Interview

I don’t see Obi winning anywhere in South-South —Emami

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2 years ago

Chief Ayiri Emami is Director, Special Duties (4), All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council. The APC chieftain from Delta State in an interview with journalists, says Tinubu, will win overwhelmingly in the South-South zone. TAIWO AMODU brings the excerpts:

Ahead of the elections, there continues to be unpalatable public perception about the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu. There is particularly that perception that the APC house is divided against itself. How do you see this affecting your party’s chances?

I don’t believe that the house is divided against itself, despite the fact that some elements are trying to sabotage the system. If the house is divided against itself, you will see party chieftains coming out against the presidential bid of Tinubu. If you cannot come out, that shows that you’re a coward. It shows you are just trying to sabotage yourself, not even the interests of everybody. So I don’t see that as a house being divided against itself.

There are notions that President Muhammadu Buhari, despite being leader of the party, has not shown enough involvement in the campaign of Tinubu. They particularly premise this on the fact that the president has only attended a few campaign rallies of Tinubu.

During his own election, it was other people that were actually championing his campaign. So, I just feel that that is his normal style. All humans are not the same. Tinubu is a workaholic. During the 2014/2015 campaign, he did that. At a time, even during the primary he was contesting, President Muhammadu Buhari declared that he had no money to give the delegates. If he was not the one contesting, people would have described him as a wicked man. He made that kind of statement in public while canvassing for votes at the campaign ground. To me, his lifestyle is such that even if he is supporting you, he does not comes out to the public to say it. But, we urge those saboteurs to please retreat. Let us go into a proper contest. I know that Buhari is supporting us because he has said it publicly and that is one Muslim that I believe that once he swears by the Quran, he stands by it.

Funding is crucial for any election and it usually comes from various sources. But, this time, it has been observed that Tinubu is doing the most regarding spending money for the election, with campaign council members and governors doing little. Don’t you think this is part of the plot to frustrate Tinubufrom winning this election?

I don’t even see PDP or any other party throwing money around, because the economy itself is such that there is no money to throw around. When there’s money to throw around, people will throw money around. The situation today, not only in Nigeria, but also around the world,does not allow for money to be thrown around except when necessary. Instead of throwing around my money going to rallies, I will keep my money for logistics to move people from the riverine to various communities so that they can vote. It is not only in Nigeria that we have economic issues. To throw money around will be a little bit difficult. It is not peculiar to APC.

You are from Delta State where the vice-presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hails from. How much votes can Tinubu pool in Delta?

Tinubu and Ovie-OmoAgege are making a lot of waves. To a lot of Deltans, Tinubu is our in-law and that is working for him. Some people will ask what the job of the vice president is. For instance, a woman might not even have an office but have a lot of influence on his husband. Asaba that you see today became a state capital because of the influence of the late Maryam Babangida. So, if Tinubu goes to the South-South, he is talking to his in-laws and we know he is going to do a lot for us. Before now, he used to extend his hand of fellowship to us. When we have a problem, we run to him and he solves it.

Outside Delta, how much votes can Tinubu galvanise from the entire of South-South?

As Director, Special Duties, I have done a lot of studies.Sometimes, I am very angry when people say (Peter) Obi is going to have votes in the South-South, it is not so. There is a family in my local government, if everybody is in this party, they will be in the other party. When some of us were in PDP, they were in Labour Party because Great Ogboru was using Labour Party then. When APC came, they moved to APC and we moved with them. I thought when Obi’s Labour Party came, they would move. I organised one event, trying to sensitise people to pick up PVCs. I tried to go around the entire local government to know the members of the Labour Party, but couldn’t find any, apart from one or two persons that could joined the Labour Party because they did not get APC tickets. What I see is PDP versus APC. I will still urge my people to give proper support to Tinubu. And, if he wins, the North will say they are the ones that supported Tinubu. When Nasir el-Rufai was saying Obi will win South-South and South-East, some of us felt pained. To us, that meant that he did not do his study properly or they are trying to sabotage us so that at the end of the day, we cannot lay claims that we actually worked for Tinubu. Saying that Obi is going to win South-South, for us, is very painful. He is somebody we respect. I don’t see Obi winning anywhere in South-South. You can check it out.!

Tinubu lamented that the recent policies of the present government, especially the naira swap crisis and the fuel scarcity, are targeted at sabotaging his presidential bid.

When Tinubu said it in Ogun State my initial reaction was, why our presidential candidate would say such. But, I did my own analysis and found out that he was very right. We have gone public to let people know that the sabotage is from some persons but we are also trying to convince Nigerians that when Tinubu gets there, he will correct the abnormality. We can’t just sit down and let them sabotage a good man who wants to come and change the narrative. In 2019, a lot of people in my state fought me that I was working for Buhari. We did everything, in fact the kind of things we were having that period in 2019, were enough to discourage us to get that 25 per cent.

But, there is a lot of anger out there with people sleeping at filling stations, Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). Won’t this affect the chances of Tinubu?

That is what those people that are sabotaging want to achieve. At everywhere Tinubu campaigns, he would call on the people to brave all odds, go to the polling booths on election day and vote him. Even if you don’t have fuel, he says try to trek to the place, assuring that if he wins, fuel scarcity will be a thing of the past.

Are these developments not policies of the APC?

They are not policies of the APC at all because if they are,everybody would be involved. These are policies of some few persons to sabotage. Why introduce such policies during the election?

People are claiming, rightly or wrongly, that these people in the Villa that governor Nasir El- Rufai referred to as a cabal have a personal grouse against Tinubu. What is this grouse?

Even in our small community. If you know your right, you know what you are doing and you want to lead, many people will come after you. This is because a lot of people don’t want somebody that understands the system to lead because of their manipulative tendencies.Tinubuknows it all. So you will see all kinds of battles, blackmail to stop him. He knows a lot about governance; he knows what to do to make sure that this place works. And if it works, people doing dubious things would not be able to do it. So, if such a person is to take over, it won’t be an easy battle because they know he knows the inner workings of government and can’t be manipulated.

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