In this interview with ADELEKE ADESANYA, the National Chairman of National Conscience Party (NCP), Mr. Tanko Yinusa, says the federal government should be blamed for the agitations led by the Yoruba freedom fighter, Sunday Igboho, and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu. He also speaks on other burning national issues.
Excerpts.
The media has been awash with the arrest of Sunday Igboho, leader of Yoruba Nation agitators, and FG’s struggle to extradite him. Meanwhile the leader of IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, is already in the DSS custody in the aftermath of his rearrest. What is your view on the FG’s manner of handling the agitators?
The federal government has their fault in that their inability to do the right things has led to all of these agitations. I mean take a look at what happened in Igangan. Had it been that the state government and the federal government were able to deal with whoever was being accused, we would not have been where we are today. The law is blind. It doesn’t know if you are a Yoruba person or a Hausa or Igbo person. They should have arrested whoever is responsible and deal with it immediately. But they allowed it to reach a level where the people, who are supposed to be protected by soldiers, are now soldiers themselves. You have Gumi in the north talking about how to rescue the country from bandits. You also have Sunday Igboho talking about agitations. It started with defending the people; now, it has degenerated to secession calls. The same thing happened to Nnamdi Kanu.
But you see, a country is governed by laws, rules and regulations and those rules and regulations must be allowed to take their places. If you commit a crime against the state, the state will always take issue against you.
Really, agitations should not cause harm, unsettle the people or rob the country of its peace. But when you have a leader in place and he fails to attend to the cries of the agitators or he does not care a hoot, you, therefore, experience what we are undergoing. As a President, you should take necessary steps to address grievances, even if you make a mistake in the course of it, it can always be reversed. But keeping silent in the face of all these problems is unfair to all.
Ahead of the 2023 general election, there have been calls that the next president should come from the South. What is your take on this?
Unfortunately, a lot of people have played to the gallery. I have been of the position of having an eastern president not because of anything but the fact remains that for us to have a united nation, where everybody has the opportunity to run for elections at any point in time, there is nothing wrong with anybody coming from any part of the country to run for election; be it north, east, west or south and I also want to say that the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria does not give any right to any person or any group of people to say this is where the president must come from. We don’t have it in our constitution; but we have in the restructuring proposal that people are saying. At the moment, we want fairness and equity. It is good that we have a southern president at the same time. So, I will support a southern president to emerge but it cannot be done under duress.
However, in any country where those who are asking for secession are at the same time asking for governance, things don’t meet there. The two don’t add up; it’s either you look for governance or secession. The two don’t add up. As far as we are concerned, for those who are agitating, they should not clamour for leading the country because, definitely the moment they get the country, they’ll break it into pieces. But those who are asking for unity and all, yes of course. Unity is the most important thing. Anyone that wants to build up the country should go back to the drawing board and continue to build unity and correct things that are bad in this country, so that we can move together as a people. We have better things to achieve than dividing our nation.
Some stakeholders in the country said there may not be a general election in 2023, especially considering the situation of things, like insecurity, call for restructuring and various agitations. What do you make of this?
Well governance is a different thing and voting is a different thing entirely; because, a lot of people who want to govern and change the narrative are always ready to mobilise the people. Don’t forget we have had serious challenges in this country and elections still took place. Almost the whole of the Northeast was consumed by Boko Haram and people were moved to IDP camps but voting still took place in different places and gradually, peace has started returning to the other side of the country and I want to believe that peace has returned.
There is a lot of challenges but at the same time, the best way to end misrule or corrupt tendencies is for us to vote for the right people. Most of us assume that the country is already engulfed in a war. Take a look at Libya, Sudan, Egypt and any other country that has been engulfed in a civil war. At the end, they will tell you to go back to the drawing board for you to negotiate. After negotiating, they will tell you to do an election democratically to elect a new leader, that’s what takes place, after killing people! So why do we resort to killing and maiming people when we have the power in our hands to change the narrative? I will advise that any other person that is making agitation should agitate with their voter card. Register, start selecting and electing people who you know will run your local government credibly. Start selecting people who you know will run your state assembly very well. Start selecting people who you know will be credible people that will govern you as governors. Especially the governors, they create so many problems and they have so much power and say a lot of things. Meanwhile, if they had governed the people in each of their states very well, many of the agitations wouldn’t have taken place. Same thing goes to the federal government; if the federal government was doing the right thing, a lot of the agitations wouldn’t take place. This means that we need to select the right people in the right places so that our agitations will stop and we will start thinking of how to move the country forward. That is the best standard anywhere in the world. Whether you fight each other or kill each other, this will end up in a polling station. So use your vote now.
There were controversies over the bill passed at the senate on the electronic transmission of elections. What is your perception?
Well, I must say that it is most disappointing that the legislators will go down low in this regard. There is no way you can suggest the position of INEC to any right-thinking person. It is completely unacceptable. It is important we educate the people that what INEC does regarding the alternation of results is more or less like proof of what takes place in each of the voting units. For example, if an election takes place in a unit, what INEC does is that it gives only a party that contests a copy of the result of the election and then they paste one on the pooling station. They finally transmit the results by snapping the picture using their voting card to send the results to the headquarters for collation.
So, we find it very amusing that the National Assembly is saying that they do not agree to the transmission of votes, that means they want to rig the election and that is unacceptable to Nigerians. It’s better for them to resign. I think it is high time Mr President put his feet down. They are trying to mess up his name and integrity and I want to believe that Mr President should not assent to this document until when the amendment is properly done in the interest of the people.
Do you, therefore, think Nigerians are ready to vote come 2023?
Of course, the people are ready to vote, that is why they are coming out to register, especially when the registration process is on. So that they want to register and vote for their choice so that they would not be manipulating the system and bringing in people who are not interested in governance as seen in the past. At the moment, it is expected that Nigerians who are willing to vote should be able to come out to reject any form of action that will manipulate their vote. So, INEC should be ready to do the right thing. Come out clearly to say that they can transmit that results electronically, they can cover the whole federation, just to clear their name rather than let the National Assembly give them a bad name in order to continue to be in power. For me, the Nigerian people are ready and willing to do the right thing.
There are reports that NCP may have its national conference soon ahead of 2023, how true is this sir?
Yes, we sent out our programme of actions starting from local government primary to scale into the state’s; then we are planning to have our national convention towards the end of the year.
Is that part of the plan ahead of 2023?
Of course, we are trying to mobilise how we are going to strategise towards the 2023 general elections?
NCP is also speculated to likely work with some other political parties to wrestle power from the APC in 2023. Is there anything like this?
Well, for a long time, the NCP has always been open for alliances and discussions and collaborations. The NCP has been interested in a merger, provided the narrative of today changes, then, we may have to rethink our programme. Well, that has to be done in a general discussion, but we are always ready to collaborate with political parties who share our full beliefs and ideologies in order to put our strength and might together to be able to fight the cankerworm who are in position of power.
Taking it from where you just ended now, if you look at it from 2019 that APC has won the second term as the ruling party at the federal level, do you think that the party or Buhari’s government has justified the vote that Nigeria gave to him in 2019?
Well, a lot of us are not happy with the way governance is being administered to the people. Vis-a-vis the issue of insecurity, corruption. You will agree with me at the point that many Nigerians are crying about the very large increase in the price of commodities, especially food items which is the common thing that the common man requires to survive. At the moment, things are difficult. We were buying a bag of rice for 7,000 naira before; today, it is about 30,000 naira. A bowl of garri skyrocketed too. It is difficult. So, for us, the government has not been able to justify the vote that the people gave them. Vis-a-vis the issue of making sure that the common man finds succour in the governance.
It appears that the opposition parties in the country are being weakened by what we see in recent times. Everyone is moving to APC and it’s like the country is moving to a one-party system. What do you make of this ahead of 2023?
Those who are gravitating towards the APC are those who left it in the first place. They are those who belong to the APC or the PDP. These are individuals who have no principles or ideological beliefs, so they can move from one party to another. But for us, we find it difficult because we have a principled ideology and that is how it takes to grow. So, we cannot justify the actions of these individuals. It is only just to protect their personal interest and political ambitions, at the expense of the people.