Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim is a presidential aspirant on the platform of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), which recently held its first national convention in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He spoke with reporters on his ambition and why Nigerians should vote for his party in next year’s elections. Group Political Editor EMMANUEL OLADESU was there..
Specifically, why do you want to be President?
I can put Nigeria back together. Nigeria is badly divided and it needs a unifier and a bridge builder. Secondly, Nigeria’s economy needs to be rescued from complete collapse. Even the growth rate of seven percent that we have for about 15 years until 2015 was not a good enough number to grow Nigeria out of poverty. We need our GDP to expand sevenfold to be able to be at par with the countries that were in the same rank as Nigeria’s like Malaysia at independence. We want to evolve a middle income country, having per capita income of between $16,000 to around $25,000 and if we are going to be at that level, we need to grow within ten years, our GDP by sevenfold. I understand how the modern economy is organized and I’m an investor myself in different countries and I have done business for 27 years. So, I have practical understanding of how to expand our GDP and grow our economy, as one who is on top of both economy, practically and theoretically. There are very few people in Nigeria who have the privilege of having strong level of political training and also sound economics and that’s important for Nigeria. We have to unite the country and at the same time, we have to deal with the economic challenges. So, they are twin issues and in fact they are related. At the bottom of some of these challenges in the country is competition for resources and massive poverty. It also contribute to the number of these upheavals that we are having in different parts of the country. Some of the realities are quite scary and needs the urgency of now to arrest them. Otherwise, if the trend continues, things can really run out of hand. Some months ago, we were discussing with some people who came to visit us from Shiroro (Niger state) and we were talking about insecurity, they said the kind of insecurity we are seeing now is not just about herdsmen and farmers clashes; that in Shiroro now, once they bury their yams in the ground around the planting season, some people will go and unearth the yams; some will even go and sell the seedlings in the market in order to have some money. So, what they do now is they mark the yam seedlings with paints so that when it shows up at the market, everybody will know that this is a stolen yam. This is where we have come to in Shiroro in Niger State. So, are you going to send policemen to be manning every farm in Nigeria? This is a huge social economic crisis. That one is no longer just security problem. It’s a serious problem of chronic poverty and collapse of all the economic lever of hope. This matter is an urgent matter. You cannot discuss some of these security challenges outside the issue of poverty and the collapse of the economic support system for the people to live to be human beings in the first place. That demands an urgency of now.
But, the discussions and analysis of 2019 leaves all these practical questions out. It’s about what is about what are the chances of this person; how many House of Reps members are following him? How many Governors do they have? The real issues are left out and we will ensure by the grace of God that 2019 election is going to be about issues. It’s not just going to be about the shenanigans of politics.
You were the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the PDP at its inceptiion. Why did you dump the party.
I left PDP in November 2006 about 12 years ago. I had issues at that time with the PDP and I think the party now is worse than then. The issues we had were issues of internal democracy and the standards were even pretty high in terms of values and we even questioned those standards then that they were not adequate. So, you can imagine what it has become now. I think it’s pretty worse now than when we formed the party. We started with issues of internal democracy right from around year 2000 and 2001, when some of our colleagues in the National Working Committee (NWC) wanted automatic extension of their tenure from two years to four years. Late Harry Marshal, myself, and others challenged it, even though we were supposed to be beneficiaries of that extension. We felt it was objectionable. We had just come from military dictatorship and coming into democracy, we were not supposed to be conducting ourselves with impunity. So, that was the fight then around 2000, almost two decades ago now.
Then, by 2006, it was clear that the party was not ready to reform itself and a lot of people exited the party including the founders of the party that made victory possible. That was why you saw that the 2007 election was perhaps the worst election that Nigeria ever had. 2007 election was like warfare because they had lost support of most of the members that made victory possible. So, they needed to rig election massively. That was the election conducted by Prof. Maurice Iwu with soldiers; very terrible election. Some of these people who became Governors in that era on the PDP platform didn’t really win elections. Some of them afterwards continued their careers and transformed themselves to Senators and all that. So, the perfidy did not just start today. The perfidy started from that era and of course it began to go from bad to worst.
But, the other dimension was that as you had people who were not reflecting genuine popularity, who were helped into office through rigging and all that, they had less loyalty to people’s welfare. So, it also took a toll on the quality of leadership. You had some Governors who were going to hand over to their successors, virtually just making their houseboys Governors. Some of them made their cash officers or account officers in banks to become Governors. Some of them never had any kind of political tutelage of anytime. You can imagine, I just make my account officer in the bank; I say I’m going; you are the one who can cover my track. Come and become a Governor. The guy had never participated in politics. He had never even been a student union leader. He has never been a leader in the CAN or a Muslim organization where we have some rudiments of organizing people, and straight, he becomes Chief Executive of a State.
Are you not generalising the situation?
All these things have consequences – when you turn out leaders who do not have political tutelage, no ideological training. So, they just come into public office and just behave like rascals. That’s what you had in the PDP and of course, the APC that succeeded PDP is not any different. In fact, it’s the worst because they are not even a political party. It was just a conspiracy to remove (Goodluck) Jonathan out of office and as soon as they came, they were confused. They were completely confused about how to approach the economy, how to approach politics and they were running a disorganized government. The National Assembly under the APC government was a different party entirely from those in the Executive and they were perennially at war from beginning to the end of that government. So, they were worse than even the PDP.
Today, you are contesting from the FCT. Why?
That’s the Nigeria I want. That’s the Nigeria the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN) wants. I‘ve lived in Abuja at least for a while, doing business for more than twenty something years. So, you shouldn’t have a problem with Mrs. Clinton doing politics and then going back to New York to contest for Senate, or in Nigeria, (Governor Rauf) Aregbesola moving from Lagos. So, this is not the first time we are having this type of thing. The country we want to build is the country where your regional descent should not define you politically. In my case, of course, I have heritage in about three states and apart from that, I have lived abroad for about 10 years of my life. So, I’m completely a cosmopolitan person and we have a lot of Nigerians having dual citizenship. I don’t have dual citizenship. I have only the Nigerian passport. I’ve had the opportunity of taking citizenship of other countries but I had never done that. What I’m saying is that you have people who were born abroad who could even contest to become British Prime Minister. So, why should that be a big issue in Nigeria?
So, the Nigeria of our dream is the Nigeria where any Nigerian can get up from anywhere and contest for public office and that was the beauty of Nigeria before. I was just talking about Sir. Kashim Ibrahim running election in Benue – a Borno man in a predominantly Christian state, a Muslim and he was elected into the Northern Assembly. You talk about Zik of Africa who was elected into the Western House of Assembly. I think what we have now is a complete degeneracy in our polity in this era. The founding fathers of our Republic were more progressive and more forward looking, whether they were from the North or West or from wherever. They were more nationalistic and more patriotic. It beats my imagination that the younger generation who claims to be more educated and more exposed, are regressing into clannishness which wasn’t even the case in the First Republic. So, we need to take Nigeria back to those values that gave Nigeria independence; a Nigeria where an Igala man can become the Mayor of Enugu and Enugu people will have no qualms about it. That’s the Nigeria our founding fathers left for us. So we cannot bequeath a Nigeria of the herdsmen that will start slitting the throats of citizens. That’s not the Nigeria we want to leave for our children.
I think there is lots of irresponsibility on the part of the leadership where the body language of the various leaders have been encouraging division, rather than bringing Nigeria together. So, the fact that I’m happy to say that Abuja is my base now, we are also sending a message that that is the Nigeria we want to build. That is the Nigeria we want to have, where you can play politics from where you live and you don’t have to retreat to your ancestral origin before you can do politics. That’s the new Nigeria we want to build.
How is your party planning to get to number one from the perceived number three positions it is now?
The two horses are on their way to death already. They are bleeding very horribly. They are both APC and PDP. One thing that is interesting is that you have almost 10 million voters who are going to be voting for the first time in Nigeria. Most of them are not followers of these two horses you are talking about. In fact, they are the crop of people who ordinarily were not showing interest in politics, who are incensed by the shenanigans of those two major parties, that they don’t want to vote for either of these parties. These are the first line of support for the ANN. In a three-way race, if you start with 70 percent of that vote, you are already halfway through and you can do your research. These ones are unlikely to vote for PDP or APC. So, that is the starting point.
Then, you have a number of patriotic people even in the APC and PDP who have been trapped in that politics and these people have been given the impression that it’s either this one or that one. But the ANN is offering a ray of hope that captures their imagination. They are already leaving the two parties in droves. Ordinarily, a lot of Nigerians are forward looking and they are really yearning for a new Nigeria, a new polity. You can also do your independent findings. If you try to find out who these people are likely to vote for, you will see that majority of electorates, apart from those who make a living of politics, are not interested in APC or PDP.
What is this programme or the ideology of the ANN that you profess?
Number one, you will see that majority of the people in ANN are people who have something they are doing with their hands. They are not professional politicians who live on politics. The party believes in productive engagement. That is number one and consequently, the focus of the party is not to distribute handouts, but to make sure that we have sustainable employment that is tied to industry, that is tied to manufacturing. Job is central to that. Creative people who are utilizing their creative energy to make value for society is central to that. These are the kinds of people you want to encourage in politics. They are the kinds of people you want to use your political platform to empower.
Then we want a Nigeria that is not going to be driven on the basis of ethnicity or religious bigotry. We want a Nigeria where merit will determine a lot of things that will drive the values that society runs on. These are things that are quite different. That’s not what you see in the two biggest parties in Nigeria. Anytime they are talking, it’s about zoning; it’s about whether the President is going to be from the South or from the East and all that.
That is the conversation all the time. There is no serious focus on how do we grow infrastructure. There is no conversation on how do we create jobs. There is no conversation on how do we expand the GDP and the economy. That’s not the conversation. Their conversation is who is leaving the PDP tomorrow for APC; what is the next permutation. That is all the conversation and that is nonsense, bunkum. Nigeria’s conversation about politics should be about jobs, about economy and that is when people cannot escape responsibilities. But when you make the conversation all about religion and all that, these are inanities and lot of people can run away with a lot of things. It’s that conversation that has fowled the atmosphere so much now and you see criminals who should be in jail will escape with the loot because when you want to arrest them, they will say I’m from this corner or that corner. Then people from their village will go and make a public display that they are persecuting our son because the whole conversation is about ethnicity. So, it makes nonsense of anti-corruption. It makes nonsense of failure in governance. But when you elevate the issues, then people cannot hide and escape the consequences of their criminal actions.
You have put a lot of energy in reorganizing the ANN, if you don’t get the presidential ticket, what will you do?
I will still continue in ANN. But members of ANN are not stupid. They want to put their best foot forward for Nigerians so that the party can win and that is what we are working hard on.
How can your party match the level of vote buying we have seen in recent elections?
That is a job for all of us, including the media. But the level of poverty in the country encourages it. I also think that those who have stolen a lot of money from government also encourage it. So, once you de-market certain categories of people and that is the job of all of us, I think the vote buying will reduce, especially de-marketing them by making the election about issues. But when the choices are not very sharp, or when the differences in the political platform are not clear, then the electorate will say they are the same; why should I choose one over the other, except the one that offers me something because there is no difference between APC and PDP. Tell me why anybody should prefer PDP to APC? There is no reason to be honest with you. So, that’s an incentive for vote buying, when there is no difference between the political parties. But when there is a clear difference, I think the scope of vote buying will become narrower.
Is that why you call yourselves technoticians? Can you explain?
That’s a term in ANN. It means basically technocrats, lawyers, doctors, professionals who are also interested in politics. That is that slang in ANN. If I want to make it simpler, it’s people who have something they are doing with their hands.
Do you see your ambition being hampered in one way or the other by the so called issues of politics, which you called shenanigans of politics, zoning, ethnicity, which appear still widespread right now?
I don’t see how my ambition is limited by that. If anything at all, I think Nigerians want a truly Nigerian President. So I don’t see how that limits me. It only helps in a period of great division. Nigerians need at this point a President that will be a true Commander in Chief of all Nigerians regardless of where they come from or regardless of their State. That is the President that Nigerians need and that person is me.
ENDS