‘Kano, Jigawa marginalised in APC’s interim leadership’

What is your take on the sharing of leadership positions among ACN, ANPP and CPC in the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC)?
In my own view, ACN has presented some of its best politicians to represent the party in the new leadership arrangement; so also ANPP. These two political parties have successfully brought in their most loyal people who will stand by their parties and work for its success; they bought them to represent their extractions in the merger arrangement, unlike CPC which is supposed to be the flagship of the arrangement but failed to present its best politicians. The party has failed to present its loyal members, people who fought and ensured the survival of the party as a formidable opposition, which gave the party the strength and the voice in the new arrangement; and instead it presented people who have been CPC in personality but PDP in character. They are people who either sold out or have questionable loyalty to General Buhari. The most worrisome part of it is that people who have been with the General Buhari since the time he decided to join politics in 2000, and worked for him in The Buhari Organisation (TBO) and in subsequent elections up till this moment have been relegated to the background.
How did CPC get itself in this situation?
My heart bleeds when I always look back and see that people who have sacrificed their lives for the emergence and success of CPC, people who have been with General Buhari as his genuine admirers and lovers have been successfully outsmarted by those that are professional lobbyists and political hangers on. These people have been with the PDP and their interest is always in the PDP, but now they are representing us. Take a look at Kano State for instance, a state known to be in total support of General Buhari, yet none of its party members was nominated to be part of the new APC leadership. It is also the same with Jigawa State, people like Farouk Adamu Aliyu who fought and always defend the interest of the party and worked tirelessly for the General to succeed are nowhere to be found in the new arrangement. Now, how can one justify this glaring inability of CPC to present at least a single representative from either Kano or Jigawa in the new leadership? Common sense will dictate that Kano State which has been the backbone of genuine followership to General Buhari should be topmost in the new leadership arrangement, but instead, a vice chairman’s position was zoned to Katsina, Buhari’s home-state and the former Speaker Aminu Bello Masari was nominated. In fact, courtesy demands that Kano should be considered to fill in the position or any available leadership position in view of its overwhelming support to the General. We have people like, Alhaji Bello Isa Bayero, who can successfully fit in and carry their people along. They have been in politics and always on the side of the people but they were not considered.
My greatest concern is that while good politicians always look for where their strength lies, in CPC the reverse is the case. The party has failed to take cognisance of the fact that Kano and Jigawa states have been and would continue to be the backbone of genuine support to the party and to General Buhari. Unfortunately, the party has caved in and is now victim of the game plan of new emerging ‘internet politicians’ who are in the party for their personal and selfish goals. The way the party caved in to the political manoeuvres of some selfish politicians will affect its fortune in Kano and Jigawa states. The party’s followership is politically vulnerable, since there is nobody to protect their interest in the new APC leadership and it seems nobody cares about the development. But I am assuring our people that we are not going to leave this to chance. As grassroots politicians, we are going to fight it and struggle to ensure full defence of our members’ interest, we will not retreat over this and we will not surrender, rather we would imbibe the teaching of the late political sage, Malam Aminu Kano, who always tell his disciples when he was alive to rise up and say ‘No’ to any form of injustice whenever they were unfairly treated; that is exactly what we are going to do.
So who is to blame for this?
The fault is from our party leaders. We have our party chieftain and Chairman Board of Trustees, General Muhammadu Buhari; we have our party leaders such as Chief Tony Momoh, Buba Galadima, and Deputy Chairman Mustafa Salihu and a host of others. These people were unable to protect our interest in the merger arrangement and the emergence of new leadership. But we are not going to accept it, because there is glaring injustice. We are with General Buhari because of his ideals, as a person who detests injustice and we are confident that when he eventually emerge as president of this country in 2015, the common man would have cause to smile, but with this development we have cause to worry and we will rise up and resist any injustice no matter from what source. We hate PDP because of tyranny and lack of internal democracy, yet we are facing the same problem in our darling party, CPC. The late Malam Aminu Kano of blessed memory had fought injustice when he was alive and he had taught us to resist any form of injustice, likewise South African nationalist Nelson Mandela who was incarcerated for over 27 years fighting political injustice and struggling to emancipate his people from any form of slavery. The lessons we learnt from these nationalists would remain our rallying point, hence we will not let any politician to intimidate or harass us by chasing us out of political relevance. We are the grassroots politicians and we will remain so in spite of political manoeuvres.
What will you do in the circumstance?
Our message to General Buhari is that we are not satisfied with the leadership arrangement because Kano and Jigawa states have been marginalised. We have people who are committed to the cause of justice, we have the political will and we have the determination to ensure our votes always count, so we will never allow ourselves to remain and watch the elite and ‘internet politicians’ to take over control of our destiny. Because of our edge and political sagacity they always rely on our efforts to ride to success but yet they want to dictate to us and make use of us and dump us. They are good at political manoeuvre but we will not allow anyone to ride on our backs and short change us. We will definitely fight injustice since we are the real political field workers who come out to vote during elections, defend our votes and ensure success of our party. Let me tell you; the problem of our party is emanating from a group of politicians who have contested in the last states governorship election. They have come together as a pressure group, and regrettably working against the interest of the party just to realise their ambitions. They have been holding a series of meetings to dictate how the interim party leadership of APC would look like. A decision was reached on who and who would be nominated by CPC but surprisingly they set aside all the nominees and selected their people based on selfish reasons so as to get easy ride, that is why I said, we will not allow this kind of injustice to continue in CPC. We didn’t expect General Buhari to cave in to their game plan because we revered him as a good leader who cannot be swayed by selfish tendencies, but they have succeeded in influencing his decision which would eventually turn out to be detrimental to the party.
In your own opinion, what will be the fate of CPC extraction in the new APC leadership?
I would advise that General Buhari should always be wary of those that have surrounded him, showing him fake loyalty. Some of them were brought to limelight by the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar but they betrayed him in order to satisfy their own selfish goal. They also betrayed their new master, former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, after he vacated the seat of power in 2007. And I am assuring General Buhari the same people would betray him at the nick hour when their selfish ambition is realised. The danger ahead is that the hope of Nigeria’s common man would be in jeopardy if these people would succeed in riding on the back of the General to attain their selfish end and do away with him. They have done it before and will do it if they get the opportunity. They have an agenda which they are pursuing religiously, that is to do away with the General and install their stooge. Whenever they are through with this plan, they will definitely betray the masses. They have succeeded in pooling wool over his eyes and Buhari is unable to stick to his political group that is genuinely loyal to him. In fact, some lawmakers and a select group of certain politicians in Abuja are working towards the realisation of this goal. They have the resources and the backing of some big shots. At the nick hour they will ditch our leader and since people have been impoverished they will execute their plans successfully given the impression that democracy is at work.