Anyone who thinks he can use 2023 to bait Nigerians is fooling himself —Kwande

Former Nigerian Ambassador to Switzerland, Alhaji Yahaya Kwande, was one of the founding members of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and later a Board of Trustee member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) before his retirement from partisan politics. He speaks with ISAAC SHOBAYO on a wide range of issues concerning the coming elections. Excerpts:

YOU have been in politics for more than three decades, but it was learnt that you recently resigned from active politics. What informed that decision?

I have retired from partisan politics. There is a clear difference between retiring from partisan politics and retiring from politics entirely. As a partisan politician, you have to belong to a particular political party but because I am a statesman, I cannot see things happening negatively without voicing out my opinion based on my experience. That is why I said I retired from partisan politics.

Fasting and kidney stones

What is your assessment of the state of the nation?

It is not unusual when a general election is at hand; what is happening in the political circles now is not new. Though there are lot of confusion and pronouncements that are not in tandem with the tenets of democracy, it is as if the country would collapse, to me, it is not new based on my experience. I was happy when one of the clergymen said all will be well. Elections will come and go, so I haven’t seen anything different but we are praying for peaceful elections and at the same time appealing to all active participants to play the game according to the dictate of the rules and regulations.

Do you think your former party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has fared well in the past three years in term of governance and development?

If you say things are not faring well with the APC, I won’t agree with you. They are on their own. Things are happening; people are criss-crossing from party A to B and B to A, it depends on what you want to know in the activities of the APC. They have the government; they are the ruling political party. People are still in love with the party, but the main opposition party, which is the PDP, is also unearthing a lot of things that people didn’t know about APC, because APC came with the mantra of change, especially to fight corruption. But what we are hearing in the debate of the knowledgeable people is that both are the same in terms of corruption, I am quite certain that February elections will determine quite a lot of things in Nigeria.

But are you satisfied with the fight against corruption by the APC-led administration?

I will tell you that President Muhammadu Buhari came in with the enthusiasm to fight corruption and he started it and he is still doing it in his own way. But listening to the debate that is still going on, the main opposition party is saying Buhari himself is not as honest as people thought, since he could keep people that many Nigerians believe are corrupt and they are still functioning under him. Also, there is a division in the political circle. There is  division in names such APC, PDP, APGA and so on but I want tell Nigerians that they are the same. Their ideologies are the same. Their thinking is the same. None of them could escape being accused of corruption.

Let me tell you that Nigerians are more knowledgeable and enlightened about politicking than before. I don’t want to mention names, otherwise I would have told you that a prominent opposition leader wanted Nigerians to forget what he had done in the past and wanted to join the ruling party. He thought that people had forgotten; but he left because he could have been arrested that week. The only escape route for him was to move to the ruling party. Which meant that if the ruling party accepted him, are they saying ‘you are not a corrupt person if you are with us?’ Is it a philosophy that if you belong to the government that has authority over activities of government you are free from being probed? It doesn’t make sense. People are laughing; let them not deceive themselves, people know, the ordinary Nigerian is reading between the lines.

Based on the happenings in the political circles, especially in the APC where you were a member of its Board of Trustees but was never recognised and inaugurated along with others, what is your take on the allegation that there is no internal democracy in the party?

I wasn’t appointed. I was elected in my state as a member of the trustees because our constitution said there should be a representation in each of the state of the federation and I was elected from Plateau State. But we never met even once. I can tell you the reason, a year after we were not inaugurated; I discovered that the constitution of the party gave the leadership of the board of trustees to either a former president who is a member of our party or a former vice-president. We had no former president that was elected into the board that could have been the chairman but we had former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who could have automatically be the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the APC. That was the beginning of the APC giving itself away because they saw in him a leadership that might go beyond being just chairman of the Board of Trustees. So they refused and up till today, the Board of Trustees has not been inaugurated. The reason was that they don’t just like the face of Atiku Abubakar and there was nothing they could do. So instead, they created a non-constitutional title and called Bola Ahmed Tinubu the National Leader of the party. There is no provision for that in the APC constitution; the leader of the party is the president of the country.

So, the problem of lack of internal democracy started from there and people saw clearly that they are not going to play fair and they are still doing it up till today. They look at your face before they appoint you. The party has not amended its constitution and they didn’t like the face of the person that could have been by the provision  of the constitution and up till today, there is no active Board of Trustees that was why Atiku left. We that are close to him, asked him why were you leaving the APC , he said people who could not allow you to lead a simple committee of the party, how would they allow you to pursue you ambition. They were afraid of him. They were frightened of his image. That is why he left the PDP. So to answer your question, there is nothing like internal democracy in APC.

But is the PDP different? A lot of its members, including Atiku, jettisoned the party prior to the 2015 elections on the grounds of injustice and lack of internal democracy.

APC and PDP are the same. But to be fair, you cannot beat or fault the PDP on the primary they had for the presidential candidates. Nobody will tell you something is wrong in the way and manner the PDP conducted its presidential primary in Rivers State.

Be categorical, is the APC a force to be reckoned with as far as Nigeria politics is concerned?

Of course, APC is the ruling party; can you underrate a ruling party with the police, army and other security apparati at its disposal. I must tell you, even the recent elections in Ekiti and Osun are enough example of what a ruling party could do in an election. They exposed themselves by what they did to capture Osun and Ekiti states. The opposition now knows the method, but you cannot underrate a ruling party.

Based on what you said concerning Osun and Ekiti elections, do you think the next election can be free and fair?

Let me use the Russian and the America as an example, they asked one of them why are you always producing arms, he replied that they are producing arms so that they can have peace, because when your opposition is ready for you and you are ready for him, there will be no one confronting the other. I believe we are going to have peaceful election because the PDP is ready and the APC too is ready and they are the same set of people with the same orientation and they know the field like the back of their hands.

You are one of the ardent loyalists of the PDP presidential candidate; do you think he has what it takes to win the presidential election?

He has more than enough to win the presidential election, but you can be qualified and be ready, it also depends on Nigerians. If you sit down here and conclude that Buhari is going to win the election or Atiku will win the election, you must be a fool. But if APC thinks it can defeat PDP that has been in the field with all the knowledge of Nigeria, they are deceiving themselves. Look at the rallies, I don’t believe that there are different human beings appearing at different rallies and so you can’t judge any political party based on rally.

Based on the prevailing political situation in the country where money is the determinant, would you say the country is moving forward politically?

Nigeria has always lacked leadership. We are very good people. You need to see Nigerians in London or any part of the world. They are humble because they would be guided to behave. In Nigeria, it is not the Nigerians that are bad. Our guidance system is bad; they don’t guide us. Buhari started in the first era of his rule even though he was not reorientatiung the people, he was coercing people to do it but still, people were following. But I believe it is the leadership that we are lacking; that is why my political associate, Atiku Abubakar, is saying let’s make Nigeria great again.

From all indications, it is like politics based on ideology is dead in this country. With the 2019 elections yet to be conducted, the politicians have started using 2023 as basis and platform for campaigning. What is your take on this?

Any politician will do whatever he can to get a vote, but if politicians think they are deceiving the ordinary man, they better think twice.  I can tell you that they are making mockery of themselves. We have no ideology; ideology ended with the first republic when there were the progressive and the conservatives. But Nigerians of today are too sophisticated to be fooled by anyone no matter their position.