By Wilfred Eya
The Secretary of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Alhaji Buba Galadima in this interview monitored on Channels Television, speaks on various issues including why the internal crisis rocking the party, alleged suspension of its 2023 presidential candidate, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso by a faction of the party and why Muhammadu Buhari failed as president of Nigeria.
What is the state of your party, the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), following the emergence of a new national chairman?
We are trying to start work early enough for the 2027 elections, so that we will set a direction for this party, and it is my candid opinion and belief that our party will be the party to beat in 2027. There is every reason to say that because we have 36 governors in Nigeria and the only governor who is doing what we see visibly and living up to the expectations of their covenant with the Nigerian people is NNPP’s Governor, Abba Yusuf of Kano State. The other governor who is working is the Abia State governor, Alex Otti.
People have to get the background correctly. Our National Chairman, Prof Ahmed Alkali, resigned his position after the elections and in his own words, ‘to give room for reorganizing the party.’ That was his reason and since then, we have had an acting National Chairman, Abba Kawu Ali from Borno State, who was the National Vice Chairman of the party from the North-East where Alkali comes from. And there is a period to which you can act and he acted for one year by the end of last month.
Therefore, we have to find a new person if we are not holding an election to continue to act until when we conduct a proper convention to elect officers of the party. Again, the Deputy National Chairman of the party, Dr Ajuji Ahmed, who is a political scientist, an experienced bureaucrat, a speechwriter to the former vice president and a special adviser to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has the pedigree to pilot the affairs of any organization and we are now putting him again from the North-East to take over as acting chairman of the party.
But there is a faction that says Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso is suspended as a member of the party…
This is democracy but you as a citizen of this country, do you believe that someone can suspend Kwankwaso from the party? Have you seen where they had a convention to elect national officers of the party? If it is not so, anybody suspending Kwankwaso is an interloper and a good candidate for the prison. Besides, I am not aware that Kwankwaso has been suspended because if I am aware, I would have gone back to the court, which said that they should never parade themselves even as members of NNPP let alone being officers of the party.
We got this court judgement about five months ago by a competent High Court. They are not members of the party because we convened a proper National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party and expelled them from party activities. They went to court and the court said they had no locus to even challenge our decision. You see, Nigerians can say anything but when you confront them in court, they will ask for evidence and it is this evidence that I’m looking at to challenge them in court.
It is the media that is encouraging this kind of people to meddle in the politics of this country. What I am saying is that you cannot be NNPP in the morning, and at the night, you work for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the All Progressives Congress (APC) or the Labour Party. You have to make a choice. People just ascribe titles to themselves. I am telling you that I am the secretary of the Board of Trustees of the NNPP. I am saying that because in a convention televised across the world, I was affirmed as the BoT secretary.
Which convention took place to confirm any of them or elect any of them to any position? But we have evidence that we gave them the privilege to come and defend themselves because they did anti-party activities. They availed themselves, we tried them, prosecuted them and we expelled them.
The expulsion took place last year when we held our NEC meeting and it was based on the report of a disciplinary committee that gave them the privilege to defend themselves, but which they couldn’t.
Just ask who is a politician in Nigeria, if 10 of them raise their hands, try to find out, only one of them may be a good person. The other nine are living satan because Nigerian politics doesn’t need honest men, women or young people. It is the end that justifies the means. I have given this government two years to see them but fortunately for us, we have only one political party that you can approach and say you told us you are going to do this, where is the evidence that you have done that.
Most of them even refused to attend public debates; most of them don’t even have manifestos and I don’t think most of them have party constitution. They have told you something and what they are doing tells you a different thing. That is why I said Nigerian politicians are satan.
Are you sure that this particular situation that you have with these men who have suspended Kwankwaso will not come back to affect the NNPP in 2027?
What was satan’s promise to God? That he is going to destroy as many as he likes. That is his main job and he took that promise and he is doing it very well. Do you know the person who is pushing these people to say what they are saying? That is why we expelled them and they know that we know. But all you need to know is that they were expelled for doing anti-party activities. They were working for other interests other than that of the NNPP to which they profess in the day that they belong to and they are still funded by the same people.
They have gone to 11 different high courts to stop us from this convention but no judge listened to them. All their submissions were dismissed with ignominy. So, all I’m trying to tell you is that we are not ruling out even within us, they may still try to get other people but those who pay other people to destabilize other parties should know that we are grounded and we know this business and it is very difficult to take us in the battle.
Are you aware of the resignation of your party’s North-West zonal women leader over exclusion from appointments so far made by the Kano State governor?
Not every politician who worked for a party would get an appointment. I am the secretary of the Board of Trustees, which appointment did I get in Kano? Over one million people voted for Governor Abba Yusuf and as of today, he is in the forefront of giving democratic dividends to citizens of Kano. Let me tell you that I am closer to the woman leader than any politician either in Kano or the whole country. If she comes to Abuja, it is in my house where she stays and Aisha Ahmed Kaita was my wife’s teacher at the College of Legal and Islamic Studies in Maiduguri.
So, if there is anybody who can see her positive or negative side, it should be me. In what she did, she was wrong. Is the man doing what he has promised to do for the people? That is the issue to me. When I was fighting President Muhammadu Buhari, some people said it was because they didn’t give me an appointment. What did they mean by they didn’t give me an appointment? Since 1978 that I have been in politics as an activist and I didn’t even become a councilor; did I stop talking.
You once narrated how you were arrested and detained. Do you think Nigeria has been unfair to you?
Yes. I’m over 70 years old now and I’m nearing my grave. I have been struggling since 1959 to date to see a better Nigeria and it has now dawned on me that I may never see that. That is the unfairness Nigeria is to me. If you are digging a well and if there is a promise of you getting drinking water, you are going deeper but you are satisfied that what you are doing is yearning for fruits. But with all the things I’m doing, it doesn’t look like it is yearning for any fruit.
Sometimes, I don’t sleep because despite all these efforts I have made, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Now, it is an insult to me that clergymen, Muslims and Christians have taken over politics, something that they don’t know anything about. Instead of them going to their pulpit and telling our young people that God said you should do this and this and that you shouldn’t do this and this.
They can swear by the Bible and Quran that they are supporting a candidate, somebody that they don’t know anything about and they call themselves religious leaders. They vouch for a politician that I just called satan; they should leave politics for us the politicians because we know each other. We know who is good and who is bad. We know who is there to make money, we know who is there to buy the conscience of the people and make more money rather than work for the interest of the people.
Some people have accused you of not being able to stay in one political party; that you moved from Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), APC, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and that you will not be in NNPP in 2027 with the way things are going?
Where I made my name was at the 1987 Constituent Assembly when men were men, not this charlatan and bread and butter politicians. That was when the soul of Nigeria was called to question and we were the gladiators. I was very young among men of substance, experience and knowledge yet I stood out. I am not praising myself. The 1987 Constituent Assembly that promulgated what they called the Peoples Constitution for Nigeria led to the convening of the Constitutional Conference by General Sani Abacha, and the 2014 National Conference convoked by President Goodluck Jonathan, and I have been a principal actor, not a bench warmer.
So, I thank God that I am satisfied with the honour and integrity I have carried since then. You know that I will never take nonsense from any human being even when life was sweet for me. Now, what am I afraid of? I can only do what I think is right. It may not be right but once I’m convinced that what I am doing is correct, I will go ahead and damn the consequences. I have never jumped ship in politics from one party to the other; it is one thing leading to the other. If you are merging with the other parties, you change the name.
The party we formed was the CPC; I wrote the constitution and the manifesto because ANPP was not working to produce the president of Nigeria. They were working for the PDP, so we felt that we could not stomach that. The world should know that Buhari didn’t form CPC. We formed the CPC and for six months, we were trying to convince him to leave the ANPP and join the CPC. He refused to do that until we went and got a statesman, whom Buhari was a beneficiary of his largesse.
We went and persuaded him because he bought the first car for Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Shehu Yar’Adua, to talk to Buhari before he accepted to join CPC. When we left CPC to form APC, it wasn’t because I jumped ship, it was because we thought that the best way to get PDP out of power was to congregate and we did that successfully. And when the going was going and APC wanted to deviate, we said no and we left to have an alliance with the PDP and support the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar. And I want to tell you that I can swear by the Quran that Atiku won the 2019 presidential election.
The lesson from all those things that happened in the past was what just happened in Senegal. Politicians should start to use their heads. Whenever anybody says if this thing doesn’t happen, it is over my dead body, God will make him die so that the thing will happen. When Bassirou Diomaye Faye, under pressure from the European Union was released because he was not charged and he was named the presidential candidate, in one week he became the president of Senegal.
He didn’t campaign and he won the election. I commend Macky Sall because he was the first person from his region of Senegal that became the president of the country. He took over from veteran politician, Abdoulaye Wade, who contested election for 50 years before he became president, after becoming president, Macky Sall suddenly became an emperor. You see, people should be careful because all these things they think, Muslim-Muslim ticket, Christian-Christian ticket, one day one small thing can unite Nigerians and by the time they send people to go and persuade the masses, the election is over.
When APC was formed, what was the idea behind it, and the APC we have today, is it the same APC you all came together to form?
No! At least even if there is nothing, I am not inside. I’m not a member of APC and that is one person out and over half of us who formed the party are not there because people like Nasir el-Rufai came to take over by spoiling the names of other people like us. And I have said in an interview that he will pay dearly because God doesn’t wait for us to die. God will give instant judgment. He has already started seeing the instant judgement and I gave the interview before what started happening to him in Kaduna. He has seen nothing.
What is happening to him in Kaduna?
Even if you don’t know anything, he removed Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi and Senator Shehu Sani because they refused to approve loans for him in the National Assembly. It is in the rules of the Senate that for anything to go to any state, at least two of the senators from the state must sign off but in his case, even Senator Danjuma Laah, representing Southern Kaduna did not sign, so all the three senators refused to sign and his loan was dead on arrival.
Then he went to Kaduna cursing Senator Hunkuyi and Senator Sani because they refused to give their approval to the loan. Now, the boy he brought to the Senate and lobbied for him to become chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, so that they will approve the loan for him is now the one fighting him. So, you think God is asleep?
Seven of them went to meet Buhari on the day the final list of the caretaker committee of APC was to be formed and Buhari gave him a blanket paper to go and fill names and this was why Senator Sani Mustapha fought Buhari when General Buba Marwa told Buhari that Sani Mustapha was making life difficult and he doesn’t want to put their names.
Buhari failed not because he had no idea of what to do, he failed because he removed the umbilical cord. We were in the trenches with him for 15 years and we sacrificed everything in life and he thinks he can betray us and God will allow him succeed. If he is a proper Muslim, let any of the Islamic clerics tell him that if you go for jihad and you receive the booties of the war, you share it with those who went to jihad.
When we came with the booties by defeating PDP, he took our reward and gave it to some people like the ones I mentioned and he thought God would leave him. Buhari has not seen anything. So, what I’m telling you is that I have never jumped ship from one party to the other, we are always transiting.
What is your thought on APC today with President Bola Tinubu; is it different from when President Buhari was there?
Let me tell you something; you Nigerians don’t understand, Tinubu has not promised Nigerians anything. He didn’t participate in any public debate to make a promise that he was going to do this or that for you. It never occurred to you that he was too smart not to engage in public debate.
If someone is afraid to tell you that we can reach a covenant with him, why would you vote for him because you are giving him a blanket cheque? We were the only people who campaigned on issues, the only people who have got a manifesto written and we are the only people who are now following that manifesto religiously.