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From Priscilla Ediare, Ado-Ekiti
Prince Akintade Olayisade is the Coordinator, Tinubu/ Shettima Grassroots Independent Campaign Council in Ekiti State.
In this interview, the Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress(APC) and former chairman, State Universal Basic Education Board(SUBEB) in the state, spoke on Tinubu’s chances in the February election, his party and other issues.
As the coordinator, Tinubu/ Shettima Grassroots Independent Campaign Council, can you tell us about your activities in the state?
We have been working assiduously well in making sure that we sell our candidate and his programmes for Nigeria. As the name connotes, it is with the grassroots and it is quite an enormous job, ours is to work door to door, house to house in all the nooks and crannies of Ekiti State making sure that we campaign very well, and ensuring that our candidate emerges as the president of Nigeria.
Some have said the presidential election is a four-horse race, do you agree?
Tinubu, Kwankwaso, Obi and Atiku, if you will have to go by their antecedents, you should first of all ask what have they done to benefit mankind? Tinubu as you all know is a beacon of light and hope, whose political blueprints are eternally true as regards the Nigerian situation.
He has been tested and proven. He did it in Lagos State. When he became the governor of Lagos State in 1999, he met a mess that was called Lagos. He met a state that was nothing to write home about and from there he turned it around and today Lagos has become the fifth largest economy in Africa and it’s still going. Of recent, President Buhari was in Lagos to commission projects.
In the last 40 years, there has never been a port in Nigeria commissioned even by the Federal Government but Lagos State under his leadership because when he came on board in 1999, he gathered 16 people, they called them G16 that sat down and mapped out the strategy and they made a blueprint on 25 years development plan for Lagos State, how Lagos State will look like 25 years to come and they are running it every four years and I am glad to tell you that the indigene of Ekiti State, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele was one of them and that is the blueprint they have been following. President Buhari said he thanked Tinubu for putting it on paper but appreciated Governor Sanwo-Olu for actualising it. What did they actualise? The deep sea port. No new sea port in Nigeria for the past 40 years, that will create enormous employment and apart from that, Imota Rice Mill, the largest in Africa and the third largest in the whole world; talk of Dangote refinery in that coastal land, 840 kilometres that span Lagos, Ogun, Ondo to Rivers States. It was Tinubu that encouraged Dangote and gave him the enabling environment to site it in Lagos. All those things combined together.
For Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, he has not really occupied executive position as number one, he was number two. Recently, he lamented, he said during their time, they spent 16 billion dollars on power and nothing to show for it. So, are we going to say that we want to go back to yester years of darkness? Of course, no. At the same time, he was in charge of the economy during their own time. He sat on privatisation, we all know what happened, they will use Federal government fund to repair corporations and in turn sold the corporations to himself and his cronies at cheaper rates including Ajaokuta steel, it was just of recent that President Buhari paid 352 million dollars to the company that brought it; today Ajaokuta steel is owned 100 per cent by Nigeria.
As for Obi, he was a governor in Abambra State for eight years, those eight years, if you have to go by what he did in that place, they are nothing to write home about. If they limit the election to Anambra State, do you think he can win?
So you can only be judged by your past, by precedence. Nigeria is in crisis now and we need a leader who has been tested and proven.
If you have to talk about Kwankwaso, he tried a bit in Kano State but Nigeria is quite a complex society where by at this time, we cannot entrust Nigeria in the hands of somebody who will be doing trial and error, but Tinubu has prepared in its entirety for better Nigeria.
Some people have said Nigerians won’t vote for APC in the coming election in view of the current hardship occasioned by the fuel and naira notes scarcity?
Their thinking is legitimate. We have to be sincere with ourselves; things are not going fine but if you see it, Buhari has tried a lot when it comes to infrastructure development, no doubt about that. He tried in fighting insecurity, no doubt about that. Insecurity has subsided but we have not done it right in its entirety but it is now better than what it was when he came on board. When he came on board, we had about eleven local governments that were flying the flag of Boko Haram outside Nigeria but today, there is no single town or village in Nigeria that is not in Nigeria. But we are going through hardship right now because of some political mercenaries within and without, those who are even close to the president, that is the gospel truth; those who call themselves cabal, who are hell bent on making sure that Nigeria is in crisis, due to peculiar gains, personal gains and due to obvious reasons. But can you use that to judge Asiwaju Tinubu? Of course not. Because, number one, Asiwaju has not been in government, there is a difference between government and party but there is no way we can run away from the fact that we are in crisis in Nigeria because the crisis in Nigeria does not know any party; we are suffering it together and the point is this, I told you earlier that Buhari has done well but I am afraid personally, that if care is not taken, the issue on ground, the issue of fuel shortage and the currency swap, if care is not taken, that one will overwhelm what he has done right.
There has not been a government in Nigeria that has done more than Buhari in terms of infrastructure but it is time of reawakening for him, for the people that surround him as Tinubu said recently that nobody can doubt the loyalty of Buhari to the party and his passion for development when it comes to Nigeria but there are some ants that surround him that he must caution. If he does not caution them the ants will move to the underwear that could cause a general to remove his pants.
You just said there are some ants that are surrounding the president that he must caution. Marrying this with Tinubu’s outcry that there are some forces in the presidency working against him, it means the APC is going into the election a divided house?
APC is not divided. As you can see, APC is different from the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP); that does not mean if there is anything wrong you cannot point it out. You can never see anywhere where Tinubu condemned Buhari or anybody but there are some reactionary elements within that are causing problems, they call themselves cabal, those are the people that we should caution. Nigeria as we are is not about religion, is not about ethnicity, not about party, we are in crisis.
We have all the things that we need to have to develop as a nation, talk of bitumen in Ondo State, we have it plenty, second largest in the whole world, talk of iron/ore we have it 90 per cent completed that we just need small effort, and the import of that is that it will create employment. Tinubu, if you read his blueprints, he talked about gas, laying of pipes from Nigeria to Morocco to Europe, he is not afraid to compete with Russia. Russia is the country that supplies gas to Europe 90 per cent that is why Russia and Ukraine war cannot end quickly because not too many countries want to stand up against Russia because if Russia cuts their gas, they will die during this winter time.
Looking at the people you have identified around Buhari, the so-called cabal, as an experienced politician, why do you think these people are doing this to Nigerians, what do you think is their aim?
Everybody knows about the cabals. They don’t want Tinubu. They know the stuff that Tinubu is made of. They don’t want development for Nigeria. They have tribal sentiment. That was why I said earlier that the way we are now is not about religion, ethnicity or where you come from; anybody that can develop Nigeria in the real sense of development because we have everything that is humanly possible that we can have to develop as a nation but we are not tapping into them. Look at Nigeria as of today, to construct a kilometre of road will cost between N250 to 350 million; this is because of the exchange rate. Exchange rate now is N750 to N800 per dollar. The same rate is what you will use to import asphalt, and this thing we are importing we have it. Nigeria is the only country in the world that produces oil and still imports oil, thanks be to Dangote that is now building refinery.
Abinitio, everybody knew that they didn’t want Tinubu to emerge in the primary but thanks to the development mind of Buhari that said he will allow for level playing ground even though during his own time, they didn’t allow for level playing ground but he said he will allow for level playing ground and eventually Tinubu emerged and these people did not rest on their oars and they are still not resting on their oars, they are hell bent.
Imagine, we are the only country in the whole world too, we are a very peculiar nation where the person who is in charge of our currency, governor of Central Bank, has turned himself to a politician, that is where we got it wrong, that is where I can blame Buhari as the president. The day Emefiele signified that he wanted to be a politician, that was the day Buhari was supposed to have sent him packing. It is not good for our body politics; it is an aberration. You are in charge of our monetary policy, you branded several hundreds of vehicles, you made your intention known that you wanted to become president of Nigeria and the president still left you there to function, it is uncalled for, it is wrong, it is an aberration, it has to be condemned; for Nigeria to move forward Emefiele must go.
Don’t you see the activities of these so-called cabal as a threat to the success of your party in the election?
Of course, it is a threat but they are unorganised people, unorganised opinion. Organised opinion will always overwhelm unorganised opinion. Tinubu is privy to information, so when he cried out, some people were thinking that he was saying something wrong but he was saying the obvious, but the point is this, people are now smarter than before, people know Tinubu has helped Nigeria in a way of entrenching democracy because he is a democrat to the core. He worked assiduously in installing Buhari but he has never participated in any way or form in governance as far as APC is concerned.
He was in government last in 2007, so Nigerians are wiser now that they cannot visit the sins of the government on APC because the agenda that they are unveiling now is not of APC, it is more or less of personal agenda. It is not in APC manifesto that there should be crisis of fuel, it is not in APC manifesto that naira must be changed. In Economics, to change currency at intervals is not wrong, but why at this time? If it had been done more than two years ago, people must have gotten used to it; things will be moving quite fine.
A lot of countries are changing their currencies seamlessly that people don’t even realize it but why are they suffering Nigerians? A lot of people have their money in the bank but they cannot access it. Buhari said it recently that he doesn’t want money to be an issue in electioneering, it is okay.
But in any clime, even in a civilised clime, there is no way that money will not be an issue, a lot of people contested in American politics that they withdrew because they did not have fund to continue. The media people will get fund, advertisement fund, moving around fund. If you allow that to cease, how are we going to be moving around and selling the candidature of a better candidate for better Nigeria? So money plays a role but we are not saying that money should be used to buy votes. I don’t subscribe to money for votes but there are a lot of things they use money for during electioneering in any clime. I stand to be corrected or quoted. People should be able to see Tinubu beyond party. Why we are here is not about party anymore, it is about how to move Nigeria forward. Who can do it? Who has done it before? Who can move Nigeria forward?
If you are talking about Atiku, they have been there 16 years, we know what happened in this country. The English people do say that once beaten, twice shy. We will not go backward, we have to move forward. So, going by the antecedent of all the candidates that are contesting, you will know that Tinubu stands out when it comes to development. So that is why I strongly know interacting with people, we should be able to separate government from APC and from the candidature of APC.
Do you see your candidate actually winning?
Tinubu is going to win that election. Not only winning but by landslide. Let me add that in the whole of Southwest, he will not lose any state.
