National Chairman of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Professor Rufa’i Ahmed Alkali, speaks with TAOFEEK LAWAL on various national issues, especially the 2023 general election and factors he believes will decide the outcome of the coming polls.
Your party is not much in the news lately; what’s happening?
This is news to me. Maybe you are tuned to the wrong or other media channels, but we are everywhere.
Your presidential candidate, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso narrowly beat the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) deadline to choose a running mate by submitting Bishop Isaac Idahosa’s name. Was it just to fulfill all righteousness or how well does he know the running mate?
The choice of a vice-presidential candidate is one of the most important decisions a presidential candidate must make. Knowing the role and functions of that office, it’s not something you just make flippantly. You need to consult; you need to reach out and talk to people. Therefore, by the time you make a decision, it should be a correct decision. I am not too sure what you said that we escaped [narrowly] is correct. We followed the processes and the INEC time table. But aside this, the decision to pick Bishop Isaac Idahosa was a very good one; it has resonated well with the people. NNPP is a party that believes in inclusiveness, justice, equity and fairness. I think that choice was a good one.
Do you think you can contend with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) as we count days and months to the 2023 general election?
The challenge we have with some people is that they are already fixated. Here is a dynamic political party called the NNPP. It has been around since 2001 when it was established by a well-known gentleman, a nationalist and patriot, Chief Boniface Aniebonam. Since its merger with the TNM [The National Movement] on 1st March 2022, NNPP has transformed and changed the dynamics, the calculations and the popular assumption that there is no alternative way. But that reality is yet to sink into the minds of some people. They may be big, but that is not the kind of party we are talking about; we are talking about quality. Take a look at the kind of leadership that we have. Kwankwaso is somebody who has held various positions in this country. He is a person you can trust. Since we concluded our merger, we have resisted the temptation of carrying all that old baggage, troubles and problems for those political parties. When we started this journey, people said they were looking for the Third Force, and we said we are not the Third Force; that is not our name, because third class is third class. But we all know that nobody is happy with what is happening in this country today and they are all looking for an alternative.
We can’t avoid talking about the security challenges we are going through as a nation. It has become so bad that even Abuja, regarded as the safest place in Nigeria, is experiencing insecurity. What will be your party’s strategy to tame this ugly trend?
Security is a huge challenge to every government in this country. The protection of lives and properties is the fundamental role of government. Therefore, every government should aspire to provide effective, meaningful and physical security before any other kind of security like food security. We have passed the phase of blaming anybody; we are looking ahead and nobody is happy with what is going on. I am not sure even those who are in charge are happy with what is going on. They know that there is something fundamentally wrong. Now that we are heading towards elections, let Nigerians be the judge at the 2023 elections. There should be a reset of the nation; we should have the opportunity of returning to normal life. Today, we are living on the edge; everybody is tensed up, living in fear and uncertainty. NNPP is not saying anything new; everybody knows this. When one is sick, he seeks a cure. That is where we are now. We have to know what went wrong that has degenerated us to this level.
In the just concluded governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun, your party’s performance was not impressive. As we head towards 2023, don’t you think this will give the impression that you are only popular in the North and not in the South?
If anyone uses Ekiti and Osun as a parameter to measure our future performance, it will be a wrong assumption or analysis. It will be recalled that even before our merger, candidates for Ekiti and Osun were on ground. And as law-abiding citizens, we did not think it was legally right to want to change those results. We cannot abandon those who had faith in us and wanted to be governors when the party was not even popular. We have to stand by them, because it requires a lot of courage to indicate interest to contest in that party that was not very visible then. There was a time when those parties that felt threatened by our presence started spreading false rumour that we had been deregistered. We decided to go into the elections, even unprepared to prove them wrong and build confidence in those that believe in us and let them see that we are on the ballot. Even if it were one vote we got, we are very proud of the people of Ekiti and Osun for that; we are very happy with them. This is the beginning of better and bigger things to come. After all, Ekiti people are among the most educated people in this country; they know what they want and just like Ekiti people, you cannot push the people of Osun aside in Nigerian politics.
With what we experienced in those elections, if Nigerian politics becomes cash and carry politics, then let’s stop complaining about what we are experiencing. Let’s stop talking about insecurity, hunger, education and all others; let victory go to the highest bidder. The media should start knocking this issue. Anybody who thinks 2023 will be cash and carry will get the shocker of his life. They will go with their money, the people will collect it, but will not vote for them. When democracy returned in 1999, Nigerians celebrated, but this is not what we bargained for.
The Nigerian economy is in a very bad shape, how will your party rejig the economy if you get there?
Every political party has a manifesto; we have ours. Very soon, we will unveil it and Nigerians will know our direction. For sure, the situation now is bad. I don’t even know how to describe it. We are just moving in darkness. There are Nigerians who are very educated across the globe, very experienced people, who know what to do; let’s engage them. Today, our currency is depreciating every day, hour and minute. If we continue like this, it will get to a level where you carry your naira and it can’t buy anything. Wages, pensions and gratuity are paid in naira; therefore even when people get their pay, it will not be able to take them out of the pay centre.
The National Assembly just threatened the president [MuhammaduBuhari] with impeachment. What do you make of that?
I’m not even too sure that impeachment is the solution to the problems at this moment. The question is where have they been all these while? Look at our universities; they have been shut for over five months. Most of them are beneficiaries of the public university system. I am waiting for a day when they will call an emergency session, invite stakeholders, the striking union members, government officials and the rest to examine the challenge and come out with good resolutions to help the government. No country has ever done this, to close their universities for over five months and people go about their normal business as if nothing is happening. It doesn’t work like that. In the presidential system of government, especially in Africa and Nigeria, impeachment is a very long, difficult and tedious process. Already, the system is overheated and they want to further overheat it. But if they want to do it to make a political statement, fine, but I’m not sure it’s worth it.
For us as a party, we don’t want anything to disrupt the process towards the elections in 2023. Anything that will create a crisis that can lead to the disruption of elections in 2023, we do not welcome it. Whatever is done now will be too late.
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