A former presidential aspirant on the platform of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prof. Iyorwuese Hagher, has given his verdict concerning the rumoured plan by some presidential aspirants to pick persons of same faith as themselves as running mates, describing such an intention as an evil plan that would ultimately fail.

Speaking specifically, he tasked the former Lagos State governor and Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the ruling party against picking a Muslim as Vice Presidential candidate.

In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Prof Hagher, a former senator who has served twice as a mistier and twice as an ambassador, said by going for a Muslim-Muslim ticket, the party would have chosen anarchy and exclusion instead of harmony and cooperation. In his words, Nigeria needs a president who is unifying and is a bridge between Christians and Muslims.

The two major political parties APC and PDP have picked their flag bearers. What’s your view of the outcome on the primaries?

So far, I am hoping to see a post-Buhari president in 2023.  If you compare the PDP and the APC conventions, the emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the APC was very dramatic. He not only trounced the president, whose body language preferred another person, he trounced the APC chairman, who surrendered like an old tortoise floundering on his back with sick and inappropriate jokes. He also defeated the party’s so-called consensus candidate and other pretenders in a political tsunami.

In the PDP, Atiku, a political war veteran, started late in the campaign but depended on his structures, which were deeply embedded in a network of support that was even etched in the PDP party structure itself. His victory was a fait accompli.

People alleged that the primaries were highly monetised. Can this attitude help deepen democracy?

All presidential election contests are expensive and wasteful anywhere in the world. But here, the threat to democracy is not only just money. Identity politics of tribe, religion, and geography are disruptive to our democracy. Behind the big dollars for the delegates, each convention is controlled from the back-end by a few retired generals, some of who had tasted presidential power and have since refused to let go. They are the nation’s presidential conclave. 

We cannot deepen democracy with money. Filthy money makes politics dirty. Corruption increases the cost of elections and the characters that emerge as flag bearers are often those whose pedigree should not qualify them for elective posts.  This deeply flawed leadership recruitment system will persist beyond 2023 until ordinary Nigerians can own the electoral process of funding their candidate’s campaigns and elections from their pockets.

People clamoured for a power shift to the South, and the APC lived up to that. But the PDP observed it in the breach. What’s your opinion?

There was nothing much except that the APC and PDP were dancing to different sets of drummers. But let the truth be told, the biggest casualty in the emergence of a second South-West presidential candidate after another second North-West president is the nation’s six zone formula.  There is an arbitrary and deliberate recourse to the North-South dichotomy (The 1914 Amalgamation), which was effectively obliterated in the 1994-95 constitution. This is unfortunate. When the South and Middle-Belt politicians clamoured for a Southern president, everybody thought the only zone in the South that is yet to produce a Nigerian president since the return to democracy in 1999 is the South-East Zone. That a Tinubu of the South-West emerged shows how dishonest the clamour for the Southern presidency was. The APC has a serving North-West Zone president and so the APC had something to give. The PDP on the other hand remembers having their last president in the South-South. It was not unreasonable to see their flag bearer emerge from the North-East. The North-East Zone is yet to produce a Nigerian president. The emergence of Atiku Abubakar is a right and proper way for nation-building, equity, and balancing, while the emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as flag bearer of the APC shows the triumph of high handed impunity and disregard for the delicate balance of Nigeria’s zoning system. His ticket rightly should belong to a South Eastern presidential flag bearer. And his running mate should be a Christian from North Central or the North-East zones.

Some people are speaking against a Muslim-Muslim ticket, which appears to be the plan of the APC candidate. What’s your take on that?

If he picks a Muslim vice presidential running mate, the APC flag bearer would be doing that in total disregard for the mood of the nation.  This Muslim-Muslim ticket portends pure evil and disaster for the APC. It is the highest form of betrayal when the mood of both the old and young Christians and Muslims in the nation is for leaders who can build bridges between the two major religions.  For Bola Tinubu to ignore this mood would be unconscionable. It would show the complaisance of the APC elite and the presidency who are unable to give direction to an unfeeling candidate, and Nigeria has now given birth to a demagogue. Muslim-Muslim ticket is a green light to ISWAP, Al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram. The APC would, with its Muslim-Muslim ticket, be choosing anarchy and exclusion instead of harmony, democracy, and cooperation. Thousands of our Christian and Muslim youth in our military uniforms who are fighting extreme Islamic terrorism of Boko Haram in the country will feel betrayed and abused by the man who would like to be their Commander-in-Chief. According to him, he made Buhari president; he is the leader of the APC and therefore the author of the seven years of APC pathetic leadership in Nigeria. This is unfortunate. The Muslim-Muslim ticket is a national demolition ticket that should be averted by all Nigerians, who wish to live in a diverse but united Nigeria.

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But we have had a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the past. On June 12, 1993, MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe, both Muslims, won the presidential election. Why the fuss this time?

Tinubu is not Abiola and 1993 is not 2023. Within this 30-year period, the whole world has changed. We are daily experiencing real terrorism in Nigeria. Nigeria is in the vortex of a violent Islamisation agenda. We daily suffer humiliation and shock as ISWAP, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram kill Nigerian citizens and desecrate places of worship with Nigerian blood. We need a president who can turn off the tap of bloodshed. Our constitution guarantees freedom of worship and faith. For Tinubu to ignore the recent killings and kidnapping of his South-West Christian kinsmen and women and choose a Muslim-Muslim ticket will characterise him as sadistic and selfish. The world today functions best in diversity. We are a great country that is fast breaking apart due to our religious and ethnic intolerance. We need bridge-builders and not wreckers whose life ambitions must be achieved even at the cost of bloodshed, agony, suffering, and breakup.

The Muslim-Muslim ticket won the election in 1993. But the butterfly was born dead. It did not fly. What a lesson! Human beings propose but God disposes. The Muslim-Muslim ticket is also jinxed and dead on arrival.

If Atiku, a Fulani, becomes president in 2023 to succeed another Fulani, does that send any message to other ethnic groups?

Certainly it should. There is an emerging Nigerian collective consciousness that does not see people in colours of tribes. This collective consciousness is predominant among the youth who will determine the polls’ victory in 2023. Should Atiku Abubakar win the election, he will be perceived as an embodiment of Fulani, Tiv, Igbo, Yoruba, Berom, Idoma, and all Nigerian hopes, realities, and pains. Atiku has been very cosmopolitan in his business, personal character, and outlook. I believe he will run a broad rainbow coalition government.

What do we do to douse these ethnic and religious sentiments and of course mutual suspicion among the various Nigerian groups?

We must only elect leaders who have the capacity to act beyond self-primordial religious and ethnic lines. We must shun voting for money. Crooks and bandits who use money or other incentives to buy our votes should be treated as political vote kidnappers and bandits. They should be severely punished by the denial of our votes. Poverty, hunger, ignorance, and sickness do not discriminate between APC or PDP or Christian or Muslim, or between an Etulo, Jukun, Arago, or Montol tribes. We must elect good leaders for peace because without peace we can do nothing.

Some analysts posit that the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket wouldn’t have been an issue, except for the alleged Islamisation agenda of the Buhari Government. Do you agree?

No. Recent events have proved to me that President Buhari has been a lame-duck president since 2015. The cabals and the APC politicos constituted the principalities and powers that held the real Buhari captive. These nefarious entities used their proximity to Buhari to destroy our unity and economy. Buhari could neither assert his presidential authority nor even choose a successor he was desirous to choose. Our president was merely a presidential presence. Coming back to the Muslim-Muslim ticket it is an evil plan, a heartless plan; it is unpatriotic demagoguery that will fail.

People accuse the PDP of laying the foundation of this rot in Nigeria and that Nigerians are fed up with both the APC and PDP. Do you envisage the emergence of a Third Force that may take over power in 2023?

Not really, though anything is possible in politics. During the campaigns, something spectacular could happen. But barring that, we have two established parties, The PDP that settled the national debt and the APC that is still borrowing. The PDP improved Nigeria’s economy to be the best in Africa. The APC made us the poorest country in the world and left 15 million children out of school, while they paid money to terrorists as ransom. It looks to me as if the APC is the exhaust pipe of the PDP. But there is no credible political challenge. We must make a choice between APC and Tinubu.

Why do you think the core North is insisting on a Muslim-Muslim ticket?

I do not think it is the so-called “Core-North” or Fulani that is forcing APC and Tinubu to choose a Muslim-Muslim ticket. Tinubu must be given the credit and recognition he craves and his penchant for owning the APC, the president, and the Muslim-Muslim ticket. He alone is the political silo that reinvented the jinxed Muslim-Muslim ticket. The Fulani in the North cannot deny the fact that the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) was founded by a Northern Christian Fulani, Dr. Barau Dikko. There are highly qualified and competent APC Christians in all the Northern states to be vice presidents. The political strategy is merely to use the religious playbook in the hope of playing up religious bigotry to win votes. Unfortunately, the timing is wrong! And this is a different Nigeria, where we the people want a president who is unifying, and a bridge between the Muslims and Christians and not a bigoted demagogue for president.