Says president disowned APC manifesto, other rules
Iheanacho Nwosu, Abuja
Prof Femi Olufunmilade is a presidential aspirant of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was a key figure in the drafting of policy and strategy document for the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2015 presidential election.
In this chat, the aspirant who is currently the Dean, Social Sciences of Igbinedion University, said he left the APC because the party has derailed.
He spoke on other happenings in the country, especially the insistence of the National Assembly in amending the Electoral Act to re-order the election sequence.
You were a key figure in the APC presidential campaign in 2015, why did you leave the party for SDP?
The reason I decided to look elsewhere is basically because the APC has proved to be an undemocratic party, a party without internal democracy. This is a party that its internal structures and organs were not allowed to function , there has not been anything called BoT being constituted. Even the NEC has only met a couple of times. And at the meeting the people that are at the helm of affairs in the party would want to push one agenda or the other, trying to push people to give the president an uncontested access to the ticket of the party for a second term. They failed to achieve this. The NEC also took place when they wanted to extend the tenure of those incumbent executives of the party who are not performing.
You can see that the party is like a party of a handful of persons. It is acting as if the party does not have other organs, where decisions are supposed to be taken, as if the party doesn’t have state chapters. In terms of appointment into government, the party has not proved that it is existing, I think some of the officials of the party just lobby to get their own people appointed or get themselves appointed into one board or the other and that is it. But in terms of promoting the interest of party members they are found wanting. I want to tell you that while I have come out openly to say that I am now in SDP, there are many that are just there physically, in spirit they have already left. Some of them are waiting for the presidential primaries to hold so that they can teach the president a lesson.
Teach the president a lesson in what way?
Teach him a lesson by denying him the ticket if he ever tries to go for it, by voting against him.
Are you saying that the reconciliation move, which is being championed by the former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, is not working?
I was surprised that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu accepted that appointment. For me, it is a humiliating appointment. I did a Master in Peace and Conflict Resolutions; when you want to reconcile people the first thing you find out in resolving a conflict is what are the causes of this conflict. The main problems within APC are the things I’ve mentioned – people are not carried along. If the party has become a non-participatory party when it is supposed to be a rendezvous, a melting point for everybody, then something is wrong. On top of that you, discover that appointments into government which is the goal of most people who worked to put a president into power have not been coming.
Appointments have not been forthcoming for most people, but on the contrary appointments have been going to those who are in the opposition, a lot of appointments have been given to PDP members, people who do not believe in the ideology of the party.
Is it not possible that President Buhari made those appointments because he wanted technocrats to handle some sectors?
The issue of technocrats is not the case, if you are talking about someone like the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe kachikwu, who was also not a member of APC, but was appointed minister, mere looking at his background you will excuse that. He was vice president at Mobil and he knows about the oil sector, which is acceptable. I just used this as an illustration, there are many other cases. There was a time Delta State APC stalwarts put up an advert in newspapers, asking Mr President what their offense was because all the appointments made in the state had been given to PDP members. If those that I know within the party, distinguished professors, businessmen and parliamentarians are given positions with which they can implement the policies and programmes of the APC as written in the manifesto, I wouldn’t worry. You are not involved in anyway in the government, those that you can relate with are not in the government and on top of that we are taking the blame for both the actions and inactions of the government. You are expected to keep defending their actions whenever people ask you about painful issues like the killings in various places by herdsmen, you end up defending things that even your conscience cannot bear. So, it is at that point I decided that we need to present a new face of ourselves to the Nigerian public. It is not as if those supporting Buhari are mediocrities, we are patriots. We thought as a man with the credentials of anti-corruption he will be able to clean up the state. Corruption is 80 per cent responsible for the problems in this country. It is what made budget non-implementable. Our thinking was that if we have a man who will make every kobo count then Nigeria will begin to work. But now our eyes have been opened. We want to quickly tell the people that some of us are not mediocrities. A good number of us came together and decided that it was high time that we thought of how to place ourselves in government by contesting election instead of merely following.
With your posters pasted in every corner in Abuja, are you contesting for president in 2019?
When you have people who believe in what you are doing and what you represent you have to say yes to their demand. We have so many young people who are saying that we must have alternative . It is their right to express themselves politically, but what I can tell you is that I am aspiring. You can see all kinds of posters everywhere, but it doesn’t mean that I am the one responsible, I am just a university teacher and I don’t have that much money to do all that, but I want to contest for presidency in 2019 . And the reason I want to contest is that I believe I understand the problems of this country better than some of those who are in power today. Since age 16, I have been studying what the problems of this country are and what possible solutions are available to tackle those problems. As a student of political science and now scholar in the same field I can tell you that I know what the problems of this country are. There is nothing we teach in political science other than politics and government. As a Political Science scholar I know the background to the creation of this country in details, I know the challenges of this country from the colonial period to the present day, I know various regimes , their achievements and shortcomings, I know policies, those that have been a success and those that have not. I know the right thing to do, I believe that if Nigerians are a bit tired of mediocre leadership they should begin to think outside the box and say they are tired of the recycling of old faces because of the size of their pocket. There are people who have not had their hand soiled, people who love this country and I am one of them. I am coming out so that those right thinking Nigerians who are tired of all these failed leaders will have an alternative. I have prepared my presidential policy papers, it is encapsulated in a book entitled: “For the good of our people”. With this I am going to be passing the message across to Nigerians that I am coming to play politics of ideas, I am coming out after I have studied what needs to be done. The book will be available online as an e-Book and some hard copies will also be circulated to important stakeholders in this country.
Why do you think your first shot in politics should be the presidency?
You see what happened in Austria, Sebastian Kurz is 31 and I am more experienced than him. I belong to a university system where you have the brightest and the best, I have been there since 1993. I served with the administrative arm of the university, I began my career at University of Uyo since 1993 and by the time I left in 1999, I was due to be promoted assistant registrar. In terms of administrative experience, I also served as secretary to various committees and I can assure you it was an environment where before you take decisions you engage in serious debates and those debates are among serious educated minds, professors, people with doctorate, not mediocrities and that is where I cut my tooth in terms of administration and governance. Beyond that I then moved into academia, after a time in governance with the late Chief Bola Ige. Chief Bola Ige was one of the brightest politicians you can find anywhere in the world, I was his personal assistant, when he was appointed Minister of Power and Steel. So, in terms of politics and governance at the federal level, I had the opportunity of understanding these things while working with Bola Ige. The power reforms that you see was part of the pioneer committee in the Ministry of Power to look into the possibility of Independent Power Projects in the country, that was when Enron was contracted by the Lagos State government under the leadership of Bola Tinubu who was governor then.
When you talk of reforms in crucial areas under the present democratic dispensation, I was one of those who began it working in the background. After I left the Ministry of Power, looking at the way conflict was ravaging the country in the Niger-Delta, I decided to do a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Ibadan. After that I returned to campus as a lecturer. Today, I am a professor of political science, I have been Head of Department of International Relations and Strategic Studies, I am currently the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences of Igbenedion University, Okada and I am also on the Governing Council of Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta. I am a visiting Professor of History and International Studies at Ambrose Alli University, a Professor of Global Understanding a state department sponsored programme at East Carolina University in Greenville,USA. I have also published on various issues about Nigeria, foreign policy, defence and security even economic planning etc. With this background, I believe that I am more equipped than many of the people parading themselves that they want to be president.
You were among the APC leaders that articulated the policy paper of the party in 2014, are you satisfied with the level of implementation of the party’s manifestoes?
I wrote the policy on defense transforming relations and I also conducted the NEEDS assessment survey of 36 states and the FCT working with coordinators of Buhari Support Organisation nationwide. The essence of the survey was to tell the president that aside the general promises in our manifesto specific needs of each states must be focused on. The report guided his campaign speeches as he moved from state to state. I also wrote the overall strategy paper entitled “Opposition victories in Africa: How it can happen in Nigeria, a working paper for the APC.” The chairman of the party personally called to thank me for that paper. The paper reviewed eight countries in Africa, where opposition defeated incumbent leadership . Those countries included Ghana, Senegal, Sierria-Leone, Benin Republic, Malawi, Kenya, Zambia and Ivory Coast. I identified common parameters that aided victory and things that constituted barriers and I adapted it to the Nigerian situation prevailing between 2014 and 2015 and I believe that some of those things helped us to victory.
Are you accusing the president of not going by the manifestoes ?
That is another reason that is very important, I need to put on the table. You know how the president distanced himself from restructuring and he said that it is the process that matters. As a leader your manifesto is a pact with the people of the country. In the South-West our campaign was rooted on the promise of restructuring the country and that was why he won without the votes he got from the South-West in particular as far as the South was concerned he would not have been president today and then after getting the power, you have the audacity to say that we Nigerians can be impatient in speech, indirectly telling people about restructuring that they were impatient and that it is the process that counts not restructuring anything. So, that for me, is not a mark of honesty, you tricked the people to get power. We got a lot of flaks because of what the president said. Here is a president that disowns his own party manifesto, which means he doesn’t believe in what we say we are going to do. Secondly, who are the people he is using to run his government, a lot of them are aliens to the manifesto itself. And that is why in many areas the government is lackluster and that is the more reason we need to look elsewhere and that is why someone like me is offering myself. There are many qualified people and I am challenging them, if they know they have what it takes to run the affairs of this country they should all come out, we have up to 68 parties, let us give Nigerians the avalanche of qualified hands to pick from .
Is it not also possible that you are leaving APC because you know that you cannot fight for the ticket of APC with Mr President ?
Yes, that is also true in the sense that the party is not functioning as a democratic party, we have had gubernatorial primaries in some states in this country that left much to be desired in some states and that to me is a sign of what to expect. I don’t believe that APC will conduct primaries that will have a level playing ground, those who have pocketed the party are already trying to re-enroll the president with his support to be the sole candidate , they are looking for a situation whereby we would by consensus approve of it, but they are scared of free and fair primaries, but if we are talking of democracy, we need free and fair elections, if the president feels he has done well, let him face his own party people first before thinking of the opposition. I know there is no level playing ground there; I had to go elsewhere . There are a lot of people, especially APC members in the Diaspora, but beyond that we did our due diligence before settling for SDP. This is the party that has an antecedent in terms of the social democratic ideology. This is the only party that when you read the manifesto you will see that these things were put together by brilliant and highly progressive minds who mean well for this country. Unfortunately, Nigerians don’t even read the manifesto.
Other parties have zoned their presidential ticket to the North, what do you do if SDP takes similar step?
Even when the PDP said they were zoning their ticket to any of the zones there has not been a time when you will not find people from other regions contesting. Right from the Obasanjo regime. When he was going for the first primaries , people like Alex Ekwueme, Abubakar Rimi, all contested against him. When it was time for him to go and Yar’Adua was to contest, we saw people like Peter Odili in the race and a host of other people that were not necessarily from the North. Coming to APC, we never zoned anything when Buhari contested in 2015 and some of us fought tooth and nail for him to get the ticket, there were people from other parts of the country who contested against him . Rochas Okorocha contested, even from the North where Buhari comes from, Rabiu Kwankwaso and Atiku Abubakar contested against him. The idea of zoning is there in the imagination of people, but it doesn’t exist in the real world of Nigerian politics and I think we need to rise above that . The problem we have in politics goes beyond zoning .As a matter of fact, we need competent people regardless of whatever zone they come from, I want capable hands to come out not just me.
What is your take on the amendment of order of election in the Electoral Act by Senate?
I think the Senate is doing its job, the primary job of the Senate is to make laws for the country, but those that are pushing the agenda of Buhari must return at all costs are scared of the Senate tinkering with the order of elections. If I had my way I would even advise the National Assembly that all elections must be held on one day because it is very expensive to conduct elections the way we are doing it at the moment. It makes a lot of sense if people go and they are given different ballot papers to vote for the various offices in one day, we do not have that luxury of the logistics that is involved to conduct elections in a flamboyant fashion. They are doing a very good job and the executive should mind its business by not interfering.