Vincent Kalu
President of Congress for Non-Political Party Members (CNPM), Comrade John Mayor Echefu, speaks on why the group endorsed former Vice President and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, for this Saturday’s election.
Between President Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who do you think will win the February 23 presidential election?
Nigerians have come to realise that only those who understand the machinery of governance should be allowed to rule this country. The people after passing through excruciating hardship in the last four years have realised that there is the need to change the way we are doing things if we want to move forward as a nation.
By his utterances, President Buhari has shown that he is not on ground, coupled with the fact that his wife has come out two or three times to raise the alarm that her husband is not in control, that three or four people have caged him and that is the reason he has not delivered on his campaign promises. If the wife of a president should say this, what moral justifications have we to be hitting our heads on the wall campaigning for his re-election? The wife is the closest person to him and she came out to cry for help over her husband, and you want to dismiss her? It doesn’t add up. Atiku has far better understanding of Nigeria than Buhari. He has been talking about restructuring; this shows he has understanding of how Nigeria will move forward. This is the time for Nigerians to give him the opportunity and after four years, if he fails to deliver we show him the exit door in 2023, just as we showed Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 and going to show Buhari in 2019.
Your organisation is non partisan, but based on your answer, you have endorsed Atiku, and how did it come about?
I have told you that preponderate of those who are going to vote don’t belong to political parties. Peoples are sick and tired of partisan politics; people have come to realise that there is no more ideology in party politics. Party is just a nomenclature and gone are the days when people join party because of its ideology. Today, what we see is promiscuity in party. In the morning a person is in party A, in the afternoon, he is in party B and in the evening he returns to party A. that is not the way it should be. Therefore, people are looking at personalities, individuals; people that can be responsible and responsive to the needs of the electorate; people who will get over there and still remember those that took them there. It is against this that we endorsed Atiku of PDP; we have other candidates in other political parties running for different offices that we have also endorsed. Ours is not about political party, but about individuals. We don’t just endorse for the sake of it, we do it after painstakingly scrutinising the candidates, their pedigree, their background, the power of their vision, and the extent of their commitments to the common good of the people.
On December 28, 2018, the state coordinators, council coordinators, stakeholders of Congress for Non-Political Party Members met in Lagos, and after along deliberation, endorsed Atiku as the presidential candidate to support. Nigeria can never move forward unless we restructure the country. Among the presidential candidates, Atiku is the only one that is categorical on restructuring the country. He had also commissioned some legal experts to look at the 2014 Confab report to see the items that need implementation without the rigours of the National Assembly.
That shows he knows the direction Nigeria should be headed, unlike the APC that put restructuring in its manifestoes, but later feigned ignorance of it.
What is your reaction to the botched February 16 presidential election?
That ‘unholy hour’s’ announcement postponing the election due on the same day is the height of insensitivity. It is like a midwife abandoning an expectant mother already in labour, whose delivery she has severally assured times without number will be timely and safe. This is not a good omen for the country. Each of the two leading political parties are trading blames and accusing the other of sabotage. The implication is that one of the parties may not easily accept defeat, it will cry blue murder, and if care is not taken, the polity may be over heated and stretched beyond its limits. But our group is going to make sure that the election is very free and credible, but if INEC chooses to be partisan; it then wants to set Nigeria on fire.
What’s your reaction to President Buhari’s charge to security agents to deal ruthlessly with ballot box snatchers?
Many people have given different interpretations to the president’s statement. Some say, it’s shoot on sight, others disagree.
We have rule of law; there are laws for ballot box snatchers and other electoral offenders. Life is involved in his statement; why should somebody pay with his life for snatching ballot box. It was unfortunate.
If he has given the same marching order to security men against Boko Haram and herdsmen, they wouldn’t have acquired this frightful dimension we are witnessing today.