By: Umunna Kalu

Salihu Lukman is the former Vice National Chairman, North West of the All Progressives Congress (APC). In this chat with select media, he speaks on the President Bola Tinubu leadership, his mistake and why he resigned from the party, among other national issues.

Excepts:

*Is it correct to say that you resigned your membership of the APC because you were dissatisfied with the administration of Bola Tinubu?*

One of the biggest mistakes President Bola Tinubu made was making that inauguration declaration where he declared that “Subsidy is gone” without even settling down to think of a plan that will cushion effect. Till today no plan was made in response to that challenge. That is why the living conditions in the country are terrible. We cannot keep grandstanding. All of us in the party are just onlookers.

We’ve been unable to even access President Tinubu and influence decisions on what needs to be done and this is the bigger frustration.

From the way things are going, my prediction, which is why I had to act the way I  acted, is that by the end of this year if we don’t take time the campaign for 2027 will start and people will be forced to just queue behind any leader and out of anger and frustration, with the reality before us, people will end up electing a worse successor. All the challenges of the country will even get worse. It is the reason, which is why I said I’m returning to the trenches to start the campaign to ensure that we’ll do the fundamentals. Democracy is not all about elections. The fundamental thing about democracy is the capacity of elected leaders to hold them accountable and reflect their decisions in terms of what they do and that is the function of a political party. The truth about it, which is the reality we face today, is that all parties are just legal entities. The main reason of returning to the trenches is to begin to campaign to do the unconventional thing of returning to start building a political party before even the electioneering season for 2027 starts so that all candidates will emerge not just based on democratic process but will be committed when they’re elected to submit themselves to the party’s leadership which at the moment doesn’t exist.

*Can you throw more light on on the statement you made about having to rig election in 2027 ?*

For me I’m aware that in the 2015 election there couldn’t have been any basis for contesting that result. We won that election fair and square, and 2019 the same thing. In 2023 my belief is that we won that election but unfortunately even before the election the country was set up on a kind of very bad politics and no matter the outcome those who lost in the election will contest the result. Unfortunately, because we have created an atmosphere of distrust which our leaders have lost the humility to accept that they contributed to creating that atmosphere. That is why the whole question of whether we live in the past is being raised now. In terms of moving forward for me, the election is about winning the support of citizens based on the belief that citizens have confidence that candidates who are contesting for elections will address their problems and challenges. At the moment what I see President Asiwaju doing and APC doing is to erode the basis of confidence of the electorate and there is no way citizens can support APC or Tinubu or candidates on the platform of APC in 2027 that is why I said except the election is rigged.

*After the Buhari disaster many thought there was no basis to vote APC in the 2023 general elections and now you said that you cannot reach Tinubu, has he become an over lord of some sort?*

On the question of whether people voted for the APC in 2023 or not. Just like I said, our leaders have created a basis for distrust and my reference point during our debate before 2023, election is about making choices, the same way you may have argued APC has performed well, I argued that relative to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the APC was better. I may be wrong and I’m not grandstanding.

*But critics say that the PDP  performed better than APC based on the numbers on ground… ?*

No. I admit that in terms of meeting up with our campaign promises we have done badly, no doubt about it. What are these campaign promises? Issues of security, issues of economy and issues of fighting corruption, we have done badly. People have reached a conclusion as to whether APC is worse than PDP or not. Before the 2023 election, I had the hope that because our leaders were not in denial of challenges facing us, they would be humble enough to admit that we have not done what we needed to do between 2015 and 2023. Under Asiwaju Bola Tinubu I was very confident that he would not really do business as usual the way Buhari did, but unfortunately he is doing business as usual and as if we are going to end up in a worse situation. To that extent you can be right if you criticize some of us who were in the APC who supported President Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. On your second point about Asiwaju being an extreme right leader, I tried to explain this very easily. APC was founded on the vision of being a social democratic party. Social democratic parties prioritize the wellbeing and condition of living  of citizens, issues of education, issues of health, issues of social welfare, and that should be reflected in public investment. Unfortunately, what are the first steps Asiwaju took, apart from the fact of the attack of corruption, social investment has been suspended which is why the question of responding to hardship is so weak. Also look at the major decisions of President Bola Tinubu, spending N15 trillion on Lagos-Calabar coastal Highway, imagine if a fraction of that amount is invested in education and in terms of education we talk about 10 million out of school children in the north. You cannot solve that problem by business as usual, allocating a meagre amount to education and expect classroom blocks, teachers to be recruited, teaching materials to be procured with the meagre that have been allocated there now. We need extra budgetary activity to be able to respond to that and mop up the out-of-school children out of the streets. In terms of mopping up the advantage of it is that it will also reduce the vulnerability of the nation in terms of insecurity. That fraction of N15 trillion invested in our armed forces by way of procurement of military hardware and training. So, talking about responding to security challenges we have been debating as a nation for only God knows how long about state police.

*You said that Tinubu is running a reactionary government that he takes decisions without thinking through the consequences, what are those things that Tinubu should do that will make you change your mind and bring you back from the trenches?*   

I think President Bola Tinubu needs to audit his cabinet. He needs to audit the people around him. I made this point somewhere that the President Bola Tinubu that we have now is not the same as Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu that ruled Lagos State between 1999 and 2007 because Asiwaju that ruled Lagos State surrounded himself with very competent and clear headed people. If he wanted to take the wrong decision they could step forward and stop him. He doesn’t have such people around him now. The people around him now are those who basically say what he wants to hear, and that is not healthy for a leader. If anything they are setting him up to fail. I don’t want Asiwaju to fail. I want him to succeed because it’s in our interest for him to succeed. As a nation we are hungry for a leader who in 200 years to come the citizens of Nigeria will be celebrating that leader just like Americans are celebrating George Washington. The issue which I think President Tinubu should start doing now, he will just demobilize some of us and we will all queue behind him if he sets out and allows party to function, ensure competent people are leading the party, not just people he nominates, people with skills and capacity, to engage him and persuade him from doing the wrong things. Get him to act based on the decisions of the party. For me if he does that I will say our democracy has begun to mature, and if I see it that the party is beginning to get the strength to really intervene and give direction in terms of government controlled by the party at all levels. The manifesto of the party is beginning to get life. I think if he does that, he will demobilize a number of us and I will queue behind him and will be the party supporter