Babachir Lawal is a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). In this interview monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on the coalition talks by opposition political parties and the growing trend of defections to the All Progressives Congress (APC), among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU writes
Ahead of the 2023 general election, you were one of the strongest supporters of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, but you parted ways with him when a Muslim-Muslim ticket idea came up. But that Muslim-Muslim ticket will appear to have been working because even the Pope invited Tinubu to his inauguration, and the President’s spokespersons have been abusing you. They say your angst is misplaced, that you should have remained silent. They accuse you of arrogance, bigotry, and irresponsibility. Now, they say you are supporting a coalition against the government. Can we start by you defending yourself within this particular context?
Well, you know how governments are run. You know that going to see the Pope is just a matter of your lobby, how well you can lobby, how many friends you have out there in the Vatican, who can lobby for you. So, it is not as if it’s a major achievement to visit the Pope on his inauguration. It can be arranged in advance by lobbyists, probably with the correct inducements.
So, Bola Tinubu going to visit the Pope is a non-issue. In fact, it reinforces my earlier belief that the MuslimMuslim ticket is an insult to Christianity. Had there been a Christian as a vice president, it’s only expected that he would be the one to represent the government. But now in Nigeria, we have a so-called Muslim visiting the Pope and leading a delegation of eminent Catholics to the Vatican.
So, it proves the fact that a Muslim-Muslim ticket is an unfair arrangement. On people defecting to the APC; in politics there are two classes of people, those who go into politics to get something out of it and those who get into politics to put something into it.
Again, I must say that it is not every Nigerian that can withstand hunger, and not every Nigerian can survive a poverty condition. So, most of these politicians, who are defecting to APC are probably driven by the desire to safeguard their stomachs, and to safeguard their luxurious lifestyles that they’ve acquired while in government, using the people’s money. So, to them, it’s okay.
They can go that way. That’s what they choose to do. Still on defection; I saw a study recently that showed that 21 governors could not deliver their states to their preferred presidential candidates, which means that the governors have little influence on the voter at the polling unit.
Most of these politicians, who are defecting to APC are probably driven by the desire to safeguard their stomachs, and to safeguard their luxurious lifestyles that they’ve acquired while in government
Yes, within the party system, they have some influence and they can rig the party primaries in favour of their candidates. So, a senator, for example, who is out of favour with his governor, is endangered in that sense.
His governor might not give him the return ticket. He could just order everybody not to vote for him. But no governor can influence the voter. Take, for example, Delta State, the vice-presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was the serving governor during the 2023 elections but he could not deliver.
Peter Obi beat them flat. I mean flat. In Borno State, it’s very well-known that the current vice president could not deliver to the APC until they did some magic on the results, so that he’s not embarrassed. But we know, the voter knows, he had been disgraced woefully. So, defection is just a function of the character of the person.
Somebody without character will easily abandon you when his interest is threatened, rather than when the interests of the masses are threatened. So that is my position. We are not bothered about defections.
It will continue to happen. But I mean, 2027, we’ll go to the ballot boxes and we’ll see the results. We are confident that the defections are immaterial.
What do you say to critics, who believe that you are arrogant, that you are a religious bigot, and that you should remain silent?
I’m a trained pastor. I went to a seminary school for four years and I came out with a degree. I augmented my religious background with a master’s degree in theology. So, if you call me a Christian religious bigot, I’m very happy.
It’s a compliment. It means that my lifestyle and my speeches convey the impression that I’m a Christian. So, I don’t see calling me a religious bigot as an insult.
Again, I will contend with anybody denigrating my religion in any way, in any shape or form, be it in politics or in other aspects of life. If you come out and say Christians in the North cannot produce a vice president, it’s an insult to my religion and to my person.
So, it’s a compliment if people call me a religious bigot, because as a Christian, I stand for the truth, which a Christian should do. I defended my religion, and as God will have it, for those who supported their religion, the Muslim-Muslim ticket because they are Muslims, we go to the same market and I see majority of them grumbling now more than me. Majority of them go to bed without food.
Some of them don’t know where they are going to get their next meal from. So, if that is what their religion preaches, to push people push into poverty, let them have their way. I will not have it.
What is your stand on Atiku Abubakar concerning the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the coalition because you expressed how you’ve been part of the coalition conversations and that Atiku has also been extremely active. However, the name PDP has never come up in any of these conversations. Does this mean that you’ll be supporting Atiku as he moves to the African Democratic Congress (ADC)?
Regarding Atiku, I’m not his spokesman. You know that we are from the same state and he’s an elder statesman in my state in particular. He was a former vice president, an eminent politician. To that extent, I have great respect for him as a politician and as an elder from my state.
As to his political ambition, he’s entitled to it, like every Nigerian, who is entitled to it. It is not for me to decide on which platform Atiku will contest or if he will contest at all. It’s for him and his inner circle to decide.
Be that as it may, I can confirm that in most of the political meetings I’ve attended with regards to the merger or the new political platform, I’ve ran into Atiku Abubakar severally. He’s been attending. Even on Tuesday, May 20, I was at one of such meetings, and he was there.
So, he has been an active participant in the need for opposition political parties to move into one platform to form one strong opposition party. Whether he will contest on that platform or not is not the issue.
Now, the way about this is we have a technical committee of experts, experienced experts, who will analyse all the possible political parties we could adapt and move into and strengthen it and upgrade it, make it more suitable for competitive elections. That’s our main goal. Atiku has presented himself at all such meetings, and my reading of him is that he’s committed to this cause. In fact, he’s one of the most committed to this cause.
This I can tell you about Atiku. Now, as to the coalition itself, it is mostly driven by prominent politicians who agree to come together to form this coalition. It is not focused on which political party should form the merger. First, our options are: Do we get another party that we could move into, modify it, upgrade it, and strengthen it for elections, or do we register a new political party? We have technical committees of experts looking into both.
I am sure that as we speak, we are getting to the end of the process, and I think we’ll soon announce a party that we’ll move into, or maybe, we’ll register a new party. We are getting to the end of that. Nigerians are anxious about this. Every time we go out, people ask, what of platform? Since we are here to serve the people, we are speeding up the process to reduce the tension among our supporters.
But I can tell you, in all the analysis I’ve seen so far, nobody has ever bothered about let’s adopt PDP as the platform. We all agree that PDP has an incurable virus. No antibiotic can cure what is ailing PDP, and we don’t want to go into a house that we cannot modify, that is not willing to change. So, PDP is not in that list.
When last did you speak with President Tinubu because he used to be your friend, and what’s your assessment of the state of Nigeria, the economy and security?
Thirdly, now that a Muslim-Muslim ticket has sailed through, will you support a Christian-Christian ticket, or for you, it is a principle of religious balancing?
As to when I last spoke with President Tinubu; I spoke to around June 2022, when I went to London to present to him our final report and recommendations on how to proceed with the general election. He left me in London, came back and announced his vice-presidential candidate.
Since then, we have not spoken. There has not been any need for us to speak. As to my position on the Muslim-Muslim ticket; first of all, it has opened a Pandora’s box.
We have discriminated against a huge segment of the society and I do believe that part of the punishment we are going through is on account of that
Somebody can now come out with a Christian-Christian ticket, and Nigerians will find it very difficult to oppose it because a precedent has been set. Not only was I complaining about the Christian-Christian ticket because of religious considerations, but because of the sense of equity. There needs to be equity in what we do. If we don’t, we suffer the consequences like we are doing now because we have not shown equity.
We have discriminated against a huge segment of the society and I do believe that part of the punishment we are going through is on account of that. When a leader decides to practice evil, the society suffers. And that is where we are now. I urge Nigerians to always remember that it is not only about MuslimMuslim ticket or Christian-Christian ticket, but also about regional balancing.
People must feel they have a sense of belonging before they can put their energy into working to develop the country and to unite the country. I will not support a Christian-Christian ticket in any form but this man has set a bad precedent, and this is where we are. On the economy and insecurity, I know the President has his supporters. His supporters, I think, have cotton wool in their ears or they are blind because insecurity has increased.
It has grown exponentially since the arrival of the Tinubu government. Insecurity has now grown and they have not done anything to curb it. It is as if the government is training the insurgents themselves because they are all over the country. Poverty has multiplied exponentially. Even those who were doing well, now feel threatened because the economy has completely collapsed.
We are just surviving by the grace of God on a hand-to-mouth basis. And what have they done; they are borrowing money that doesn’t arrive in Nigeria before it is spent. Even when it arrives in Nigeria, they spend it on intangible things that are not measurable and not visible. It is not their intention to fix the economy. Their intention is to run down this country.
That is their intention, which is a surprise because people like me didn’t know Bola Tinubu to have this type of tendency. But it appears that he just deceived us all along and now he has gotten power, he’s in a mood to ruin the economy, ruin the security of the country and divide the society.
What you are saying is different from what the spokespersons of the Tinubu administration are saying. Only recently, the Central Bank Nigeria said it is moving the economy forward and ensuring stability. The World Bank and IMF have commended the government. In fact, politicians from the North-West have also endorsed the Tinubu administration. So, how do you justify your statement that Tinubu’s ambition is to collapse the economy?
He doesn’t need to say it. He only needs to do it. You are known by your actions. He doesn’t need to say it. People from the North shamelessly, they gathered themselves, drank tea and coffee and said they endorsed Bola Tinubu. Did they endorse him to do what? There’s no state in the North-West that is safe. The poverty level in the zone is so huge and terrible, much more than anywhere else.
If their so-called leaders choose that it is the path they want, good luck to them. But everybody knows that they are just liars. They are deceiving themselves and they are deceiving their own people. They have no regard for their people. If somebody from the north western states says that they endorsed Bola Tinubu because of his security policy, that person is a shameless liar.
What it is that induced them to do that is between them and their God and their conscience but Nigerians know that it is not so. On the issue of IMF and World Bank commending the President; have you ever seen or do you have an example of a country that has gone though IMF that came out stronger?
The IMF and the World Bank are there just to impoverish us, so that their people can come and exploit our wealth and take it away. Which country has ever fared better under IMF? Any time you hear about IMF loan or you hear about World Bank loan, the economy crashes more. It is like that all over the world. Tell me, which country has ever benefited from the inputs from IMF?
