn’t have that power. It’s very simple. So, somebody cannot just wake up because we want to favour certain political interests and bring the timetable that amends the act. That’s all I am saying.

What happens if the leadership crisis in your party is not resolved before the primaries, that is, before September?

You can’t go by INEC’s timetable. You have to go by the Electoral Act. You can’t go by INEC’s timetable. INEC’s timetable is not law. I go by the Electoral Act, even with all the limitations of the Electoral Act, and people are still distraught with all the things in the Electoral Act. They are still finding it difficult to keep faith with the Electoral Act. What kind of lawless people are these?  Why not govern society? You tinker with the law. You did everything you wanted to do to favour you. People are complaining about it. You can still not keep faith with the law that you signed, as horrible and as terrible as it is. Are we a country of barbarians? We are a law governed society now.

In the event that the APC and other parties keep faith with what INEC has released, what are you going to do?

Then, it will not be based on law.

What are you going to do?

Well, I don’t have to tell you what I am going to do.  When we get there; we will cross it.  I think people think that they can just do anything they like. Even under military rule, when they publish their military decrees, they keep faith with that military decree, even though we didn’t elect them.  Even monarchies, when they make their ordinances and decrees under the monarchical system, everybody obeys the law, including the king.

So, rule of law does not mean that you obey just laws alone or laws that are made by democratic government; even military governments and monarchies are law-governed systems. When the law is published, everybody obeys it.

The electoral act which we have all criticised stipulates the number of days when parties must submit their nomination before an election. INEC cannot act outside that. It is a very simple thing.

The PDP, which once upon a time, was the party of choice in this country, has been weakened considerably by the crises …

(cuts in) Sponsored by APC. It is not just PDP alone that was weakened by crises.

From 13 governors, after the 2023 general elections, you are left with just three governors and a number of your National Assembly members have left too. How quickly can the PDP reposition itself for the 2027 contest?

Your first question has to do with the party’s crisis and I said it’s APC-sponsored crises. And, PDP was not the only one that had that crises sponsored by the APC. You had the Labour Party, they sponsored the crisis there. Even the ADC, they are still battling with multiple…

If the APC has this number of governors, they should be happy to face a free and fair election, if those numbers of governors will make them win. Why are you manufacturing crises in every party? Why are you fiddling with the electoral act? Why are you breathing down through the neck of INEC if this number of governors you have is sufficient for you to win?

The summary of the issue is that the APC is an unpopular party, based on its record in the economy, in national security. That the best election for them is an election that will not hold. That they will just announce the result. Okay, so that is very clear. Now to be clear. Nobody is going to accept that. All right? That you will just announce a result for us and call it an election. We are not going to accept it. The Nigerian people will not accept it.

The question you asked, ‘now you have three governors.’ It doesn’t matter. Even if we have zero governor, I am still going to be optimistic. The difference between me and some of these governors that you are talking about, some of them were not in politics when we started PDP. Some of them came into politics five or ten years ago.

When we started PDP in 1998 and I was one of the conveners of the PDP, in 1998, when we were calling people to speak at the inauguration of PDP, in the rally, at that Area One Parade Ground, that was where we launched the PDP in August 1998. Alhaji Musa Mussawa and I and Guy Ikoku were the compere that were calling people to come and speak at the parade ground in 1998; three of us.

As one of the conveners of the PDP, I doubled as secretary of the Finance Committee and the Secretary of the Publicity committee where Chuba Okadigbo was chairman.  The Finance Committee, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi was chairman and I was secretary. The way we raised money for the PDP, our initial fundraising was that we levied every member of the sub-committees, N50,000. Only Sylvester Ugoh took permission to pay N10 000. He said he was a former civil servant of Biafra, so we should excuse him. He paid only N10,000 and we just laughed it off, and everybody paid N50,000.  That was how the party took off.

When it was time for the local government election, Babala told me Gbenga, ‘you run a public affairs business; go and see how we will be on the radio and television with our jingles and keep your records, because we are going to owe you.’

Ola Fajemisin was my producer then. And we put things together and we ran the radio, television campaign, newspaper campaigns and so on and so forth.  By the time we finished the campaign,  the party was owing my company almost over N100 million because we were paying for newspapers campaigns  which is equivalent of about over N1 billion today. Rochas Okorocha paid for the party secretariat in Wuse. Ahaji Atiku Abubakar, Waziri Adamawa, was the one who paid for the printing of the party cards and the register. We kept our staffers in Philip Salawu’s hotel, on credit. Rochas also paid for Babala’s hotel bills in Sheraton Hotel. This was how this party was put together, not with money from governors. There were no governors then. The people who were very rich were in Abacha’s  party, the APP. The  people who made money from Abacha- his former ministers and all, they were all in the APP.

Then, we went to the local government election and asked all the leaders to deliver their local government. I delivered my own local government- Irepodun – with the majority of councillors and speakers. By the time we came after the local government election, PDP had won two thirds of seats in Nigeria. Two thirds of seats in Nigeria! It was the local government election that qualified parties for registration in 1999. It was not the number of governors or whatever. The PDP had a grassroots structure that was based on the integrity of those leaders that were leading it. Okay? That was in 1998.

So, we are back to the basics. Even if you don’t have a single governor, the PDP has a grassroots structure to win the next election. Because there is no polling unit in Nigeria where you don’t have 10 to 20 members of the PDP, even after all these governors have defected.  APC has been in government for some 13 years or thereabouts.

There are polling units in the South-South and the South-East, where you don’t have a single APC member up till today, despite the fact that they have a number of governors. Because, this thing is not about governors; especially governors who don’t have history. Most of them are special assistants to former governors, who just joined politics. They have never joined politics. They have never done anything for their people. The people just see them as looters. And, when they leave the party, good riddance to bad rubbish! The APC will be defeated with all those its number of governors. What we need is free and fair elections.

Governors don’t have two votes. It is only a governor that has done something for his community that his voice will matter to his community But all these people, who are seen as wicked people sharing money from taxes; doing nothing in their community, they will only bring woes to the APC. They are not an advantage.

You are very optimistic about PDP’s chances in the next election, despite the defections, but there are two different camps laying claim to the party’s leadership, each with a court judgment…

We are reconciling the PDP camps. And, you can see that I did a lot of work on that. A lot of people in both camps really love the party. We are going to sort that one out before we go into election by the grace of God.

So, how can the PDP reposition itself to return to its winning ways?

We are already on the way to that. You saw what happened in the Abuja election. Despite all the brigandage, PDP still came out as the major opposition party. But, in that election, even with all the noisy people on TikTok, you can see that they don’t really exist as an opposition party. So, the PDP is already a resurgent party on the way to its winning streak. And, what you saw in Abuja is not just an Abuja affair. You know Abuja is a microcosm of Nigeria, where you have Igbo, Hausa, Idoma people, everybody is in Abuja. So, the Abuja election, to be honest with you, is reflective of the mood of it.

Let’s take another look at the Electoral Act. One of the major features of the new electoral law is the restriction of parties to direct primaries and consensus…

(Cuts in) If you ask me, it is not the business of the National Assembly to legislate for parties how they choose their candidates. It is their internal affairs. It is an overreach on the part of National Assembly members.  And, it is a symptom that is inflective of the ruling party’s desire to micromanage the next election. It is an infringement on the freedom of association of political parties.  Political parties derived their existence from the fundamental human rights principle that respects the right of people to associate. It is a direct assault on that right. Well, maybe some parties will contest it.  Where you have nice judges, it won’t take them 10 minutes to strike down all those sections that  infringe on the rights of parties.  I mean the Supreme Court has always held that the parties have the right to conduct their own affairs.

So, the National Assembly cannot legislate for parties on how they choose their candidates.  It is their internal affairs. It is an overreach. So, I don’t want to waste my energy on that.

Do you nurse the fear of Nigeria becoming a one-party state?

Nigeria will never be a one-party state. It is a delusion of some people in the APC. We have always been a multi-party democracy. When our founders put this country together, they put a constitution that recognised multi-party democracy. And, even when we had above-average political leaders in terms of their outstanding qualities, I mean, do you want to compare Chief Obafemi Awolowo with Tinubu? He didn’t have a command of South West politics.  NCNC was there all the time. Ibadan People’s Party was there, in Ibadan, alone.  And, even for Chief Obafemi Awolowo to get the majority against Zik (Nnamdi Azikiwe), he had to make some alliance with the Ibadan People’s Party and all that. There was some cross-carpeting. You understand?

As towering as Sir Ahmadu Bello was in the North, you have Aminu Kano, in Kano,  controlling all this area of Kano, present  Kaduna, Katsina, they were under the influence of the NEPU – Northern Element Progressive Union. And, then, all these areas here that, you know, Plateau, Benue, they were under the Middle Belt Congress. The area of Borno, Yobe and all that, they had their own political leadership up till Borno People’s Union. So, we have always been a multi-party democracy.

Who is the leader of the APC? What is his track record that all of us will now follow him? We have never been like that before. So, this is just a delusion that will never happen in this country. Nigeria cannot be a one-party state, and especially a party with a woeful record of performance.

When our independent leaders led us to independence, they had superlative economic achievements. In 1966, before the coup, the GDP of Nigeria was twice the GDP of Malaysia, all right? And bigger than the GDP of Indonesia. Under this APC, the GDP of the country had contracted by almost 50 per cent. The GDP of Nigeria today is less than the GDP of Nigeria under Obasanjo 20 years ago. And yet we were not a one-party state then. So, what will make us be one party now? Is it the record of achievement in the economic front or the record of achievement in the security front, where Nigerians are killed every day, and there is no coherent and intelligent response to the security crisis? Is it this record that will make us one party state? It is just a delusion.

Last week you addressed a press conference where you asked for INEC to be reconstituted. In the event that it is not, are you still going to contest in the 2027 polls?

I will always contest. I will contest in 2027 and then, if they don’t reconstitute INEC, we know what to do next.  That won’t stop me from contesting.

The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory has been accused of working with the opposition APC to destroy the PDP. Why is it difficult for the PDP to discipline him?

Look, let me tell you something: there is nothing wrong with anybody working with another party. When we won in 1999 as PDP, Chief Bola Ige, who was the presidential aspirant of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), was our Minister of Power. Abdukadiri Mohammed, who was the AD chairman, was Apecial Adviser to President Obasanjo. Mahmud Waziri, was the chairman of the APP. He was appointed. So, there is no big deal for anybody in any other party being invited to serve in a ruling party.

So, it is not the first time we are going to have that. Maybe it is just the way and manner in which things are presently organised that people are concerned about it. But I believe that Minister (Nyesom) Wike, at least, is still a member of the PDP. Whatever problem you have with him, he has not formally resigned from the PDP. So, I will be very reluctant to come hard on him in this type of question. I believe there is still room for reconciliation within the party, especially for people who have not announced that they have left the party. Those who have left the party, that is a different ball game.

During the FCT area council elections, he was alleged to have told the PDP candidates to step down for APC candidates. Is that not enough to discipline him as a party man?

You know I am not leading the party now. And, my priority, as somebody who is trying to mediate in the party, is first to have a party before we come to discipline. You cannot impose discipline when you don’t even exist. Let’s exist first before we talk about discipline. My priority is how to save the party and then, we will come to discipline later. That is not my priority right now.

What will you do differently to reposition the country if you become president?

We have a plan for a $4 trillion GDP, to have an economy that is driven by IT, manufacturing, solid minerals, agri-processing, et cetera, et cetera. And this is actually achievable because a country like Indonesia that has the same profile as Nigeria in terms of population, and who is peer compared with Nigeria when Nigeria achieved independence, will be about that in the next eight, ten years. And in some respects, we have some advantages above Indonesia. So, we are not talking about things that have not been done before. We are talking about things that our founders have done.

We will aim for double-digit growth, which we have achieved. We have achieved it before. Not all these Mickey Mouse economic growths of 3, 4 per cent that people are banding about after shaving the GDP of 50 per cent of its value.

In 2003, OBJ achieved nine per cent economic growth, and we went into double-digit afterwards. So, we understand the mechanics of this. We are not going to be doing what these guys are doing. We are not going to be taxing people. We are going to put in place Keynesian  principles and principles of economic growth, which we saw under President (Theodore) Roosevelt in the US., after the Great Depression,  to achieve the growth that we need to reduce poverty and to address insecurity. Because even apart from the military aspect of insecurity, some of the complex issues that are driving the recruitment into banditry and all that is mass scale poverty, particularly in the North, where you have more than 18 million children of school age that are outside and these are the potential recruits.

You cannot win the war against insecurity without addressing the issue of mass poverty. So, I am going to do things differently from these guys, for sure. I have been doing things differently all my life, you know. I create wealth. These guys have been living on the treasury, you know, most of them.

In the quest for this ambition, have you met or have you opened a line of communication with PDP leaders across the country?

Oh, of course! You saw that the entire North Central chairmen endorsed me. So, they wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t have a line of communication with them. We are set.  Definitely, I am confident that we will be able to win the party’s nomination, by the Grace of God.

Nigerians perceived the ADC to be a more viable opposition platform for 2027…

Well, the FCT election results did not show that. So, at least that is an empirical data for you to extrapolate from, you know. And I think the ADC is a non-starter as compared to PDP. And I invite all of them to return to PDP, those who are in ADC.

The INEC chairman, just a few days ago, said that the 2027 election may not be perfect. As a prospective contestant in that election…

(Cuts in) One thing I have seen about the INEC chairman is this; there is nothing in his CV that shows that he has handled any assignment of this magnitude before. Apart from being a professor, I have not seen any serious thing that he has done that would give me the confidence that he will succeed in this assignment,  and  that is why I really want him to step down as INEC chairman.

I don’t think he can conduct a free and fair election. He does not even have any intention to do so. He is already telling us that no election is perfect, even before starting the assignment.  You will know that this man is not a serious man.

Why did you leave activism for capitalism?

What do you mean by activism and capitalism?

You were an activist when you were in school, but now, you are in the business world

Activism does not mean whether you are capitalist or not capitalist. It only means that you speak truth to power. Even (President Donald) Trump is an activist because he speaks his mind. But he is also a man who came from an entrepreneurial background. My mum, when she was active in business, was the most successful businesswoman in New Bussa (Niger State). She had the biggest account with UBA in those days, with account number 1206, and as  her young son, I accompanied her to the Annual General Meeting of the UBA as the best customer from that Borgu Division at that particular time when Nicon Noga Hotel here in Abuja was newly built. That was where the first AGM was held. Mutallab was the MD then.

So, I came from a parentage that is entrepreneurial and I didn’t join activism out of poverty. It is just a choice that I have a conscience. But the way I was raised, I was raised to have respect for poor people. So, I didn’t come from a poor home. I didn’t go to school without shoes like some people.

My mother, at any point in time in our house, we have about four, five cars, even in the early ‘70s when you can count the number of people who had cars in their houses. So, I had a disciplined upbringing, but it didn’t mean that I was spoilt. Because despite being surrounded by that comfort, I had a very tough upbringing. And, of course, my late dad rose to become a Commissioner of Police and he was promoted as an Assistant Inspector General of Police. He was appointed even as a military administrator. But before the posting, he died. So, my activism was  a question of choice and a thing of conscience. And you know Friedrich Engels, who was (Karl) Max’s colleague, also came from a very prosperous, entrepreneurial home. But it didn’t stop him from being a companion of Karl Max.

On your presidential ambition, why don’t you consider a senatorial or governorship position? Why the presidency?

I think there is some presumption in that statement. Why should you be asking somebody who wants to be president why he is not a senator or looking for governorship? Abraham Lincoln was not a senator or governor before he became president. Obasanjo was not a senator or governor before he became president. You don’t have to be following that trajectory; everybody has their own trajectory to power. The current president of Zambia was never a senator or governor and he is president. The current president of Ivory Coast was never a senator or governor.

I think some of you young reporters now who are covering politics and who came into reporting in the era of the governors becoming the people running the polity, you have been enamoured by these things that you think that if you are not a governor, you cannot become president. That was not what it was before. Shagari was not a senator or governor before he was elected President of Nigeria.

So, I think you need to also get something out of your own thought processes to know that some of the things you erect as criteria are really not necessary. Trump was not governor or senator before he became president of the most powerful country in the world. So, why do you think that somebody who was not governor or senator would be president of a very powerful country and not a very poor country like Nigeria that desperately needs help?