2019: Buhari hasn’t said he’s not contesting —Abdulkadir

Former Minister of Youth Development and now National Vice Chairman (North-West) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Inuwa Abdulkadir, in this interview with Deputy Editor, LEON USIGBE, speaks on contending issues in the ruling party, the purported 2019 ambition of President Muhammadu Buhari inclusive. Excerpts:

 

PENULTIMATE Friday, you were with the APC national leadership which, together with the PDP national leadership, met with President Muhammadu Buhari. It was a first. What’s your impression of the meeting?

To me, it was a delightful meeting. It symbolises what Nigerians want – one indivisible country, a meeting devoid of politics, devoid of partisanship. The purpose of that meeting was to formally welcome the president from medical trip abroad after some few months which, before his returned, generated a lot of tension and controversy. It symbolises the happiness of Nigerians, especially the political class, that the president is back and all are happy, that both parties are happy and mean well for this country despite all acrimony. And I think for the first time, we are coming out to show that there should be no bitterness in politics; there should be no ill-will in politics. From the pleasantries we exchanged with our colleagues, leaders of the PDP, I think everything is hopeful for Nigeria. I foresee a smooth partisan politics in the near future.

 

APC is only just now thinking of a meeting of its National Executive Committee (NEC). It is not able to hold a national convention. What’s making it so tough for the party’s leaders to meet?

You see, one should not pretend about those things that have happened in the last two years, particularly after the 2015 elections. What happened in 2015 has never happened before in this country where through the ballot, you remove the incumbent president. 2015 general election was more or less a universal resolution to remove PDP from office at that particular point in time, because of so many variables and factors. That was achieved. You could see the euphoria in the campaign despite the postponement, especially for us, the APC, because what really happened was the culmination of so many different political thinking to make up the APC. Before it happened, it was unimaginable. Afterwards, we retired to governance after having won the election, having the majority in so many respects: the presidency, a majority of the governors in the states and the legislature. So, it was a Herculean task for everybody. Yet, the hopes of Nigerians were high on the president and people were even expecting miracles to happen. So, you could imagine how difficult it is to manage the situation. And to compound this situation, there was a recession. Recession in the sense that oil prices had gone down globally and the treasury was almost empty because there was a lot of pilferage not only at the federal level but also at the state level. So, these things compounded the situation of those who were elected.

Also, in the National Assembly, there were mistakes or miscalculations on the part of our party in the election of the principal officers or presiding officers. So, all these things compounded the situation and you should expect those things to distract governance generally and it is doing so. It is only later we started to realise this. The inability to hold the national convention of our party or other statutory meetings, these were part of the distractions. You know that there were no regular meetings of the National Working Committee of our party. We were unable to hold the National Executive Committee meeting of our party largely because of the absence of the president, who is a key member of our party. The president is the de facto leader of the party and it would not be nice if he is not there. He was sick and out of the country and the vice-president was acting in that capacity.  But there are some crucial issues we thought should wait for the president, because they are not too urgent to address. You know in politics, there will be a lot of misinterpretation of events when they do happen. You see, it’s much easier and safer for a party not to drag ourselves into unnecessary bickering by avoiding those issues. But the president is back; we thank God for that. All preparations are on for the mobilisation for both meetings.

We have been in consultations with other leaders, de facto leaders. We have been having regular meetings with the governors and a lot has been done and achieved in terms of addressing some key party issues, particularly the internal issues. So, I don’t think it is something we should worry much about, because it had happened. Nobody envisaged those things would happen and they have happened and heaven has not fallen. Where we made mistakes, we will try to rectify those mistakes because we are human beings. After all, we are not expected to be perfect in what we do.

 

But there is the perception of a cold war among the founding fathers, the different groups making up the party, Senator Ahmed Tinubu, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and others are thought not to be on the same page with the leadership of the party and that’s being said to be the reason things are not in place for the APC at the moment. How do you react to that? 

You see, if you go back to what I said earlier, many people are not happy. Of course, it depends on what angle you look at it from. But certainly, there are those things. It’s part of the errors that were made, which hopefully we will sort and iron out. Of course, Senator Tinubu has made his position known. He made the remarks sometimes ago, especially about the leadership of the party and one cannot dismiss the fact and the leadership role played by Senator Tinubu in the APC; from the merger level to elections and many other things. Two, you cannot dismiss or wish away the role played and the goodwill brought by both Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar and many other people including the governors and leaders, de facto leaders who are not officials of the party.

Their complaints are largely about lack of consultations. There is this impression of exclusion in the consultation process at many levels of the party in terms of formation of government and key appointments and so on. One cannot pretend or dismiss the fact that there are those problems, which I believe have been acknowledged by all concerned and we are in the process of making sure that they are sorted out, the right thing is being done. You know, in every big family, there is bound to be crisis. You don’t expect that crisis won’t happen and you will expect some misgivings and once those things are voiced out or noted, what is expected is for those things to be addressed. These names we have mentioned are just but a few. There are a lot of people who have the same opinion about this. We believe that since many people are on the same page on this, the party will sit down as a family and it will be addressed.

 

After a protracted crisis, PDP is back. Its resurgence must be putting APC under pressure? What do you say?

I don’t think PDP is putting us under pressure. If you relate it with the question of APC not holding convention and others, you see, if you look at the past two years, PDP has not had a leadership so to say – from Sheriff to Makarfi, from Makarfi to Sheriff until the Supreme Court’s decision, which validated the caretaker committee. They were in legal tussle in the last two years. So, you could not say when there was a formal PDP function. You could not even say everything was well with PDP. They could not sit down as an opposition to properly articulate what the APC was doing to criticise or otherwise. Until this moment, they are still in the labour room, because this is a caretaker committee. They are to hold their convention in December probably to elect their leaders. You don’t even know what will happen, who will be the chairman, which group. Even though the Supreme Court has invalidated Sheriff’s leadership, they are still PDP. Those involved in the crisis are still PDP and they have their own reckoning too. So, you can’t say everything is over.

In the APC, it is not leadership crisis we have, we have defined leadership, both de facto and de jure. Those of us who are elected officials of the party, of course, we had our normal bickering and crises here and there but the issue is that there is a defined leadership; positions were taken at one time or the other. There is what I call the elite conspiracy. We are politicians first and foremost. It all depends on how matters are issued because in Nigeria until now, there are certain things that have not taken the expected shape in terms of globally defined political thinking. Here, we do more of defined political interests and the foremost thing is inclusiveness. Wherever there is no inclusiveness, there is bound to be a problem. But when you have inclusiveness, you will see things happen correctly. So, we are not under any pressure from PDP and what we are even expecting is more of PDP members joining us in building this country, in building a political group and political solutions to so many problems that this country has. So, we are expecting more PDP members to join APC and they have been joining us right from the time we won election, not because we won election but because they appreciate where we are coming from.

 

President Buhari is not well and many Nigerians believe that he should forget about 2019. Does the APC have a succession plan should Buhari decide not to run? 

Though I am a politician, I find it difficult to run away from being a lawyer. One, Buhari hasn’t said to anybody that he cannot run. That’s his personal decision. Two, APC is a party that is unique. We are a departure from what used to happen in the past, we don’t close our doors in terms of the aspiration of members. This is something that is formal. Whenever there is an election. We don’t say this thing is foreclosed for a particular person, whether he is a president or a councillor. It depends on the party’s position. You can say that we are going to have a consensus and it is not the leadership of the party that will so direct. It is the members of the party. If they overwhelmingly want Buhari to continue, that is their decision and that is their right. If anybody feels that he wants to contest with Buhari or anybody, that is also the right of members to aspire. So, if Buhari wants to contest election and anybody else wants to contest, he is free to do so. This is constitutional. It is in consonance with the constitution of this country and in consonance with the constitution of the party. All these things are done as spelt out in the constitution.

You don’t expect some kind of sycophancy from the leadership of our party that we will just say that there is no vacancy, as some sycophants used to do in the last 16 years. That was what ran the PDP down. Somebody, out of sycophancy, will just say is just fait accompli. Because the moment you declare that there is no vacancy in 2019, Buhari must contest, we are going to give him automatic ticket, before you know it even some people who feel that they don’t agree with you, they will not express it because they will be misunderstood. I and many others do believe that there is no perfect human being. There is always a second opinion on things. So, I don’t subscribe to preventing people from their own right. This is my personal position. Some other people may have their opinion. But the issue is that as far as I know and I know that am correct, the constitution of our country, the constitution of our party does not create that sort of fait accompli situations.

The Buhari I know is not also the kind of person that subscribes to wishing away the opinions and rights of other people. So, it’s a personal decision that he will make and I don’t think as a president, as a sitting president it is even the right time now for you to expect such kind of decision from him.

 

Given the rash of promises the APC made before the 2015 elections, many Nigerians are disappointed that their expectations have not been met. Are you confident that with the short time left before the next general election, the APC can still impress? 

People are not being fair to the president if they do a random analysis at this moment. You see, you have to first and foremost look at the quantum of the problem he met vis-a-vis what he has been able to clear, because he met a very huge quantum of problems. There are two ways of looking at the performance of government. There are policies; there are programmes. There are projects that you will not see until may be even after eight years. The president or any government could put a policy today or in 2015, you may not see the impact of what was done until may be 2020 or 20125. It would not be fair to assess that person on that project because you have not felt the impact now.

Maybe there are certain expectations and that is a miracle that people expect that as soon as Buhari or APC is in government because we promised to sanitise the system on May 29 after taking over by probably June 1; that Nigeria will be corruption-free. That is impossible because there are certain steps, which have to be taken, these are processes, which take a long time.

Of course, there are other categories of issues, quick wins. If it is about quick wins, then, you can assess. And these quick wins are more about the conduct of the leadership, either the president or the governors. These quick wins expected are may be prompt payment of salaries, prompt payment of pensions, social investment; all these things are there. Or rather, the decorum exhibited by the leadership. You can’t take away the humility of the president. You can see visibly that he is not an outrageous person; he is not fraudulent. You can clearly see his prudence. So, these are the quick wins which we expected. You can clearly see the system that he is trying to adopt. He is not the kind of leader that is extravagant in expenditure in his personal or official conduct. This is being emulated by so many public officers. So, that also one can readily take. Unlike before when you could see how much was being spent on ceremonies, it’s no longer there. If we continue this way, there will be some kind of sense of responsibility to the public. And I believe everybody will be happy and that leads to the minimisation of corruption in the system. These are the quick wins.

But there are larger issues which one cannot easily handle immediately, the personal expectations of people who have invested, who want some kind of patronage from various governments. It is with time people may appreciate why certain things are done and certain things are not done.

 

The Buhari administration has gone beyond the halfway point and some would expect a cabinet rejigging. Is the APC making any input in this direction? Or is cabinet reshuffle even desirable now?

There are two ways of viewing it. One, the cabinet is answerable to Mr. President. It is his discretion to appoint whosoever he wishes and for now, he is in a better position to assess how comfortable he is with one cabinet member or the other to see whether he is performing well or not. Of course, it is expected he would normally not just make judgement based on his interaction with that minister, but also I believe the president has so many reports and feedback from stakeholders. These stakeholders are even beyond the party, maybe even in the sector the minister is serving. The Nigerian constitution gives the qualification for becoming a minister of the federal republic and the rules are clear. Maybe that’s where the party can make input. And there is a reason for that. You see, the constitution says a minister must be appointed from each of the 36 states of the federation of Nigeria. The idea is that not only are the state’s represented in the cabinet because states make up the federation, but the president is also expected to have an agent within the party from those states.

Politically, you can’t be elected as president of Nigeria without being a member of a political party. Even the constitution goes further to say that for any person to be so appointed, he must be qualified to be a member of the House of Representatives. And to be so qualified to be member of the House of Representatives, you have to be a member of a political party. This is the nitty-gritty of what I think the president will consider in making up his mind. I don’t think the president will just take his decision in this respect from what is just available from his interaction with his ministers at the Federal Executive Council meetings, but also other considerations, merit, the quality of the person, the political link with the person. What I mean here is, of course, more or less whether he will also accommodate political interests.