Youths must stop recycling of old leaders and take charge of Nigeria now —Etsu, 36-yr-old APC national chairmanship aspirant

Mohammed Saidu Etsu is an aspirant for the position of the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The 36-year-old, who is currently the Senior Special Assistant to Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger State on Rural Electrification, speaks with ADELOWO OLADIPO on his aspiration and issues affecting the ruling party.

Why do you want to become the next chairman of the APC?

I joined the race because I believe it is time for Nigerian youths to take charge of the affairs of the country and the political space. I believe there is no better time than now to see how the country can move forward and stop the recycling of the same people that we have been seeing for decades.

If the candidature comes down to Niger State, I am optimistic that I am going to be the one to get the ticket.

But there are many political heavyweights from the North Central who are also eyeing the position?

Yes. But if you look at it, Alhaji Momammed Sani Musa, for instance, is already a senator from Niger East and he has a task to perform for the people of the zone and the state as a whole. He still has some years to spend in the Senate. I have called his attention to the need for people like him to give us a chance so that we can be able to achieve much bigger things in the state. I said that it was not good for us to continue recycling people like him. And his response was clear. He said if I believed that I had the capacity to do it, I should continue with my campaign to be the national chairman of our great party. But he said he was in the race, too, and he knew that the road was going to be clear.

APC is beset with internal crises at the national level and in some states. How do you think the party can move past these crises?

You see, the APC is a conglomerate of three different political parties that came together to form a political party. The party is trying to realign because it is the party in government and with a lot of interests. Actually, I think there is really no crisis within a political system when there are lots of interests at play. But we are going to resolve our crises soon because we are progressive people.

It seems governors are more powerful than other members of your party. Could you explain why this is so?

Well, people say the governors are powerful because they are the ones financing the party. But there also exist party supremacy and internal democracy and this is where members take charge. When you are in an association and there is this one person that is feeding the association with lots of resources, that person would definitely want to take charge of the association. He would want to be the one who dictates who does this and who does that. This is why we are saying that when we come on board, all the members of the party will participate very well financially or otherwise so that the decision-making process would be all-encompassing.

In a recent interview, President Muhamadu Buhari warned party members to put their house in order to prevent opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from taking over the affairs of this country in the next political dispensation. What is your take on this?

The president is a democrat and a concerned member of the party. He is the national leader of the party but he is not calling himself that because he has relinquished the position to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. With that warning, the president was trying to make it incumbent on the members and leaders of the party to do the right things. Since the president made the pronouncement, you can see that the party has been meeting and virtually all interests within the party have been trying to realign in the overall interest of the party.

How is the party planning on ensuring that the forthcoming national convention is devoid of rancour?

Well, politics is a game of numbers and of interests. It is clear now that the North Central will take the position of the national chairman and that is why we are in the race. When people asked me why I was not gunning for the position of the national youth leader, I said the North had occupied that position since the party came on board and it was definitely now going to the southern part of the country. I am not going to chase shadows, rather I am going to chase something that is real.

People wondered that as a relatively young man, how could I be challenging older people, senior citizens, in the party for the same elective position. My response has always been that I am not challenging anybody because I have told them that this is the time for them to retire. If they had been in the civil service, at 60 years and above, they would be going back home to relax and give younger people a chance. I am sure that when they were in government as governors, they enforced the law. They are already above 60 years in politics and in the party, let them step aside, play advisory roles and guide us in moving this country forward.

With the array of presidential aspirants in the party, how is the party going to manage the situation and bring sanity into the system?

We are progressives and we are going to see how we can manage the situation and be victorious in the 2023 general elections. I have not seen any political party or group of people that can match the APC now. You will recall that in 2015, we gave the PDP a run for their money but presently the PDP is not even giving us a run for our money. They wrongly believe that that Nigerians will do the magic on their behalf and give them the political power. That is why in our reset agenda, we have four things: the rebranding of the party, the supremacy of the party, quality reward system and internal democracy. We are taking Nigeria beyond 2023.

Thank God, the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has declared his presidential ambition. Chief Orji Uzor Kalu and governor of Ebonyi State, Chief Dave Umahi, have also declared their bid to contest the 2023 presidential election on the platform of our great party, the APC. They are all welcome. We will see who becomes the presidential standard-bearer of the party. In 2014, when the President Buhari was vying for the presidential ticket of the party, my late former boss, Mr Sam Nda Isaiah, was also in the race and he challenged even the president, who was like his political godfather. The deceased publisher of Leadership newspapers contested but at the end of the day, President Buhari won the ticket and went ahead to win the presidential election in 2015. The party was able to reconcile all differences and the president was victorious.  I believe that this time, too, we will get our acts together and resolve all crises because all the party members and leaders are honourable people.

What has your political journey been like?

I have been in politics since I completed my secondary education. I was once the youth leader in my local government, Edati Local Government Area of Niger State. From there, I became a member in the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and later a member of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and then chairman of the youths vanguard of the party at the national level. In 2015, I was a member of the Sam Nda Isaiah Campaign Organisation. I was a member of the Presidential Campaign Council for the 2015 and 2019 general elections.

I think I have got the experience to move the party forward. If I am elected as the national chairman of the APC at next month’s national convention of the party, we will build the party into a strong institution such that the coming generations would study the party to understand what the progressives are all about.

The campaign slogan of the opposition PDP is to rescue Nigeria from the incompetence and misrule of the APC in the forthcoming 2023 general elections. What is your take on that?

The PDP is saying that because they think that politics is still being done the old ways but our democracy has got stronger. They were in government for 16 years; they had never been in opposition before and that is why they don’t know what to campaign on. But let them reflect on how we wrested power from them and see how we met the country in shambles.

But the APC administrations at the national level and in the states have put something on the table and Nigerians appreciate what the party has been doing and they would give us the opportunity to do better. We are building a strong democratic process. We can’t deny the fact that we have faced challenges but we are overcoming those challenges. Even though the security challenges are taking new dimensions, we are trying to overcome them. We are optimistic that Nigerians, in no distant future, will appreciate what we have been able to achieve.