The spokesman of Buhari Campaign Organisation, Mr. Festus Keyamo, explains why he is supporting Buhari against other presidential candidates; why he thinks the President will win the 2019 presidential election and why he has resolved not to answer questions on his private life until the 2019 elections are over. Keyamo, who spoke with Assistant Editor JIDE BABALOLA, in Abuja also speaks on the controversy surrounding the ‘Next Level’ logo of President Buhari’s campaign train.
As someone with human rights and anti-military background, how and why did you become a part of the campaign organisation for a retired military general?
Maybe you got it wrong. I have always been anti bad-government. Beyond being pro-democracy, being part of anti-military rule, I have literally remained committed to struggles against bad governance. Now, the full realization that we cannot achieve utopia and the reality of comparing what we have now with what we may likely recede back to if care is not taken makes some of us to have no choice but to come out of our shells to do what we are doing now.
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary decisions. As it is today, the choices facing us as a people are: either we go back to a path of waste, the path of open and indiscriminate corruption, or move forward in a progressive way. I used such words and phrases because there is still corruption going on now, but what we have now is that we have blocked majority of the loopholes, even though we have not covered all the loopholes. If we want to go back to the era where the loopholes are open again, then it will be unfortunate.
For some of us, what we are involved in now is a crusade for accountable government, not just politics. It is not just politics for me; it is a crusade. And during this crusade, I am forced to choose between the effort we are making now, which is not utopia yet, which is not the best according to international standards, but is the best compared with where we were before and where we are coming from. It is also the best in terms of what has been available to us in terms of resources and even in terms of the personal integrity of the personnel involved in the choices we have to make.
You would also agree with me that the person who trained me up to this point, my late boss, Gani Fawehinmi, was until his death, despite his anti-military posture, a fan of Muhammadu Buhari. When his mother died, the only General invited to the burial, who came, was Muhammadu Buhari. And you can see the love that Muhammadu Buhari had for him too, that he conferred on him the title of GCON. People don’t understand the love that existed between them because both men are men of character and steel. They are unusual human beings. I have had the rare luck of having to work closely with these two individuals. It is a rare privilege.
So, you are carrying on a legacy…
I don’t think there are two human beings on earth now that have had that privilege of working with those two unusual human beings. It is only me, Festus Keyamo, who has had that privilege. It is a rare privilege.
What do you think are your candidate’s chances of winning the 2019 presidential election?
Before I talk politics, let me talk about performance. Because when I go into politics, you will say I am avoiding the issues. But Nigerians know what the President has achieved. I don’t think this interview is big enough for me to go into all the achievements. It is a very short interview. But with the way the President has achieved so much with so little, Nigerians have learnt to trust him despite the huffing and puffing of the opposition, and I will tell you why.
In the midst of recession and all we have gone through, the opposition lost all major elections in 2015 in this country, up till last week. They won one or two very rare ones, but in major elections, they lost. It is still an indication of the predominant thinking among Nigerians, and that is a pointer to where we are going in 2019.
Nigerians feel the pain. Some Nigerians may at times feel very frustrated with the Buhari regime just because we are not going as fast as we wanted and as they wanted us to go. But when you turn their attention to go back to PDP, they will say, ‘Hey, stop! It’s No! No! No! It is a no, no for us!’ That, I think, is the comfort zone that the President can still find himself, and Nigerians still trust him going forward.
Despite all the ups and downs, Nigerians still follow him up till this point. And his party won all major elections, even in the North Central where they said it’s on lockdown. But yesterday, we discovered that there was even no door in the house that they said was on lockdown. There was no key and no door; the President’s party just entered. So, this is why I think that going forward, we will win.
But you asked the question, and I don’t want to go into demographics. What we have now is a situation that could have existed in 1979. Those who are old enough, if they take their minds back to 1979 and imagined a UPN/NPN combination, nobody could have been able to defeat that. What we have now is a rehash of NPN/UPN. If that coalition had worked then, because the NPN was a North West party in real foundation and in the North Central, we had Balarabe Musa’s party and a mixture of other parties. Then you had the UPN that covered the South West. Since the time of UPN and perhaps the time of AD, no party has taken control of the South West like APC has done. But for the first time in history, the total control of a party in the South West has collaborated with a party in total control of the North West. Demographically, these are the two highest voting populations in the country.
Does that mean your party has lost hope in other geo-political zones like the South South and South East?
Not at all. I am only telling you the basics of the President and Vice President’s support. In Africa, you start from your base before you go on, before I attempt to enter your region and you attempt to enter mine. So, from calling the race for candidates to be on their marks, get set and go, Buhari is already one hundred meters ahead.
Historically, Buhari has his tennis court in the North East. He plays political tennis there. He will enter Borno any day and enter Yobe and he will win. He will win Gombe any day and enter Bauchi any day, leaving only two states in that area for the opposition to scramble, which are Adamawa and Taraba, and I know the handicap is that Atiku has a governor who is an opposition in his own state. The vice presidential candidate of the PDP also has a governor who is of the opposition in his home state. It is a very weird situation for them. So, demographically we are just miles ahead.
However, I want to repeat, especially in respect of our supporters, we are not taking anything for granted. We are working hard. The mantra is work hard, hard and hard and we will get there. But we are confident by the grace of God, demographically, performance-wise and in terms of trust, the candidates are too far apart to compare.
Among the controversies started by your critics is the allegation that your party had a target of creating three million jobs in 2015 and that under its ‘Next Level’ campaign plan, it now has a target of only one million jobs.
It is not just one million. That figure is only for maybe just one sector. Because we look at the various sectors and what is supposed to come out from all the sectors will be much more than one million. Even if you look at the N-Power scheme alone, it is bringing in one million in the Next Level, because we are training one million extra young graduates for them to go and work. In the Next Level of the home-grown school feeding programme, we are bringing about 300,000 more cooks, people who grow and sell local food, scaling it up to 15 million, and on like that.
You heard Fashola (Minister of Power) talk about the Mambilla Power Project; that when it starts next year, the number of Nigerian workers that will report there daily, we are talking of thousands of workers that will be brought in at the Mambilla Power Project. So we are in for a good time. At the Next Level, there would be something for everybody, including you as a journalist. There will be something for your children, because 10,000 schools will be renovated every year under the scheme for schools and education at the Next Level. If you go through the handbook, I am sure you have them, an interview is not enough to reel out all that we have in the book.
There seems to be some an unusual controversy around the ‘Next Level’ logo…
It is the creation of the PDP! Instead of them to look into the documents, they are looking at the pictures on the cover of the book. They are not even opening the book. That is very shameless. Talk of content first, but you are looking at a drawing. Who cannot draw whatever a drawing is. Of course, we have shown everybody that the logo is different and that is it. I am showing you right now. Look, they should look for some other things. That is not an issue.
In what way has getting the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) title changed you?
It has not changed my perception of life. I remain who I am. It has not changed me. It just brought lots of personal satisfaction in terms of career development and all that. But let me tell you a secret that I haven’t told anybody, but you can still write it—it has not brought more money (laughs). It is an open secret.
Are you still living as a bachelor?
How can you say that? Anyway, my focus now is about Buhari, Buhari and Buhari.
No, it is not. This is a personality interview and people want to know more about you and what you do. It also projects you as a human being…
To be honest, I really don’t want to talk about my personal life at all. As a matter of principle, I don’t talk about my personal life at all! Who told you that? Go and ask the person if he is part of my household.
You are here to correct us if it is wrong. Is it wrong or right?
I told you to go and ask your source.
We do not need to mention names, but there was a beautiful girl from a popular lady years ago and it was all over the soft-sell magazines. How is the young lady doing now?
Who said so? Anyway, as a matter of principle, I don’t talk about my personal life. I took that decision long ago, not now. So we should focus on my principal, President Muhammadu Buhari. I don’t want to deflect that focus at all. There is only one focus now. After February 14, next year, I promise, and you can put it down, come for a personality interview. For now, it is only my principal that matters. I mean nothing else; it is the principal that means a lot.
There is a perception that in some ways, some of your colleagues in the legal profession may have been the cause of undue delays in the courts, especially in anti-corruption cases.
It depends on the ways you look at it. With the Administration of Criminal Justice Act that has been passed, even lawyers, their hands are tied now. So, even if any lawyer wants to be funny, the law is the law and we are advocating sanctions for those who may want to circumvent the Administration of Criminal Justice Act. The law is very clear: you cannot delay again, you cannot stay trials again. You cannot let interlocutory appeals affect trials at the lower court.
I think we have made a lot of progress in terms of criminal trials. You can see ex-governors being convicted because of the speed with which trials are going. For my colleagues, I don’t want to blame anybody openly, but I think everybody has been put back on track, because anybody who tries to go out of that track, I think the person should expect some sanctions.
The opposition party had a big event a few days ago. Would you say that the gathering of the opposition Who-is-Who is something to worry about?
It was not an opposition party event; it was an ex-President’s event. That is why there was a mixture of everybody there, including my party’s National Chairman and the President sent a representative. So, it was just a national event.
