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Tag: IBB

  • Obj, IBB, Oldbreed and New

    Obj, IBB, Oldbreed and New

    For the second time in recent years, former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), has begged to differ from his “boss,” as he often likes to call General Olusegun Obasanjo (Obj), on the seemingly perennial debate about the Oldbreed political class versus the New.

    Tuesday August 13, Obasanjo, the only person to have served Nigeria as its leader in khaki (1976 to 1979) and mufti (1999 to 2007), came down heavily on the latter class of politicians like a ton of bricks. As a group they were, he said in effect, worse than useless. The occasion was the Fourth Annual Ibadan Sustainable Summit at Le Chateau, Bodija, Ibadan, where he was the guest speaker. His topic was Leadership in Africa’s Quest for Sustainable Development.

    As often happens on such occasions, what made the banner headlines the following day was not the paper the former president delivered. Rather, it was the extempore remarks he made in response to comments and questions by discussants of the paper and from the audience. The comment by Professor Mojeed Alabi, the first of the two discussants and a former Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly, that the country’s problems stems mainly from the refusal of the Oldbreed to “step aside” – to borrow Babangida’s now famous phrase when he not-so-voluntarily left office in August 1993 – for the Newbreed apparently got old man Obasanjo’s dander up.

    The professor, he said in effect in a counterpoint, was talking so much rubbish. Many governors during his tenure were less than 50. The first Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Salisu Buhari, was even much younger, he pointed out. Yet the record of these Newbreed politicians on the whole was, he said, dismal.

    “We had some people who were under 50 years in leadership positions. One of them was James Ibori. Where is he today? One of them was Alamieyesiegha, where is he today? Lucky Igbinidion, where is he today? The youngest was the Speaker, Buhari. You can still recall what happened to him. You said Bola Tinubu is your master. What Buhari did was not any worse than what Bola Tinubu did. We got them impeached. But in this part of the world some people covered up the other man.”

    Trust the man not to leave out his deputy and eventual nemesis, Atiku Abubakar, in his list of villainous Newbreeds; the former vice-president, he found out after studying him for a year, he said, was too corrupt for him to have groomed as his possible successor.

    In short, the Newbreed, he seemed to say, should not complain anymore since they had their chance but blew it.

    This was the conclusion General Babangida, not surprisingly, found somewhat disagreeable, as a well known champion of the Newbreed even though he had had cause in recent times to express his disappointment at their record of performance in power, a complain which I once loudly thought on these pages meant he has at last broken faith with them.

    In a rejoinder to my article in question entitled “A Newbreed apart” (July 7, 2010), which was a tribute to Honourable Isa Kawu, a Newbreed member of the Niger State House of Assembly who had stood virtually alone as a thorn in the flesh of the state’s executive and has also stood almost alone as an example of a rare exception which proves the rule that, generally speaking, our politicians’ first commitment is to themselves and everyone else a distant second, Professor Sam Oyovbaire, my Political Science teacher at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in the early seventies and much later, Babangida’s minister of Information, said his principal never lost faith in the Newbreed.

    “It’s not true,” Oyovbaire said in his rejoinder, “that IBB has changed his views about the historic role and value of the ‘new breed’ segment of the political class. His well-honed critique of its disappointing performance from the Abacha era through the OBJ’s horrible legacy to date has been, as usual with the press mindset on anything IBB, badly twisted and made to hang! He believes in the potentials of the youths/new breed in the development process. Believe me on IBB’s thoughts.”

    On the occasion of his 72nd birthday last Saturday, the general seized the opportunity of an encounter with the press to re-iterate his faith in the Newbreed and disagree with his “boss” over his (the boss’s) expression of lack of faith in the competence and integrity of the Newbreed in politics.

    “I am not sure,” Babangida said during the encounter, “I read what he said neither am I sure he said so. In any case this is a matter of opinion…There are other young men who have done equally well.”

    The former military president is absolutely right to say Obasanjo is wrong to tar all Newbreed politicians with one brush. However, he too is wrong to think the role of the Oldbreed in bringing about development in society is essentially marginal simply because the future belongs to the Newbreed.

    In other words, both of them are wrong to think leadership is essentially a matter of age. It is not. The virtues of leadership have never been a preserve of any age group. There are good and bad, wise and foolish, etc, old men and women, just as there are good and bad, wise and foolish, etc, young men and women.

    Obasanjo may be right to say that right now the preponderance of Newbreed politicians have proved incompetent and corrupt but to conclude, as he seemed to have done in his counterpoint to Professor Alabi, that governance is therefore best left largely, if not solely, in the hands of the Oldbreed is to mistake correlation for causation.

    Not only does he seem to have mixed correlation and causation in his conclusion, the old man was characteristically selective in his choice of examples to buttress his condemnation of the Newbreed. Conspicuously missing from his list of villainous Newbreed politicians was his own daughter, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello who rode into the Senate more on his coattail as president than on her own merit but whose tenure as chairman of the important Senate Committee on Health was scandal ridden.

    Even worse for the selective amnesia was his remark that the media and the leadership of a section of the country employed double standards in their treatment of the accusations against Speaker Buhari and Governor Tinubu in 1999 that they forged their university certificates. While he made sure, he said, that Buhari was impeached – itself an admission of his interference in the internal affairs of the federal legislators, something he had often denied – “in this part of the world some people covered up the other man,” meaning, of course, Tinubu.

    What the former president forgot to mention was, first, he wilfully ignored to check out information in the open that the young man might have forged not only his university certificate but also that of his age, all in his bid to impose a leadership on the House which he could easily manipulate. Second and worst of all, he conveniently forgot to mention that he quickly granted the former speaker presidential pardon after he was tried and convicted and sentenced to jail with an option of fine which he quickly paid.

    However, the one point the former president made which is hard, if not impossible, to disagree with is that development is not just about leadership alone. “If you talk about good leadership,” he said, “you should also talk about good followers.”

    The Encarta Concise English Dictionary defines leadership as “the ability to guide, direct, or influence people.” We have remained underdeveloped precisely because we all think the virtues needed to be able to guide, direct or influence others are different from those needed to be good followers. In this sense, the leader/follower dichotomy is a false one. The fact is that only a good follower can make a good leader because, leader or follower, you need a sense of equity, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, compassion, personal integrity, competence, among others, to be the good and honest person any society needs a preponderance of to make any progress.

    However, in so far as the leader/follower dichotomy exits in our minds, the burden of cultivating these virtues lies more with leaders, elected or self-imposed, than with followers. For, without enough leaders willing and able to practice the virtues of being good and honest men and women, the vicious circle between bad leadership and bad followership will never be broken.

    The problem with Nigeria is that we have engaged for far too long in a futile debate about the false dichotomy between Oldbreed and Newbreed politicians when it is pretty obvious that the answer is Good-breed.

    To that extent, the Oldbreed, Obasanjo included, must accept greater responsibility than the Newbreed for our lack of development because, by merely preaching virtues they hardly practiced, they have only succeeded in creating a Newbreed of leaders – and followers – after their own poor image.

     

  • Northern governors greet Babangida at 72

    Northern governors greet Babangida at 72

    The Northern States’ Governors Forum has felicitated with former Military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd), as he turns 72 on Saturday.

    This is contained in a statement issued on Friday in Minna by the Chairman of the forum, Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger.

    The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Aliyu commended IBB’s untiring efforts at preserving the unity of the nation.

    He said Babangida’s life symbolised statesmanship, patriotism, vision and courage which were some of the excellent leadership virtues that had guided him through his years of active public service.

    According to the statement, Babangida has excelled in his chosen profession and showed rare vision, courage and exemplary leadership during his leadership of the country.

    It said the former military ruler had consistently remained on the path of promoting national unity, integration and development with his influential networks cutting across the length and breadth of Nigeria and beyond.

    It stated that the history of Nigeria would be incomplete without paying tribute to “IBB’s contributions and achievements to the socio-economic and political development of our country.”

     

     

  • Clinging to the serpent for help

    Clinging to the serpent for help

    That govs had to rush to IBB and OBJ to save democracy shows the depth we have  sunk 

    In one breath, it is good to commend the five northern governors who, seeing the way the country is drifting like a rudderless ship, took the matter to three of the country’s former heads of state. Yet, in another breath, one could also query the wisdom behind the decision. In a country where birds are no longer singing like birds and rats are not crying like rats, that is exactly what to do: look for people with the experience to intervene and get the country back on track. It is only when there are no elders that a country goes into ruins; it is also when the family head is no more that the house becomes desolate. Nigeria, as it is today is like the proverbial child strapped into its mother’s back but with its head bent. When that happens, then the elders around have become the exact opposite of what true elders should be.

    The governors in question are Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto), Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) and Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano). Nyako was not at the meeting held last Monday, which lasted two hours at the Presidential Lodge in Minna, the Niger State capital as he was reported to have been held back in Yola by a meeting with a Camerounian envoy. He was however represented by his deputy. They met with Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar. The good thing about the development is that the five governors are all of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The governors had earlier paid a similar visit to former President Olusegun Obasanjo on July 20.

    The visits afforded these former leaders the opportunity to play the roles they hardly could play well. General Babangida in particular must have relished the visit because it afforded him an opportunity to come into national limelight once again. Hear him: “I want to commend the governors and some of their colleagues. I was very impressed because they have seen the problem of the country as our problem and they have taken the right steps to consult widely in trying to find solution to some of these problems.

    “These governors are real patriots and I am very happy and I told them so,” Gen. Babangida said after the meeting.

    Now, what are Babangida’s antecedents? This is a man on whom we can write volumes without making reference to any library. This is a man who had all the opportunity in the world to write his name in gold but chose, rather, for selfish reason, to write it on the marble of infamy. If we look at his economic programme, the so-called Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP); it was a monumental failure. It was during his reign that the country’s currency lost its essence and it has never recovered from the slide of that era. In Babangida’s time, his go the slumber to talk about corruption despite the fact that the issue had become a cankerworm then.

    Babangida, perhaps, might have been forgiven for all of his maladministration if only he had honoured his promise to hand over to a democratically elected government. But, rather than do that, he chose to scuttle the process in spite of the billions that his government sank into a transition programme that failed, in line with the design of the evil genius. Babangida kept shifting the goal post, banning and unbanning politicians depending on his whims and caprices. As is usual with all evil geniuses, Babangida eventually shot himself in the foot when the June 12, 1993 election finally held in a peaceful atmosphere, contrary to the chaos that the Babangida government had expected. After failing to stop the election via a kangaroo court ruling on the eve of the election, and seeing that Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola was coasting to victory, Babangida summoned the courage to finally annul the result of the election, adjudged the fairest and freest in the country’s history. Now how can a man with this kind of antecedent save democracy?

    In the same vein, if it takes the deep to communicate with the deep, I do not know what lesson someone like Chief Obasanjo wants to teach when the issue is democracy. His eight-year tenure, from 1999 to 2007 was replete with various acts that were detrimental to democratic ethos. Is it his seizure of Lagos funds for months that we want to commend? Or the illegal manner by which some governors were removed by people backed by the Obasanjo presidency.

    As a matter of fact, this is the script that his estranged political son, President Goodluck Jonathan, has been playing and which is now heating the polity unduly. He did it in his home state of Bayelsa and got away with it. Now, he is experimenting with it in Rivers State, where he wants to remove the democratically elected governor, Rotimi Amaechi, by hook or crook. Although Jonathan’s presidency has continued to deny its involvement in the Rivers fracas, the more it does that, the more opprobrium it gets from Nigerians who are seeing through the presidency’s hands in all the shenanigans going on in that state.

    When the president of the federal republic descends so low as to be involved in the politics of a mere governors’ club and he gets rubbished in the process, whose fault is that? And, if the presidency still has not learnt its lesson and be able to truly gauge its true worth in the eye of the average Nigerian correctly, then it should have no one but itself to blame for whatever disgrace it attracts to itself. It is this Dance Macabre by the presidency that has made the five governors rush to where there can never be salvation in search of solution to some self-inflicted crises.

    That is the kind of thing that happens when one is caught up in the circle of confusion. The tendency is for such a drowning person not to mind clinging even to a serpent for help. Going to Babangida and Obasanjo to help solve problems of democratic nature is akin to asking someone to give what he does not have. Clearly, these two generals do not have any answer to the problems we have at this point in time. The only good thing working for General Abubakar is the fact that he promised to hand over the reins of power to a democratic government and he did within what we considered a reasonable time. But the choice of the then powers-that-be (Obasanjo) has turned out to be a disaster. But, if we can give General Abubakar the benefit of the doubt; we cannot for Generals Obasanjo and Babangida. Indeed, but for our common resolve, Babangida would have returned after he was forced to ‘step aside’ in August 1993. Nigerians seem unanimous in telling Babangida that ‘you step aside today, ‘you step aside forever’. In like manner, Obasanjo would have got a third term through the back door if we were not resolute in saying ‘no’.

    Politicians in the country have to ponder this sad development. By going to Babangida and Obasanjo in search of solution to democratic challenges is indication of how things have degenerated in the country. It shows the depth to which we have sunk as a people because, apart from General Abubakar, the other two generals are in the red in terms of goodwill and can therefore not draw anything from its bank. We gave them enough rope to tie themselves and they did not disappoint us. How then can they be the ones to rescue democracy, the very thing on whose grave they danced naked in their eras in government and in power?

  • IBB: A tormented mind at work

    IBB: A tormented mind at work

    Former military president General Ibrahim Babangida’s greatest fear, I gather from some persons who see him from time to time, is that despite his many accomplishments, he will be defined by a single event: the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election.

    That fear would seem to explain why, over the past five years, he has been labouring desperately to re-write the very public record of the crucial events of the time, and to latch on to anything from that era that could soften what is sure to be history’s harsh judgment on him.

    Irony of ironies, he has seized the very election he annulled with such brazen casuistry as his path to redemption.

    He was back peddling that line the other day, in an interview with ThisDay, on the 20th anniversary of that election.

    “Well, it has come and gone,” he said of the poll. “Whatever I feel about it, at least, Nigerians agreed on one thing, that we, the administration, succeeded in holding one of the best and freest elections ever held in this country.”

    Then, this:

    “I can say I feel proud. We may not have achieved the objective but at least, we conducted an election that was not rigged, an election that was not marred by violence, an election that is still being referred to in the country.”

    In case he has forgotten, here, in his own words, is what he said in his June 24, 1993, national broadcast justifying the annulment:

    “ . . . Even before the presidential election, and indeed at the party conventions, we had full knowledge of the bad signals pertaining to the enormous breach of the rules and regulations of democratic elections.

    “But because we were determined to keep faith with the deadline of 27th August, 1993 for the return to civil rule, we overlooked the reported breaches. Unfortunately, these breaches continued into the presidential election of June 12, 1993, on an even greater proportion.

    “There were allegations of irregularities and other acts of bad conduct leveled against the presidential candidates but NEC went ahead and cleared them. There were proofs as well as documented evidence of widespread use of money during the party primaries as well as the presidential election. These were the same bad conduct for which the party presidential primaries of 1992 were cancelled.

    “Evidence available to government put the total amount of money spent by the presidential candidates at over two billion, one hundred million naira (N2.1 billion). The use of money was again the major source of undermining the electoral process.

    “Both these allegations and evidence were known to the National Defence and Security Council before the holding of the June 12, 1993 election. The National Defence and Security Council overlooked these areas of problems in its determination to fulfill the promise to hand over to an elected president on due date.

    “Apart from the tremendous negative use of money during the party primaries and presidential election, there were moral issues which were also overlooked by the Defence and National Security Council. There were cases of documented and confirmed conflict of interest between the government and both presidential candidates which would compromise their positions and responsibilities were they to become president.”

    Then, the coup de grace:

    “It is true that the presidential election was generally seen to be free, fair and peaceful. However, there was in fact a huge array of electoral malpractices virtually in all the states of the federation before the actual voting began. There were authenticated reports of the electoral malpractices against party agents, officials of the National Electoral Commission and also some members of the electorate.

    “If all of these were clear violations of the electoral law, there were proofs of manipulations through offer and acceptance of money and other forms of inducement against officials of the National Electoral Commission and members of the electorate.

    “There were also evidence of conflict in the process of authentication and clearance of credentials of the presidential candidates. Indeed, up to the last few hours of the election, we continued, in our earnest steadfastness with our transition deadline, to overlook vital facts.”

    But Babangida was not done yet.

    “For example, following the Council’s deliberation which followed the court injunction suspending the election, majority of members of the National Defence and Security Council supported postponement of the election by one week,” he continued. “This was to allow NEC enough time to reach all the voters, especially in the rural areas, about the postponement.

    “But persuaded by NEC that it was capable of relaying the information to the entire electorate within the few hours left before the election, the Council, unfortunately, dropped the idea of shifting the voting day. Now, we know better.

    “The conduct of the election, the behaviour of the candidates and post-election responses continued to elicit signals which the nation can only ignore at its peril. It is against the foregoing background that the administration became highly concerned when these political conflicts and breaches were carried to the court.

    “It must be acknowledged that the performance of the judiciary on this occasion was less than satisfactory. The judiciary has been the bastion of the hopes and liberties of our citizens.

    “Therefore, when it became clear that the courts had become intimidated and subjected to the manipulation of the political process, and vested interests, then the entire political system was in clear dangers. This administration could not continue to watch the various high courts carry on their long drawn out processes and contradictory decisions while the nation slides into chaos.

    “It was under this circumstance that the National Defence and Security Council decided that it is in the supreme interest of law and order, political stability and peace that the presidential election be annulled. As an administration, we have had special interest and concern not only for the immediate needs of our society, but also in laying the foundation for generations to come.

    “To continue action on the basis of the June 12, 1993 election, and to proclaim and swear in a president who encouraged a campaign of divide and rule among our ethnic groups would have been detrimental to the survival of the Third Republic.. . .”

    My apologies, reader, for drawing so copiously on Babangida’s broadcast formally announcing and justifying the election annulment. A paraphrase would not have done justice to it, I fear. Nor would it have shown so starkly the irreconcilable differences between Babangida’s 1993 evisceration of the poll in question and his desperate bid to canonize himself for conducting what he now advertises as a model and a signal achievement, if not his crowning glory.

    The ThisDay interview raises anew the question: When did Babangida know that the election he denounced so forcefully was indeed “one of the best and freest elections ever held in this country?”

    When did it occur to him that it was “an election that was not rigged, an election that was not marred by violence?”

    If he came to that judgment before his broadcast and yet annulled the election, history will charge him with perfidy and grand perjury. If he came to it after the broadcast but chose not to correct the record, history will hold him accountable for the tens of thousands who lost life, limb, livelihood and estate in the struggle for the validation of the election.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Ahoy! Lagos girl, IBB wants you

    Ahoy! Lagos girl, IBB wants you

    Wow, our own IBB (General Ibrahim Babangida, rtd) has done it again. The fellow we love to love and hate with equal passion has just given us one fat dollop of matter to chew again. Last Sunday, he granted what we mischievously call a full-dressed interview in the industry to the Sunday Tribune. The chit-chat lived up to its top billing running into five long pages. It also lived up to the quintessential IBB-speak. It was all wind, and a lot more wind with little sense or sensibility.

    Hardball took time and tallied up 55 questions thrown at the dangerously genial gap-toothed general and he gobbled them all up giving nothing in return. The only answer that made any sense whatsoever is to the question: “… people are wondering why you have refused to remarry?” In answering even this question he went on his usual trips and de-tours before returning to the matter thus: “If I will remarry, I will go to the Southwest. I will go to Lagos and get a Lagos girl. I was in Lagos for 18 years. I know much about the girls and women.”

    Jeez, did you hear that? This general has been to the East, he has been to the North and he has been to the South but Southwest is the best and he is not shy to say it, indeed he wishes to take the woman of his evening from there. Well in case dear Lagos Girl, you missed the interview, Hardball hereby gives you the tip of your life: you are wanted by the greatest general alive in Africa today, a coup-meister, the only African president in army fatigues; the great annuller who organised the best election ever in Africa and then went ahead and quashed it. The spirit who lives in a 50-room mansion on a hilltop (he had the opportunity to debunk this claim in this interview but he side-stepped the question).

    Such is the peculiar genius of this Nigerian statesman that he would field 55 questions yet would have said nothing to his compatriots. Not a word of particular wisdom or edification; not an incisive critique of extant policies to guide the people at the helm; not any insightful drawing from experience and hindsight to light up the path to the future. After wading through pages of rich equivocation and worthless verbiage, Hardball was of one mind to pronounce a no-interview ban on IBB. It was an exercise in shadow boxing of the well-practised type.

    Once again he had the opportunity to shed light on the historic June 12, 1993 election he botched, but as he has done over a dozen times in the past, he missed it. Here is a sampler. Asked if he has any regrets about annulling the election, he responds: “…As a military president, at that time, I organised the best, free election for the first time in this country. Nobody is asking me how I did it. Many are shouting that I should be crucified. You still complain. You complained in 1999; you complained in 2003; you complained in 2011. And you will complain in 2015. Mark my words. Nigerians accepted the June 12 election; the world accepted it.” Phew! If you understood that answer dear reader, you will understand astrophysics.

    Well, suffice it to say that this general still doesn’t get it, in which case we must move on and leave him to his woes. One cannot help but feel some pangs of pity for the aging general. Twenty years after June 12, IBB comes across like a man permanently fitted into a gabardine of lies that have become him. He doesn’t even know the difference anymore. Just say June 12 to him and he goes on a blabbering spree. IBB’s last act, hardball dares to suggest, would be to come to terms with June 12 and SPILL IT, lest he returns to his maker bearing a fat hunch on his back.

     

     

  • Insecurity : IBB rallies support for Fed Govt

    Insecurity : IBB rallies support for Fed Govt

    Former military President General Ibrahim Babangida has urged Nigerians to join hands with the Federal Government to tackle the security challenges facing the country.

    Speaking with reporters in his Minna, Niger State country home, yesterday, Babangida said Nigerians should not abidicate the role of tackling the security challenges to government. Rather, all hands must be on deck to finding solution to the problem.

    ‘’If we all come together, elite, the media, the ordinary people and the government by taking a common stand just as the people of Azare in Bauchi did to tackle their security challenges, insecurity will be brought to its bearest minimum,” the former president said, adding:.

    ‘’The problem did not start in one day but it was a gradual thing before it came to this level , owing to our negligence by the government, elite and the people but I cannot blame anyone..

    “Some 20 years ago, we did not have this problem. What was the state of things then? What have we forgotten that we have not done that led to the present challenges, this what we have look at.

    ‘’It is something that everyone should have a hand in solving the problem ensuring peace, stability in the country. Therefore, we should not leave to government alone.’’

    On the planned amnesty for Boko Haram, Gen. Babangida said he would reserve his comment until the Federal Government make public the terms of reference to the committee set up for the purpose.

    ‘’I do not know the terms of reference of the committee, therefore, I cannot speak about the plan, until the terms of reference have been released before commenting on the amnesty plan’’, he concluded.

    He, however, praised the Federal Government, saying “the move was part of measures to ensure that peace and stability return to the Nirthern region.

  • IBB: Obasanjo’s 1999 presidency saved Nigeria from break-up

    IBB: Obasanjo’s 1999 presidency saved Nigeria from break-up

    Former military ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida, yesterday claimed that only the emergence of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as President in 1999 saved the country from possible disintegration.

    Babangida, a key figure in the drafting of Obasanjo into the race, said on the Kaduna-based Liberty Radio that the events in the country in the build up to that year’s election demanded a leader who was conversant with the country and ready to work hard to keep the country one.

    “We have to simplify a lot of things without going back to what happened before. The emergence of Obasanjo came about as a result of what happened in the country. The country was in a very serious crisis and we had to find solution to these problems. Therefore, we needed a leader, that leader who is known in the country,” he said.

    “We did not believe in foisting somebody who was not known. So we looked for a man who had been involved in the affairs of this country; who held positions either in the military or in the cabinet; who had certain belief in Nigeria.

    “For all of us that were trained in the armed forces, there is one belief that you cannot take away from us and that is the fact that we believe in this country. It is part of our training and we fought for this country.

    “So, when you have a situation like that, you need a leader that has all these attributes and quite frankly, Obasanjo quickly came to mind. Remember those days the fight was against the North’s perpetuation. But here, we had one who knows the North, knows the South and who fought a war, who believes and says it.

    “People with that type of connection, the people recognised you, and this is what we did in the case of Obasanjo. What he did is between him and the Nigerian people; but his emergence solved a lot of problems in Nigeria. At least, we did not disintegrate because we believed he could go to war again, to keep this country together.”

    He hailed the formation of the All Progressive Congress (APC) and said of its coming: “I am a firm believer in a two party system and I also studied the emergence of political parties in this country since independence and it shows that this country will be heading for a two party system. You heard about national alliances, parties coming from the North and aligning with those from the South, NEPU aligning with NCNC.

    “So when we came, we introduced the two-party system and democratically, you have to have a choice and you can vote without belonging to a political party. You vote for the quality of the man you want to represent you. So, it is nothing new because I believe in two parties and I see signs of the possible emergence of two party systems. So, I welcome it because it is good for the polity as well as the unity of this country.

    “When we were doing it in 1989, some of you in the media said no, it was going to be one Christian party, one Muslim party. It did not work out that way then and then you said it is going to be one northern and one southern party and it also did not work like that because everybody blended.

    “The chairman of NRC was Chief Tom Ikimi, while the chairman of SDP was Ambassador Babagana Kingibe and everybody was in one party or the other. You just have to have an accommodation. I am a founding father of the PDP; one of the founding fathers of the party and I cannot disown what I founded.”

    On the 2015 elections, he said “first of all we have a new party in formative stage; Nigerians have a new party in-formation. They are trying to get their act together and sell a programme to the public and use that programme to take power.

    “As an ordinary citizen, I have the right to look at what they are offering this country. Based on my knowledge of what I believe is good for this country, whoever offers something similar to that or near that, I have the right, the constitution allows me just to go to the polling station and drop my ballot and say I like this.

    “I will belong to those who will choose a credible candidate, a candidate that can lead this country and it is not difficult to find one out of 170 million people. There must be a candidate because that is what the constitution provides. If the party is silly and chooses the wrong candidate, the ordinary person will not be silly. He knows this man cannot lead me so he doesn’t vote for him. So if he chooses a wrong candidate you stand the chance of losing.”