Buhari is winning by landslide —APC National Publicity Secretary

Mallam Lanre Isa-Onilu is the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC). He speaks with Senior Deputy Editor, TAIWO AMODU, on the chances of his party in the general election, among other issues.

YOUR party has been boasting that it would win this February election convincingly. What gives you the confidence that you can repeat the feat of 2015?

We aren’t talking of 2015. We are emboldened to think that we are going to have a land side. It is pretty obvious even to the biggest opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and so you can see why they are throwing the tantrums instead of campaigning.

Is swallowing sperm good?

We can go over this. It is pretty clear. As an opposition party, how many states did we start with? About 18. During the course of our first tenure, we have added Ekiti, we have added Ondo that weren’t APC states. These are safe belts as I speak to you.

In the South-East, the  Ebonyi that our president went yesterday ( Wednesday), the traditional councils rolled red carpet for him and endorsed him publicly, including a governor from the opposition not because of anything but because of what Ebonyi people have seen in the last three and a half years.

In 2015, we have just 19,000 plus votes. The same Ebonyi today, PDP is battling to survive in that environment. Go to the entire South-East, how many of them have you seen around Atiku? Forget about the ones who came out publicly throwing their weight behind Atiku when that weight cannot be taken to the South-East where they come from. The real people who are on ground who mean well for the South-East have seen clearly that with what is going on now, if we continue for another four years, Nigeria will not be the same again, in terms of progress that we would have made.

They know how their roads are, even though they aren’t ready now, they know they are ongoing. They know that when this government starts a project, it will finish it and they know all the other ones that are in the pipelines. So, people can see the future that conforms to their expectations. So in the South-East we are comfortable, very comfortable.

Same thing in the South-South. The immediate past governor of Delta State, Emmanuel Uduaghan, is our senatorial candidate in the zone in Delta State today. That counts for something and so do we have several many people. We have cleaned up Ogoni land; the second Niger Bridge is ongoing. They can see it and they can compare. The Maritime University which was used for politics during Jonathan, which they took so many billions without doing anything, that school is ongoing as we speak. The only thing that has changed is that corruption was stripped from it. They can see it and that is why when the issue of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen happened a formidable group from that place said no, this isn’t about us.

What is the name of that so-called formidable group?

Well, I have forgotten their name, but it is one of the strongest Niger Delta group. It came out clearly. It is in the media. They said it isn’t about the Niger Delta.

I want us to look at the North-West and the South-West where we have the largest volume of Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs) The presidential election will be fought and won in those zones. What is your strength?

Of course, we have made progress in the North-East. Look, state by state in the North-West is for APC. We know this. We confronted a sitting government as opposition nearly four years ago, we defeated them in the North -West. Now that we are the ruling party with evidence of concrete efforts that we have made. The Kano-Maiduguri express road is ongoing; they can see it. The Kaduna- Kano rail line is ongoing. So are many other federal roads; so are the housing projects. So are the social intervention programmes and don’t forget that these people are farmers. They are the new millionaires in this country. So, what do you think will happen? We can only have improvement on whatever we had in 2015.

South-West has never had it so good. For the first time, we can say we are at the centre and in control. You have a vice -president that you cannot compare to any before him in terms of powers and control, influence in government and in inputs. The people of South-West are some of the most enlightened in this country.  They understand what it means to have progress. They understand what progress actually means. They understand what development means and they have seen it for the first time.  Very soon, in a matter of weeks you can live in Ibadan, in Abeokuta and all those communities along the corridors of Lagos-Ibadan rail line and work in Lagos, or live in Lagos and work in Ibadan and go and come back same day conveniently. They can see what is going on with the international airport road, which has been an eyesore for several years. They can see what is happening in Tin Can Island, that very soon, we are going to have a complete removal of the congestion at Tin Can Island because the train coming from Ibadan terminates right there.

So, these are things that are clear. That those two geopolitical zones we have had improvements and more converts than before.

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Do you think the pictures you painted are cast in stone, against the background of internal bickering within your party?

What you call bickering,  I call progress. And you know what? We are trying to move away from civil democracy to real democracy. Civil democracy is the one that we have been seeing under PDP, where a governor sits down to dispense destiny and determines who becomes what. That isn’t democracy. What this party has provided is internal democracy that allows the ordinary woman who is sweeping the street to have equal vote with the man who is the number one citizen of the state. So, they are entitled to one vote each. That’s what we are doing. That’s what democracy is all about. Change brings conflict because there are people who are comfortable with the situation that we are and causing a paradigm shift to the extent that it dislodge their comfort will receive some resistance and that is what is going on. But it is also a responsibility for this party to live up to its world view of progressiveness and to ensure that democracy truly thrives. So what you are seeing in Imo, in Zamfara, in Ogun are clear evidence that this party is moving away from the past and sending strong signals to people who are in political offices to know that at the end of the day, what will count for them will be their performances, not the influence of their office.

But your ordinary party faithfully have expressed reservations about the intervention that President Buhari made in Ogun and Imo,  for instance. At a time the APC NWC led by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole issued a strong statement to dissuade your party chieftains from proceeding to court to challenge party positions, Mr. President overruled him. Certain governors have been taking governorship candidates from other parties to him and he has been according to them a warm reception. Is he not unwittingly encouraging indiscipline?

Well, people tend to be  with due respect narrow in their interpretation of issues like this. In a political environment, one needs to be a little bit more expansive in interpretations. I will tell you. What the president said about the issue of people going to court and what the party said are in tandem. No contradiction. If you go back to what the party said, the party said, court must be last resort, not that you cannot go to court. But we encourage them to exhaust internal conflict resolution mechanism before going to court. And the President reiterates right of people to go to court which is completely in tandem with the position of the party that if it comes to that, you have a right. We have many people who are in court and the party is responding to it but it shouldn’t be your first recourse. That is just what we said. So for us as a party, we understood where the president is coming from.

Let me tell you, we have seen evidently that the president is a strong party person. He is a person who believes in development and growth of a political party. So he has given this party the utmost support you will expect once he is sure that you are following the rules. He is fully behind whatever actions we take and that’s what encourages us because we know all we need to show is that we follow the rules and the president himself is a stickler for the rules. So we are comfortable with the president because he is a party man to the core.

He is a stickler to the rules? How do you reconcile that with his warm reception of Action Alliance candidate, Uche Nwosu in Imo State and Abdulkadir Akinlade of another opposition party that he received within the precinct of the presidential villa?

You see, we have a peculiarity in Imo state generally. In a political environment you have a president where virtually every party, including some corners of this country where PDP candidate put the picture of Buhari along with their own. So you almost have a pan-political party candidate. That’s the kind of person we have. So the president must now acknowledge the fact that his political personality traverses political parties without jeopardising the APC interest. And that’s what he did in Imo. He acknowledged those other parties that are giving him support and ended up by raising the hand of his own candidate. That is the issue.