Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo will be a straight fight between Atiku and Tinubu —Dele Momodu

The Director of Strategic Communication of the Atiku/Okowa Presidential Campaign Council of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Dele Momodu, in this interview by SAM NWAOKO, speaks on a number of issues concerning the presidential campaign and what he thinks of the 2023 elections.

 

People are taking more interest in what Chief Dele Momodu says more than before. Would you attribute this to the politics in the air or you are just getting the usual reactions to a media chief?

Everybody is aware that a presidential election is coming up in 2023. So, naturally, anything that has to do with any of the major candidates would attract news. So I am not surprised that everyone is talking about it. I am the Director of Strategic Communication of the Atiku/Okowa Presidential Campaign Council, so my job is to project our candidate and to ensure that we scrutinise other candidates and let the world, especially the electorate, know that Atiku Abubakar is the best prepared and the most experienced, the most exposed, the most detribalised and the most cosmopolitan candidate out there. There is none close to him in experience and exposure; there is none close to him in terms of building bridges and having stupendous network across the nation. That is why we have been talking about who our candidate is and to also show that we know the other candidates and to let the world know that they cannot compare favourably with our candidate.

 

You said Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is the most experienced of the candidates on the field and that he’s also the most detribalised and so on. Other candidates are saying that they studied overseas and are more cosmopolitan and that you can’t compare. How do you react to this?

You can’t compare a man who has been Vice President to people who were governors in one state. The Vice President sits atop the 36 states and Abuja, so there is no basis for comparison. If you talk about education, Atiku Abubakar is one of the most educated Nigerians. He studied at home and abroad, but because he doesn’t talk about it and, because there are no question marks on his education, people tend not to know. So you can see who we are dealing with. Atiku Abubakar is a child of destiny. In 1993, he stepped down for Chief M.K.O. Abiola at the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries in Jos, Plateau State. He was supposed to be the running mate to Chief Abiola but they picked Alhaji Babagana Kingibe. He never complained. He went back home quietly. After he won the governorship election in Adamawa, his home state, they pulled him out to become the Vice President to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. That is how you know a child of destiny. He didn’t have to fight for it. Even when he began to have problems with his boss, he never at any time raised voice against his principal. He took everything with uncommon equanimity. He moved on, and he has conducted and comported himself with dignity and discipline. He is not a reckless leader. Nigeria at this time needs a man who s that composed, because we have so many issues. We need a man who is that composed and who can unify all, and who has the requisite experience in both public and private sectors. Atiku Abubakar is the man.

 

You have spoken eloquently about your candidate and there is maturity in the way you have spoken. However, we wonder why you have chosen to frontally engage Festus Keyamo. Were you provoked by the things he has been saying?

There is nothing alarming in what I said and I choose my words very carefully. He provoked me, he attacked me but when I replied him, I only said he is a man who has no shame.  I said that because if he had shame, he would know that schools had been shut under this government more than any other time we can easily remember and therefore speak with some restraint. This is a man who used to be a human rights activist, who was also known as a fighter for the uplift of the masses, but since he became a minister in this administration, he has become the opposite of that and I am very worried. But that is his business. If he had not crossed my lane, there is no way I would have spoken about him. We used to be very close and I believe we are still close because he is my younger brother. But you know him, he likes to yell at people and I want to put him in his place and let him know that no matter the job you take, you can still manage it well. There were many spokespersons in the past and they did their jobs professionally. So, I expect him to do that and I hope moving forward, he would do that. So, I didn’t attack him. Of a fact, people commended the way I conducted myself in the interview in which I put him in his place.

 

You accused the candidate of the APC, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of practically plagiarizing the manifesto of Chief M.K.O. Abiola of the Hope ’93 era. Is there more than just what you said about that document?

I did not use the word ‘plagiarism’ on that document. It is a very weighty word. I never said Asiwaju plagiarized. I said they stylishly adopted… What they did was to stylishly try to equate him to Chief M.K.O Abiola. It is his right but I think they did a poor job of it, I mean, the consultants. You know he couldn’t have written the 80 pages himself. So, definitely some people got the contract but they scammed them by not doing a thorough job. Number one is the title of the manifesto: “A Renewed Hope”: there is no hope they are renewing. They couldn’t resist the temptation of using Abiola’s Hope ’93. That is what happened. I expected them to do a better job because Abiola’s manifesto which was entitled “Farewell to Poverty” was written about 30 years ago. The events of the last 30 years have shown that a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Even some of those things now have got worse than 30 year ago. What they did was to call it ‘Renewed Hope’ whereas Abiola, when he wrote “Farewell to Poverty” nearly 30 years ago, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. The situation now is far worse than at that time. I expected them to have done something more creative, more original, more imaginative and more impactful. I don’t know who is consultant on that – that is none of my business – but I expected them to have done a thorough job. What I did was an academic critique of the work. It wasn’t anything personal. It was Festus Keyamo who pulled me out when I was asked ‘what did Tinubu do to me’ and I listed all the reasons why I believed that the candidacy of Atiku is better for Nigeria. If I believed that the APC was a better option, I would have joined APC. When I supported Buhari in 2015 I wasn’t a member of APC. I think of candidates. When I supported Atiku in 2019, it was because I believed that the case of APC was irredeemable so the only alternative for me was the PDP. That is why I joined PDP because for me those are the two major political parties.

 

By “there is no hope they are renewing”, what exactly do you mean? Are you saying they don’t have things to campaign on? What are you campaigning on?

Every presidential candidate must campaign on a programme: What do I intend doing? Atiku Abubakar, for example, has spoken about the urgent need for us to reunite Nigeria and Nigerians; he has spoken about devolution of powers which some people call ‘restructuring’; he has spoken about education, he has spoken about the economy. If you look at his personal life, you will agree that he is the best with regards to all of them. He has invested in education in his private capacity, from nursery to university, so he knows about all of them. He has been able to invest in building bridges both in Nigeria and beyond. He has spoken about the economy. He was the Vice President in charge of the economy when our debts were written off. Today, the debt burden on Nigeria is heavier than an elephant. So, Atiku knows what to do. He has spoken about privatization and diversification. That is what we expect a presidential candidate to be talking about. He should be futuristic. It is not for someone to doctor what somebody wrote about 30 years ago and think that is all there is to a manifesto. No. Try to be creative, try to be original. That is what we are saying, but it is up to them to run their campaign as they want and it is up to us to scrutinise their action plan.

 

We have the issue of Nyesom Wike, the governor of Rivers State; we also have the issue of Samuel Ortom of Benue State and the young Nigerian voters who believe that Atiku and Tinubu are old. How do you intend to tackle all these issues as the campaigns are heightening?

As for Governor Wike, Governor Ortom, Governor Seyi Makinde and the others, they have a right to be angry. I have said that repeatedly and the PDP will continue to reach out to them. Our candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has met with them at home and abroad. He has appealed to them but he doesn’t seem to have made too much of progress with them. They are insisting that they cannot shift. In reconciliation, people must be ready to shift. If you are not ready to forgive, you cannot be a statesman. Nelson Mandela was put behind bars for 27 years. When he came out of prison, he could have killed all his enemies of he wanted. He didn’t. He embraced them and that is what made him Nelson Mandela. So our political leaders must imbibe that spirit of give and take, of forgiveness, of genuine love and embrace peace. That is what we are preaching in PDP. So, I hope Governors Wike and Ortom and Makinde and all the aggrieved members of the party will see the reason why they should not destroy the bridge after crossing the river because you never know if you will need the bridge again. PDP has been very good to them as they too have been very good to PDP, especially Governor Wike whom I refer to as our “best governor”. I like to call him the “poster boy of the PDP” because of his great work and vision for his people in Rivers State. However, nobody knows it all and nobody can have it all.

On the young who say they want a younger person, I want to tell them that PDP is amongst the parties in Nigeria with a lot of young people. If you know Atiku well, even when he was the Vice President, you will see that he usually surrounds himself with a lot of young people. At our party secretariat in Abuja, there are lots of young people who have been working there for years from different parts of Nigeria. He is the most organised I’ve seen. I’m relatively close to some of the other candidates; but I can tell you that Atiku Abubakar is way ahead of any other candidate. He is very in tune with youth affairs especially as it concerns how to empower them, how to create opportunities for them. That is what he is known for. So, the young people should know that experience also counts; that is why they say ‘experience is the best teacher’. Nigeria right now is in a very delicate and precarious state. So we have to be very careful so that we do not bring in another government that will spend the next four years trying to perform experiment; trying to learn the ropes; trying to understand the system. There is no one who understands the system at the national level better than Atiku Abubakar.

 

Look across the six geo-political zones, look critically at the South East and South South; and then look at a place like the North West where one of you opponents, Senator Bola Tinubu, has literally been dwelling. How would you rate the chances of Atiku Abubakar considering all of these?

The chances of Atiku Abubakar are very bright in the South, brighter than the chances of the Southern candidates in the North. In the South East, yes a lot of young people have been saying they want Peter Obi, but to the best of my knowledge peter Obi needs the structures even in the South East for him to make appreciable impact. His party does not have a single governor, no senator, no House of Reps member, no House of Assembly members… you need all those foot soldiers to enhance your chances at the polls. You will know that for a long time, Atiku Abubakar had always picked his running mate from the South East but this time, what he has done now is a masterstroke. He picked someone from the South South who is an Igbo man: Ifeanyichukwu Okowa. He is a Delta Igbo. So, what it means is that he has killed two birds with one stone. He combines South East with South South in one single vice presidential candidate.

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When we come to the South West, Lagos is the only place where the three of them will split the votes. When we leave Lagos, we go to Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti and Ondo; in these places it is going to be a straight fight between Atiku and Tinubu. There is no question about that. So, it tells you that in the South today, Atiku has a better chance than Obi and Tinubu have in the North. If you go to the North West, this area is a major factor. The more the Igbo say we are the ones who must do it, the more the North too would say we are the ones who must do it; the same way the South West will say we want Tinubu. That is how the other parts of the country would vote for their people. And in terms of cohesion and the ability to galvanise their people to vote, North is always the best area to do so. Don’t forget that Tinubu made a technical error; he did not pick his running mate from the North West. So it makes it wide open. And that is where we have some of our biggest leaders. In Sokoto, you will talk about Governor Tambuwal; we have Alhaji Sule Lamido in Jigawa; we have former Governor Ahmed Makarfi in Kaduna. We have a lot of our leaders from there. In Katsina, nearly all the APC members have migrated to the PDP. Their senators, reps and everybody are migrating on daily basis. So, where is the comparative advantage?

Another thing is that in the North East, they’ve not had any president since the time of Tafawa Balewa – Bauchi State in particular. That is the axis from where Atiku Abubakar comes from – Adamawa State. So, the North East would want to have the president for the first time since the first republic. So, in the North, it is going to be difficult to persuade the North not to vote for their son, Atiku Abubakar and they have found who they know who has friends and families in every part of Nigeria. He has prepared very well for this journey, for this mission.

 

Does it concern you or does it affect what you are doing when you hear that Fulani wants to take over from Fulani or that the North wants to perpetuate itself in the presidency? How does this affect you or worry your campaign?

It doesn’t worry us at all because we don’t have that issue in PDP. PDP had Chief Olusegun Obasanjo for eight years. After that, we had Yar’Adua for three years after which we had Goodluck Jonathan for five years. We haven’t had any other president since then. Buhari became president on the platform of APC. That has nothing to do with PDP. Out of 23 years now, we have had 13 years to southerners. If not for that Jonathan lost the 2015 election, it would have been more than that. That would have been another four years added to that. So, I am telling you that definitely PDP does not have that issue, you cannot accuse PDP of being pro-North. We have been totally pro-South. In PDP, a northerner has only spent three years from the North. All the rest are from the South: Eight years of Obasanjo and five years of Goodluck Jonathan. So, we don’t have such issue.