Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed is former Presidential Adviser to Tinubu on Political Matters. In this interview monitored on Arise TV, the former Secretary General of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), speaks on why former Vice President Atiku Abubakar shouldn’t run in 2027, failures of the All Progressives Congress (APC), why the ruling party can still lose elections even with all the politicians it has coerced into the party, how President Bola Tinubu has marginalised Vice President Kashim Shettima, among others, reports Daily Independent.
Excerpts:
Some people have told Peter Obi that he lacks the capacity to emerge as the African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate with Atiku Abubakar in the race, others have told Atiku not to run, what do you make of this?
I think the point they’re making is that if you go through the conventional process of bringing out a candidate for a party, and that’s the convention, not hand over, surrender again, Peter Obi is likely to lose. Vice President Atiku is head and shoulders better than all the other candidates in terms of emerging through a convention.
He does this either through experience, or he has wider spread, better structures, and more loyal people. And he understands the mechanics of internal democratic politics, I think, better than the others.
I think Peter Obi’s people and himself are not helping his case. What he really needs to do is to go out and soil his boots. I think he’s the most travelled politician I’ve seen in recent times, and that’s good for him. He tried to stay in touch with the grassroots, which is good for him.
But what he needs to do now is to really sit down with his people and come to terms with the fact that he’s now running against hardline politicians who also have their eyes on the same thing that he has his eyes on. What Vice President Atiku did in terms of saying to his people, calm down, we don’t want to start trading insults with each other, was the right thing. Peter Obi should do twice as much.
I did a programme two or three days ago where I mentioned the fact that Peter Obi would lose 100 conventions. You would be amazed at the number of people who commented and insulted me and said, look at these people, how do they think Peter Obi will line up behind Atiku? I’m afraid in the democratic process, that’s how it’s done. You can have a consensus candidate, but you need to have the consensus of people like Atiku. Maybe Amaechi, and maybe there are one or two dark horses who are working behind the scenes. The point is that ADC’s ticket is up for grabs, but it’ll be a very difficult task for anybody to get it other than Atiku. You can play your card and stay still within the party.
But things like, “if I don’t get a ticket, I don’t stay, or your supporters say, give him the ticket, convention or no convention”, it has to be you. I think those things don’t have a place in the democratic process.
How should the ADC avoid an implosion that you’ve predicted, in the event that Atiku Abubakar emerges as a flag bearer? You’ve identified an opportunity for them in your last interview, saying that based on the performance of the APC government, it might not be a clear road for them to emerge as winners in 2027. How can the ADC take advantage of this?
I’m beginning to sound like a broken record when I say the most important thing that ADC can do, and the single most important commitment that Atiku Abubakar can make to this country, all these years of labour and strive to build a democratic process in this country, is to decide not to run. You’ve got to do something that’s so dramatically outside the box that Nigerians can sit up and say, “These are not just other recycled politicians trying to replace you”.
And of all those things, it has to be something that Atiku can do. And one of them is not to keep insisting that he has to run. And I’ll give you my reasons. I’m not the most popular person for Atiku or his camp for saying this, but look at it. President Buhari ran for eight years. He didn’t run well. If he had, he would have mitigated the damage of all this business of, we must have eight years. So, President Buhari’s record is not exactly the best preparation to have another northerner and make a case only for the fact that the person comes from the north for him to be elected. Atiku may have a lot of votes in the north, but Buhari has also alienated a huge number of Nigerians from this idea that being from one part of the country bestows upon you a capacity or an instinct for good leadership. So, that’s going to be a problem.
The second one is people would ask, what can somebody like Atiku and the people around him offer different from what the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku are offering? It’s very little, especially when you don’t know. They need to come out and say exactly what they’re going to do and say it in a manner that one can consider that they have an option to all this poverty, have an option to all this insecurity and have an option to all this quarrels about coming from one part of the country. There are people who are saying, give us power and we can fix the country. ADC is in the strong ground, but what ADC is not doing, it’s not playing its card right. What would you do with power?
The third reason why I think Atiku’s sacrifice for the nation is the best thing they can do is that it’ll give him immense powers to decide what happens in ADC and send signals to the people who will be joggling for positions. If he makes that sacrifice, it gives him huge power. Now he doesn’t become president, but he can decide who becomes president.
What’s the winning ticket? Is it the Obi/Kwankwaso ticket that some people have clamoured for? Is Amaechi the underrated underdog who might just emerge whilst the focus is on Atiku and Obi?
We’re now proceeding on the assumption that the impossible happens, that Atiku says, I give up my ambition to be president, so let’s look at those who are clamouring to fly the ticket. You can settle the issue of who flies the flag even before the convention, but you need to go through the formalities of the convention.
You should mention El-rufai as well, even though he says his hat is not in the ring, so you have Obi, Kwankwaso, if he does come in, because I’m not sure how much Kwankwaso has committed yet to the ADC, but let’s assume he’s there. Amaechi is there, the former governor of Osun State is there.
There are quite a number of Nigerians who have fairly credible records of having held power and quite possibly could offer leadership.
Atiku could say, our best hope for instance is to say, why don’t we produce an Igbo president? Obi is with us. If we combine his huge popularity with the Southeastern people, and the huge number of votes from the north, quite likely because I think the religious element was prominent in the manner people responded in 2023. Then we go out and say, let’s try an elected Igbo president, because he’s good, not just because he’s Igbo president, because he has a credible record as governor, and because if we do this, it’ll certainly be the catalyst for the defeat of the APC. That’s the kind of thing that will go for an Igbo presidency. If it’s not going to be Obi, then you have to look for somebody from the southwest good enough to provide competition to President Tinubu in the southwest and in other parts of the country.
It doesn’t have to be Northern to take over from Tinubu, but we have somebody from the southwest, someone who will do incredibly better than this presidency, which is allowing the country to drift and to sink deeper into insecurity, poverty and division.
You then have to look for a person, like Amaechi. His drawback would be that he was so closely aligned with Buhari, a lot of people will smell Buhari every time he passes by. So that’s going to be his limitation.
Can you mention two names of potential candidates for ADC, all things being equal?
The one factor we haven’t mentioned is this rather unfortunate, but there must be two terms for the southern part. If it’s not Tinubu, it must be a southerner. Amazingly, it appears to have taken place.
I mean, take its position in the mentality of our people. The north shouldn’t take the next four years. I’m responding in this manner because you asked a question about the number one and the number two. You can have a number one from the northern part of the country if it’s the choice of the party and it’s good enough to be sold to a country, not only to the north but to the rest of the country.
Then you can have somebody who will run as second, but he must also bring on board a huge number of southern votes.
The chairman of the APC, Nentawe Yilwatda, was saying that you have to be a member of APC for you to get a position. And even if you’re a technocrat given a position one way or the other, you must also become partisan. How does that work for diversity and for inclusivity and for competence in terms of how we choose those who lead us, so that we don’t end up again in 2027 with multiple motor park touts who are on their way to getting the ticket?
You worked with President Jonathan. And I know two or three excellent non-party people who came in to work for him. One of them was Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, my former minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an excellent Nigerian with excellent credentials. She didn’t just come in as Minister of Finance, she came in as the coordinating minister of the Ministry of Finance. And that was one of the most frustrated people I’ve seen. She ended up throwing up her hands and saying, they’ve finished all the funds being set aside.
The governors come in and say, why are we saving money when we have needs? Basically, she was there when the Jonathan administration ran the economy aground. Being part of that administration, I’m not too sure you would agree with that. The point you raise, does it make any sense, the comments of the chairman of the APC, that you can have a government as complex as the federal government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, made up purely of politicians or technocrats turned politicians?
I was just one of those people in the last few weeks. I almost thought, I hope these guys are not using me as an example. I went in there as a non-political person. I actually have my own party. They knew I’m a member of the People’s Redemption Party (PRP). But anyway, they appointed me there. I went in there. Midway through, or a little bit before midway through, I walked out because I didn’t see any value in being there.
You have a huge number of excellent people, even as we speak, excellent, well-placed to make massive inputs into policymaking, policy management, policy implementation, but they don’t get involved.
I used to ask some of my colleagues, what the hell are we doing here? We form cliques, we block ourselves up. So having a technocrat in government in itself is not necessarily a guarantee that they would use you. But it’s inconceivable what he’s suggesting.
If you’re going to come into our party, you have to have a party card, you have to show levels of loyalty consistent with their needs. How do you run a country made up entirely of politicians?
I’m really more worried, now we understand why the APC is so desperate to gobble up and eat up every politician. They think that if they corner all the politicians on their side, they’ll win this election in 2027, and they’re making a terrible strategic mistake.You can pocket every politician in this country and still lose an election, because they’re not performing well. Regarding Shettima, he’s one of the most intelligent people I knew and worked with. I mean loyal beyond questioning. He’s a victim of geopolitics.
There are people who think the Muslim-Muslim ticket needs to be replaced, you need to go for a second term with a Muslim-Christian candidate so that you can now bring on board the Christian element. And they keep missing the point.
Actually the truth is that the Muslim-Muslim ticket hasn’t worked for the Muslims. On the contrary, it has assuaged the concerns of the non-Muslims who thought, if we have two presidents, a vice president and a president, praying five times a day, we’re in trouble. They’re not in trouble. They were not put in trouble.
On the contrary, they got many concessions that the Muslims in this country didn’t get. Largely because there was really no substantial difference between having a running mate who is a vice president.
Shettima has been marginalised, he has been made virtually redundant by President Tinubu. I don’t know whether it’s because he’s a Muslim or whether they have issues, but I think they’re not utilising an excellent vice president in the manner they should. They have massive problems in the North. What they need to do, really, is to use people like Shetima to say, help us to fix the North. On the contrary, they’re just bringing in governors, senators and members of the House of Representatives. These people who can’t even face their citizens or their people who voted, who are going to go on the street and tell Nigerians to vote for them, unless they’re not planning to have a real election. APC’s strategy is fundamentally flawed.
You said that they’re not maximising the potential of Shettima as vice president to consolidate the base in the North. Again, the ADC does release press statements regularly to counter the government and offer solutions. You also said the ADC hasn’t told Nigerians what they would do differently can you elaborate?
Releasing press statements once in a while when something happens is not defining what you’re going to do with the country. It’s just simply a routine critique of the opposition. Every time the government puts its foot wrong, you get somebody to write a beautiful statement that says this was the wrong way to have done this.
What I meant was basically ADC is operating in an environment where it genuinely has to say what it’ll do differently from what APC is doing. Study APC, where are its limitations? And what will you do to fix them? It hasn’t done that. I haven’t seen a single document, manifesto, policy statement, no press releases for goodness sake.
What is the ADC going to do in specific terms that differs radically from what APC is doing and looks likely to be a solution? Is our military losing a war we’ve been fighting since 2010, 2011? What do we do with these bandits? Do we simply continue chasing them while we kill a few of them and then they take over villages? Our people are living literally in many parts of the north, living under bandits or conditions that bandits dictate.
Take the issue of poverty, it’s a very serious issue. What are you going to do about it? The management of the economy, you hear about all these statistics and all these improvements being released by the ministries and agencies of the government. Yet they don’t translate on how many millions of children are living with malnourishment, how many families go to bed with an empty stomach, how many people are roaming the streets with nothing to do.
These are the kind of things that you think a party prepared to replace the APC should be doing. Preparing a document or a publicity strategy that will say to Nigeria, look at us.
We can actually fix Nigeria. Eighty percent of their energy is targeted against each other. APC’s energy is targeted at winning the next election, not preparing the people to vote for them. They’re so sure with all these politicians in their room, they can literally walk into power.
So who’s looking after the country? No one. Not the government, not the opposition. That’s why we’re in such trouble.
You asked if the APC is in trouble in the north. Yes, they are. They’re not just in trouble in the north. They’re in trouble everywhere. I don’t think they understand that. Because when you read the press releases, which is 80 percent of how they engage the rest of the country, you really shake your head and you wonder how extensively the people who write these reports or briefs travel.
In a place like Kaduna, a church was raided. They took away a large number of people, I don’t play numbers games, but they took away a large number of people. The immediate reaction of both the federal government and initially the state government, even the local government, was to say, no, nothing of such happened.
For goodness sake, what do you want people to think? That either you don’t exist in the same country as we do, or you don’t care. I listened to the comments made, and I commend you guys for those comments. It was a horrible thing.
I’m very happy that Governor Uba Sani retracted and said, no, it did happen. But these are examples of a government not on the ground. They don’t understand the damage that poverty is doing in the country.
They don’t understand how citizens who are chased away from villages feel about what it is to live in a country where as soon as you put your load down, they’ll tell you they’re still coming after you and you’re running.
In the entire southwest, there’s not a single eternally displaced camp. Not because the people don’t need it. They roam the streets. But because neither the state nor the federal government have thought it is important to put places where some of the people have been displaced. In Katsina, in Kaduna, in Bauchi, in Zamfara, they settle these people down. They’re Nigerians. They used to farm and live in decent homes and look after their families. Nobody wants to do that. And the reason why they don’t want to do that is because IDPs magnify or show in graphic terms the number of people who have been displaced by criminals and bandits.
And these are the kind of things I’m suggesting should be done in the northern part of the country. Shetima is very good at dealing with these kinds of things.
