Buhari qualified to contest in 2019, but…—Pearse

Dr Adetokunbo Pearse is a chieftain of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Lagos State Coordinator for Professor Tunde Adeniran, one of the party’s national chairmanship aspirants. Pearse, who is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and former PDP governorship aspirant in Lagos State, speaks with BOLA BADMUS on a number of issues. Excerpts:

 

Ahead of the 2018 election, can you review the state of the Nigerian nation?

I don’t think there is anything that I have to say that is not known to everybody and it is similar to what was contained in the statement written by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, which is to say that the administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari has failed in every way. The economy has been in shambles; education is at its lowest ebb, security is worse than it has been; so every sector of the economy is in trouble. I don’t think this administration has commissioned any major road project since almost three year now in office.

Certainly, we know the cost of living has gone up tremendously now in the country because the Naira is the weakest than it has ever been in the in the history of this country. GDP is down, lowest in 25 years, direct investment is down, the Stock Market is down, the only thing that is up is poverty and unemployment. So we are in real trouble. There is a real crisis in the country and unfortunately we have a president who is totally incapable of handling the situation. So, that is why you hear so many people clamouring for a new force, because the APC has failed woefully and the PDP that would have been an alternative was not encouraging with its last National Convention.

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But anytime issues like these come up, the APC always beats its chest that it has done well and gives statistics that the economy has grown, that Boko Haram has been contained, that terrorism has been addressed and recently the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said Nigeria is in safe hands with Buhari in office. What do you say to this?

Well, what do you expect Lai Mohammed to say? He is only doing his job, but at the end of it all, history would not be kind to them at all because it is clear; all the statistics I have given you is not refutable. And I think more importantly, Nigerians know that under Jonathan, the last administration, a 50kg bag of rice was something like N12,000; now they know how much its costs; a measure of garri was something like N50, now it went as high as N500 at one time. A litre of petrol used to be N87, now it is N145, and still going up. So, no matter what Lai Mohammed says, the facts speak for themselves; Nigerians know, you and I know that there is hunger and pain in the land.

Even in the area of security, it is a shame that they are playing politics with human lives, because every day, in spite of attempt to keep the reports down, you still have reports of Boko Haram killings almost in the country. And then, if you are able to tackle Boko Haram to some extent, another form of Boko Haram is emerging. The Fulani herdsmen’s question is unfortunate, because the president has failed this nation totally; the president has failed both the herdsmen and the farmers. Don’t forget, herdsmen are killed too, they are killed regularly and their herds destroyed and stolen and so on, and then they retaliate by killing farmers and the president is keeping quiet, because he doesn’t want to appear to be on the side of the farmers. Whereas, all he has to do is tell the truth, gather all these people together and let us solve this problem. Insecurity is on the rise; virtually every geopolitical zone has been hit by this farmer versus herdsmen clash, except probably the North-West. It is everywhere, South-East, South-South, South-West, North-Central; it has been everywhere in the past two years.

And then, you have various dissident groups, very unhappy group from the South-East, you know. No matter how they try to be and paint the picture of peace and harmony, there is trouble in the land. Everybody knows that everywhere, there is discontent and there is acrimony and insecurity to life.  It is a shame that you have a very dishonest administration. Everything started with a lie, everything about this administration is a lie. In fact, every information about the ruling party is a lie, because now we know that the party structure does not really exist; that you have fragmentation. You have segments of different groups within the APC: there are about four or five factions. The president has no control over the party, the only control he has is over the CPC faction of the party, so it is a shame.

 

Pressure is being mounted on President Buhari to contest the 2019 election, the PDP is warming up to unseat the president while a Third Force that believes that both the APC and PDP cannot do the job is coming into the picture. Where do we stand? 

Mr. President is qualified to run again if his party nominates him to run. The president can run if he wants to run and his party nominates him; we wish him good luck. But when he ran in 2015, he had a problem because he was not a well man then and he fell two or three times, but this time, he probably would collapse during his campaigns. If he loves himself, he should withdraw from the race, but if he wants to run, let him run. I don’t see how he can win the election, because the country is tired of him. He has failed everybody in every way, even his own friends and allies are telling him the home truth now that he really should not run not only because he has failed terribly. He has destroyed the economy. He has also destroyed the goodwill, the little trust that existed between himself and Nigerians. He has pitted himself on the side of Fulani through his very ethnocentric appointments. He has shown that he is only a leader of the North; the whole of South, including the North-Central is now against him. If he wants to run he would lose so sadly that I can predict that just like in the olden days when you lose so badly, then they say you lose your deposit. He is going to lose his deposit; he is going to lose badly. I don’t see him getting two-thirds of the votes in the South-East and in the South-West, so he really has North-West and North-East where he can possibly win and this time, we are also going to be very vigilant about underage voting, which got him into office the first time. It’s not going to happen again. Nigerians are tired of this deception and the corruption and Mr. President would lose very badly, he can run but he cannot win.

Regarding the PDP, the convention we had in December 9, 2017 proved to be quite disappointing. It appears that Governor Nyesom Wike has hijacked the party, because he seems to be the only one financing and, therefore, he is claiming owner’s right to the party and, therefore, controls the chairman and the party machinery. And if that is the case, I don’t see the PDP winning any election either. But don’t forget that right now, there is so much distrust in the party. In virtually every state, you have problems; we have fighting going on, different factions fighting each other. It seems that the conflict we have with the Makarfi versus Modu Sheriff has not really gone away and Secondus as chairman is not addressing the issue. He is making it worse because he started off by developing a list of personal contacts, personal friends that he endorsed, some people didn’t even buy forms and they got elected because they are on that special unity list they called it. And so the party is now functioning under a false structure and very faulty and, therefore, very weak.

Concerning the Third Force, you know, before the convention, a lot of people were waiting from APC and other parties to come to PDP as an alternative to APC, but when they had the convention and it did not appear transparent, a lot of people stayed where they were and are still looking for a Third Force. Not just a Third Force but a Third Party. This is because Obasanjo’s Third Force is a coalition of like minds, but it is not programmed as a political party. I believe very soon, a political party would come up, which would have personalities that are convincing; that would impress Nigerians to believe and if that happens, then that would be the Third Party that would win the election.

 

The idea of state police appears to have been bought by the APC government through the Governor Nasir el-Rufai Committee on True Federalism. There is also the belief that the party is ready to restructure the country, but recently the ACF kicked against the establishment of state police. What is your reaction to this?

Well, this is what we mean; restructuring is not just word of mouth. They are just paying lip service to the talk about restructuring. APC leaders such as el-Rufai, who led a committee on restructuring, are on record expressing their opposition to the idea.  So, when they found out that this is a very popular slogan and people will buy into it, they now brought it up to start deceiving people, but people know who is for restructuring and who is not. We know people like former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who has been promoting restructuring, writing about it, giving lectures about, talking about it for over 10 years. That’s the kind of person you can believe not somebody who is coming up now to speak for what he opposed yesterday. All of a sudden, because election is coming nearer and he knows this idea is attractive to people, he now wants to sell it to people; that’s a lie, that’s hypocrisy, that’s typical of the dishonesty of this administration.

But when they said they have bought into the idea of state police now, you saw there was opposition within their rank. By the way, you would have noticed something, when they say they have bought into restructuring, have you ever heard President Buhari say anything about restructuring? He will never say it, he has a lot of reasons to be against it.