Sokoto State-born Ibraheem Hussein Abdulkareem, is one of the leading Information Communication Technology (ICT) experts in Nigeria. The young entrepreneur is credited with overhauling the image of President Muhammadu Buhari through a number of innovations during the run up to the 2011 presidential election. Today, he is the convener of the We2geda Movement, a non partisan political group interested in building a new nation through innovations. In this interview with ‘DARE ODUFOWOKAN, Assistant Editor, he insisted that Nigeria is not a nation yet. He added that ahead of the 2023 general elections, the search for a new Nigeria continues. Excerpt.
THE current political scenarios in the country speak volume about the forthcoming 2023 general elections. What are your expectations and your fears about the next general election in the country?
To start with, and to make for easy understanding of some of my positions and opinions, I’ll describe myself as somebody searching for a new Nigeria. Yes, I’ve participated in partisan politics before now. Aside from being an Information Technology expert and youth advocate, I worked on the frontline with others to bring about the victory of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015. But after the government got into office, they found a way of disengaging us from the process. That was where our engagement with the process ended. So, I can confidently tell you today that I am non partisan; though I am still very much interested in the politics and governance of my dear country.
My fear is that we are actually that we are not trying to do anything new. It appears we just want to repeat what we have been doing since 1999 till date. And that will not solve our problems. It is like we are automating the problem. And when we do that, it will keep bringing back the same situation to us. It is like having a bakery and not changing your production style, yet you are expecting a new type of bread. That is not possible. It is when you change maybe the content or shape of the bread that you will see a new type of bread. Until then, you get the same type of bread all the way. Of course we still need somebody to lead us in the direction of nation building. That is why we are more interested in candidates that have the capacity to be nation builders and not just ethnic champions and sectional warriors.
Various people are aspiring to lead this country in 2023. Are you satisfied with the caliber of aspirants from the political parties so far?
Our interest should not even be about who will drive the vehicle called Nigeria. Our problem is not the driver and now all we are looking for is a driver. Our concern should be with the vehicle itself. The vehicle is not having a good engine; it is not having enough fuel in it and the tyres are not good enough. If that is the condition of the vehicle, no matter how good a driver is, he cannot make a success out of driving such a vehicle. That is our situation today. Nigeria is not yet a nation, we are just a country. And we don’t have citizens in the country yet. There are just people. It is the citizens that create a nation. So, no matter who you bring, unless we create a nation first, we are not moving anywhere. If we borrow the best President in the world and you bring him here, he won’t achieve much because we have peculiar problems we have not solved.
That is why I say we need to go back to the grassroots. If we know the stakeholders right from the ward, it will be easy to pull out a manifesto, a representation and a system for such a community and environment. But it is not so yet. If nothing is working at the grassroots level, it will be difficult to change the centre. So, if we really want to see a better system in the country, let me and you go and be part of the systems at our various wards. And then we need to strengthen the institutions. Because the institutions are weak, we tend to look towards individuals for solutions. Ahead of 2023 now, we are interested in the individuals who will lead and not in the institutions that should protect us.
But several attempts have been made to bring about change before now. Why hasn’t there been much change?
In 2015, we brought in General Muhammadu Buhari because we though what we need is a person who can change the system. But today, after his performance, we know better that it is not about a person but the institutions. Some people are beating the system and breaking down the institutions. So, it is for all of us to fix the system so that we can get the type of democracy that will work well for us.
We are practicing democracy and it is about representation. Once we missed the representation from the ward level, we are going to miss every other thing. And that is what is happening to us. This makes our democracy so difficult for the aspirants and very difficult for us, the electorate. If you want to represent the people truly, they are the ones who should be urging you to come out and contest. They will be the one to say this is the man we want. If you fix a car and it is in good condition; you already know the type and capacity of the car, whether it is manual or automatic and all that, getting a driver will be very easy because even the driver you approach already know the expectations of the assignment. If he cannot drive a manual car, he will not even take the driver’s seat.
Are you satisfied with the level of youth involvement in the current political dispensation ahead of the 2023 general elections?
What type of youth will be involves in a presidential contest where a form goes for N100million? It is not possible. That is why I am talking about creating systems and institutions. You cannot blame the elders who are able to participate. People create systems that work for them. If you want to change things, you have to first create the system that will work. That is the only way to make the old order obsolete. Nobody will tell the old order to pack and go when that is done.
When we do that, we will get rid of godfatherism, money politics and thuggery from our politics. As at today, without these things, you don’t go far in politics. And these are very dangerous for our country. So, youth involvement is not even there yet in the real sense of it. That is why in our movement, ‘We2geda’ Movement, we are leading the charge for the creation of a nation by first creating citizens of our country through the advocacy for change in orientations and mindsets. For two years, we discussed the problems of Nigeria and we discovered that our democracy is not working.
Insecurity, lack of basic amenities, and the lack of value for life in Nigeria. We don’t protect Nigerians as it is done elsewhere. We decided to work at creating a Nigeria not just for Nigerians but for the entire Africa. This, we believe will help stop the error of breaking us into further smaller units by people who are not seeing the bigger picture seen by our founding fathers. We are attacking the old mindsets and introducing a new one that makes all of us part of the solution instead of blaming others. If you keep quiet, you are part of the bad people. We all must participate to end what is happening to us. We created a platform with our main target as the youths.
What do you intend to achieve with this?
It is our belief that once we have a platform that is broad based and across the country, we will be able to really get involved in making inputs into how leaders emerge from the ward to the national level. That was what led to our programme ‘9-by-5-by-5’, which is intended to ensure we have at least 250 people of like minds in each ward of the country to drive the new thinking. So that when somebody is coming to contest at any level, there are at least 250 people, a journalist like you, a tech person like me and others like us, to sit down and scrutinize what he has to offer and ensure that a social contract is signed with the people. Soon, we will have a generation declaration where we will put up a charter of demand saying these are what we want from the next set of leaders, irrespective of their political parties. It is only those who can fulfill the demands that will get our support. It will be the criteria of our candidate selection. When we guide young Nigerians on how to select candidates, we would have started the process of making citizens out of the people of the country. It is these people that will create the nation we want.
To ensure we can fund the candidates of our choice, we intend to raise N2.3billion from the 2.3 million members we target across the country. So, we are not being sponsored by any group or individual. We can also help such candidate cut the cost of electioneering since we will our members to do a lot of things free of charge to these aspirants. These will be easy because people know who is good among us and the bad ones among us. So, when we painstakingly select the good people to run for election, people will willingly work for their victory with the belief that they will work sincerely for all of us.
For how long have you been involved in this?
My first contact with anything politics was in 2003. It was just as a voter. I supported Buhari back then and voted for him. He lost and I saw a system that didn’t work well. As a young man, I realized the problem is not the people that rigged by those who allowed them to rig. I also discovered that people don’t really know who the Buhari they are supporting is, so they allow others to define him for them. So I joined the Buhari Organisation so as to contribute my quota to making him better known and appreciated. From that point, I worked with others in 2007, 2011 and 2015. I designed his first website called Buhari for Change. It helped greatly to present his own view about himself and his politics t the world. I was part of the media group from 2011 and I followed Buhari to about 29 states during the campaign. I was part of his campaign again in 2015 and then we won. We did a lot to create a structure through various organizations and groups, networked together before the 2015 election. We used technology to strengthen Buhari’s electoral value and I worked. And the victory was a proof of our efforts. But like I said earlier, some people saw that we were working towards liberating the system so it can work for the people instead of working for a few individuals. They didn’t like that and they wasted no time in throwing us off the bus after the victory. They continued their business as usual and you can see where the country is today. The innovation we brought stopped t that level in the Buhari organization. But we are pushing on with the innovations through We2geda Movement.