By Fred Itua, Abuja
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from Delta State, Chief Ayiri Emami has offered an insight into why certain elements in the Presidential Villa tagged as cabal are working to undermine the ruling party’s presidential candidate, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He spoke on other issues in this interview.
There is so much unpalatable news coming from the APC. You have a presidential candidate in Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu but the story out there is that the house is divided against itself and we have a few weeks to the election, what’s your take?
To me, I don’t want to believe that the house is divided against itself. There are some few elements who are trying to sabotage the system, but I don’t want to believe that the house is divided against itself. If the house is divided, you can see party chieftains coming out to say, “ Oh, this is what we want to do. “ For me, if you cannot come out, that shows that you’re a coward you just there, just trying to sabotage yourself, not even the interests of everybody. So I don’t see that as a house being divided against itself.
President Muhammadu Buhari is not carrying the campaign on his head as it should be towards ensuring that Tinubu becomes the next president and this can be seen on a number of cases that he was not present at the campaign. How do you react to that?
To me, even his own election, it was other people that were actually championing his campaign. So, I just feel that that is his normal style. All humans are not the same. Tinubu is a workaholic, during the 2014/2015, he did that. At a time, even during the primary, somebody that was contesting, like President Muhammadu Buhari said I didn’t have money to give to the delegates. For example, if he was not the one contesting, people would have said this man is a wicked man. Then, he was the one contesting and he could make that kind of statement in the public while canvassing for votes at the campaign ground. To me, it is his lifestyle, even if he is supporting you, it is not that type that comes out to the public and say it. But what we’re trying to say is that those saboteurs within should please retreat. Let’s go into a proper contest. I don’t see any problem. To me, I know that Buhari is supporting us because he had said it publicly and that is one Muslim man that I believe that once he swears by the Quran, he stands by it.
One of the bedrock of elections is funding. Most of the campaign council members are in complete lack of funds, and we know that the governors are not really coming out to spend money; the party has failed to raise funds for this, thereby leaving only Asiwaju the burden to spend money. Don’t you think this is part of the plot to frustrate Asiwaju from winning this election?
To me, I don’t even see PDP or any other party throwing money, because the economy itself, there is no money to throw around. When there’s money to throw around, people will throw money around. The situation today, not only in Nigeria, around the world, if you understand the situation, it is not actually friendly to throw around money but when it is necessary, you bring out money to spend.
To me, instead of throwing around my money going to rallies and all those things, I will keep my money for logistics to move people, for example, the riverine where I can move people to various communities so that they can vote. It is not only in Nigeria that we have economic issues. To throw money around will be a little bit difficult. Not peculiar to APC.
You are from Delta State where the PDP Vice Presidential Candidate is from, what impact do you think Asiwaju can make?
Asiwaju will make a lot of impact, I have said it before now. The governor (Ifeanyi Okowa) is a very good friend and an elder brother. But with due respect, he has not done very well for the people. Warri is the oil city, we are in total darkness; roads are not good, very dirty, people are not happy. So, it’s already showing that Asiwaju and Ovie-Omo Agege are making a lot of waves. To a lot of Deltans, Tinubu is our in-law and that is working for him. Some people will tell you what is the job of the Vice President. For instance, a woman might not even have an office but have a lot of influence on his husband. Asaba that you see today became a state capital because of the influence of late Maryam Babangida. So, if Asiwaju goes to South south, he is talking to his in-laws and we know he is going to do a lot for us. Even before now, he used to extend his hand of fellowship to us. When we have a problem, we run to him and he solves it.
Outside Delta, how secure is Asiwaju in terms of galvanizing votes in the whole of South-south?
As Director Special Duties, I have done a lot of studies because sometimes I am very angry when people say Peter Obi is going to have votes in the South-south; it is not the way people are looking at it. There is a family in my local government, if everybody is in this party, they will be at the other party. When some of us were in PDP, they were in Labour Party, because (Great) Ogboru was using Labour then. When APC came, they moved to APC and we moved with them. I thought when Obi’s Labour party is back, I thought they would move. I organised one event, trying to sensitise people to pick up PVCs and I tried to go around the entire local government to know the members of the labour party, but we couldn’t find any. Maybe one or two persons now that who could not get APC tickets are there to get the ticket to contest.
What I see is PDP versus APC. That’s one thing I want to still advise my people to come out and give proper support to Asiwaju because Asiwaju will definitely win. And if he wins, the North will say they are the ones that supported Asiwaju that we didn’t come out to support Asiwaju. When (Nasir) el-Rufai was saying Obi will win South-south and South-east, to some of us, we felt pained. That means he’s not doing his study properly or maybe they are trying to even sabotage us so that at the end of the day we cannot go and start laying claims that we actually worked for Asiwaju. If not, whatever el-Rufai was saying, 80 percent of it was true. But saying that Obi is going to win South-south, for us, it is very painful. He is somebody we respect. I don’t see Obi winning anywhere in south south. You can check it out .
The recent policies of the present government, the Naira swap, the fuel Scarcity and all the rest are creating a serious problem for Asiwaju’s ambition, what’s your response to that?
To me, Asiwaju has said it earlier when we were in Ogun State that it is sabotage. I was standing very close to him when he was saying it. I was having that feeling that how can our presidential candidate start saying this kind of thing. But at the end of the day when I looked at it and did my own analysis, I found out that he was very right. For instance, maybe if it is someone else who is of interest to the Villa that is the one that is contesting, by now you will see the Federal Government no matter what, maybe they’re having issues of daughter vessels. You will see they would do everything to start getting daughter vessels to take the product, no matter the cost so that it would not cause hardship for the people. But we are going public now letting everyone know that the saboteurs are from some persons, all is because of Asiwaju. At least, we are trying to convince everybody that when Asiwaju gets there, he is going to correct the abnormality.
We can’t just sit down and let them sabotage a good man who wants to come and change the narrative. In 2019, a lot of people in my state fought me that I was working for Buhari. We did everything, in fact the kind of things we were having that period in 2019, some of us were choked to discourage us to ensure that we weren’t able to get that 25 per cent. That’s why you see people say people are sabotaging. Some of us who have foot soldiers really want to believe that there are a lot of saboteurs. Because we are foot soldiers, we take that into cognizance. So we’re telling our people this is sabotage because this is not what they did with us in 2019. It was not Buhari that was dealing with us in that period, 80 percent of those same persons are still in government.
Don’t you think the anger out there now, people are sleeping at ATM, sleeping at filling stations, don’t you think…
(Cuts in) Is it Asiwaju that owns those banks that people are destroying? They are destroying banks now because people now know it is sabotage. We too we’re coming out now preaching and letting people know the reason why they are doing this. And that is why you can see me today talking to you that whatever that is going on is sabotage because of our candidate.
I wanted to ask if the anger out there will not affect the chances of APC bearing in mind that it is the APC government that is inflicting…
(Cuts in) that is what those people sabotaging want to achieve and that’s is why I am with you now so that more people will read tomorrow and know that these things are geared towards Asiwaju. If you see Asiwaju campaigning and everything, once he goes anywhere, he would say please come out and vote no matter how. Even if you don’t have fuel, try and trek to the place, because if he wins, this fuel scarcity he will end it.
So in other words these things are not the policies of the APC ?
They are not policies of the APC at all. Because if they are the policies of the APC, everybody would be involved. These are policies of some few persons to sabotage.
Why introduce such policies during the election?
People are claiming rightly, or wrongly, that these people in the Villa that Governor Nasir El- Rufai referred to as a cabal has a personal grouse against Tinubu. What is this grouse?
Let me use myself as an example. Even in our small community, if you know your right and you know what you are doing and you want to lead, many people will come after you. Because a lot of people don’t want somebody that understands the system to lead because of how to manipulate. Asiwaju knows it all. So, looking at my small community, people know that I know the tradition, I know my right from my left when it comes to tradition. So, you will see every day all kinds of battles or kind of blackmail, or kind of way to stop me and that is how I see Asiwaju. He knows a lot about governance , he knows what to do to make sure that this place works. And if it works, the persons there doing dubious things would not be able to do it. So, if such a person is to take over, it won’t be an easy battle because they know he knows the inner workings of government and can’t be manipulated.
Do you think Buhari is doing enough to change the narrative that he is not involved in all this. The governors met with him yesterday on this Naira redesign. And he said give me one week, but people are saying with the harrowing experience Nigerians are passing through, why would you be talking about one week?
Maybe when he said give me one week, maybe he has extra money that they kept somewhere and he wants to bring it out. So if somebody says give me one week, you give the person one week. You won’t force him, he’s the president. So, give him one week. Why are you stressing yourself.
By way of analysis, we have four major contenders, Asiwaju, Obi, Atiku and Kwankwaso. What is that edge that you will say Asiwaju has over them
I want to talk only about Asiwaju. I don’t want to promote anybody.
What is his unique selling point?
To me, what I have seen, for instance, all this movement that you can see today about Asiwaju, he sits from morning till night and makes a decision about it. That means he knows what he’s doing. If we’re traveling tomorrow, he will tell you X Y Z are going. So if he gets into government, he will be the one that will sit down and give his directive. I believe that with Asiwaju there, we will be able to know that this thing is not working. Asiwaju will want to listen to TVC in the morning, you will not go and choose the television channels that Asiwaju will watch. So he understands. To some of us, our terrain in Escravos is like Lagos. So if I’m telling Asiwaju that we are having erosion problem, Asiwaju will not hesitate to say let’s go and cure this place because he already had a similar issue in Victoria Island that he has dealt with. So maybe ours might not be a high class but he knows what to do.
So if you tell him we are having problem of gully erosion in South-east, he will know that he needs to take expert to do the job. He will not tell us that he wants to save money for us when things are not on ground. Asiwaju will want our refineries to be working, so that it would be in his name that during his time, the refineries were properly fixed. He might even take a working visit to the refinery to see what is actually going on. He has his mind. I have studied him. From his house when we are going for a rally in Lagos, everybody including el-Rufai was telling Asiwaju that he doesn’t have to enter the open bus but he insisted.
The same thing happened in Kano with the little things I have seen around him. That’s what I used to tell some of my friends that say Asiwaju goes to places, he sleeps, I said okay, myself as a young man, if I don’t sleep for 24 hours, maybe I will do worse than Asiwaju. This is a man that will have meetings till 6 a.m. Then maybe he sleeps for two or three hours before they will go and wake him up.
He isn’t having enough rest. But when he’s now in office, he’s not pursuing anything, he would be more relaxed, so he will do his job accordingly.