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From Desmond Mgboh, Kano
Rabiu Suleiman Bichi, current Managing Director, Hadejia Jamarre River Basin Development Authority (HJRBDA), was the Kano State Campaign Director of the Tinubu- Shettima Campaign Organisation in 2023 . A former Secretary to the Kano State Government and a one-time Chairman of Kano PDP, he spoke to Sunday Sun in Kano on sundry political issues bordering on the chances of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the forth coming general elections, insisting that Tinubu would certainly overwhelm his rivals in addition to the fact that he would sweep the votes in Kano.
With the recent flag-off of political activities in Nigeria, what are the chances of your party, the APC, in Kano State and in Northern Nigeria?
Thank you very much. APC, as you know, is very. very strong in Kano State and in the whole of the North. In Kano State, I want you to take note of the fact that we have an overwhelming support of the people of the state. Look at it this way. During the 2023 general elections when I was the Director- General of the Tinubu-Shettima- Gawuna- Garo Campaign organisation, APC scored almost 980,000 votes while the NNPP scored almost a million votes. But now the majority of all of us (in these two parties) are now together in the same party. There was no serious movement from the APC to any other party since the alignment of both groups. If at all there had been any defection out of the APC since then, it is just one or two people. But in reverse, all the political heavyweights of Kano State, from all divides, just name any, they are all now in APC and they are currently working very hard to ensure that APC overwhelmingly wins the next general elections.
Let me give you a practical example of the APC surge from my own local government for instance. In Bichi Local Government Area of Kano State, because of the activities of APC, especially the activities of our House of Representatives member, whatever we do we do according to the polling unit, a lot of people have rushed to get their PVCs so that whatever we do, they can be getting these empowerment programmes executed by the APC. Now, we have a list of over 370, 000 registered voters in Bichi Local Government Area. And it is the same thing all over the state. The second factor driving this new push into the APC in the state is that APC under President Bola Ahmed TInubu has done a lot for Kano. I must admit that no President in Nigeria has done what Tinubu has done for Kano State, so many things at a time and within a single tenure- a span of three years. The President is doing his work. He is developing national infrastructure and I think that Kano, we are the darling of this government. I will give you a few examples. When he took over, there was a lot of complaints regarding Kano-Abuja Road. Everyone knows that. People normally spend the night on the road because of lack of good road, but now that project is almost completed. The Kaduna-Abuja end is already completed. Secondly, the road project from Maiduguri–to Kano, which has been going for the last 20 years, it was actually started in 2006, it is almost completed. New projects were started in Kano……
There is the general belief that Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso is in full control of Kano politics. Do you think that if we go for an election in the coming months, Tinubu will be able match Kwankwaso?
Where did you get that your “general belief” from? Where did you get it please?
I said that people assume out there…
(Cuts in sharply) …Then, honestly, then these people are assuming wrongly. Let me tell you something…In the last election, the governor of Kano State, Abba Kabir Yusuf was part of the then NNPP and was working with Kwankwaso. Today, the governor has decamped from the NNPP and decamped with all the members of the government – that is his cabinet and all the chairmen of the local government and they were in NNPP before. So my big question to you is, who is left in there with him (Kwankwaso) ? Secondly, APC did not perform woefully against Kwankwaso in the last election. APC was equally strong against him. If you could recall, we went to the tribunal and we got judgment in our favour. And we got the same judgment at the Appeal Court. And when we went to the Supreme Court – you know that the judgement of the Supreme Court, sometimes it is political, sometimes it has to do with general security. You remember that time, the people were brandishing weapons on us, saying they would murder, they would kill, they would torture the judges. It was everywhere. All these voting strength are now in one party. Like I said all the political heavyweights in the state are in one place. And you must also not forget that Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso is now a Vice Presidential candidate of another party under Obi and you know that Kano people with an Obi is a no- go area. This is known. There is no point hiding it. Everybody knows that Kano is not for Obi. So against these backgrounds, how can a Kwankwaso and his party stand a minute chance against Tinubu in Kano State? How can that happen? I think that APC apart from doing well, is also a party that is on ground and APC has done a lot for Kano and I am sure that Kano people are going to reward the President with their votes when the time comes.
If you are asked to project the forthcoming elections in the state, what percentage would you give to Tinubu and APC, and to Kwankwaso?
Going by the trend, I forecast that currently, we expect to get nothing less than 70 per cent of the votes of those who would come out to vote on that day. Let me remind you. I was the Collation Officer of the APC in the 2023 Presidential election in Kano State. President Tinubu, across states in Nigeria, got the highest APC votes from Kano. Bichi Local Government Area produced the highest votes for the President Tinubu in Kano State and in the country- apart from President Tinubu’s Local Government Area in Lagos State. We scored 567,000 votes for the President, more than 25 per cent of the vote cast. That alone gave a 380,000 votes difference in favour of APC, which helped wiped out all the votes that PDP gathered in other states where they were stronger than Tinubu. Now with what we have seen , with what Mr President has done for Kano State, I think that we are going to get more than 70 per cent of votes cast in Kano State.
But I want us to interrogate your predictions against certain obvious indexes. At the moment, the APC in Kano State is nothing but a rainbow coalition of different politicians forged together by President Tinubu for his own sake. Observers also insist that they are yet to have a seamless integration. Together, the public think that this might have some negative consequences on the ambition of the party during the elections.
You see these people don’t understand politics very well. You see the rainbow coalition that you are talking about and the lack of seamless integration often happens before party primaries. But whenever the primaries are concluded and we have clear candidates for the contest, it is expected that every member of the party is working to ensure that APC wins the elections irrespective of whatever had happened before. For example, if we take a look at the legacy members of APC, that is the members of the party before the defection of the governor- which of them will say he will not work for the APC? Who among us will say that he does want APC to win? Nobody will do that. And also, the governor who has more stake in the party because he is the governor and all those who came with him to the APC, none of them will say APC will not win. So, you see we are working hard, we are working harder and we are all working together and all of us are ambitious for APC to win Kano State.
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But we as reporters, many of us still get the signal that there are quarrels and differences within Kano APC. We hear about their quarrels, we hear of their silent misgivings, we hear about quite a number of these negatives and they certainly do not tally with your submission.
You must know something that with democracy, there is nowhere where you can say there are no differences or that all is too calm and peaceful. Even in the United States of America, there are differences. Everywhere there is popular democracy, it is like that. But when it comes to elections, everybody will want his party to win. This is because if you don’t do that, you will be embarking on anti-party activities. And there is a penalty for that.
Two years back, the people of Kano came out in large numbers to say they don’t like the Tinubu administration and what was happening. How does this represent or support you claim that Kano State is favourably disposed to or is politically in favour of Tinubu?
You said two years ago. Two years ago! But you must realise that that time, there was a difference between us, the APC and the government at the state level. That was the reason the demonstration was escalated in Kano. That was because there was APC and the NNPP and the NNPP government was trying to show that it was the government. That was why the situation got that high. But now, we are in the same political party and everybody is working hard and fighting hard for APC to win the elections. So if you try to judge what happened two or three years back and try to use it as basis of your analysis today, then you are wrong. The situation has drastically changed today. Every member of the party is working hard for the party. We are all together with the governor. But two years ago, he was fighting us and we were fighting him. Now, we are together. In fact, if you remember, during the demonstration, the governor clearly encouraged people to come and demonstrate! He called them out to the Government House and collected their letter to take it to Mr. President. But now, will that happen? Those who demonstrated and went to the government were his people. But now we are all together. The parameters have changed completely. We have the government.. We have the APC and let me tell you, the governor and ourselves, we came from the same background. We were all in Kwankwasiyya Movement. But a majority of the Kwankwasiyya Movement, almost 80 per cent of them are now in APC – all their leaders, their followers, almost everybody. We are all in APC.
But why do you think these leaders left Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who was the leader of the Movement?
You see, that is a long history. But I can tell you something. It is just like a Danfo commercial bus. Everybody eventually drops at some point or somewhere. Everybody understands that that movement is failing. Those who saw it earlier had dropped. And over time, it has been dropping everybody at different stops to the point that there is no passenger in the bus except the driver and his conductor. Let me enlighten you more. Politics is about leadership. These chieftains of APC that you are talking about, every of them is leading a lot of people and all of these people that are leaders of these groups are now in APC. Everybody is trying his best to ensure that his group or tendency votes for the APC. And so the leadership of Kwankwasiyya Movement, most of their leaders, are now in APC. I came with my group, Ganduje came with some, the governor came with his people. People don’t know of this fact, that those that created Kwankwasiyya Movement, I don’t think that there is anybody there left. They have all left except for their gubernatorial candidate. And even their gubernatorial candidate was not a member of the Kwankwasiyya Movement until he was appointed a commissioner. Up to the time we went to the elections in 2010 or 2011, the current gubernatorial candidate of NDC was not a member of the Kwankwasiyya. So, we looked at him as a stranger to us, a stranger to those who created the movement. He did not participate in the creation of Kwankwasiyya. But you can say that he is as old as those that participated in the creation of Kwankwasiyya. Those of us who created Kwankwasiya are all in APC and we are all working hard to win the elections. That perception that you have of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso as a popular candidate in Kano politics has changed with time.
You talked so well about President Tinubu. But out there, Nigerians say that there’s hunger, hardship, and fuel price, electricity rates are above them. How can you say Nigerians are happy with the president?
Naturally, this temporary hardship emerged as a result of government policies- because as I always say, President Tinubu is a statesman who is thinking of the next generation and not a politician who is thinking of the next elections. And any statesman would look at his country and his people and see what is best for the people and the country. Naturally, is this the first time Nigerians are complaining that they are hungry? No! If you go by history, Nigerians have made similar complaints in the past. Anytime an election is approaching, the hunger claim becomes a popular slogan. You are a journalist; I want you to do a research across time.
Check the time of your Drum Newspaper, your Concord Newspaper and others. Every time there was an election, people would complain. Do you remember the time of Umaru Dikko, when he said that Nigerians were not hungry because they were not eating from the dustbins? This recent claim is a continuation of the gimmick from the opposition. They tell you that you are hungry and you believe that you are hungry. After Tinubu won the election, the opposition went to court and were beating their chest that they would remove him. They went up to the Supreme Court. But when they failed to defeat him at the court, what did they do? They went and bought all the foodstuff and horded it. I am talking about Kano – which is a practical example. The foodstuff were hoarded in warehouses. You know that Kano is dotted with warehouses. And we have the largest grains market. And people started crying that we were hungry and we were dying. This people wanted to bring down the government even before the administration had started. But Tinubu decided to send foodstuff to all the states and you remember that in Kano State, the Chief of Staff to the Governor was caught diverting the foodstuff and those bags had the picture of Mr. President. A whole Chief Staff doing that, diverting these foodstuffs! And another member of the government was also caught. We were not in the same government with Governor Abba at that time. And when the governor saw it and distanced himself from his staff that have diverted the items, he also directed the then Chairman of Anti-Corruption Agency, Muhyi to go and break those warehouses and bring out the food items and sell to the people. And when the President saw what was happening, he decided to send foodstuff to the states and the prices of foodstuff began to come down. Up till today, the prices of maize is N36,000. But when he was sworn-in, they just hijacked it to about N200, 000 per bag. You remember. The same thing with the price of rice. It was N120,000 but rice is now N53,000. So, it is affordable for people to buy. Those who cannot afford to buy, I can’t say anything about that. But those who are saying it is too high… maybe some of them are just playing politics. It is understandable like that when there are changes that affect the micro-economy- that is, the removal of fuel subsidy and the unification of the exchange rate, there should be some dislocations. This is because some of the people who have been enjoying the old order would come back and fight and this is what they are doing.
The Presidential candidate of the ADC, Atiku Abubakar recently said he was going to bring back the subsidy. How do see his declaration?
Atiku is just trying to play with the intelligence of Nigerians. That is a fact. During the 2023 general elections, he insisted fervently that he was going to remove the fuel subsidy. Peter Obi also said that he would remove subsidy. Tinubu also said that he would remove subsidy. Mohammadu Sanusi has been advocating the removal of subsidy. Okonji Iwaela has been advocating the removal of subsidy in the last 15 years because it had been hijacked by the cabals at the expense of Nigerians. It was that bad that by the time this government came to power, there was even no money to pay for the subsidy. The country was economically collapsing and being the President, he said that I looked for this job and I worked hard to be elected the President and so I would not complain. Don’t even pity me, that was what he said. And he would not blame any previous administration for our situation, but he would do what is best for the country. That was what Tinubu said. And the best for the country is what these people have been saying all along, which is to remove the subsidy and then channel the subsidy to where it should be. Take for example, all the state government now, they are getting 10 times what we got when we were in government in 2011. And we can see it in Kano here. Look at what Governor Abba is doing. Every aspect of governance is improving. See the number of roads that are being constructed all over the place. Health. Education. In fact in Nigeria today, his government has dedicated more budget to education more than any other government in Nigeria. He has surpassed the UNESCO benchmark. Where did he get the money from? It is from the subsidy removal. And a lot of empowerment programme is taking place everywhere in Nigeria since President Tinubu came into office. Without the subsidy removal, there is no way they can do all these. Again, you cannot blame a President for things or projects that a councillor, a local government chairman or a governor should do. He is doing what he is supposed to do from what he is getting from subsidy. Go to Kano, Panshekara. This rail that started from the North up to Maradi is on-going, go to Dawanau now, when you reach the Murtala Mohammed Roundabout, there is a diversion because they are constructing the project. That is what the President is doing with the subsidy removal. And look at the Sokoto – Badagry Super Highway, the same thing with the Coastal Highway. And from Lagos to Calabar is also on-going. This is what a country should be doing. By investing in massive infrastructural projects, you are kick starting the economy through engaging labour and this labour will now transform into all kind of auxiliary services to the benefit of the economy. So people that are working now will get money and those who are complaining will complain. Just last week, I heard of this report. I heard it on Arewa Radio and other news outlets that Nigeria, between March to date got up to 8000 new billionaires. This people they would not to talk to you, but they would look at what you put in the bank. That means that the economy is improving. But our opponents would continue to hammer on what has happened yesterday and they want us to go back…I am not saying that there is no hardship. There is. But that is temporary and definitely every country that has developed had passed through this temporary challenges.
I know that Kano doesn’t have serious security challenge. But do you in all fairness think that we have done so well in that regard nationally?
Yes, I think so. In fact, if we did not say that Nigeria has done well in the area of security, then we will be ungrateful to God. Let me tell you something, before APC took over- and that was the reason people voted for APC. You remember President Buhari directed the IGP to go Maiduguri. He went there several times. Before, everyday these insurgents will kill and maim the whole town, the whole villages and set these places on fire. Everywhere bombs were being planted on a daily basis. In fact, it went to the level that people were annoyed with President Jonathan at that time. But when Buhari took over, things changed. I recall that from thus my house here, you will get several checkpoints by the military. From here to Abuja, there are uncountable numbers of roadblocks. The issue of banditry which came up much later….. Every day they were striking. Do you report these bombs the way you were reporting it before? There are a lot that has changed and a lot is being done. President Tinubu has spent more than any other Nigeria President on security and it is showing. You see the security challenge we are dealing with is not the normal security issue. If it were the normal security issue where you have the opponent or the enemy over there, it would have been crushed by now. But you are fighting with an invincible enemy and despite that, this government is doing a lot in that respect.
