A presidential spokesman of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Abdulmumuni Jibrin, says his party would win in all the 19 northern states in the February 25 election. In this interview on Channels TV Politics Today monitored by David Lawani, he also ruled out the possibility of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and major opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) emerging victorious in the exercise, among other issues

Few weeks to the election and you are just inaugurating your campaign. Why?

The inauguration is a formality. And if you follow our activities in the last couple of months you will know that we have set the ball rolling and even much earlier than the three other political parties trying to compete with us. We have been going around and holding our town hall meetings. We have been opening our offices all over the country. And meeting with all the stakeholders and the rest, and a majority of the people that have been inaugurated today have been part of his political family. The transition from the Nigerian movement and after leaving the PDP. They have been together and everybody has been doing his part of his work. And I know that when people see the news today they will say they are just setting up their campaign council. It has been working. It is important to just fulfil that formality that people are being inaugurated today. But all the while we have been working.

How has your campaign been going because your party is seen as the fourth in this horse race?
Well, that is wrong and incorrect. A lot of people have been using polls and all sorts of arrangements to be able to throw a kind of perception in the public. In the last couple of weeks, like I just explained to you, he has been doing a lot and many people call it the eleventh wonder of the world for him to have come up with a political party and go all out because of his friends. A lot of the so-called big men were doubting perhaps because they underrated his connection with the masses of this country. Within months, he set up the party, went through the congresses, and primaries, and at the same time, start going around the country and setting up offices. In terms of the campaign, he has done much more than all the presidential candidates. He is not going to the state. And none of the Presidential candidates have gone to the local governments like Kwankwaso has done to about 400 LGAs across the nation. On record. A documentary was launched today and you would see the videos and pictures of the towns and cities that he has visited, and before the election, he would have been able to finish up the 774 local government councils that we have in the country. It is unprecedented and that is why sometimes we complained that perhaps the media is not even a fair coverage.

Why has your party not been captured in the science of the polls?
I am so happy that you brought up this issue. You see, because we have also been in the trenches campaigning, and the rest. We have not had time to respond to a lot of issues. The last one that came up was from somebody that I respect so much the man, the founder of IBTC, Atedo Peterside. He came on national television and was just reading figures without basis, foundation, and with absolute nonsense. You cannot come on national television and talk of Kwankwaso in North Western Nigeria and you say he is going to get six per cent of the votes, Rabiu Kwankwaso? We have concluded that some people know that they are going to lose the next election. We are going to win the election. They know they are going to lose so they are setting the ground to reject the result and that is why you see the polls coming out without credibility. When you ask them who are those in the poll and who are on the board, how they get their data and somebody will say he call Kano, where unofficially we are over 20 million, while officially we are less than 10 million, and somebody said he called 200 people. Do they know what they are talking about? Talking about the campaign and everything that is going on. I have said it repeatedly in this programme, you have the APC, PDP, and the LP, and NNPP. A chunk of the votes always determined who wins the presidential election from the Northern part of the country, and today, I keep saying that for about 16 years President Buhari controls more than 12 million votes, today, Kwankwaso is the one controlling the 12 million votes. Go to the Northern part of the country and you will see the reality. Not even Buhari can control that 12 million votes now.

Why do you think President Muhammadu Buhari cannot control the 12 million votes?
It is the law of diminishing returns. He has already done his own. He was supported for 15 years. And I am not talking about what he has done right or wrong. I don’t want to go into that. But it is the natural law of diminishing returns. He has done his eight years. Those people and all of us who have supported him in the North, we say thank you, Baba. You have done your own. Go home and rest, and he is going. That is why you see and you can tell. Do you need somebody to tell you? Or have you seen anybody put his picture with Buhari’s own? I think President Buhari went to Adamawa. He should look at the roads and see for himself. All the people saying come and campaign for us, when you have a national leader who is not contesting in an election you will want to put pictures.

If you are not campaigning for Kwankwaso, you would have been doing that for Tinubu. President Buhari was in the North for Tinubu. Do you think that Tinubu will not benefit from his advantage?
Tinubu is not going to benefit from it. That is why when APCs do their analysis all the time, they talk about the PDP. They say, oh, PDP lost Kwankwaso. PDP lost Peter Obi and five governors. Yes, PDP is in crisis. PDP is in a mess but is in a more challenging and damaging situation. That 12 million votes are not there. Again, when you say Kwankwaso left PDP. The assumption was that he left only PDP supporters, no. Many people from APC like me joined him. Where did I come from? Am I not coming from APC? As it stands, today, APC has lost about 70 to 80 per cent of its support base in Northern Nigeria. So, by the time Kwankwaso mop up those votes, particularly in the northwest part of the country and now, we are making significant inroads in the southern part of the country. Then, we will be able to win the election. No miracle on earth will make APC or PDP win this presidential election.

Police, Fire Service, others put out fire at a fuel station in Abuja

So who will win?
You will see what will happen. We are winning the election. The fireworks are on.

You don’t have any state that you control including state or national representatives. How will you do it?
It is wrong. Go to the national assembly and see. Even some people even placed LP ahead of us while some are even praising us. How can you place LP ahead of us when some people are already jumping camps to APC? The person who is contesting in Bauchi who is going to be the governor is a seating Senator and an NNPP candidate. Even in Kano, we have about 10 members of the state house of assembly. And we have members like that in other states. You are probably getting this story from the fake Atedo Peterside polls. Be careful of this googling and you just get information. Research it. We have members everywhere. We have serving Senators.

Can you give at least 10 states that you think you can win conveniently and comfortably as a political party?
We will win in Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Kaduna, Yobe, Taraba, etc. You said 10 otherwise I would have said take 90 per cent of the 19 Northern states. So, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Nasarawa.

How will your party be able to defeat APC and PDP in some of these strongholds that they hold strongly?
I have told you our route to success. The North always significantly tilts towards a particular side, and the votes will come in bulk. It will come in pieces. And because of the credibility of Kwankwaso, performance, and trust, that the Northern voters have in this gentleman, Kwankwaso is going to mop up substantially the votes that are going to come from the Northern part of the. I have just explained to you that Kwankwaso is the beneficiary of the Buhari 12 million votes. Certainly, a Northern politician will have to come up and inherit that. And because Buhari’s politics is commoner’s politics and masses based none of the surviving Northern politicians have a connection with the masses like Kwankwaso. They will go that way and I am telling you. What we are saying will happen in the next 5 to 6 weeks. You will see what I am telling you. And that is why you hear people go to Kano and said he is looking for votes in Kano. And in Kano, you are looking for votes? Do a simple experiment. I am saying it on national television. And I want everybody to experiment with it. Take Kano from one end to another. Maybe from the access road to Katsina then you come out from Zaria Road. Take a vehicle and put a song of Kwankwaso. Then put Atiku with the loudspeaker. Put a song of Tinubu and drive to and from. And put a song of Peter Obi and drive to and from. Come back to the studio and tell people what you have seen. These are the practical polls, not the ones somebody sits in his bedroom and cook up results. You know you will drive past artisans, mechanics, food sellers, traders, motorcycle riders, etc. Those are the people you will pass by. You will pass through the towns and cities and the rest. Just a song and you feel the difference.

Do you say that the crowd that came out for Tinubu and Atiku, amounted to nothing? Considering that four of these 10 states like Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, and Jigawa have about 10 million votes?

I want to answer this question consciously. And I want to choose my words carefully. Let me tell you something. Do you know what happens in Kano? The rallies you are seeing were just Kano alone. What happened in Kano last week was a combination of Northwest. Northern Nigeria all gathered in Kano. Even at that, people were taken. Take and climb the car. That is why I said let me choose my words carefully. Everybody was seeing it and the videos are everywhere.

Were they given money?

That was why I said let me choose my words carefully. The videos are being played everywhere. They were seen fighting on the streets. They will go to local schools and just push them onto a bus and give them money. But look at how organic the Kwankwaso crowd is. But we will keep arguing about this. It is six weeks and you will come back and say I said it. No party will get 25% in Kano. Put a bet on me. You have no idea what is going on there.

So, you mean Kwankwaso will win a landslide in Kano?

He will win massively. And that is why he is going to have an advantage because he is going to have an open balance sheet with a massive advantage. Now, previously, why APC was winning the election because Buhari was giving them the advantage of an open massive balance sheet of 10 to 12 million votes. They don’t have it. Meanwhile, they are jumping up and down celebrating. And you think, how are they going to do that? Most of their governors have lost credibility maybe you can take El-Rufai or two other persons. Most of them cannot even go back to their states.

Why should anyone vote for Kwankwaso over the other 17 candidates?

Experience, capacity, performance, and trust. This is the simple reason why 500,000 and one million people will come out of the street of Kano to receive this man without spending money. Let me tell you something- that is the oath of Muslims. Everything you see Kwankwaso doing, it is just miracle money is not involved. I am a politician and I know what I am telling you. When you see them gather people, they give money. The man doesn’t. Nobody collects money from him.

Why is the talk of alignment with other political parties because there is the possibility of an inconclusive election based on the fact that there might be a second ballot? Is your party talking to any other political party?

All this is coming from the three other political parties. And probably they did their analysis and they don’t want to accept the fact that Kwankwaso will win by a wide margin. So, they are consoling themselves by saying that we will have a tie by going for a second round. The issue of discussion of the second round or the rest never comes to NNPP. We are focused. We are not aligning with anybody. It is nonsense. But you see, they are already afraid. And they are going all around running helter-skelter to achieve one of the two things. Either to diminish us in the eyes of the people that oh, they don’t have the strength they are trying to align with them. Or to prepare the grounds in the likelihood