Defection to APC: No cause for alarm – Gabam, SDP National Chairman

• Says voters will decide fate of defectors  • Accuses APC of shielding corrupt politicians under EFCC’s probe

From Okwe Obi, Abuja

The National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Shehu Gabam, has attributed the gale of defections from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), as a deficiency of the law and the greed of politicians.

In this interview, Gabam, said in 2027, voters will decide the fate of defectors.

He also accused the ruling party of aiding corruption by shielding politicians who are under investigation.

In addition, he boasted that the APC would not infiltrate his party ahead of the 2027 general election.

On the zoning formula, he argued that it was not a constitutional matter that should take the front burner of political discourse for now.

What is your take on the state of the nation?

Let me start by giving you a background on where we are coming from and why we left the PDP. The reason we left the PDP was for genuine reasons. With the idea that we have developed after we consulted nationwide for a platform that will turn out to be a national platform, we invested our time, resources, energy, all idea-driven legacies. The result is showing that we are on the right side. We are being seen today as a major force, as the oxygen of the political environment. And of course, our ultimate aim as citizens who believe in Nigeria that should be great, who believe that Nigeria should do everything necessary to provide the basics for the citizens, is to support the system. Nigeria is a unique country on earth, well-endowed by God. It has suffered from massive man-made disasters, which have plunged us into the state that we are today. It did not start under this administration. The decay has been on for a very long time. And that is why you see, instead of improving the system, the system is on the decline. These are issues that we have raised time and time. I was privileged to be among the founding leaders of PDP. We fought vigorously to ensure that PDP then became a major fundamental political party. And we succeeded. We campaigned throughout the federation of Nigeria. We ensured that we galvanized the party to ensure that there is a platform that protects every citizen of Nigeria, irrespective of tribe or origin. Along the way, major distraction came. The party that ruled for 16 years was taken out within a few months. And, of course, since our entire agenda is not about developing Nigeria, we remain where we are today. So, our ultimate aim is to keep on convincing Nigeria. We know that there is a trust deficit in Nigeria, massively. Whatever you see, no matter how genuine, no matter how the society is, Nigeria do not believe in it, especially the youth. When you read their comments, they misinterpret virtually everything. You do not blame them. The system has failed. You know, most of them who went to school, came out of school, graduated, no job. Difficult to feed. They can’t assist their parents who sold their property to send them to school. They cannot assist themselves. So their mindset is already a mindset of people who are angry, who are frustrated, who feel that the system has betrayed them. So, that trust deficit gap will continue to widen until we do the basics and ensure that citizens have confidence in their own country, have confidence in the leadership. Otherwise, this will continue to be an exercise in futility. So, where we are today, you can attest to the fact that SDP is on top of the map in terms of political engagements, in terms of driving the process, in terms of trying to create the cohesion that we need a united front to confront these failed policies that the nation is witnessing today. So, I am glad that what we have predicted, what we have said is coming to fruition. Not in bad faith, but in good faith. Everything we generated is for the system to adjust its own behaviour and have policies that are people-oriented policies, have policies that have human face. So, these are key, these are very fundamental to the development of the nation. No decent human being should be happy with the situation of Nigeria. Because at the end of the day, we find it difficult to find our bearing. This is what we try to avoid. As someone that the nation has invested in, as someone that Nigeria has collectively invested in me, I cannot afford to be a regionalist or tribalistic fellow or ethnic bigot. Some of us are far beyond that. We look at Nigeria as an entity, as a fundamental base that is protecting everyone. And we must strengthen it. We will make sure that everything is working well.

What is the philosophy behind SDP?

The philosophy is a national philosophy. It is not just SDP as a political party. The national philosophy is simple. One, we look at our constitution that is superior to the constitution of other political party. We talk about the protection of life and property of Nigeria. That is one of our constitutions. Every president or governor has taken an oath of office. The language is that I will protect, preserve the integrity of Nigeria. So, we have deficits in the protection of life and property of Nigerians right now. We talk about education, which is a foundation of human beings. When you have a child, if you have the means, you invest everything in that child. From pre-primary, from pre-nursery, to nursery, to primary, to secondary, to university. If you find out the quantum of money you invested in that child, the child is not just going to benefit you, it is also going to benefit the society. The knowledge you have invested in the child to acquire will have massive impact on the nation. Because the entire system is equipping our citizens to do the right thing and run away from the wrong things. So, we also talk about the health sector. You need to be healthy to discharge responsibilities. The health sector is in decay. There is no referral hospital in Nigeria today that is well equipped. So, that is why you find out those who have access to money or wealth or something always fly out for medical check-up or treatment and so on and so forth. I feel it is a shame. As a nation, as the biggest, the largest, the most sophisticated nation in the African sub-region, Nigeria should have a massive, well-equipped referral hospital, not just one, but across the six geopolitical zones. We should have universities that are referral universities. I do not know if there is one. In your research do we have any university that is within the level that can be argued that is well-equipped and have everything it takes to discharge their responsibilities? Now, when you talk about philosophy or principle or ideology, ideology cannot function outside the provision of the law. When the fundamentals are functioning, they are working well, philosophy ties itself or ideology ties itself to the environment. But when you have the fundamental pillars of the country that are enshrined in our constitution, weak and they find it difficult to function, there is no quantum of ideology or philosophy that will work because the infrastructure that determines how the system functions is extremely very weak. And now you are talking about social justice or you are talking about justice in Nigeria, which is very, very rare to find right now. An average Nigerian, 80 per cent or 90 per cent of Nigerians believe that a judicial system are tailored towards one interest. They are servicing the interests of people that are in government. Citizens always say that the hope of the common man is in the judiciary, and they do not get that justice today. If there is anything that has to do with delivery of justice, people find it difficult to go to court. People sometimes find it easy to get justice even in the police station as bad as the situation is, given the trust deficit gap between the citizens and the Nigerian police force. But somehow, we believe that police somehow provide even justice for them than the judiciary. Now when you do not have judiciary that discharge justice, that stand by the nation and by the reasons of establishing the judiciary, which is the strongest arm of government that interprets the law, then you have people, non-state actors challenging the state of Nigeria because they believe that they will not get justice. Unless these fundamentals are addressed from the three arms of the government, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary once these three arms are not functioning together, there are no parameters of determining national interest. There are no parameters of defending Nigerian citizens. There are no parameters of protecting Nigerians outside Nigeria. Our foreign policy is very weak. We do not even have ambassadors in our foreign embassies right now. So, Nigerians are stranded because their passports have expired. They cannot go to the embassy to get passports. So, these are fundamentals that define a nation. That defines quality of leadership. These are the points that we are making. Now, we believe in a nation that believes in the welfare of its citizens, that believes in improving the living standard of the citizens, believes in food supply chain of the citizens, believes in the healthcare development of the citizens, believes in the strong educational system of the citizens. Once these fundamentals are being taken care of, irrespective of party ideology or otherwise, the system will ignite another creativity. Because a nation is about events or manifestation of something that you have not anticipated. When we had Boko Haram, it was not properly captured in our constitution. But then, we have to work around it. Our security partners have to be retrained and retrained to deal with the modern challenges of non-state actors taking up states, trying to destabilize states. So, many personnel were trained, the DSS, the army, the police, how to deal with non-state actors. These are fundamental components. We find out that as a result of this engagement and training and retraining, they are continuing the massive number of non-state actors challenging the state of Nigeria. So, we are not there yet, but a tremendous effort has been made to bring it under control.That is what defines a nation. That is what defines leadership. It is about quality of people you been have around you that will determine how far you will go as a leader. If you have half-baked that occupy your government, you should know that there will be no result that you produce. I know you don’t blame anybody, but the moment you are sworn in as a President and Commander-in-Chief, your responsibility is to get the best material that can assist you. The nature or the law has established the fact that there is no perfection anywhere. So, which means the responsibility of shopping for quality, competent, patriotic Nigerians lies on your ability to foresee or to identify those visionary leaders, irrespective of tribe or religion. We have seen a lot of leaders that are despotic in their government. We have it in our archives. We have seen a similar thing playing out right now, but have they produced results for the leadership? The answer is no. Have they created more problems? The answer is yes. So, a leader is not supposed to be sectional. He is not supposed to be an ethnic bigot. He’s not supposed to be a religious bigot. He’s supposed to be a patriotic Nigerian that goes for the best and the best material.

How can the authorities fix the problems affecting Nigeria?

The biggest challenge in Nigeria today is the youth, the unemployment, the loss of hope. That is creating the entire threat and the insecurity that we are facing today. A nation that is close to 300 million in terms of population, if you take the statistics of the birth records in Nigeria, approximately on a daily basis you are producing almost 6 million babies. What are the foundations in terms of immunizations, in terms of treatments, in terms of institutions for their training, in terms of housing, that is infrastructure, in terms of education, and so on and so forth? Now, that is very key. When you do not take the statistics, there is no way you can engage the massive build-up with the army of youths that are unemployed. And there is lack of history to tell them that, look, we have recorded this in the past, we have made mistakes in the past, and we are taking this step to correct it. That is number one. You made mention of people defecting from one party to another. It is a deficiency of the law. If the law did not protect the institutions of political parties, then they certainly wouldn’t have the responsibility of leadership recruitment. There is nothing we can do about it. Parties are centers of leadership recruitment. The law says that parties sponsor candidates. Not INEC, not courts. But you have interferences where courts determine who will be a candidate, which is a breach of the system. And it demoralises the political parties as well. When you have your fractions between the party submissions and the INEC. So, if you do not work on this to ensure that no flimsy excuse should be entertained to allow people to move from one party to the other, look at what is happening in the National Assembly today. People wake up from their sleep and decide they are leaving their parties. And then the leadership of the National Assembly, that ought to have stopped it or guide the process. But they will encourage it because they believe it favours their own political party. They forgot that PDP ruled for 16 years and lost it because of lack of wisdom, lack of strategic way of allowing things to evolve over a period of time. They believe it is in their favour. So, they allow the impunity to continue. They believe they will benefit from the impunity. But if history is anything to go by, they will not benefit from it. Because at a point, people will ask, what did you provide for us to survive as citizens? Okay, we have a nation that cannot feed its own population. We do feed our population before. We supply and we produce food in excess. We feed West African sub-region. Are we still doing that today? We are struggling to feed the family with three basic meals. We cannot even do it. Most of the families today is in the range of either 1-0-1 or 1-0-0. Unless the family that has some elite or people who have means of doing that they can feed three times a day. So, these factors cause the weaponization of poverty, absolutely weaponization of hunger. It drains your ability to reason. So, when you see a little enticement, it takes away the origin of your reasoning. Because you are struggling to survive, or your argument should be between, do I collect this money to survive, or should I hang on principle to die? These are two distinct issues. Now, you can always deal with issues when you are alive. When you die, there is nothing anybody can do about it. So, it is a very serious struggle that the citizens are facing. Survival versus principle. Survival versus patriotism. So, if the survival is scarce, it is difficult to get patriotism, commitment to the nation, believing in the nation’s principles, sophistication of the nation, viability of the institutions of the country. Naturally, they will be weak. And if they are weak, and the government in power allows them to get weak, then the government pays the consequences. Because a man who is hungry is not prepared mentally to listen to whatever you are going to tell him. So, you cannot define ideology unless you engage the mindset that are disenfranchised, that have no food to eat, nothing. Your ability to get them to sit together, to reason together, is going to be extremely, very, very difficult.

What is your take on the gale of defections and the multiple party system?

The law allows multiple registration of multiple or multiple parties. This is why the wisdom of the former Head of State, Ibrahim Babangida of two-party system would have saved Nigeria from all this rubbish that is going on. If it was a two-party system, you would have in either A or B. That would have reduced the gap of differentials politicians want to capitalize on. And that would have taken care of even religious consideration because you must belong to one party or the other. And that cements the system and the institutions. So, in the absence of that, parties that are in power take advantage of the loopholes and the weaknesses to woo people or intimidate them into their own political parties in their mindset of preparing for election, for dominance, for intimidation, for harassment. We forget that what is critical is the institution. They, as a political party that is in power, they have not solved the problem of their own parties. They have not solved the problem of Nigeria.I thought their priority is to look for quality people wherever they exist so that they can add value to what they are doing. But what we discovered which has been on for a long time is that PDP came up and allowed this nonsense to start whereby if you are a candidate of PDP, you do not need to go and campaign. You will be sleeping in your house and then you will win the election. That is where the impunity started. And this impunity has been properly embedded in the APC right now. You have cases of individuals going on for investigation, certain individuals that are under investigation, cross-carpeting to a ruling party. A ruling party that is supposed to show transparency, honesty, sincerity of purpose, leadership, determination, economic development, capacity building, skill acquisition building. They are now worried about bringing people into the government that so far is not doing well in terms of the basics, principles of power. What they are after is to show that they have a build-up so nobody can defeat them. It is a psychological warfare. But it has never worked. Look, I always remind people that we have seen tough times in this country. So much went under the bridge. Tough time did not survive. I always tell people that if there is one government that has fought, invested to return to power, it was President Jonathan. A humble president. But he lost the election. So, Nigerians at the last minute decide what they want to do. It is not about propaganda. It’s not about building a machinery that is very deceitful in nature, scary in nature, and you think you’ll survive it. No, it doesn’t happen. One thing about Nigerians is that they take last minute decisions. And you cannot predict where they will go. So for me, trying to build a one-party system is one of the most disservice the nation and democracy is going through. It contradicts our principles of presidential system of government. The separation of powers and citizens’ responsibility have been compromised by the same government that is allowing such things to happen. Because the National Assembly ought to have checkmated all this. The National Assembly has an oversight function to checkmate the excesses of the executive, including the laws that they make for the judiciary and the judiciary to interpret the law. So you cannot divorce this from the primitive and arrogance that is going on, that is leading into barbarism, into maiming, into kidnapping, into killings that have taken our psyche. If you are travelling from here now to Kaduna, you are having a lot of palpitations. No part of the country today you can certainly say is safe. Look at the Southeast, a very homogenous people. So what is causing all this? The fundamentals have been disconnected by the government that is supposed to enforce the law and create the tariffs. And so long as it continues, no single individual will predict tomorrow for you. So for me, what I think about it is that if they think they are smart by allowing people that are under investigation to move to their own parties simply because they are planning for the next election, they should know that their credibility has been dented. Because the primary responsibility of the government is to purge the system. There is no warehouse where free money are being kept for politicians to pick. Any money that exited our accounting system, our documents, have the conspiracy of people managing the financial sector. Because there is no way you can go to any warehouse and pick money and go. So the structural system of governance and financial regulations are well intact. So compromising those principles, using formal process, diverting the resources, lack of budget implementation and so on and so forth account for some of the things we are seeing today. So fundamentally, you cannot fix the system when people that are supposed to strengthen the system have weakened the system and make themselves to look as if they have done superlative projects and this is the reason people are crossing to their own parties. So, if it is based on project or policy implementation, it is something they can put at the public domain and let the decision do justice to it. But this policy of trying to bring one party system in Nigeria would never go well for them because when there are people that are coming with expectations and you have members of APC across the length and breadth of Nigeria that are starving, have no private market of their own, have no private hospital of their own, have no private school of their own simply because they are members of APC. So we go to the same pool. We suffer the same. We suffer the same segregation. So which means that coercing the political space into one party system is a greater disservice anybody can allow to happen in Nigeria.

What mechanisms are you putting in place to ensure that these entrants will not create the kind of crisis we see in other parties?

The Constitution of our party states that the party  is supreme. It is like the ANC party in South Africa. It is supreme. But our laws restricted parties from conducting business. The South African laws allow their parties to do business and generate money, that is why they are very strong. They invested in big institutions that generate billions for them. So they are not looking for a senator or a governor or a president to give them money. They have resources to run the parties. So, the party is supreme. They can tell the president to resign. Our laws here are weak in terms of strengthening parties. But we try as much as possible to look at the laws of other political parties to strengthen the constitution of SDP and the manifestos of SDP. That is why if you look at it in terms of discipline, SDP is more strict and they apply disciplinary measures on any individual that violates the party rules and regulations. Number two, we try as much as possible to purge issue of corruption in the party. I have been in PDP from the founding stages. I know how people who are aspiring to be in position, what they go through, the kind of resources they spend even before getting tickets. It does not exist in SDP. Three, we try to encourage young men and women to participate. We are going after talents, not bourgeois who have money. If you do not allow people who have talent to come into the system and develop the system, you are just for commercial purposes. The system will automatically collapse. So our priority is to get talents who will drive the economy, who will drive the political space and who will allow the institution to function. So these are key things that we have demonstrated in the last elections and that is giving us the attention that we need. Don’t forget Ekiti. We won that election, but it was taken out. Do not forget recently Kogi State where nine local governments flatly, all the votes went to SDP. But see how it turned out. It is one of the worst judgments I have ever gone through. So these are demoralizing factors for people to believe that their votes will not count. But let me say this please, before we conclude. I am urging all Nigerians, especially the youths that constitute 75 per cent of the voting strength of Nigeria, by INEC records, please, they should come out and cast their votes. Their votes will count. The laws allow you to cast your vote. The laws allow you to stay within certain parameters that we have their polling units. And make sure that you are part of counting your votes. You are part of escorting your votes. The voters’ apathy in Nigeria is definitely very delicate, very dangerous for our democracy. You cannot have almost 100 million registered voters and then you have the highest votes that declared the president right now as 8-point-something million. Buhari had about 15-16 million votes. Today, we are debating about 8.2 million votes that the president is running away with. How do you justify the legitimacy in this? And there is a great disservice for the government to declare public holiday on the election day. Private investment closed their offices. And people cannot go out and cast their votes because of the trust deficit, believing that their vote is not going to count. Their votes will count. You have to protect your vote. You must understand this. Nobody will protect you. You have to be there. If government will sacrifice their businesses, private sector will sacrifice their businesses, then you have to sacrifice the time as you cast your vote. You can time it around the counting period. Come back and be there when your votes are going to be counted because you know what you have voted for. Anything short of this, then it speaks doom for the country. The National Orientation Agency must live up to their responsibility and ensure they sensitize Nigerians on the need to come out and cast their votes and protect their votes. Otherwise, I am sorry, our democracy will suffer major consequences that nobody can define. And the country will go through crises that we have never imagined because the moment you take away the right and the privileges of citizens through instruments of state of coercion or intimidation or harassment, then we are in for trouble.

In less than two years, Nigerians especially eligible voters will be going to the polls, where will your party zone its ticket to?

Zoning is not a constitutional thing. It is an internal affairs of a political party. This is because the constitution of Nigeria does not support zoning. The Supreme Court says zoning is segregation. Okay? So zoning is an internal affairs of parties for leaders of parties to agree by an act of understanding that we are zoning this to A, B or C. The Supreme Court ruling on zoning is segregation. So, in 1999 or thereabout, I was the first person that took PDP to court when they tried to show as if zoning is constitutional. And the court says zoning is not constitutional. So, when we get to the bridge, we will cross the bridge. We are not there yet. We do not have a presidential aspirant right now. INEC has not opened campaign activities. We have not come up with a timetable of presidential primaries. So, it is going to be very unprofessional for me, unethical to talk about zoning right now.

Are you not scared that the PDP is almost gone because of internal crisis and the APC is feasting from the crises?

So many people have said the APC is sending virus everywhere. If you are sending a virus and you do not have an antidote to the virus, it means the virus will end up consuming you. So, if they believe the solution to disagree with people who do not agree with them is for them to send virus into the parties, they should also be aware that they have no immunity to the virus. So, they have to go back to their thinking cap. If the whole aim is to destabilize parties, as you said, in Labour, in NNPP, in all other parties, is what will give them victory. I refer them back to history. I believe if they have strategic thinkers in their government, it is the wrong way to go. But if they don’t have strategic thinkers, they are power mongers. They are free to do that. But all I can assure you is that the Nigerian airspace will be full of litigations and that the international community will understand that politicians are not organized, are not sincere, are not honest. Look, we try to avoid coups in Nigeria. Every coup has input of politicians in Nigeria. We thought that by fighting to restore democracy in 1999, politicians would have mature to a point of respecting institutions, allowing institutions to function and prevail. But what we discover is that we have not learned our lessons as politicians. Since we have not learned our lesson, we want to grab power at all costs, without modesty, without humility. The consequence is that you will have a system that you cannot control yourself. You also forgot that they are in turmoil, APC themselves. So, if the virus is beneficial, then they will continue injecting the virus. And then the future will determine how it will go.

Are you saying this government has not done anything worth celebrating so far?

In terms of security, as a journalist, what is your rating? In terms of health, go to the national hospital, which is supposed to be a pride of the nation. Go to even Nizamiya, where VIPs are going. Go and take the public opinion. Do not talk of other government-established hospitals. Go and see the wards where patients are lying down. Look at the settings. Go to the secondary schools, primary schools across the country. You will shed tears. Nobody beats you. You will start imagining that, are we a nation? What is going on? Where did we get it wrong? So, if you are asking me this question to answer you, I don’t have the statistics. You see statistics from one end to the other. The public opinion statistics, the government-opinionated statistics, and the international opinion and statistics about what is going on in Nigeria. So, for me, I don’t want to comment on that. I want to see what they will present to Nigerians after May 29, that they have a full two years in office. They will dish out their successes. Look, I watched the former Senate president, was it last week or thereabout, saying that the insurgency is re-emerging with full-scale force. This same government is telling us that they have disseminated them. This same government. Go to Katsina State to find out the level of insecurity. Go to Zamfara. It is daily on the news. Go to the Southeast. It is daily captured. Go to even the Southwest. It’s daily captured. Go to the Northeast, Northwest, North-central. So, how does development come in an environment that is not secured? How do you expect citizens to invest their resources in an environment that is not secured and their lives are not secured? Now, I thought the primary function or responsibility of this government when they came in is the restoration of law and order. That is the foundation of any other development. So, I cannot exaggerate. Let them come up with their statistics. We have our own statistics that we are collecting, departmental by departmental. And, of course, we will respond accordingly. But to say that whether we wish this government well or not, we wish them well. We pray for them. No responsible citizen will pray bad for leaders because you don’t know who will be there tomorrow. You may end up being there tomorrow. So, you pray for leaders to do well. You pray for the country to be stable, to be peaceful, for environment to provide basis for everyone to conduct his or her own business under conducive and happy environment.