Dr. Yunusa Tanko is a former presidential candidate and the incumbent National Chairman of the National Conscience Party. The former National Chairman of Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC, spoke to Akani Alaka on contemporary developments in Nigerian politics, Nigeria’s political party system, election reforms, the raging controversies over alleged withdrawal of funds to prosecute 2019 elections by the APC government, among other issues.
Why do you think that in spite of the complaints against the two major parties, Nigerians still don’t vote or support alternative platforms like the National Conscience Party, NCP?
It’s because we don’t give money; we don’t pay money for agents, share rice or give stomach infrastructure. Apart from that, you need to have kingpins in the local governments, who are the opinion leaders that you have to pay money to or give some kind of incentives, which is more or less like buying votes. And some of the candidates when they come in, they are not able to mobilise enough or show physical presence in the local governments. If it is in terms of ideas, we have better ideas, better solutions to Nigeria’s problems. But, unfortunately, unlike in those days when ideology was important in politics; you remember the Peoples Redemption Party, PRP, the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, and so on – and the situation of the country was much better for the electorate – the electorate now do not even have trust in the candidates and what they are thinking is let me collect my own now and then when you go there, you can do what you like. And that has become a problem for our development in Nigeria.
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But why is it difficult for NCP, which was sired by the late Gani Fawehinmi, who was popular for his defence of rights of the masses, to have even some seats in the Houses of Assembly or the National Assembly?
In 2011, we won a seat in Ekiti State by one Adekoya Benson. That was when Femi Falana contested for the governorship of Ekiti State. And even, when Gani himself contested, you can remember the number of votes that were ascribed to him. I would not say that was the true number of votes he scored at that election. And, unfortunately, the Nigerian electorate do not see viability in merit. They probably see viability in mediocrity; those who were able to persuade them, convince them and tell lies and when they get to power, they cannot be held accountable to the promises that they made. These are some of the challenges that we are facing as ideology-based political parties. What is important to most Nigerians is, what do you have to offer? They will look at you and say, look at this young man, he is very good, very articulate, he is vibrant and he speaks well and all. But unfortunately, he doesn’t have money, babu kudi, ko si owo lowo e; those are the things that they say, no matter how hard you try to convince them. And you cannot entirely blame them because those who are in power now and past leaders have not exhibited truthfulness in terms of leadership. What they believe is that I have already paid you before I contested election, so why are you disturbing me with dividends of democracy. I have met so many contestants, who have to sell their properties in order to convince the electorate to vote for them. Believe me, if you are to contest election in Nigeria of today for even a councilor position at the local government level, you will need nothing less than N10 million, especially if you are running on a platform like ours. But if you are running on a platform like All Progressives Congress, APC, or Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which are already established parties, it may be less. To put up posters cost a lot of money, not to talk of going on radio or television to do adverts and jingles. You know how much it costs for you to pay for a page of newspaper. Where are we going to get that money from? So, our electioneering has been monetized; it is about vote-buying. It is no more an issue of integrity and ability to perform. And we need to change that. Otherwise, our democracy will continue to be in danger.
Many Nigerians also don’t believe that parties like yours are doing enough to mobilise the people during and after electioneering periods. They believe that many of the so-called smaller parties became visible during the period of election and even then, they don’t see you campaigning, that they only see some of the party leaders sometimes on television and social media, that they don’t go to the grassroots…
Like I just explained to you, if you put up your posters, for instance, in the local government to contest elections, what you will find out is that the thugs that belong to the other political parties will tear the posters. So, you will not even see them. Therefore, you need to get the people on your side so that they will protect your poster. If somebody is saying that after elections they don’t see us, that will be unfair to us especially. We in the NCP have always been constant. We did about four or five press conferences just after the election. In fact, we celebrated our 25 years anniversary, promoting the idea of proportional representation. No other political party has done that. We have been proffering ideas. But it depends on how well the press carries it. So, we are even lucky that we are appearing on radio, television. Maybe, some of the things I am saying, journalists find them worthy to also use for their own TV, radio stations too. They find content in what we are saying. I want to even thank the radio and television stations that find us worthy. Normally, if members are paying their dues, one could have been constantly on the air or we would have been able to commission somebody to be doing media advocacy for us and you will hear us all the time, speaking on national issues. You have confirmed that you see us on television, social media and so on. And that’s because those are the areas we can cover with our limited resources.
The APC government has completed its first term of office and is about seven months now into its second tenure. How well would you say they performed in the first term and do you think they will do better this time around?
The problem with APC is very clear. They wanted to find solutions to some of the problems afflicting Nigeria. But they have not been able to identify the problems and provide systematic solutions to them. They are only thrashing from left, right and centre and they are not getting the correct solution. Even within themselves, they are having issues, not to talk of how to transform their promises to the people into a reality. And, unfortunately, Mr. President, who has a background of military rule, feels that democracy is not giving him enough room to perform his militarised ideas to get to success. But democracy is different and you must understand how it works and put what you believe in into the system so that it can work. And they are even fighting among themselves. The conglomerates that formed the party have not been able to fuse together totally to work as a team. Until that is done, things cannot work. They need to find a way of building trust among Nigerians because we don’t trust one another. We are not working as a team and we must get that particular trust right before we can start working as a team.
You used to describe President Muhammadu Buhari as a man of integrity, though you don’t say the same of his other party members. But given what happened in recent times, especially in terms of the election in Kogi and Bayelsa, would you still say the same thing about him?
As an individual, President Buhari has his own level of integrity. But now, he has found himself in a political terrain and that is putting a dent on his integrity. Look at what happened in Bayelsa and Kogi, how the elections went. Yet, the president did not condemn it because there is politics in it. Yahaya Bello is one of his anointed sons and for him to come out in public and degrade that election will be very dangerous for him as a politician. And that’s where democracy comes into play. So, as an individual, you can say he has integrity, but politics is denting that integrity, looking at what is going on in the country at the moment.
You have talked about parties in government, using funds sourced from government agencies to further their political interests. This is in alignment with ongoing controversies over allegations that billions of naira were sourced from the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, under Babatunde Fowler, the former chairman of the service to prosecute the 2019 elections for the APC. What do you think should be done to end these controversies?
The thing is this: We heard stories long before now that there was caucus meeting of APC and they were looking for money to run the 2019 election and one of their major stakeholders said, look, there is money in the FIRS that we can use. The story has been circulating in the political circles for a long time and those of us in politics heard it. It just came to the surface now. But the truth about this is this, during the 2015 election, we were all aware that the people who brought in money for the campaign of APC then were Atikus, the Sarakis, the Tinubus, the Amaechis but this time around, most of them refused to bring out money since APC is already in power. So, they had to source for that money somewhere else. But it is expected that the president has to come clean on this matter. The government must tell people if money is missing; a forensic audit must be conducted to find out if money is missing. But the most interesting thing for me is that Fowler happens to be a very important person in the system. He belonged to a group that is a decider in the politics of APC. But when his tenure expired, he didn’t even spend one day extra in his office before he was replaced. But here we are, we have the Chief of Army Staff, the Chief of Defence Staff and other service chiefs, who have overstayed in their offices and nothing has been done to them. Even, the EFCC man has overstayed in office, and he is still there. So, you will want to believe that there is a power tussle going in government and that is why politics is coming into the issues. The National Assembly, unfortunately, is already a rubber stamp of the Presidency and that has even made it difficult to ask it to investigate the FIRS controversy so as to expose the truth of the matter. Even if we are able to find out the truth, whether the people will believe it or not will depend on how they are able to sell that truth. The perception is already there that a certain amount of money from the FIRS was used for the campaign of APC. Nobody at the moment can change that particular perception in the minds of the people, except you put very convincing evidence forward.
You have spoken about infighting among members of the ruling party. I know that you are not a member of APC. But as a politician, do you think the party can survive the exit of President Buhari from the presidency?
It will be difficult, especially now that the infighting is already coming to the fore. It is something that anybody should expect anyway. It was the president’s toga that many of the APC members used to win election. Many of them who did not have credibility, just because the president was popular among the masses, they used his name to win elections. But the man has now come out and said nobody should use my name anymore. Anyway, he didn’t even need to say that because the name may not be as valuable as it was and Nigerian people would know that who they want to vote for are individuals since he is leaving office. And you can see the level of struggle for his office now and they are not yet even up to one year in their second term. There are lots of permutations going on among them: Amaechi is this, Rochas is that; Tinubu is this, El-Rufai with this, Fayemi with that – so, there is already a scramble for that particular office and that will tell you the level of eagerness they have for the man to leave office for them to take over. They are very eager to take over the man’s office in less than one year and that’s very sad, it’s very, very sad.
Given what happened in Kogi and Bayelsa, do you believe Buhari’s promise that he would ensure that the 2023 election is free and fair?
He doesn’t even need to bother himself saying so because though he will still be the president at that time, the Nigerian people will demand nothing less than having a free and fair election. But I think what the president is trying to do is to instill confidence in the minds of the people, which also means that many Nigerians have already lost confidence in the electoral system. People don’t trust the system anymore. So, what happened in Kogi and Bayelsa was like the hatchet that buries the cat. People have become so disillusioned about the electoral system and wondering whether there is hope for Nigeria. We believe that there is hope and we will continue to work for the progress of this country.
With the jailing of former governor of Abia State, a chieftain of APC, for corruption, could we continue to say the anti-corruption war of the Buhari government is selective and targeted at only members of opposition parties?
Any political party like ours will support any government, which is out to fight corruption. We need to fight corruption in this country. But how we marshaled the fight is another thing entirely. People must see that there is fairness in the fight. Many of these political gladiators run to APC in order to run away from their corruption trials and all that they have done in the past that were inimical to the interests of the people. But, unfortunately, some of them met brick walls; maybe they have not just been able to play the games very well to be able to survive the axe coming for their necks. Unfortunately, Orji Kalu happens to fall into that particular realm. But I still believe that they will try to find a way of giving him succour if they can. But if they can’t, they will have to sacrifice him and use him as a political campaign strategy. Even one of us, we prosecuted him and we have jailed him.
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What kind of reforms would you want to see in the country’s electoral system, given what is happening now?
Number one, the Chairman of INEC and his officials will agree with us that INEC is overstretched and they need to unbundle it and that unbundling needs to result in the creation of, at least, three other bodies. One of them also is INEC, but which will be responsible specifically for electioneering. Two, we can talk about Enforcement Commission, which has to enforce laws and constitutions of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as it has to do with elections. Three, we must have to talk about delineation; the delineation aspects of it can be given to the National Population Commission and National Bureau of Statistics. If you share those particular aspects out, it will reduce the burden on INEC, so that that won’t put too much burden on them; they would be able to concentrate on giving us good election. Again, we need to find a way to solve some of the challenges of the commission. One, with regard to the issue of financing, the commission doesn’t have to go to the Federal Executive Council, begging for money. They need to be on the first line charge so that the person, who eventually becomes the chairman of INEC would not be a rubber stamp to any person whosoever. And as it is now, the chairman of INEC is appointed by the president, but what we are suggesting is that we should follow that Justice Uwais report, where people who have the capacity would apply and then, three of them would be subjected to screening by the National Judicial Commission, which will now select one of them. In that way, it will not be tied to the Presidency, but the judiciary. The appointment of the NJC members itself should gravitate towards being a career position, they should not be appointed by the Presidency. In that way, the Presidency will not have powers on the judiciary and INEC itself, while the chairman and the commissioners will be independent. Nobody would be afraid that anybody would remove him from office for doing the right thing. On the Electoral Act, there is a need for consultations; we need to meet all the political stakeholders to proffer solutions as regards how to reform our electoral system. Are we going electronic? How many political parties are supposed to be in the system? How do we enhance the performance of each of the political parties? How do we ensure that people come out to vote and they have trust in the system? What do we do to the electorate, how do we protect them? The electorate cannot always be in the wilderness where rain, sun will be beating them and we must ensure that anytime they vote, their vote will count. In that way, we will help our electoral system. There are so many suggestions that can be made. But for the moment, these are the fundamentals that we need to put in place so that our democracy can have a semblance of fairness, equity, and acceptance to the people.
