The Director-General of the Labour Party’s Presidential Campaign Council, Chief Akin Osuntokun, in this interview by SAM NWAOKO, speaks on his experience leading the Obi-Datti campaign, the new naira policy and its controversies, and what he thinks Nigerians should consider before casting their votes In next month’s presidential election.

Looking at the entire political scene and how the campaign has been going, how would you say the task has been?

It’s challenging and you know we are at the peak of the election season. Ordinarily, election seasons in Nigeria are prone to tension and sometimes outbreaks of violence. We have been able to prevent that kind of challenge. However, this election is unlike the other ones that we’ve had before and that is because of the types of presidential candidates.

We have a candidate that is a sharp contrast to the two sides of the same coin in our own candidate. We have a situation in which the PDP and APC camps of their presidential candidates are outdoing themselves in who is worse in the art of corruption and deplorable attributes. We’ve heard about allegations of narcotics involvement and theft.

It is as if this is done to show Nigerians that the choice is clear and we hope that the Nigerian electorate will not behave like the case of Jeroboam in the Bible. Having known the inadequacies or shortcomings of Jeroboam, the Israelites said they still wanted him as their leader. When he became their leader he told them that ‘before me, my fathers scourged you with whips, I will scourge you with scorpions and that whatever it is you suffered under my predecessors’ regimes, you will have double portions of it under me’.

So, in a way, this is what we are being told by these two candidates. Whatever bad records of President Buhari they will outperform themselves. So they are de-marketing themselves before the Nigerian electorate and as it is, there is no difference between them. The difference between them is like the difference between six and half a dozen.

They represent the worst manifestations of the status quo. I don’t think that any Nigerian will be looking forward to either of these two candidates as the next president of Nigeria. Only a masochist or something worse will want either of these two persons to become the next president of Nigeria. There is no way we can look forward to the future and identify either of these two on the basis of their records, on the basis of what they are saying about one another now can look forward to any of them as the president of Nigeria. So this election season is stacked in that respect.

On the other hand we have a presidential system of the Labour Party which ticks all the boxes: Leadership, integrity, discipline, knowledge and national political balance on the premise of national integration and unity. The other two candidates apart from their shocking personal attributes, of them negates the objectives of national unity and integration.

The first one, Atiku, is coming against the background of the adoption of rotation between the North and the South, a convention that has helped a lot in stabilising this Fourth Republic. His coming after Buhari is still shocking because he has been part of this rotation of power to the full knowledge of the fact that under even the PDP constitution, the next president should come from the South.

So, he is now coming against that, that is coming against an instrument that is fashioned to foster national integration and unity. Same is with the APC ticket. What the APC gave with the right hand it took it back with the left. Somehow, they maneuvered the party to observe the North-South rotation, as expected, to the South but what they gave with the concession is to kill that with the Muslim-Muslim ticket.

So, I don’t need to lecture on what that kind of ticket represents for Nigeria today. It is spiteful and it is not good for us to deepen religious harmony. And they did this deliberately because there was no stampede and there was no pressure. It’s just a flagrant, cold-blooded calculation that this is what they want. They just want to win using their own formula regardless of what happens to Nigeria. Their own formula of winning an election is more important than Nigeria’s.

Would you now say, from your vantage position, that there is hope for your candidate winning the election?

Of course there is. And for the sake of Nigeria, there is hope. There are better hopes with Labour Party than there is with the others. Anyone who supports our presidential ticket is doing himself or herself and the country a favour.

Any Nigerian that casts his or her vote for the Labour Party presidential ticket is doing himself or herself a world of good, it’s not Peter Obi as an individual. Looking at the background of those three presidential candidates, who among the candidates, objectively speaking, will Nigerians want as their next president? There is a demography that the younger Nigerians have made up their minds who to support and they are going to hold on to that.

A quotation of Frantz Fanon’s validates what they are expected to do from what they will end up doing. It says: “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”

This applies to the youths and the younger generation in Nigerians today to depart from the kind of politics that has rendered Nigeria a wasteland, a degenerate land and choose the opportunity of the 2023 election to start the project Nigeria all over again; away from the desperation and rampage and the ravage they have been subjected to by the older politicians of which PDP and APC are the manifestations of the worst of that status quo.

So, I have hope and the hope should be the hope of all other Nigerians. We will not be doing the ticket any favour by supporting it, the only entity you will be doing a favour through your support is Nigeria. So, for the sake of Nigeria they should support the Labour Party ticket and work towards the election of Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed tticket.

Reports emanated that your campaign train was attacked in Katsina State. It is the opinion of some that this was because your candidate is not accepted there and that the attack was a hint at that disposition. What do you think?

Incidents like that are not strange actually. Those who threw stones do not represent the majority of the populace. Secondly, Katsina has been a hotbed of violence in the last few years. It is so bad that the governor had to ask the Katsina citizens to go and arm themselves, buy guns to defend themselves. The other governor who backed him up with that Is Zamfara State. So, if they have any manifestation of violence in Katsina State, that’s no news, really. That is the truth.

The other perspective to It is that political opponents who, all along, had been dismissing Peter Obi as having no chance in the North West states have been woken up. They can now smell the coffee and have been subjected to a rude awakening by what happened in Kano State. They have been thrown into fear and panic by what is happening and they don’t want it to continue. This must not go on and they resort to violence. Those few people out of thousands of others cause the regrettable situation.

So, that is another perspective to it. It is the handiwork of those who are afraid. We don’t have any cause to be afraid. We are confident that anybody who has no chance will be subjected to that kind of situation. It’s explainable. So it was a reaction by those who have a vested interest in the failure of Obi/Datti ticket in Katsina and generally they will fail.

Even beyond that, President Buhari comes from the state. His convoy had been attacked at one time and was shot at by some hoodlums. The violence that occurred has so many perspectives to it to stand alone. With or without the attack on the presidential ticket, Katsina is one of the flashpoints of banditry, flashpoints of violence in Nigeria. Several times, this has been reported.

There was a time the president was visiting and bandits went to a village, attacked a secondary school and took almost all the children away. So, katsina has that tendency. That’s also another context to what happened. But we take it in our stride and we are not afraid and we are not deterred by that.

Leaving the North, how acceptable is your candidate in Yoruba land?

There have been several polls conducted as parameters for the acceptability and popularity of our candidate in the South West and in all the polls, we have ticked all the boxes of acceptance. Lagos is the biggest of all the states in the South West. Lagos is a prominent urban and cosmopolitan centre which favours us.

The enlightened youths are predominantly located in a place like Lagos. The general acceptance of the young people there is to vote for Obi. Almost all my friends with their children have the same peculiar situation in their houses. First, almost all their children are rooting for Obi. Second is that their domestic help, like cooks, stewards and everything have the same predilection for the Obi/Datti ticket.

So, that takes care of a state like Lagos and points to the fact that if we have a free and fair election, we are going to have an edge in Lagos. We are doing well in Oyo State. As for some of the other states, like Ekiti and Osun, part of our own shortcoming is that they have not been sufficiently sensitised and some evidences we gathered point to that. They have not been sufficiently enlightened and sensitised to make the right judgement.

Obviously, our task is cut for us there, we now need to carry the message as much as possible down to the rural areas. There is no reason why anybody, whether you are in a rural area or urban area, should not desire progress and good government for your country, especially against the background of the poverty they have endured in the past seven years. The thing about the Buhari government is that he has made the choice clear.

There are no longer any rooms for doubting’, he has made it clear to rural and urban dwellers that APC is bad news. Of course, the same goes for Atiku. I’m sure you read the story of Ali Baba and the forty thieves. This is what has been going on in their camps. It is a tragedy of Nigeria that were these to be the only two parties contesting the election, what Nigerians would have been presented was ‘which evil is better or is less than the other?’ It is not something good, we have two evil incarnations.

They could have presented Nigerians no option and the greatest evidence that leads to that is what they have said about one another in the past few weeks. It’s a way of God telling us that if you have any doubt about what these people represent’ here now is a piece of evidence for you not to behave like the Israelites who wants to be going back to where they were suffering as a matter of the slightest obstacle.

So, logically, those two people should be ruled out of the contest. Those are not the kinds of presidential tickets Nigerians should be looking forward to. It is only a masochist that will see the decay of those two tickets and what they say about one another and still believe and say he is looking forward to any of them becoming the president of Nigeria.

It’s as shameful as that. They themselves have ruled themselves out, they de-marketed themselves. The only thing you hear about them is that somebody is coming from an epic background or that somebody is this or that. But in any other area – the universal standard – none of them can be weighed on universal standards, they are a disaster.

I’m not the one saying it, it’s the evidence that stares every Nigerian in the face on a daily basis. I don’t know – whatever is the case – for one forfeiting almost$500,000 in a drug-related offence, that alone should be sufficient cause for turning your back on that kind of candidate.

You said if we have a free and fair election you’re going to be victorious especially in Lagos State. Are you harbouring some doubts that there might not be free and fair elections?

Yes, but let’s wait and see what comes. We want to see it to believe it. My evidence is circumstantial and it is a fact that I don’t see President Buhari having a vested interest in a free and fair election, unless I want to deceive myself.

His stewardship has been consistently defective in all manners and I don’t see him suddenly developing an attribute that he doesn’t have. The INEC man, regardless of their protestations to the contrary, I keep believing that there is a patch somewhere that these people that I know, I don’t see them having a vested interest in a credible election.

I don’t know what they have done or what they might have done, but I’m very skeptical of their mission. Look at their background, President Buhari is the first military of civilian president of Nigeria who has appointed the INEC chairman from his own constituency. There’s none in the history of Nigeria from Tafawa Balewa to this period that appointed the INEC chief from his own constituency.

Buhari is the first person to do that. So, we have to ask why does he want? What is his special interest, why should your kinsman or so body from your constituency hold this position? You have a field of old Nigerians to pick from and they do it in order to assure Nigerians. Even the military: Babangida picked Humphrey Nwosu; even Abacha picked Dagogo Jack from Rivers State.

The reason for this Is to instill confidence that prima facie, I don’t have a vested personal interest in this. But Buhari was even contemplating putting his own niece until he was maneuvered and the woman was prevented from becoming the INEC chairman. But the woman is still there in the commission.

So, we wait to see what happens. And off the cuff, have we wondered how they register itinerant Fulani who are tending their cattle from North to the South? How are they even counted? How are they recorded to come and vote.

Is this an area for manipulation and so on and so forth. But we wait and see but going by the record and reputation of this president, I don’t see any free and fair election overriding his own personal interest. I don’t see that happening. We have to be alert because eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. So, we have to be vigilant.

Some people feel that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo should have been statesmanly enough and act like General Yakubu Gowon and others who have been silent, rather than criticise all governments in power except his own. In addition, Chief Obasanjo has endorsed your candidate against Bola Tinubu his kinsman and Atiku Abubakar, his former deputy. How do you see this?

That shows that he has noble reasons for endorsing our presidential candidate. What has kinsman got to do with it? So, if you have a kinsman who has all the defects and shortcomings of the candidate of the APC, we should elevate that over what is good for all? The same thing goes for Atiku.

Like I said, those two tickets are a fundamental challenge to the idea of a nation whose national unity and integration are at stake. What is it that endangers nations’ unity than inequity unfairness and injustice? Saying that you must come from certain areas to be able to win an elections is a misnomer, Nigeria can never endure with that kind of attitude. That was specifically the reason why the North-South rotation was instituted in the first place.

So, this is the provision of facility that the candidature of Atiku is coming against. And you tell me that that is not a sufficient reason for anybody, especially Obasanjo who believes so much in the unity of Nigeria not to want to have anything to do with that ticket. The same thing goes for Tinubu and his ticket.

Again is having a Muslim – Muslim ticket a way forward for fostering national unity and integration in Nigeria? So, why should you support a candidate that is a threat to national unity? Both tickets are a threat to the national unity and integration of Nigeria. Prima facie, that has knocked them off before you even now come to their personal defects and conspicuous shortcomings and deficiencies that have been on parade between the two of them in the past few weeks.

They have taken themselves to court over who is the worse character. It is as bad as that and with the kind of crimes they are accusing themselves of, there is no society that will let anybody implicated in those crimes or allegations that you will want any of them as the president of Nigeria.

Going by your sentiments now, if you met Atiku or Tinubu today, what would you tell them about next month’s election and their chances at the poll?

I would tell them to step down to spare Nigeria the agony and the burden that their candidature has contributed to Nigeria. I will tell them to step down because they perpetuate all that is bad. Anybody that is going to vote for Tinubu will tell you that it is tiwa n ti wa, that means that it’s an ethnic thing.

That kind of attitude does not promote the interest and progress of Nigeria in any way. It’s the same thing with the Atiku ticket. It has physical flaws. The first thing is that it is antithetical to the integration of the nation with his insistence on Iyorchia Ayu to remain as chairman of the party. Then the Director-General of his campaign is Aminu Waziri Tambuwal from Sokoto, and he is deliberately projecting his candidate as the candidate of the North.

This is what he is doing, he is doubling down on these defects. It is bad enough that he came against what has been the measure of stabilising the country. He came against this and on top of it, they have insisted and still have it up till today that Ayu will remain as chairman. Both of them are doing things that favour them but that are of serious detriment to the health and the prospect of the society that we have.

James Freeman says a politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation, so both of them are prioritising winning the election over the political stability and development of Nigeria.

So, if any candidate can be characterised by that, has that kind of poster, then it is counter-intuitive that anybody looking forward to the betterment of the future of the country will have any of those two people in mind.

The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu, during the week alleged that the redesigning of the naira was targeted at sabotaging the coming election and his aspiration in particular. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has reacted, your party too has reacted but the president who approved the new naira policy has been silent. Don’t you think he should speak and clear the air on this allegation?

Yes, of course, but you and I know he won’t. On second thoughts, I think he might. Either way, don’t let us get ahead of ourselves. Nonetheless, I believe that both of them have crossed the rubicon and there is no going back.

If you read the lips of the president where he indirectly indicated the target of the currency change policy as those aiming to buy and force themselves on Nigerians at the election, you wouldn’t be in doubt on the identity of the candidate he has in mind. I had long anticipated this turn of events in a column I wrote after the APC presidential primaries titled ‘Running against Osun and Buhari’.

The sum of my argument was that Buhari was opposed to the emergence of Tinubu as the party candidate, after his alleged preference, Ahmed Lawan, the senate president, was rejected by the APC northern governors. At the time, he pretty much indicated his veiled hostility to the Tinubu presidential ticket. Given the latest flash in his cold war with the Jagaban, I think the presidential aspiration of the latter is doomed.

Now don’t also forget that Tinubu confessed his guilt as charged. Why would you believe the policy is targeted at you if you do not intend to practically buy the election?

The one I don’t understand is the reference to the fuel scarcity as contrived to obstruct his chances. (Saturday Tribune)

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