National Coordinator of Take Back Nigeria Initiative (TBNI), Abumchukwu Okoye, has said that Ramadan which just ended has afforded President Bola Ahmed Tinubu enough time to repent of his sins committed against Nigerian through the harsh economic policies he has been implementing since 2023. He stressed that Tinubu’s repentance is the key to unlocking the forgiveness he asked Nigerians to grant him at the beginning of the Ramadan.
He said that Tinubu is yet to fix the power sector over which he made a vow while campaigning in 2023. While acknowledging the excellent infrastructure work being done by FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, he also expressed his belief that President Tinubu will be re-elected because there is no credible opposition.
In this interview, he speaks on the clear and present urgency for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to be released and other issues.
A lot of Nigerians believe that the Electoral Act was intentionally amended to enable the All Progressives Congress, APC, to rig the election. What is your view on this?
I saw the Senate and the House of Representatives wobbling in the passage of the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill with regards to electronic transmission of election results from the polling booth. One thing is clear: the law cannot be wrong, but human beings who manage the law harbor bad intentions. The electoral system is not the problem, but the way we handle it. In the first place, electronic transmission or manual transfer of election results are not the issues per se. The main issue is the will to carry it out transparently. This is so because sometimes during elections problems that would affect transmission of the result may arise. This could be resolved either through transfer as soon as possible or manual. To warrant the use of manual transfer of results, there must be clear evidence that there was no network where voting took place. However, if the phones are working that means somebody was lying. Let say this, the President will be betrayed whichever method that is used. He will be betrayed by those he trusts within six months to the general election in 2027 just as it happened to former President Goodluck Jonathan. Right now it is already happening. In a society like ours, betrayal is normal in politics. In Nigeria, because of treachery, you cannot trust anybody, not even your political allies or business associates. Therefore, you must be careful who you are dealing with. In Nigeria every politician is a gangster because it is for their own interest or nothing.
A school of thought has asserted that President Bola Tinubu’s speed in assenting to the amended Electoral Act is an attestation of the conspiracy against the Nigerian electorate. Do you share this view?
No, I don’t because this has been the trend in electoral matters. The amended Electoral Act originated from an Executive Bill. Is there anything new in it for President Tinubu not to sign it into law? There is a timeline within which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must do so many things and time is not on their side. Now, it is too late to register any new political party because every political party had to be registered within a timeframe. If the Electoral Act was delayed further, the INEC timetable would have been affected.
There appears to no strong opposition, to keep the ruling party in check, given the wave of defections. Are you not worried by this?
From what I have seen the system has produced a lot of failed and distressed politicians. Politicians who did into emerge by way of ideology as was the case in the first and second republics as exemplified by the founding fathers like the great Zik of Africa, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Maitama Sule, Aminu Kano and former President Shehu Shagari. Back then, many them were discrete, there was the party system where the ideology of the parties reigned supreme. In the caucus, the President had to step down from the high table and allow a committee to discuss the concern with the ideology of the party, but right now the entire system has collapsed. In Nigeria’s political space today, you see men and women ganging up to snatch power and positions for their own interest regardless of the people’s interest. I can’t see the difference between APC, PDP and ADC except that the masquerade is changing uniform.
ADC has vowed to defeat APC in 2027. Do you foresee a repeat of what happened in 2015?
How will the ADC achieve that goal? Is it with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the former Vice President who has expired? Or is it with Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the former governor of Kaduna State whom the Senate disqualified from being a minister? Or the former Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi? Or the former presidential candidate of the Labour Party in 2023, Peter Obi, who lost his impact the day he stood in line with El-Rufai in ADC. From the day he left Labour Party, he became a neutralized politician. So, nobody should be deceived. I’m not saying Tinubu is the best candidate to rule Nigeria, but when you have a community of evil persons, you select the better evil. For now we don’t have an alternative. Our main concern is to see how we can baptize Tinubu to give him another name or we paint him because he is an old fox and very witty, but he is a better evil. The devil we know is better than the angel we don’t know.
Without mandatory, real-time electronic transmission of results from the polling booths, do you foresee INEC conducting free and fair elections in 2027?
This has nothing to do with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) because we lost it within the concept and content of old Electoral law in the Supreme Court. The judiciary is the architect of this problem because if they had handled the issue of carpet crossing very well there won’t be so much talk about free and fair election. And we all know that a candidate and the owners of political parties are the owners of authority. So, now somebody can just change party any time and any how without control, that is the problem. Otherwise, we would have strong opposition and we would know who is contesting against APC, but now there is no opposition. The new ADC is a community of power snatchers or power hungry persons and not nation builders. They are not interested in nationhood, they are interested in capturing power at all cost and Peter Obi is being used to taunt Nigerians. How many are you as voters in the five states in South-East? How do you trust the North to bring an Igbo man to become President? Peter Obi has been used as bait, used and betrayed and he will not know until the last minute. So transmission or transfer is not the problem, but very weak and poor opposition.
Isn’t it an attempt by the ruling party to turn Nigeria into one party state by weakening the opposition?
The ruling APC has nothing to do with that because every political party is scouting for membership, even churches and mosques are doing evangelism for membership. Every corporate organization is selling shares and canvassing for people to buy shares. It is the same spirit. If people gather in my home to sleep and they agree on whatever I say, why would you blame me? Weak political system, weak and failed politicians have disappointed Nigerians not Tinubu or APC. Peter Obi and Atiku have changed almost four political parties, are they political prostitutes? Can they be trusted? A man who is married to four wives must love them all equally. If Peter Obi had remained in Labour Party even though there is an internal problem for whatever reason they disappointed him. But let him carry that ideology of Labour Party and principle he will be regarded as a true politician. Do you know that if Peter Obi had remained in Labour Party he would have become the party’s presidential candidate, instead of going to join Atiku and El-Rufai in ADC? Associating with El-Rufai who was rejected as a minister in the Senate where the North was the majority is enough signal to any political party to run away from him because he has become a political liability. For Atiku Abubakar, we all know him, he destroyed PDP and he will also destroy ADC. You can’t bring a presidential candidate from the North and the national chairman from the same North and you expect Nyesom Wike to keep quiet. Wike is very hard to contend with when he is right. In the political space if you must handle him you must apply pure political mathematics and it takes a long time to do that.
But many have criticized him for being the person that actually destroyed PDP by working in favour of APC while still a member of the party?
Nyesom Wike is in PDP. Is Atiku still in PDP? Didn’t El-Rufai betray Amaechi? How come all of them gather together because they want power? But I tell you they will fail in 2027 because President Tinubu will be re-elected and they will blame it on political malpractice.
Pressure is on the President to change his running mate for religious balancing in 2027?
You know from the beginning that has been the major problem in the political system. Muslim-Muslim ticket has never been done before. It has always been the blending of the two major religions in Nigeria – Christianity and Islam – for the sake of unity, but when one carries one portion and another portion it cannot work. So, it is overdue. Vice President Kashim Shettima should be replaced with a Northern Christian in 2027 and he should be assigned to another position. Again, there is a serious rumour against Shettima in the ongoing insecurity in Nigeria hence the reason President Tinubu should make a Christian his running make in 2027.
The United States/Israel war with Iran and given the deployment 200 American soldiers to Nigeria, do you Iran may see Nigeria as a target?
America should not only deploy soldiers to Nigeria, they should also arrest sponsors of insecurity in Nigeria for questioning because no one is above the law. Sponsorship of insecurity is a crime against humanity. I urge the United States Government to do more because channeling of funds across nations is fueling insecurity in Africa. So, if they find any Nigerian wanting no matter how highly placed the person should be arrested by the Department of State Security (DSS). Meanwhile, I call on Federal Government to urgently intervene in the current fuel price crisis due to escalating tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran. The rising cost of petrol is pushing millions of Nigerian workers deeper into acute poverty. Iran cannot attack Nigeria because of their dispute with Israel and the United States.
The just concluded election in the Council poll in the FCT shows APC won in 5 Council Areas and PDP won one, is it not an attestation of the FCT Minister Nyesom Wike’s political popularity?
Yes, even though political propaganda is allowed and when you say your party will win whether you win or not it is a political statement that gives hope to party faithful. It is after the election results are announced by INEC then we will know the party that won. APC and ADC had right to say they will win, but as a test case for Wike his performance as FCT Minister is now appreciated by the people. I was in Abuja recently and most of the people I met said that they have never had a minister like Wike in FCT.
At the start of the Lenten season and Ramadan, President Tinubu asked Nigerians to forgive him. What is your general assessment of the Tinubu administration so far?
President Tinubu has done a lot of things that have created hardship and hunger and he needs to repent. Nigerians are hungry; they need food to eat for the brain to work properly, they need steady power supply which Tinubu promised us during his campaign in 2023 and even said that nobody should vote for him for second term if he failed to fix the critical power sector. Till today we still have infrastructural decay. So, a lot has gone wrong. We are not sure whether the ministers and other departments and agencies are functioning even though there is good intention by the Presidency. So, President should give Nigerians food, water, and steady supply of electricity, road and food items sold at good rate. We expect more results from the economic reforms and less taxation. So, he has committed against the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). The government is suffering workers because those who are working are suffering more than those who are lazy. That is sin against the people and so we need him to repent and we will forgive him, but let him sin no more.
The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 is seen by many as another burden on the people, which President Tinubu will fully implement when re-elected. Are you in any way bothered about this?
Don’t mind them because the tax system is a global practice. You know, what happens in Europe, Britain and America is that you pay for what you eat. What Nigerians are complaining about is that they don’t see the effect of tax they pay. That it doesn’t reflect in the structures on ground, that if the revenue from tax is properly utilized it will affect lives positively. Then there will be nothing wrong to pay tax. Tax is important because all over the world tax is paid, but in Nigeria we want government to subsidise everything which is not good. As I said earlier, it is better that the President Tinubu tells us the truth and should be a government of reality. If tax is paid let it reflect in education and health sectors. You can’t tell me that it is fair for a medical doctor to be paid a salary of N300, 000 while a senator who goes to work for less than 160 days or so, just to sign attendance but says nothing during plenary or even participates in committee deliberations gets more than N15 million per month and several other allowances running into millions for a month. In Nigeria government pays professors less than a million naira a month. Even local government councilors are using better cars than professors and there is no money for research in the universities. So, this is the issue. We misplace priority in government spending.
APC has launched City Boys Movement and ADC has also come up with the Village Boys Movement, all geared towards convincing youths to vote for their parties in 2027? What are your thoughts on this?
I’m not surprised because there are charlatans all over the world claiming one thing or the other. I heard one of them claiming that he is now in charge in Imo State, that the people of the state have agreed to vote for APC in 2027 and some say they will vote for ADC. Some of these persons behind these movements are collecting money from the campaign organizations of the president and the ADC. I tell you nobody is going to the village to do anything because their impact will not be felt in the village. So, anybody that tells you that he is a member of City Boys or Village Boys movements, that person is nothing more than iron gong making no sound. These people are political charlatans collecting money from politicians, trying to show that they can do something while they cannot do anything. After the general election in 2027 go to their electoral wards and know whether they won in their wards. That is why we are calling on the Federal Government to release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, to let us know those who are criminals in Southeast. Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff because so long as you hold Nnamdi Kanu while Sunday Igboho, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi and Nasir El-Rufai are free, it is a selective justice.
Credit: The Sun