A former presidential aspirant under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adamu Garba, has opposed the February 26 national convention because it might spell catastrophe if issues and crises in the party are not resolved, in this interview with DAVID LAWANI

You contested the APC presidential primary in 2019, are you still planning to do the same ahead of the 2023 election?
The ambition is still very much alive. Nothing changed except the fact that we have learnt a good lesson with what we did in the 2019 election and we are willing to even do more after taking some corrections. And also, we learnt so much about the country and we are improving on our vision for the country. Currently, we are at the stage of consultations. We remain solid. Nothing has changed.

Others aspirants like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and the Governor of Ebonyi State, Dave Umahi, are already consulting, are you doing the same?
I am consulting everyone. I believe when it comes to election time, of course, the President is the leader. But he won’t be happy seeing that you are waiting for him. He will be more appreciative if we move around talking to ordinary Nigerians. For me, we have to keep consulting so that we can reach everybody. I am consulting and in 2022, I will come out to contest.

How will you face the cabals?
The cabals in the party are very pragmatic politicians and they understand the challenges facing the country today. And they can hear the yearnings of the people calling for fresh blood and minds. They all understand that we have been doing our best for this period. We have been talking to them. I have been making private calls to individuals in the course of these consultations.

They are very happy and willing to run with the vision we are presenting. They are also looking forward to the future we are preparing for their children and grandchildren.

So, securing their blessings is correspondent to securing the blessings of the younger population of the country which we have already. I am sure the cabal will be happy to find a new president in their lives that they nurtured, guided, and supported while they still live to witness the future transformation of Nigeria from the older to a newer generation.

It is said that there are cabals in the APC who decide what and how the party should be run?
I don’t like you to sugar-coat anything. In every country, not just Nigeria, there are groups of people charged with the responsibility to determine the leadership direction of the country. So, naturally, however, we want to say it, there are people responsible for filtering who should be leaders of the party. For instance, if you come to the APC, how many delegates do we have? Over 8000 delegates will be coming to vote. We have how many people in APC, 41 million. We can call the 8000 delegates the cabal of the party. So, it is happening everywhere. It is fine.

What do you have to say about zoning?
The arrangement came from the military. It was the military guys that determined the rotation of the presidency. And they decide whether it should be South or North. And you can see how polarized the country is. So, we live in an elite consensus. I am not coming out to contest as an elite. I am contesting as someone who doesn’t care about the north or west, east or south. Christian or Muslim.

All I care about is that you are a human being and a Nigerian. Our generation will pay more attention to being a Nigerian than those sectional considerations. Our consultation is even more strategic because it will show clearly that the new generation of Nigerians is not ready to accept that North/South divide. They are going for unity and they demonstrate it by voting for a younger generation that they believe comes from Nigeria.

What is that thing that President Muhammadu Buhari has not been able to do that you want to do?
I think what we intend to do is to consolidate the successes of President Muhammadu Buhari. He has done his best given the challenges he met and especially on the issue of insecurity even though we may want to condemn it. We have so many issues in the North West.

And we hope to have peace in the zone as we move forward. I believe the president became a prisoner of the Nigerian system because it is designed in such a way that no matter how great you have become, if you get to the centre especially the presidency without an extensive plan to fundamentally transform the country, from its bases, roots arrangement, it might not be easy.

So that gap, I believe, is one of the things the president is unable to achieve may be due to age and some constraints around the people surrounding him. This is the area we intend to focus on when we get there.

Is age a factor for who administers the country?
I don’t agree with it. I don’t believe age should be a factor in who becomes the leader of the country. I believe the plan of action should determine who should be a leader. Somebody like me, maybe still a youth or young, I always say I am not a youth candidate.

They should stop calling me a young man. I have two wives and eight children. And I am 40 years. So, what is youth age? I want to be the president of Nigeria whether youth or young, that is my target. It has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with the capacity to deliver.

What is your assessment of all the aspirants that have declared their interest concerning the internal wrangling in the APC?
Yes, I think it is fantastic. APC is a darling that everyone wants to ride. I call it the most beautiful woman everybody wants to marry. And that is why you have so many governors. Former Governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, David Umahi, Urji Uzor Kalu, Rochas Okorocha, and co.

All of them are coming to the contest and it shows how remarkable the party is. It shows that so many people are showing interest in the party far better than the opposition PDP. But again, what do they have on the table? It is not about wanting to be president. Or I feel like I am entitled. It is just that I want to be the president because I have something fundamental I will do to change the structure of this country.

To build the necessary lifestyle or life expectancy. Nigerians want improvement in the system, economy, security, health care, education, etc. There must be a program of action that is pragmatic and implementable which is in tune with the 21st century. That can work in Nigeria and suit our international partners’ interests in addition to what you have on the table.

This is what you can do first to show you are fit to be the president of Nigeria. It is not about, I was a former governor or I am the current governor or I have this entitlement that I build people. These things are not enough manifesto for an ordinary man on the street.

What the ordinary man wants is money in his pocket. Therefore, I will create jobs to be able to earn this money. I don’t want to go to the market and buy things too expensive because it is inflating or removing all the money I am supposed to save to better tomorrow.

There is this notion that once President Muhammadu Buhari is out of power, the party will collapse. Do you share the view?
I don’t agree with that notion. But I believe President Buhari is a very strong force in APC. After the merger, he brought about 12 million votes. That is a very large vote. And he still commands reasonable respect among the people. He is a strong force in the party. But I believe APC has now transformed into an institution perhaps due to the present level of democratization in his way of interaction with the party.

The president never imposes candidates or decisions. He never imposes certain processes to take place in the party. He allows the party to do what it should through consultation so that things can be done well. With the current status of the APC, it has transformed into an institution. Becoming an institution means institutionalization of the APC by President Muhammadu Buhari.

You recently called for the postponement of the APC national convention, what informed that move?
What I wanted to achieve is peace and a united party as we confront the 2023 general elections. We have serious internal wrangling at the party. You know, as you said before, we talk about camps. We have the ANPP, ACN, CPC, APGA, and the nPDP. And lots of democratic parties joined to form the APC. If you go back to the states, there are issues between the state governors existing and the state legislators. And again, you have issues between sitting governors and the former. There is a lot of confusion. So, when you have this kind of confused arrangement, if you pay attention to only reconciling the governors, you are only addressing one part of the issue. There are so many parts to the problems.

And this is the kind of situation we have found ourselves in 2013, 2014, PDP crashed and APC became the net gainer. So, we should avoid this kind of situation. And we now have a caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee under Mai Mala Buni that was instituted by the President himself and of course, the court of law validated it as legal, and they are doing everything possible to stabilise the party. So far, we have attracted more members to the party than we have ever got. And we have achieved so much stability that we can dream of.

The thinking is that, since they have demonstrated this capacity, then give them extra time to make sure that we conciliate some of these toxic interests. There is interest whether we like it or not they might end up leaving the party. But there is some interest that we cannot lose them in the party. This is because they are genuine lovers of the party. They have their sweat and blood at the party. So, you have to find a way to give them a level playing field. And these interests need to be attended to for proper conciliation. And since we are now approaching the convention, these warring parties with all their arsenals, if we can achieve the unity that will be fine, we can go to the convention. But if we are not able, let us have the extra opportunity for the main time for this CECPC to succeed in bringing and mainstreaming the majority stakeholders of the party before we go for a public show.

A convention is a public show. And I don’t believe it is good for us to go to a convention without a good appearance. I don’t believe as a party, we should go into the convention with contestations. Of course, it is democratic to contest outside, but inside the family affair, we have to be able to sit together and agree that this is our leader. We all trust him. So, going into the convention ground with contestation is not solid for us. We have to wait and conciliate, filter candidates across the board to ensure we have a unity list and once we go there, we anoint them. It is a family affair. We do our celebration and we go and take our dinner and we go.

Are you calling for consensus?
I am calling for 100 per cent consensus

What are your fears about the convention on February 26th?
Seriously, if we do not put our house in order, and pay serious attention to the contending interest, we might end up having an implosion. Other people are waiting for this implosion. I am sure you are monitoring what is happening at the party. There is this emergence of the mega party and it is deliberate this time around. It is a combination of strong interests.

They are interested in breaking both the APC and PDP to emerge and win elections. This is ongoing. The strongest broker to that success is the success of APC. That means the merger party will do everything possible to see APC break so that they can gain from it. So, we should not allow them. Even if it warrants giving extra time, even if it means giving more months for the CECPC to regularise the fake membership within the party, we will be able to do that. If we fail in this convention, it will be difficult to win power.

You cannot go to war without an effective General who has the support of the majority of his lieutenants. If the lieutenants break themselves from within, and the house is divided against itself, it cannot stand. And that is exactly what we are trying to avoid.

How much support did you get from the APC government when developing your app?
This kind of application is not government-owned. They are supposed to be freely available. I will expect that the APC being my government, it is good for it to be on the application. I should expect that naturally. But, it is just an expectation, not an instruction. There is no way I am entitled to it. But it went viral and about 63 thousand Nigerians are now using the application. That is the situation we are in now. The support is zero point zero. Are you expecting government support for it like the way it is with Twitter and Instagram, it is okay. But since they are on Twitter and Instagram, maybe Adamu Garba’s government can do that.

Are you disappointed with it?
I can’t say because it is a democratic application. People will have to decide to be there. They don’t have to say I am entitled. I have to convince one of my wives who initially didn’t want to but I was chatting with my other wife on it until the other one became convinced that she wants to join too and she joined. So, you have to respect individual disposition to joining it.

We are still contending with IPOB and Boko Haram and you know APC got to power due to insecurity in the country. Will you say the government has been able to deal with the situation?
I started by saying that the President became a prisoner of the Nigerian system, and that is the situation. We can’t continue with the settings we inherited from the military. Nigeria is not designed that way.

If you go back to a pre-independence time, different countries formed the Federation called Nigeria, and these countries have different identities with their tribes and government system with institutions that have been working for them for a long time. Then we were like 44 million people, now, the same identities have ballooned into 200 million people, and so much information is on the internet about individualisation and personalisation. This is what is taking place. So, people have designed themselves for who they are. So, what is wrong with accepting the situation that pre-existed? What is wrong with accepting an Igbo man for being an Igbo? What is he going to take you from?

They have their own identity. They have their location and what they believe in that is working for them. If they say they want to do IPOB, they need a republic of BIAFRA, give it to them in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If those calling for Oduduwa want it, give it to them in one nation in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If you have people like Boko Haram saying they are Islamiya, give them the opportunity.

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If they want to join a political party to advocate for them, if they have more voters, let them come to the Senate and change the constitution. But to say you are going to use state power to wipe them off, you are giving them more strength. That was the mistake we made. Most of the countries that succeeded in bringing this diverse group together and accepted them for who they are better today. Having the Republic of Biafra doesn’t make any difference. We are sharing the same border and same foreign policy. We are sharing the same currency.

The only difference is that they may provide their governance system and internal security according to their standards. The military, police, and others maintain and vote for their President. Let the centre deliberate and validate that. It is happening in Russia, China. So, that is what we need to do. But in a situation where you insist that we must be united around one document, which most people don’t agree with, then it is a problem.

Are you an advocate of true federalism?
I am an advocate of it. In my case, it is somewhat like the sovereignty of Biafra in a sovereign state of Nigeria. Each component unit should be allowed to organise themselves around a commonly accepted constitution and provide their local security, giving them autonomy in terms of resources and local police.