Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, a former presidential candidate, is a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview monitored on Channels Television by FELIX NWANERI, he speaks on the party’s zoning of its presidential ticket for the 2027 elections to the southern part of the country, the state of the nation, and other issues

What’s your take on the zoning of PDP’s presidential ticket for the 2027 elections to the South and what does that mean for the party’s unity and Nigeria’s broader political balance?

Let me first congratulate Amb. Umar Damagum over the party’s ratification of his position as a substantive chairman. I also want to congratulate the party for pulling through as one entity. The PDP is a very democratic party. At least you saw things happening. Some other parties don’t see things as we do but this is what the PDP has always been from when it was founded.

It is a party that will always debate fiercely internally and at the end of the day, a decision will be taken. That does not mean that when decisions are taken by organs of the party, they are decisions which cannot be faulted. So, what has happened today is unprecedented.

The PDP has never zone presidency before. In 1999, General Olusegun Obasanjo contested against Alhaji Abubakar Rimi from Northern Nigeria and some other aspirants like Dr. Alex Ekwueme. In 2003, Obasanjo as a sitting president in the villa had to contest again with Chief Barnabas Gemade from Benue State and Alhaji Rimi from Kano.

The party never shut the door against any zone. There would always be agitation that the candidate should come from one section of thecountry or the other but the caucus leaders will use their control over the delegates to influence their preference. The party has never done what was done today by the National Executive Committee (NEC) and I say it’s really unprecedented.

What do think this decision means for those who are not members of the PDP?

It means that if you are a northerner, you find another party for that’s what it means.

Someone like you because I assume that you have your eyes on the on the presidential ticket…

No, no, no. It’s not just about me. While past leaders of the PDP, even when they preferred a certain aspirant from a certain section of the country to emerge, they would rather use their votes at the convention to speak for them. They will never shut the door against any region because the more implicit you’re going to one region is the other.

That’s what it means. So, they always avoided this because they knew the implication of it on the unity of the country. So, I believe that NEC has made a big error. I’m not saying that they didn’t do it by majority. It was quite democratic. All the organs of the party decided. But they made a big error.

The constitution of Nigeria does not allow you to discriminate against a party member, when it comes to elective position on account of where he comes from

Why do you think it’s an error?

Because the constitution of Nigeria does not allow you to discriminate against a party member, when it comes to elective position on account of where he comes from. It’s a major constitutional issue. Even if I’m not contesting, any party member who is interested can go to court and say I was shot out by this zoning policy and on account of that, the party’s candidate can be struck down.

Does this zoning preclude anyone from running?

It might be an arrangement as it is not cast on stone… That’s what I’m saying. It’s an error to have done it but the future NEC of the party are in a position to correct this error. It’s not about my interest.

Let me tell you, I was I was a NEC member before. I was the chairman of the group of 54 NEC members in 1999 as Deputy National Public Secretary of the PDP. We were elected for two years and then some of our colleagues felt that governors go for four years, president go for four years, we should also have four years and we should have automatic extension.

I said no you can’t do that. We wee elected for four years. If you want four years, you have to amend the constitution, go for another convention to get your four-year mandate.

I insisted that it cannot even be amended and applied retroactively and they said you are still thinking as if you are in the student union, you’re enjoying power and you are saying you should give it up. So, it’s not about me; it’s what I would do any day if I feel that something has been done in error. I pointed out the error that time and we went to the convention we defeated those who wanted virtuality.

Though it was passed at the NEC, some of us were suspended but we went to national convention and defeated them. That’s the PDP tradition. So, NEC can be in error and can be corrected by future NEC.

So, you believe what NEC did was an error…

I believe so but it could be corrected and I’m not saying by any means that those who took the decision are not competent to do so. They are competent to do so. They are elected people to be in NEC but they made an error.

But before they came to this decision, the different caucuses have met – the governors caucus, the Board of Trustees and the National Assembly…

I said as much as you are enumerating. I said it went through all the process. How could they have made this kind of error you are describing? Well, it’s possible.

It’s not a perfect organisation. Any organisation run by human beings can make errors. That’s my own perspective and I may be wrong but that’s my opinion.

Could it be that the party has learnt from what happened in 2023, when a group of governors, who call themselves the G5 came together and said the party was unfair to the South because it did not zone the presidential ticket to the South?

Let me say that the history of the PDP zoning arrangement did not start in 2023. The first disaster was in 2014, when President Goodluck Jonathan said he will be the sole candidate; that nobody should come from the other zones and the other people from other zone walked out of the party.

That was how PDP lost power even as a ruling party If you were in Jonathan’s shoes, wouldn’t you have done the same? Before Jonathan, we had President Obasanjo, who was a sitting president and went to the Eagle Square in 2003 to contest alongside Ekwueme, Gemade and Rimi.

As a matter of fact, when we are going to the national convention in 2003, it was still a rumour that Atiku Abubakar was going to contest against President Obasanjo. Up till the morning of the convention, some governors were supporting Atiku from all over the country. So, you cannot start the history of the PDP or our politics from when some G5 people think they hold the ace.

And let me tell you this and it is my own position; they zoned the presidency to the South as a default campaign for return of President Bola Tinubu because those who are mounting this campaign of zoning to the South are the same people who are saying we are in PDP but will work for President Tinubu. Look at all of them; almost all of them.

The same people saying ‘we are in PDP but we are committed to the President’s re-election.’ So, it’s a default campaign for the PDP not to have a viable candidate by those people.

So you are saying that zoning of the PDP presidential ticket to the South is a subtle campaign for an easy ride of Tinubu’s re-election?

Absolutely, because those who are saying it must be automatically zoned to the South are also championing President Tinubu’s re-election. So, they are running a default campaign for his reelection.

There’s a statement from the office of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, who said he’s been vindicated. What do you think of his position on being vindicated?

You see, Wike has made it clear to everybody that he is campaigning for President Tinubu. He said he’s working for President Tinubu’s re-election.

He has said it many times and some of his supporters have also said the same thing even while in PDP. So, I am telling you zone that zoning of the ticket to the South is a default campaign for President Tinubu’s re-election. I’m not going to spend energy on Wike’s statement.

I’ll just want to look at what has happened to us in Nigeria’s history because we have travelled this road before. This is not the first time. General Sani Abacha created five parties and all the five parties adopted him. But did Abacha become president? Even under that circumstance, you had a patriot, Alhaji MD Yusuf.

He was in GDM and he said: “I’m a member of GDM. I’m waiting for Abacha to come to GDM national convention. I’m going to contest against him. A number of times, we will meet in his office in Banex plaza.

I was national publicity secretary of National Democratic Party at that time and Dan Nwanyanwu, who later became chairman of Zenith Labour Party was national secretary and we were all in this together. So, we have seen this kind of thing before but what I thought was that we have passed this kind of stage.

You know, when people are not doing well in government and they are paranoia about retaining power, they don’t even want any kind of election. They cannot even trust that they can rig it successfully, so they would rather that nobody is contesting against them, that they are the only candidate.

Are you inferring that the decision of the PDP is linked to the All Progressives Congress (APC)?

Well, I’m addressing your question on Wike’s position that he has been vindicated and all he’s been saying is that he’s going to re-elect President Tinubu. So, you can connect the dots together. But I believe that the PDP internal machinery as a self-correcting mechanism just like Wike said he’s been vindicated.

There is no precedent for this type of economic collapse that we have seen in 10 years… You cannot even call it a recession. You cannot call it a depression. It’s a complete disaster of monumental proportion

Now that the party has done what he wanted, maybe, tomorrow the party may not do what he wants if you have another NEC composition, another national convention or another executive comes in place. So, we wait and see. We see how all these ends; 2027 is a long time in in politics.

You don’t seem to be a fan of how this government is running affairs of the country… How can I be?

We left in 2015; Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $574 billion according to world economics; the GDP today is $259 billion. The 1929 great depression in America that we all talk about was not more than 10 per cent contraction.

When an economy contracts marginally for about three quarters or so in succession, you say the economy has gone into recession.

But when it loses 10 per cent of its value, you say you are witnessing depression. But what do you say about this 50 per cent? There is no precedent for this type of economic collapse that we have seen in 10 years.

So, the 10 years of APC government has been a disaster, complete disaster. You cannot even call it a recession. You cannot call it a depression. It’s a complete disaster of monumental proportion.

But the Tinubu administration said it wanted to do major economic reforms and that those reforms will bring some pains…

I’m not talking about pain on just the pocket of people alone. When you shave more than half of the economy, how long will it take you to recover that? But it’s been long years of disastrous run that we have and they say that they want to fix it… We didn’t have a disastrous run.

How could you have a GDP of $574 and you were the largest economy in Africa and you say it is a disastrous run?

But the truth is that we’ve always ran a rent economy in this country… You are buying this propaganda. I’m dealing with facts here and I am giving you figures. In 2014 that the economy was the largest in Africa, oil was not the biggest contributor. Telecom was already competing with oil in the size of the GDP. Go and look at the data.

The economy was already being diversified. Let me tell you; you underestimate the potential of the telecom market and the telecom revolution that was accomplished in this country. Outsourcing alone in the global market not even mainstream telecom business, which you see people do in India and Brazil, do you know that the size of the market is $545 billion worldwide. India and Brazil are colonizing that.

If Nigeria can just take 10 per cent of that, it is going to be bigger than everything you are getting from oil in a year. So, we were already on a trajectory where we moved our telephone lines when democracy came, from barely 400,000 to over a 100 million. Nigeria was already becoming a huge cyber power.

Now, the only thing that you needed to do was to tweak the content creation element and participate at least at the outsourcing level invest a little bit in cyber security so that people can trust your destination. We have a lot of advantage. Brazil India, they don’t speak good English the way Nigerians do because we are primarily an English-speaking country. You have our some of our young kids that have never left this country but they mimic the way Americans speak.

All these are advantages in the outsourcing market and that could have been converted, so that people will sit down in their homes in Nigeria and make a lot of money because we already have all the telecom infrastructure. So, we are not coming from a disastrous past. You see, people throw figures and lies in the air. Nigeria has always been a great country. Nigeria is not about to become great now.

What you find now is disaster. Between 1959, the period of limited self-government and 1966, Nigeria’s economy was bigger than the economy of Malaysia. Nigeria’s GDP in 1966, by the time the military took over, was $6.3 billion. Malaysia was 3.2 billion, Indonesia was 5.8, Thailand was $5.2 billion. So, we were twice the size of economies of these countries. I went to school, when Indian teachers were coming to take jobs in Nigeria.

I was taught Mathematics by Indian teachers. Irish doctors were applying for jobs in Nigeria. Nigeria was assembling Styer tractors in Bauchi; Leyland lories in Ibadan. So, what do you call all these? Vaccines were being exported from this country to all of West Africa up till 1987. So, you think this is who we are?