Daniel Kanu
National Chairman, National Conscience Party (NCP), Dr Yunusa Salisu Tanko, and the party’s presidential standard bearer in the 2019 elections is also the head of publicity for the new political movement, National Consultative Front (Ncfront).
In this chat with Sunday Sun, the activist and politician spoke on the new movement and its agenda, the Nigerian condition, security challenges, and politics of 2023, among others. Excerpt:
You are part of a group that is trying to float a new political movement, do you think it’s the way to go looking at what happened to President Obasanjo’s much publicised Third Force initiative that later had no impact. How optimistic are you?
Democratically, that is the best way, except, of course, if people want us to go on arms struggle which is not the best. The only best way we can is to mobilise the people to think differently and we, most of us who are championing this particular cause, should show different leadership style. The problem of Nigeria for a very long time has been that of leadership. The leaders we have in the past and the present have failed the country though we give so much trust to thinking that maybe they have integrity, but they have failed woefully. So, the first is that the people themselves have lost trust in terms of our leaders generally and so they too have either have a conspiracy against the state. What I mean by that is that eventually because they have lost so much trust, what they do is to simply collect money to vote for any individual who runs in an election despite the political party. And then the leaders on the other side have disappointed them in such a way that they have marginalized them and reduced them to just a pun that they use for their selfish gain, so what do we do for us to change the attitude of the people and then the leaders who are proposing to lead should be able to show the capacity of leadership so that both can now run with a political agenda that is needed to reshape the country and move the country forward.
Most Nigerians think that even those that are positioning themselves today for a shift in leadership style, including members of your group, have at one time or the other been in leadership positions before now and were unable to practice what they are preaching today?
The only difference is that at least those people have realised their mistakes are now keenly interested in moving the country forward in a different direction, so if we keep quiet the country will continue to decay, so even if a criminal who must have done something wrong and he says okay, I have done something wrong, I have genuinely confessed and I am now ready to turn a new leaf and do it the right way, of course, the person should be brought on board. The person now has the right type of experience to do it better. But mind you, it is not that all that is preaching for a new shift now did it wrongly when they were there. You must bear in mind the offices they occupied then. Some were in offices where they were mere advisers and if your boss did not take your good advice or refused to implement it what do you do? But be that as it may, what we want for the country now is for everybody to move in a prospective direction that can help the country devoid of tribal interest, devoid of corruption, devoid of hate speeches, devoid of racism, killing and maiming and putting the country in very difficult light, all of these things are what we want to change and if we can change at least 60-65 per cent of this particular travail we find ourselves, the country will have a different lease of life.
How has it been for the group in terms of mobilising Nigerians from different parts of the country to key into your message and vision?
The mobilisation is on, we are very much on the move, and about 30 of us are in the lead of leaders, people like Umar Na’Abba, Prof Pat Utomi, Prof Remi Sonaiya, Isah Aremu etc, eminent Nigerians who have the capacity and track record to stand in the mobilisation. The Nigerian people have established the fact that they are tired of all the rhetoric of saying that we are going to do this, what they want to know is, how do we do it, and we are finding answers to that.
Some of your members like Abubakar Umar (rtd) are already disassociating themselves from the group…?
(Cuts in) Let me clarify on that. People like Oby Ezekwesili, Femi Falana, Rt. Hon. Umar Na’Abba, Mallam Shehu Sani, Prof Chidi Odinkalu, Segun Osinowo, Dr. Chris Ekiyor, Ms. Habiba Balogun etc, all these people have contributed one thing or the other to the Whatsap group that we have, which we have had for some time now. We have been discussing at a consultative level, some of them made concrete suggestions as regards to our last communiqué. What happened must have been a kind of miscommunication. What we thought was that we are just dropping a communiqué of what we agreed to do; unfortunately it went to the press full-blown, not as planned yet, so some of them felt embarrassed. It is not that they were not part of us, they were and I can confirm that to you, but going to the press must have put some of them on a difficult level, perhaps they felt they should have been consulted before such. We understand and apologies have been tendered to those who have misconstrued it to be, probably, name dropping, but apologies have been dropped to all of them and then we are trying to woo them back and you can see that recently Alhaji Balarabe Musa has endorsed the group, being a statesman that we all admire. So, we are reaching out to others. And they will be with us. We will have challenges especially from some people who may not want to see the new change come to reality, but then it is within us, them, and the people of Nigeria. if the people of Nigeria are not tired with what they have seen over the years they can still go back to the same old circle and if they are tired and they needed some genuine change we are available to give them the leeway we thought that will be better for every Nigerian. We are still apologizing to all of our leaders who must have felt that they were not properly consulted as the case may be, but the fact remains that if you are not with us, then who will you be with?
Some experts are of the view that even if we have good leaders that are altruistic in their intentions and we still retain the present structure that the country will not make any headway in terms of development. Do you share that view?
I don’t think so. What problem will we possibly have when we have agreed to move together as a people, when an Igbo man sees a Hausa man as his brother, when a Yoruba man sees another tribesman as his brother, when we show love to one another. The problem we have is that for a long period we refused to address some of the key issues that divide us. For example, for a long time the people in the Southeast are saying that they have been marginalized, whether wrong or right, unfortunately, this particular government that is supposed to have the opportunity of uniting our ethnic groups further divided it. We refused to do what we needed to do. Hausa people are looking at it, and saying fine, we are from the North and some people are continuously, every now and then accusing us of being a burden and simply enjoying from other peoples resources forgetting that for a long time too the North has contributed to the nation-building. And in the Southwest where the intellectual base is, everybody is thinking that this people (the North) is drawing them back and they are saying they want to be moving as an independent people, at their own pace, not giving other people opportunity while forgetting that it is the same people from the North and the South who help them in building the Southwest too because the ports and seaports and the intellectuals had other groups input in its development. So, it is good or in our best interest to see ourselves as partners, as brothers in our development agenda rather than focusing deeply on things that will not unite us. The truth is that everybody has been complaining, probably, we need a commission of apology to everybody, every one of us must apologise to each other and say, in any area we have done you wrong forgive us and vice versa. When you apologise to one another then if there are problems we can now start thinking as one. The intellectual and capacity base in the Southeast can never be over quantified, what the Southwest also has to give this country is very enormous in terms of what they can contribute, so also is the North, so we have enormous capacity, collectively as a nation to build this country based on trust, equity, freedom, and justice, that way we can move forward.
How do you feel with the present thinking of most Nigerians that we are deeply divided today more than any time in the nation’s history?
Of course, I feel sad and worried, that was the reason the majority of us refused to keep quiet and ready to move along and work together with other like-minds so that we can move out of this particular quagmire. The question is that everybody is complaining that things are not done right and every day you find out one group or the other demonstrating, protesting. Initially, when it started it was like child’s play. The Niger-Delta Volunteer Force started with the agitation for self-control and all that, we then had the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), at the end of the day we are now having what we are witnessing from Boko Haram, how they are ravaging everywhere, so every part of this country have agitated for one thing or the other, wrongly or rightly it has affected the people and then the country from moving, so the complaint is so much so that we need to do something as quickly as possible before it consumes all of us.
You just mentioned the issue of Boko Haram, but the government keeps saying that the group has been decapitated and neutralised and that they are on top of the situation?
No, no, if they are on top of the security, how can Boko Haram be doing what they are doing? Even yesterday (Monday), 15 people were killed, today (Tuesday) another 18 people were killed in Katsina, the state of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If they can attack the president’s state and be doing the way they are doing and then coming into the state with relish, nobody is stopping them, and even abducting the local government chairman with one woman, then how can anyone say that they are on top of the matter? It is either that their intelligence failed them or inaptitude in the task on hand or incapacitation of what they are doing on the people or lack of chain and command. And I find it so difficult to believe why Mr. President uptil now did not find it fit to have sacked or relieved these Service Chiefs of their positions? Why? I don’t just get it and then he finds it so comfortable to be living in this particular denial that they are doing something. What they promised, in the beginning, was that in less than six months they will take away Boko Haram, but now look at it, it is getting equivalent to six years, we are still doing the same thing. We cannot uptil now think, and some of these people (Boko Haram) will come out and make public statements, boasting that they are coming to attack you or your community and they will still come and do the attack, ferocious one, and still get away, nobody will do anything. Now everybody is almost on his own, getting security on his own to protect oneself. This cannot continue. It is because of the failure of the state that every zone is strategizing and agitating to get the presidency position. Look, had it been that, probably when Jonathan was the president of the country, that everybody was satisfied with how things were being run, do you think there will be this strong agitation from all groups for a shift in presidency from one particular part of the country to another? No. Had it been also that the present president (Buhari) has done or being sincere with ways of uniting this country together how we ought to have been united, and people working together in fairness, equity, and justice, do you think people will worry about a shift in power? Do you think, let’s say the president’s kitchen cabinet has an Igbo man, Yoruba man, Nupe man etc, do you think anybody will be agitating when they find out that they are carried along, that they belong, that they are treated equally as Nigerians? But the truth is that merit is the key, anybody that has the capacity to lead us out of this particular wood is what we want irrespective of where he comes from: North, South, East, South-South etc, does not really matter. Unfortunately, because of these denials, or probably segregation, etc with some people believing that they have not been given the opportunity to lead this country, it has now led to different agitations that we are seeing today with different zones wanting to get there (Presidency). It is not because of this shifting position that made me say that an Igbo should lead this country, no. My support for the Southeast is for them to at least give us some of that particular intelligence capacity that they have, share it with the country so that Nigeria can move forward. But unfortunately too, my brothers in the Southeast are not playing the politics that ought to be played. They are very good at doing their trade, they are everywhere in this country, why can’t they use that particular capacity to mobilise their friends everywhere rather than having hate and make enemies? You cannot lead a country when you already show a complete denial to belong to that country, nobody will trust you. This is a fact, but once you show that your capacity is for the interest of the country, you will win the trust of others. Let me tell you, we have capable individuals in the Southeast who have shown love, equity, and reliability if given opportunity. Can you believe the capacity of our Eastern brothers who during even the civil war were producing planes, armoured tanks? So, you can imagine the in-depth of the capacity they have. Other regions also have their attributes and what they can bring on board to make Nigeria great. So, we need one another. We need to go back to history to make our corrections. I am seriously interested in having an Eastern president, but our people in the East need to play the right type of politics and then show that Nigeria is in their mind. There is no gainsaying, every part of this country has been offended, but we need to be careful the way we tackle it. Remember the kind of exposé that was given by Zakary of CNN. He said that Nigerians are too much in their ingenuity, they are doing wonderfully well in America, and in other countries of the world, imagine if we bring all of this resourcefulness together, nobody, can beat us. The man who thought me mathematics is the best neurosurgeon in Russia, he is a Hausa man from Kano, but now when you look for them you can’t find them here, you have to start looking for them in America, Britain, Russia etc, we need to put our country together as a people, that is paramount for us. We must have that trust and believe in ourselves to be able to move this country forward.