Abubakar Alhassan Yakubu is FCT NLC chairman and National Coordinator, Peter Obi Volunteer Electioneering Team of the Obidient Movement, in this chat with BEN ADOGA he insists that Obi, LP candidate for 2023 presidential election is better that other candidates. He said he is proudly Northerner, Hausa and Muslim and convinced that Nigeria needs Peter Obi at times like this. He accuses the elite of using religion and ethnicity to divide Nigerians and pauparise them so they can use them for political gains.

Q.

Let’s get to understand the issues properly, who are you and what is POVET, what does the Obidient movement stand for?

A.

My name is Abubakar Alhassan Yakubu. I am the chair person NLC, FCT Council. Knowing that the NLC has a party, the Labour Party which has presented a candidate in the person of Dr. Peter Obi for the 2023 presidential election, I am galvanising POVET which is Peter Obi Volunteer Electioneering Team; I am the National Coordinator of POVET.  Our objective is to galvanise people at all levels, from the wards, the polling units up to the national level to get them to vote for the candidacy of Peter Obi and Ahmed Datti during the 2023 presidential elections.

Q.

Let’s know more about POVET, how did you start, we know where you are headed, how do you operate?

A

POVET is a collection of like minds and friends from different backgrounds and different interests. We came together, looking at the Nigerian political terrain, especially now that the NLC has taken ownership of our party, the Labour Party and brain stormed on how we can contribute. I am privileged to be  FCT NLC chairman and has taken part in all conferences and aware of all decisions taken, especially where it was decided that we work in tandem with the Labour Party. We also agreed to work with candidates that will accept the workers charter of demands. The chatter of demands is our demand put forward to whoever will fly the flag of the Labour Party. We presented the charter to politicians and insisted that any candidate we support MUST accept our demands because it’s the demand of the workers of Nigeria. For the LP, being the child of Nigerian workers, who ever emerges candidate must have it in mind and accept those demands.

Q.

What are the demands contained in the charter?

A

The basic demands are free education, at least from primary to junior secondary school, proper healthcare services for all Nigerians, social welfare cover for the aged, young and the working class, infrastructure and making our refineries work. We presented them to Peter Obi to see what the NLC has put together and decisions the organs have taken and how we can work together on them. Having come from such background, some from the Labour unions, sone from the business sector and some from the political sector, we decided to come together and muted the idea of POVET. Initially we were just about 12 and later invited people from different states of the federation to join us.

Q.

Is POVET and the Obidient Movement sinonimous or these are two different entities.

A.

The Obidient Movement, like we call it, a mass movement, while POVET is a support group. There are several support groups that are in the movement, we are part of the movement.

Q.

The narrative out there is that Peter Obi’s supporters are irritant Ibo youths, from your name you are not Ibo and ….

A.

I am not irritant, you can see me and I am not Ibo. I am of the Hausa extraction, but I think I am educated enough to know what is  Nigeria’s problems and to proffer solutions to them, to know exactly what is workable and what is not workable that is why I find myself where I am today irrespective of religious and tribal sentiments. To reiterate, I am Hausa and a Muslim but I belief strongly in the Peter Obi movement and I am doing all that is possible to see it succeed.

Q.

The politics of 2023 is drifting towards tribal and religious inclination. How do you thing we can address this issue?

A.

The elite has been able to use tribe and religion to continue to divide us so they can continue to enslave us and make life difficult for us continually and pauparise Nigerians. Just like Peter Obi used to say, if you are hungry, what you need is food, if you are in dare need of medical attention and you go to a hospital, you will not ask whether the doctor is a Christian or Muslim before he attends to you, all you need is medical attention, I believe what we need today in this country is not about where I come from, my religion or denomination. Come to think of it as a Northerner, what have I personally or my people have been able to achieve for just being Northerners? That is the question I always ask, most of us are privileged to be where we are by share grace of God and by some stint of hard work, we don’t belong to the class of the Northern oligarchy, so how has it benefited all of us? If you go to the so called Core North, the North West, are they faring better? Is the level of poverty there better than the level of poverty in the South East or in the South West, do they have fantastic infrastructure like good road network? Rather there is where insecurity is ravaging today. Are there better off now than they were 10 years ago? For me, nobody should deceive us with tribes and religion,  I know the kind of calls I get from colleagues, friends and family members sometimes questioning, you are an Hausa man, what business have you got with an Ibo man, after all there was 1966 coup when  Ahmadu Bello was killed, that has remained the propaganda. Till today, we have not got anybody from the North who did what the Sardauna did in the North, so where is the Northernisation they claim?  Have Northern leaders of today able to bring those principles he propagated to work?

When the man was alive, from  available records he was detribalised; the Ikuns in present day Kogi State, the people of present Plateau State and Benue are largely christians, he was just and faire to all, he made them what they are today. He didn’t say because they were christians he would marginalise them, I understand one of his drivers was a Christian and he bought him a copy of the Holy Bible as a gift when he travelled. The crop of Northern leaders that we have today, do they have that mentality?

Q.

Politics in Nigeria is a game of numbers, ideas remain in the realm of academics, the voting pattern in Nigeria remains tribal. Pundits are already saying that the three major candidates have naturally divided themselves, the North for the PDP, West for APC and South East for the Labour Party candidate, given that the South East has the least number of voters in this equation, what are Obi’s chances?

A.

Peter Obi has a very bright chance, in fact, better chances than all the other candidates, but I don’t want to leak out our strategies, we are still keeping some of them to our chests, we are working on all of that. I remember in the LP retreat held last month, the president of the NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba gave a charge and urged every worker to get at least 10 other persons on board, this is a tip of the ice berg.

Imagine this, every worker in Nigeria under the umbrella of the NLC and the TUC should mobilise, at least 10 persons each, imagine that.

Q.

With that strategy, it seems it’s game over already. Every village and hamlet in this country has, at least primary school teachers and NULGE members in every local government, this sounds fantastic, but do the workers believe in your leadership enough to take this instruction?

A

For Nigerian workers, it’s not about believing in the leadership of unions, it’s about what they have seen and the future that lies ahead for them and their children. The workers are looking at how Nigeria has treated them and how the N30,000 minimum wage couldn’t take them home and how even done governors refused to pay the N30,000. These are the crux if the matter, it’s not about trusting NLC president or TUC president. Do workers and Nigerians want the suffering to continue, that’s the question. We are tired if lamentations, we are tired of argonising, we now want to organise our selves and get a better Nigeria for all of us.

Q.

People describe Peter Obi’s movement as an amorphous force flowing in a flux, do you really have strategies and segments to go into this 2023 elections? People say that some members of your movement are not even registered voters.

A.

This party began to gain momentum less than five months ago. Those saying all sorts of things about us, the APC, PDP and other parties never thought the Labour Party and our candidate can ever get to this level, so as they keep doubting we will keep working behind the scene and keep moving but what I am assuring you is that we are focussed on our goal while they keep fighting among themselves. As we keep strategising, you can see what is happening in PDP; the Gov. Wike group and the rest of them, in the APC, the court has pronounced that the primary election for the Osun State election is not known or recorgnised in the eyes of the law because the caretaker committee that conducted the election is not known in the eyes of the law . You can also see what happened in Aramawa State, who knows if the presidential primaries that took place would be recorgnised in the eyes of the law. We are watching, the prayers of the down trodden Nigerians may be in all these. We will continue to strategise and talk to the Nigerian people and see how 2023 ends.

Q.

Let’s look at Northern Nigeria again, in the far North, how well have you made in route into the North West and the North East?

A

Like I said earlier, I don’t want to say it all. You don’t open up your strategies to your opponents. Whether they believe that we are making in routs or not, time shall tell. Let me tell you something about this Northern Nigeria people talk about, North Central is supposed to be part of Northern Nigeria, but you are more interested in the far North, that is the problem that those of us from other parts of the North feel terrible about, that some people feel that they are more Northern than some other people. Some of them feel that just coming from the North West make you a proper and authentic northerner, even the North East people are regarded as not being proper northerners, how long can we continue in this narrative enslaving ourselves to some people who feel that they are more northerners than the rest of us? Finally, we are doing our best and gaining access to those areas some people think we can’t have access and we are getting results. We are already talking to those they think we can’t reach. They say we don’t have structures and they are beginning to see structures coming up, structure is about people and we have people, it’s human beings that will vote. The only thing I want to say at this point is INEC should be seen to he independent and let’s see what happens. From the area council elections we had in the FCT, my confidence in INEC was boosted. There are area councils where they used to register ,30,000 to 40,000 votes in the past but with the use of BVAS some of those areas could not even generate 15,000 votes, understand what I mean, that is why we are saying, if that technology will be deployed and properly deployed too, the rigging will be reduced to the bearest minimum. With BVAS, the votes will count.

Q.

Let’s talk about Peter Obi as a person, what really endears you people to him?

A.

Peter Obi became lucky, so to speak, because of the times that had come and the privilege that God has given him. In my personal opinion, Peter Obi is a capitalist like any other politician, but the fact that even among the blind, the one eyed man is better, and since he is coming on the platform of people that actually have a blue print, we believe he will adhere to the blue print because it’s on those principles that he will be elected. From antecedents, I am not from Anambra State and I have not been there before, the things he did in the past are on record and we have verified, we think he is better than these other people. Remember, he is running on the platform owned by the NLC, he will be different. These are the things that endear us to the personality of Peter Obi.

Q.

Is there any area you want INEC to strengthen their strategy or do things differently before or during the 2023 general elections?

A

I feel the technology that was deployed in the area council elections in February this year is good and can be said to he dependable. They should strengthen that technology because it has seriously reduced rigging, the beauty of it was that accreditation and voting went simultaneously. That should continue and make sure that they give every body equal opportunity, provide a level playing field without giving preference to certain political parties in certain areas. I say so because in this country, people complain of rigging where they are not strong enough to rig, all parties want to rig in their locations of strength , but where they are not strong enough to rig, they complain, that is the Nigerian situation.