Barrister Abdulraheem Adebayo Shittu is a former Minister of Communications and a governorship aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview culled rom Nigerian Tribune, he tells YINKA OLADOYINBO about the fight against corruption in Nigeria, opposition politics and other issues. Excerpts:

As a leader of the CPC block that made up the APC, what is the situation of things between the bloc and the present administration of Bola Tinubu?

As far as I am concerned and as a foundation member of the both CPC and APC, once there has been fusion of different groups, I don’t see myself as substantially belonging to any past fused group.

I used to give this example: if you have yam powder and so many others, once they come together, they coalesce and become one; there is no point in anybody trying to distinguish the past component from anything new. As far as I am concerned, CPC no more exists, just like ACN also no longer exist; what we have now is APC and to the best of my knowledge and perception, it is in the best interest of the party for us to forget the past cleavages and concentrate on building and consolidating on the new formation that we have. Having said that, we now have a presidency which is a product of the fused groups, so I can’t see myself being detached from the president, I see myself as one of the stakeholders in the current presidency, even though it is not possible for any presidency for that matter to be perfect, we have a religious duty, particularly as a Muslim, to pray for its success because Islam actually teaches us that we must pray for our leaders because if they misbehave or make mistakes the consequences fall on all of us, so it is my duty to continue to pray for the Tinubu presidency.

What is your take on the insinuation that Tinubu is persecuting people of the CPC extraction that served under late President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration with the travails of people like Abubakar Malami?

Could Tinubu have picked on me if I did not steal? Could he have picked on many others who did not steal? For me as a lawyer I know that if you have your defence, you don’t fear to go to court. The truth is some of us in that government of Buhari’s new that there will be problem sooner or later. The problem I particularly perceived in Buhari administration, although, it is unfortunate I have to say this and my religion does not permit me to say ill of the dead, except for historical purposes, so whatever I say is not for the purpose of denigrating Buhari, it is for history, he was not given to proper supervision, that is, the late General Buhari as president. A lot of people were misbehaving, they would give him documents he would not read, he would just sign, it was very unfortunate, so if Malami or any other person feels that he does not have anything hidden, he is a lawyer and he knows how to go to court to defend himself, so all those who have been picked up still have the Nigerian judiciary as bastion of defence for themselves. So, it is rubbish for anybody to say that Tinubu is picking them up. Is it Tinubu or EFCC, which was not set up by Tinubu and these are governmental institutions set for specific purpose of ensuring that corruption is confronted. Unfortunately, during our period, I mean Buhari presidency, we didn’t do much against corruption, I know that a lot of Nigerians voted for Buhari because of perception that he is an anti-corruption person, unfortunately he couldn’t do much. Now that the EFCC is free and at liberty to do its work, and it is doing the work for which the law set it up we allow the courts to try those who are to be tried and let them produce their defence.

Are you saying that the perceived war against corruption was not fought the way it should be under Buhari?

Under the law, the EFCC reports to the Attorney General, who is the chief law officer, so you can now imagine what type of influence the then federal Attorney General had on the work of EFCC. It is very unfortunate, I am speaking as a statesman and not as a politician, I want the best for this country and I want all institutions of government to be allowed to operate properly. Incidentally, I still consider Malami as my friend, but I love Nigeria more than I love friends.

Many people have argued that the defection of opposition figures to the ruling APC is dangerous for our polity, do you share this view?

If it is dangerous, it is dangerous because people in other political parties fear defeat in the next election. Most of the people who defected to APC are from the PDP, and PDP is so disorganized that it is not likely to have an executive to even process their nominations with INEC. So, it is only reasonable that people should go into stable political parties where they can still manoeuvre to get nomination for election. Else, in what way has Tinubu or APC encouraged anybody to defect from their erstwhile political party into APC?

But there are insinuations that the presidency is trying to lure the opposition into the APC?

Where is the evidence? That is just a puerile argument. There is no evidence any such underhand activity by the president

But don’t you think that Nigeria is drifting towards one party state?

Whose fault is that? It is unfortunate that people don’t have the courage to stand and redeem their failing political parties. People like Bala Mohammed, people like Seyi Makinde have not given us any reason why they choose to stay in their party or why they have refused to come to APC, but the type of steam that APC is gathering, it is definitely unstoppable from achieving another triumph

The ADC seems to be gathering steam, particularly with the entry of Peter Obi, are you not perturbed by the way the party is growing?

I am not perturbed, I want competition, I want us to have parties that we will beat during the election, we don’t just want to emerge as a sole party. If Peter Obi had been in Labour Party and he lost election, he went to court to claim that he won, could not even tell the court how many votes he garnered during the election, even as basic as that he could not. If one leaves his party and goes to another one, you are getting weaker, not stronger because the commitment of his followers then can’t be got from ADC. So, we are democrats, APC is a democratic organization, we want parties that we will beat in election.

This is Peter Obi without any governor in 2023 election got over six million votes and also defeated the incumbent in his home state of Lagos and with the coming of people like Atiku and co, that should give you sleepless night?

We are not moved at all by that. It doesn’t give us any concern. For instance in Oyo State, we are currently undergoing a lot of rallies, being part of those rallies alone is worth it and if you see the multitude of people who come for those rallies, it is unbelievable and I am very confident that if there is any election today APC will defeat any party.

The APC in Oyo State seems to be getting itself together and moving from the time when there was sharp division within some of the leaders, what does this portend?

There is total elimination of division because the president is making us very proud as the leader of our party, he is taking Nigeria through a lot of reforms and we can see that those reforms are yielding results. Anybody who comes into a dilapidated structure must have the courage to pull the building down completely and start rebuilding, this is what he has done and we can see for now that prices of things are coming down, the litre of petrol that we were buying for over 1000 naira is now around 750, the dollar rate has gone down. He has also done some other wonderful things, for instance, the NELFUND project for assisting students of tertiary institution, several millions of naira have been spent on it, the Badagry-Sokoto highway, these are things that have never happened in this country, to have a stretch of road of about a thousand kilometres being built with concrete and lightened up.

Don’t you think that the peace that we have in Oyo APC is that of the graveyard because many people believe that ambition will definitely tear the party apart?

Things have improved, if you see those you perceived as fighting each other now you will know that everybody has accepted that the party is supreme and the party must have the last say on the issue of candidacy, and in any case, we cannot have two gubernatorial candidate it must be just one and once the party decides, everybody will queue into it.

But when the party decided last time that some people didn’t abide by the decision and left the party, you also were not happy with it.

What happened last time I don’t want to go into it, I want you to take note that the fact that I am not happy in 2023 I started as an aspirant and I withdrew by myself when Teslim Folarin got the ticket and worked hard for him and we have learnt a lot of lesson, in 2023, the person who decided to go to another party did not have any good show and that was a shame, so nobody will dare do that again, once the party takes a decision, that decision must stand.

There is an agitation in Oyo state now that power must shift to other zones apart from Ibadan, how would you react to this agitation?

My reaction is very positive, in 2022 when Asiwaju came up, the sing song was there must be rotation from the north to the south because usually because of the population of the north, it used to be the north that usually provides the presidential candidate but Tinubu appealed to them to allow this thing to rotate, according to a Yoruba saying, “ajoje o dun b’eni kan o ni”, if we are together, we are one country, for instance, Ibadan has been governor for six times, so it only makes sense that this time around it should move to Oke-Ogun with ten local government areas and which has never had any opportunity, so let the thing rotate so that there would be sense of belonging and I am happy that the Olubadan of Ibadanland accords with that psychological argument, even the leadership of the Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes agrees with it that there is nothing bad in governorship shifting to other areas, so I believe the party will take a cue from this and do the needful.

How do you think that this can be achieved?

It can be achieved through persuasion, no confrontation and people must also reason, the people who will be negatively affected must also reason that it is in the best interest of everyone that we concede for ourselves, we should appeal to the conscience of those who have always benefited from the system.

How best do you think we can reform our electoral system, what areas of the Electoral Law do you think should be amended to have free and far election?

It is not about the law, but about us as individuals, my experience is poverty is grinding among the low-income people, who are more that 60 percent of our population. When you go to any community to seek their support instead of them to ask what the candidate will do for them when they get into office, so that they will be able to articulate a response by way of manifesto, they are rather going to ask “what did you bring for us? So, if it is just some irrelevant things once it benefits them at that moment they are satisfied and will be shouting your name. So, we must ensure that people who want others to vote for them make commitment in writing as what they want to do when they get to office. I am leading by example by having a manifesto, I am a product of Awolowo school of thought, in the time of Awolowo we had four cardinal programmes that we sold to the masses for which they voted for Awolowo’s party. Now I have improved on it to make it seven cardinal programmes which I have encapsulated in the manifesto. Because if you think of the law alone, this same law works in other countries but why is it not working here? When you hear something like “d’ibo ki o s’ebe (Vote and cook soup) or d’ibo ki o je Indomie (vote and eat Indomie), these are kind of taking advantage of the poverty level of our community members. Law alone cannot do it; there is no law that you make that people will not take advantage of.