Professor Iyorwuese Speaks On Nigeria’s Political Development, Atiku’s Chances Of Winning 2023 Elections

A former Nigeria High Commissioner to Canada and Mexico and Former Senators of the 2nd Republic Professor Iyorwuese Hagher, Spoke on political developments in the country and Abubarkar Atiku’s chances of winning the 2023 Presidential election in this exclusive interview with THISDAY George Okoh. Also a former Minister of Health, Power and Steel, Former Pro-¬Chancellor, Afe Babalola University,a presidential aspirant and presently a Director of election management in the PDP national campaign.

Excerpts.
Sir, we are approaching the general elections and political parties are making headway, going around the country canvassing for support for their candidates, we know that you are a director in the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organization, what has your party been doing so far to ensure that Atiku is returned as the president of Nigeria?

Thank you George. Our way to the Atiku Presidency 2023 is simply to show Nigerians that under the PDP we rescued Nigeria from collapse, heedlessly caused by decades of Military dictatorship. Nigeria was a pariah state, its economy had collapsed, the quality of life had degenerated and inflation was hitting the roof while the military promoted the country into endemic corruption. All these situations are back in Nigeria within the APC rule in 7 years. Our campaign is showing Nigerians that Atiku is the best presidential candidate because he was at the apex of that PDP exceptionalism that restored the nations integrity, rescued it from economic collapse and grew democracy. The last seven years of the APC government is nothing but an unmitigated disaster. Many civil wars are taking place in Nigeria, separatist agitations have become rampant and governance is characterized by impunity, nepotism and a civilian dictatorship. The quality of Nigerian life is pitiable as 20 Million Nigerian Children are out of school and the university system has collapsed. The Naira which was 160 to the dollar is now 800 Naira to the dollar. Corruption is virulent and operates in a pervasive and ubiquitous manner. Nigerians are fleeing Nigeria in alarming numbers.This is the collapse scenario beckoning Atiku to rescue.
How exactly did the PDP rescue Nigeria from collapse and how does the PDP intend to rescue Nigeria now?

In 1999, the PDP returned Nigeria to democracy after decades of military dictatorship characterized by lack of national cohesion and Nigeria was a pariah nation to be avoided by the international community. The PDP, set up a very lofty agenda for this country, to bring unity, so that every Nigerian citizen will feel at home and every part of the federation will feel truly federated in freedoms, quality of life and equality of opportunities before the law. The PDP’s 16 year rule enhanced the quality of life of all Nigerians by running a transparent government based on the rule of law. One of the first things the PDP did was to make the country viable again. The PDP government negotiated favorable terms to end the suffocating debt burden and unsustainable thread-mill debt trap. No country that is heavily indebted can take care of its citizens when debt servicing is out of proportion to the national development needs. The PDP did a great thing; exiting the colossal debt burden took diplomacy, and high levels of financial management to have Nigeria exit the 30 billion dollar debt to the London and Paris Clubs. The servicing of these loans alone was gulping over 3billion dollars yearly. After doing this in the first four years the PDP began on infrastructure, Telecommunications, doing roads, power, railways and airports. It diversified the economy and privatized national assets creating a new economic base for global competitiveness.
All these achievements have been obliterated by the irresponsible APC government which has demonstrated poor and ineffective leadership. Within only seven years the APC has brought Nigeria back into a frightful debt trap. We are owing over $86 billion in public debt and of these whooping $33.3 billion is owed to external creditors. Nigeria is now permanently tied to China ( a country we were ahead of economically in the 1970s,) for more debts. The APC has borrowed a harrowing $3.3 billion from the Export-Import Bank of China. The debt conditions are opaque and the money is being wasted by the APC administration. The noose in the debt trap is choking Nigeria to death as the government is actually getting more loans to pay salaries now. We need the PDP with cognate experience in Atiku Abubakar to rescue Nigeria from this trap.

Are you suggesting the APC government is corrupt?

I am not suggesting. I am stating matter of fact that the APC’s manifesto and posturing on corruption is a huge joke. Any country in the world where endemic corruption sets the agenda of governance has put the citizens at risk. The APC government is responsible for widespread treasury looting and allocation of billions of stolen money to its top functionaries. The APC hypocrisy and rot stinks. The massive stealing of over $25 billion oil money has exposed the APC as a bandit administration that has foisted poverty on the hapless citizens with glee. Except for the PDP, corruption would have continued to be celebrated. It was the PDP that set up the anti-corruption infrastructure: the ICPC, the EFCC and all the others. Today these bodies have become instruments of political oppression. Corrupt officials hurry to join the APC so as to be condoned and forgiven while the citizens reel in poverty.

Are you not afraid the military might intervene soon as these weighty allegations gain momentum?

I hope not.. I believe like Awolowo that the worst civilian administration like the APC now is better than the best military government. The fact is the PDP had earlier professionalized the army and got rid of the bad eggs and the coup making mentality. The APC administration has corrupted and bribed the military to look the other way while treasuries are looted. Nepotism, has eaten deep in military appointments and retirements. If the military takes over power now it must be at the invitation of the failed APC junta. In the first six months of the PDP in 1999, the PDP dismantled the coup-making architecture of the Nigerian military. The PDP actually enthroned democracy. Even when the APC Through a massive assault on the electoral system rigged the election of 2015, the PDP conduct was exemplary in protecting democracy. President Jonathan did not go to court like the APC would have done. Instead the PDP allowed a rabble-rousing, hatchet party, the rag-tag APC, hurriedly constructed purposely for wresting power from the ruling party. President Jonathan was amazing and he achieved for Nigeria, a bloodless first time successful transition from a ruling party to a party that was not even one year old, a rabble rousing opposition political party. Unknown to the PDP, the APC was coming to power with the intention of, if they had failed, then Nigeria would have been ungovernable. So, the PDP saved Nigeria from anarchy. But unfortunately the APC government that took over, allowed anarchy and terrorism to rule in its own tenure of seven years where Nigerians have had a horrendous life. Nobody sleeps today with his/her two eyes closed again. Nobody feels safe in their homes or offices or farms or roads or anywhere. The APC has failed the Nigerian people because the political elite from the business class to the politicians had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing about how to build a lifestyle for themselves and not care a whit about the poor masses of the country. The political elite of this country is too rapacious, too much of conspicuous consumers, and too self-seeking and unable to first and foremost to allow nation-building to be the number one duty of those who are in government rather than self-seeking. So, the end result is, the fault lines that had existed which the PDP was trying to manage were widened to chasms during the seven years of the APC leadership. And one of the biggest crimes which the APC committed was the total disregard for the Nigerian citizen; total disregard for their welfare, in terms of the security of their lives and property. And worst still, an inability to fashion a future that is tailored for an education for the next generation. They didn’t prepare for this. So, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world– 20 million children out-of-school. This is really terribly, terribly, bad because it is an approach to apocalypse; because with the kind of horrendous demographic, we are heading towards a massive civil-war situation, or bloody revolution and a total breakdown. The APC has successfully hatched a generation of beggars, vicious street urchins, armed robbers and political bandits who are already making life unsafe and unbearable for everybody. This is what we have on the ground.

In other words does the PDP hope to coast to victory merely on the poor performance of the APC in the last seven years?

So, the battle is already won. The election is over. The best campaign for the PDP is the score card of the APC. Nigerians are sick and tired of the APC government. So, this election is actually a referendum on the bad governance of the APC, which should be punished for our suffering, insecurity, manufacturing poverty and their total disrespect for the lives of the Nigerian people.They should be punished for the loans which they have kept taking and for which we have seen nothing, except unfinished roads,rails,refineries and development of other countries, other than Nigeria. We have seen an APC that has enriched its member with colossal sums of money. We have seen the APC that has turned the Central Bank, into a political machinery to give money to their friends and to punish their enemies. We have seen an APC, that has destroyed the value of the Naira, so that it is now in shreds. We have seen an APC that has no respect for the rule of law. And so, it is with all this that the campaign for a return of power to the PDP has become an imperative. Deep inside every Nigerian’s mind is, let’s give the PDP another chance. Atiku Abubakar happensto be the most senior of the PDP politicians because he was our Vice President, when democracy and civilian rule was re-established and we could sing and dance and sleep. We need to return to the base. A return to sanity. A return to development. A return of Nigeria back to Nigerians because Nigeria was stolen away from us for seven years.
We didn’t even know if we had a president. We had an absentee King who was totally unconcerned about anything happening to Nigerians. And terrible and horrible things happened all over Nigeria and he said he didn’t know. He was an enigma and recluse. We didn’t know him and we didn’t know what was wrong with him. When he took ill, and spent so many months outside the country nobody knew what was wrong with him or if he really was sick or not. He couldn’t be bothered to tell Nigerians. He felt accountable to no one that his own sickness was only a personal thing and Nigerians didn’t need to know. And so, there was a sense of having a government of deceit, deceiving us about who the president was, deceiving about his emotions, deceiving about his sickness, deceiving about his policies, and then there was this obsession with self-rule; obsession with the nepotistic tendencies and he alone destroyed the image of the Fulani in this country because we’ve had excellent Fulani presidents from Shehu Shagari, Musa Yar’Adua and these people were nation builders and then we have an APC government that came up as nation-wreckers. Their obsession to take lands from other people. The obsession to defend the banditry and terrorism of his ethnic group and penalize other ethnic groups for expressing their own pains was and is beyond the pale of presidential morality.

Do you really believe that the APC set out to deceive the public and destroy the country?

No, I don’t think so. I think the APC harvested from a break up faction of the PDP and an effective campaign based purely on lies in 2015. They not only sold the county a dummy, they were ill prepared for power. I am sure they were shocked when their game plan worked and they were declared winners in 2015.
The APC was not really prepared for power. I know that they did not seek out to destroy the country. They were just ill-prepared for power, because when finally, they won, to appoint a Secretary to Government took months. To appoint ministers was almost impossible and the president even before he appointed them, expressed disdain for cabinets. He said he’ll prefer to use permanent secretaries and then we saw a president who corrosively, rode roughshod over the sensibilities of the National assembly wanting to control them totally. Today we have a National Assembly that is a mockery of itself. A national assembly that is proud to be a rubber stamp of the President is nothing but a quisling slave to civilian dictatorship.

So sir, are you saying that the PDP is ready and prepared to take over power?

Say that again. The PDP contract with Nigeria is to rescue Nigeria from total collapse. We are ready and prepared to take power. We are ready and prepared to hold the APC accountable to their seven years of misrule and we are ready and prepared to offer the alternatives to the collapse scenario. We are bringing peace to the land and prosperity, and happiness and and liberty.

The campaign by people are degenerating into insults and mockery of the candidates. How do you see the issue of attacks on the person of Bola Tinubu by PDP spokespersons and personal attacks on Atiku by the APC?

In this campaign some of the attacks are inevitable. When you see a candidate who is visibly having memory problems, visibly cannot articulate his movement or his joints and seems in every eye that there’s something physically wrong with such a candidate then it is inevitable to draw the attention of the public. It is the APC which is making a spectacle of its presidential candidate a man who should be in hospital being taken care of instead of being hauled from place to place. he is a symbol of the APC decadence and collapse. It is unimaginable for us to see that the APC is really not prepared to rule this country properly. It is people who believe that you don’t need a healthy and strong president, but a cabal who lock the president up in some hospice and establish the rule of the cabal. A cabal is a system of people who will sit on top of others in decision-making in an undemocratic manner to skim, all the benefits of the economy; they determine who gets what in the most undemocratic manner; they interfere with the judiciary; they influence the legislators; they setup physical violence against the citizens like what we saw during the anti-SARS demonstration which saw the hand of government in an amazing clandestine operations, where thugs were unleashed on people by the hand of government that was very visible, and then the unaccountable number of lives of people who were lost. APC has shed too much blood in this country to be allowed to continue one day longer than the end of the tenure. And that is why we are running. That is why we represent the anger and the pains of the Nigerian people and these pains we are standing here to express them so that we can take Nigeria to a solid state of recovery. Nigerians deserve to have their country that was stolen from them seven and a half years ago back to them. Our youth need their country back to the competent shoulders of Atiku and the PDP.

The APC are still insisting on governing Nigeria through the candidacy of Ahmed Bola Tinubu despite his alleged frailties,are you comfortable with this and also Peter Obi, don’t you think his coming into the contest and his appeal to the youths would likely jeopardize the chances of the PDP?

No. Not at all. Peter Obi is an asset because the young people, the millennials following Peter Obi have already voted against APC. And therefore, nationwide, they are going to take the votes from the APC and deny them the votes. There are two consequences. There are two ways by which you can win elections: either the total number of votes tallied or the number of states that you make 25%, at least in 24 States. So, Obi is going to deny Ahmed Bola Tinubu from making 25% in 24 States. So, first Bola Tinubu is restricted. He’s an ethnic jingoist. And also, I don’t even call him a religious fanatic but somebody who plays with religion. He loves playing the religious card, even when it is to throw his wife in and say my wife is a member of a Christian denomination. In fact, my wife is a clergy in a particular Christian denomination – he throws it in for a religious card. He is already famous for his fake bishops that attended his declaration earlierdeclaration earlier in the year. But when it suits him he bares his anti-Christian fangs and does not find one Northern Christian as his running mate? He’s desperate about power and he thinks the Northern Christians don’t have a critical vote to his northern victory. His choice of a Muslim running mate is pathetic and shameful. Because, clearly it means at a time when we need a nation builder, we have an egomaniac , a body builder, a frail body builder who’s just building himself from a zero to a multi-billionaire. He dabbles into all kinds of activities you don’t even really know why he just happens to be so stupendously rich that his money is carried by bullion vans. It is almost as if whatever he is doing, he has the monopoly of that. Tinubu seems to cover his mysterious and questionable past with money, his ill health with money and believes in the power of money in politics. And so we’ve seen him operate and we are so scared, because he believes that you can buy anything. We’ve seen him in his moments of unguarded utterances challenging and humiliating the president that he’s the one that made him and that the promise was that after Buhari it should be him. Tinubu claims to have been promised in one political party and expect the whole country to turn around on the basis of such a clandestine promise to be elected by 90 Million registered voters.

So, this is the kind of mentality and obsession with power and obsession with arrogance and hubris that should be punished by the electorate. I believe that at the bottom of his mind Tinubu knows he is too sickly to be president, but he’ll rather die in office as president, as a fulfillment of an ambition. This I believe is his main manifesto to Nigeria. Every Nigerian has a right to be president but it is only God who knows whose turn is to be president. No ambition is big enough to warrant this kind of boast. The perception Nigerians have of Tinubu is that he has no desire to serve but the desire to own power. A desire to become the most powerful man, and if it means dying in Aso Rock and being buried there it’s his ultimate wish. I think that Nigerians have the least reason to elect somebody like that Bola Tinubu President. He says,” I’m going to continue with the policies of Buhari”. Nigerians knowing that the policies of Buhari create poverty, insecurity and collapse for Nigerians. The way Buhari has run the country, if we continue with Buhari’s policies Nigeria should get ready for total collapse. I can imagine the New redesigned Naira with Bola Tinubu’s face on it becoming 2000 Naira to the dollar and Tinubu’s cabal dancing to celebrate this “achievements”. Because he wouldn’t be bothered. He worships money. And he doesn’t build a network where knowing he is sick, let somebody else who is more capable than him run. I don’t think if you have money, it should be translated into personal power of manipulation for assuming power at all costs. I don’t see this as a reason I would support anybody like that to be president. But so be it. And so, Peter Obi would not be a threat to the PDP because he’s part of us. He has always been part of us. And we’ve never seen any point of disagreement with him because he’s very creative. He’s a visionary and he’s a dynamic personality. And that’s what our party is. We are a dynamic party that leads to growth. We absorb different and variegated opinions. We possess an internal mechanisms of resolving and absolving our complexity and diversity to run a country that is as complex as Nigeria. A country of over 200 million people. A country of over 300 languages. A country that is equally split into Christians and Muslims. We need to have nation builders like Atiku Abubakar to run the country. We cannot afford to have people like Bola Tinubu who clearly will sacrifice everything, in order to acquire power and consume people to serve his demagogic obsession with power.

Their are those who are saying that Nigeria cannot afford that a Fulani man rules for eight years, why the other section of the country is waiting for their turn, and yet, Atiku Abubakar, another Fulani man is now agitating to take over from a Fulani what’s your take on this?

I believe that the people who are saying they cannot afford another Fulani man actually mean they can’t afford another type of Fulani man like Buhari. A Fulani ethnic irredentist. We have had Fulani presidents in the past they were exceptional leaders. When Shehu Shagari ruled this country during the NPN days, nobody saw his face as a Fulani face. In fact, as second republic senator, I had attended a meeting with Aper Aku and Shehu Shagari one day, and Shehu Shagari was pleading with Aku, “how come when you are having a meeting of minorities, you don’t invite me as a Fulani because Fulanis are a minority tribe too in this Nigeria”. When Yar Adua was in power nobody saw him as a Fulani president. He was the best civilian president Nigeria had. Tribalism is a nation destroyer. We have seen an example where the Tutsi and the Hutus, had killed each other in a horrendous genocide. But today Rwandans are not talking about tribes. They have embraced nation building with capacity and diversity.There should really be one tribe in Nigeria, and that is, the Nigeria tribe. The last time I was in Kigali I asked a Rwandan student what tribe he was and he promptly told me he was Rwandan. We cannot afford another Nigerian president who is an ethnic irredentist like Buhari. Nigeria needs Atiku Abubakar a cosmopolitan Nigerian who lives and breathes diversity to be the Nigerian for all Nigerians. When he was vice president we did not see the Fulani in him and when he is president next year he will be for all Nigerians. Many people have forgotten that this country is no longer about North and South. It is clear now today, that of the six geopolitical zones in this country, Atiku belongs the North East zone which has never produced a president, since the return to civilian rule and therefore he has more right to be president than Bola Tinubu from the South West where President Obasanjo was given the first shot. So, the South West has produced a president and a vice president. So why are we not talking about that and not seeing that Atiku legitimately ought to also be considered as aAtiku legitimately ought to also be considered as a president coming from the North East. Indeed, significantly, some of the frontrunners in the last elections like Wike come from the South South, which has also produced a president and vice president.

But Governor Ortom called out Atiku as a Boko Haram sympathizer. How do you reconcile this with your lofty and rosy picture of Atiku?

Governor Samuel Ortom has since apologized to Nigerians for his lamentation outbursts. The Fulani herdsmen ( transnational terrorists) have killed so many people in Benue State in the last seven years of Buhari administration. Benue State has almost a million people displaced from their ancestral lands. The governor is in distress and has emotional trauma. His public outbursts must be understood as the wailing of the bereaved. We should expect no melody in the wailings of the bereaved. But Ortom has since apologized for his hateful outbursts.
I can give a different testimonial of Atiku. We lived next to each other in Apo village in 1994-95, during the National Constitutional Conference. He is a Nigerian with open arms extended to all Nigerians. I welcome him as a Fulani but also as a Tiv man. His Tiv name Zege Mule was not bought but earned. Vice President Atiku stood by Benue victims of the infamous Zaki Biam massacre, when President Obasanjo opened the military tank fires against the Tiv people. His own government ordered a massacre, a genocide so to speak of the Tiv people. And the following day, Atiku flew into Makurdi. And we, with Atiku, George Akume, Iyorchia Ayu, myself and the others. We flew into Zaki Biam in a helicopter, and Atiku walked for five miles along with us, looking at putrid corpses on the streets of Zaki Biam. And shedding tears and sympathizing. And he tirelessly worked trying to see that peace returned to our people. In fact, when we organized under the ambit of the Mzough U Tiv, a reconciliatory conference in Gboko, Atiku was there in person donating to the victims. I was then the Secretary to the Mzough U Tiv. If there are personal misunderstandings with Governor Ortom, they will be resolved. Atiku will win more votes in Benue State than Tinubu and Obi. Governor Ortom ensured that Atiku won Benue state in 2019. He will work for Atiku despite personal disagreements. Atiku is loved here. He’s a Benue son. It is quite wrong for anyone to use tribe and religion against him.

I will like to go into the issues within your party. Five governors under the umbrella of G5 are aggrieved with happenings in the party. This thing started during the primaries of the party where Atiku won, and since then, the five have threatened to quit the party if genuine reconciliation and understanding is not gotten from the party. If you look at it, most people feel that what the G5 is agitating for is not very very clear. What they usually say is that when Atiku left the party some certain times to join and bring in president Muhammadu Buhari, they stayed back, particularly, Wike, they stayed back and financed the party and since then these issues have lingered on and we see it every day they are demarketing the party. As one of the elder statesman in the party, can genuine reconciliation be gotten before the 2023 elections? And if these five were to pull out of the party, don’t you think it will affect your winning the 2023 elections?

If these five governors and their states, do not support the PDP in the 2023 elections, it could lead to the PDP losing elections. I’m afraid that even if we win, it will be by the slimmest of margins. These five governors are extremely important, and nobody should belittle them in any way. And I know their significance and importance because at the top of the hierarchy of these five governors, is a young man by the name of Nyesome Wike who apparently has an inexhaustible chest, war chest so to say, money. And money speaks a lot of languages of politics. So, it was expected that he would win the primaries if money was the main factor, but some other things played, and he lost. And I think that in losing elections, different people react differently to it. In 2015, he supported Tambuwal who lost to Atiku. In 2022 Tambuwal supported Atiku against him. These people are all friends and need each other.They must reconcile, apologize, forgive each other and move forward. Wike and Ortom must have made promises with Ayu which they want Ayu to keep. But Atiku was not part of the promises to be kept. Wike is holding the campaign to ransom and demanding the National Chairman’s head to roll.. Now, it’s a serious issue and nobody should belittle the five governors, because, a similar head must roll mentality took place before the loss of 2015 election of PDP to APC, when Saraki and other governors decided to give Jonathan an ultimatum. “You must remove the secretaryThe same Governor Ortom came back from the APC to PDP and won election again in 2019. So, you can see he is well rooted in grassroots mobilization. There have been misunderstandings. But very soon they will be set aside. Just like Ortom led Atiku to victory in 2019 in Benue State he will lead the Atiku victory in 2023. So, all these things are healthy because democracy is freedom of expression. But we are here solidly for Atiku and solidly for Ortom. And that’s my position.