A socio-political activist, Austin Okai, has identified former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and ex-Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi as major threats to President Bola Tinubu’s reelection bid in 2027.
Okai, a former House of Representatives candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, for Dekina/Bassa Federal Constituency in 2023, said former President Goodluck Jonathan can’t be a barrier to Tinubu’s reelection because he may likely not contest in 2027.
In this interview with DAILY POST, Okai also spoke about the chances of the African Democratic Congress, ADC and the PDP in 2027, stressing that they should focus their attention towards the 2031 presidential election.
He also spoke on the issue of insecurity, comparing President Bola Tinubu’s administration to that of his predecessor, late former President Muhammadu Buhari. Excerpts!
With the level of movement from the PDP to the ADC, can the party reposition for 2027?
PDP is not gone, politics is money, it’s an expensive venture, so when you have a sitting governor endorsing the president of another party, who is going to fund his own party? Right away, it’s Makinde that is bankrolling the party.
Wike was interested in chasing Atiku away, he is endorsing the president, so when you see the who-is-who are endorsing APC then who are you that is just an upcoming? You will be scared, so the party may come up but whoever tells you that PDP can put up a good fight in this coming election is lying because it’s going to be difficult.
The governors are the Chief returning officers of the party in their various states. Somebody like Adeleke had endorsed APC, automatically he’s going to turn to Tinubu, so that is just the reality. So, saying that the party may likely come back, yes – maybe in 2031 – when you have people openly sitting down like Tambuwal and Sule Lamido endorsing the coalition. It’s not only Wike alone that is doing this thing, it has been normalized, so being in that party now means either you are working for APC indirectly or you are a political novice.
So PDP can’t stand alone like the ADC coalition and APC?
You can’t say that because the last election has passed and just yesterday’s election, it was between PDP which won two states, the three parties that won are PDP, NNPP, and APC – ADC doesn’t have any one now, do you see any House of Representatives member that joined ADC? But people are joining APC, let’s see what ADC will come up with but I see a major problem there.
I attended their inauguration in Kogi State and if ADC is smart now, they should accept Nafiu, the deputy National Chairman from Gombe who declared himself National Chairman. Let Atiku and another leader of ADC convince him to do a National Convention where they can take over the National leadership of the party.
From the information I have, David Mark was announced the interim National Chairman on July 20th and on July 21st, he left PDP – that means he was still a member of PDP when he was announced the National Chairman of ADC. So you can’t be the National Chairman of a party if you are not even a member. So there is some technicality in that matter, now that they are in court, they don’t know how sincere the Judiciary will be – though I may be wrong. Either you hold a NEC meeting to change the leadership or you hold the National convention.
I prefer ADC, there must be a stronger opposition, the prettier of our democracy advocated for two party system and that’s just it because the more you split the opposition votes the stronger the ruling party will be, so if PDP does not have the capacity to stand up to ADC in 2027, then let ADC hands forward but in doing that they should be careful because having seen so many crisis in PDP, I can tell you that the party’s administration is very key and very important because the law is ignorant to it until proven.
If you remember, the likes of former governor of Sokoto State, Shekarau and Amaechi were advocating for a fresh political party to avoid this. Looking at what is happening and the precedent, I’m being careful because there must be a stronger opposition that would put the ruling party on its toes but how we go about it is what I don’t know.
What happened when Nwosu handed over to David Mark, was that what is known as NEC meeting in ADC? Because I saw Leke Abejide complaining about the same thing, if that is the NEC meeting fine, that means we are good to go and if that is not a NEC meeting, it means that we are standing on a time bomb. We should get in Nafiu the deputy National Chairman whether he is working for the APC, if they have given him money, we too can also give him money to claim our own side because Nwosu has already resigned and can’t lead the party to the National convention, there must be a proper national convention supervised by INEC, that is what I thought it should be.
Nigerians across the Northern region have accepted the ADC as an alternative but we must not fail them in terms of us doing what we are supposed to do, in terms of technicalities and legal procedures and processes.
With Atiku’s departure from PDP and Peter Obi’s return unsure, what are the likelihood of the likes of Saraki or Makinde picking the presidential ticket?
Peter Obi has not declared he’s coming back, there have been moves from PDP. I saw Babangida Aliyu and I was shocked when he said the North should tolerate Tinubu for eight years. So if somebody like Babangida Aliyu is asking us to tolerate Tinubu like Buhari, there is confusion. So if Obi comes back to PDP it will be good, there is the rumour of Jonathan coming back but I don’t see Obi fighting Jonathan because politically, Jonathan is Obi’s boss, we were once together. Obi and I were members of the PDP’s several committees under Jonathan when he was appointed as the Chairman of the SEC board after his tenure expired in 2013-14 thereabout, so there is that mutual respect.
But if Makinde is also in the race, you can’t take Makinde away, he has a war chest. Saraki can’t contest because the ticket is already going to the South and he is from the North. It is in 2031 that all the parties are going back to the North except if ADC does otherwise.
The major mistake was making the ADC look like a Northern party and we are not doing a regional system.
Does that mean that Northerners are more in ADC?
Because it’s the North that is crying about marginalization, we are Northerners and I’m a Northerner – we must be very careful, we don’t know where is marginalization here, but in politics we can device any means to achieve your goal, including mischief, blackmail and tribalism is allowed, but whatever would divide us more should be discouraged.
Today, we in the North know what we did to Jonathan – so many theories, how we accused Jonathan of creating Boko Haram to kill Muslims and reduce the Northern population. We had issues with Southsouth, instead of allowing Jonathan to complete his term he was chased out of power by the Northern conspiracy. I was a member of the Presidential Campaign Council then, the highest organ of the campaign organization.
Today, we say God forbid that we allow an Igbo man to become president because of General Nzeogwu Kaduna coup and Biafra has led to this embargo that an Igbo man must not be president, that any Igbo man now is a pro-Biafra. The North doesn’t want an Easterner to be president, the North does not want the Southsouth to be president, the Southwest has always been with us, we are now accusing it of marginalization. The North may be alone. If you look at the North now, the Northcentral is not being well recognized in apportioning political parties.
If you give an appointment to a Southern Kaduna Christian now, a core Northerner will not see him as being a Northerner. The way things are going, we may draw the map of the North again because we can’t just be only North in the mouth and we are not good to come to the table to eat.
In our campaign, the unity of the country must be paramount. The fact remains that the North’s worst mistake is for us to have the Southsouth, Southeast, and Southwest coming together against the North. Because the core North will not enjoy the support of states in the Northcentral, I can bet you that.
So we must be very careful, national unity should be paramount, crying about appointments, when your time comes you do the same thing just like Buhari did. Nepotism was institutionalized in Nigeria by Buhari, Jonathan did not do that, he had so many Northerners in key positions and in the 2015 election those key Northerners that Jonathan gave power betrayed him because he was not a Muslim, so we have to be careful.
We should not be behaving like Biafra people too because the way that they are going, they may be behaving like Nnamdi Kanu. There will be no difference from what Kanu a pro-Biafra is doing; look at what Babachir Lawal was saying on Channels Television that if you vote a Yoruba man into power he will misbehave, how can someone like Babachir Lawal, a Christian minority from Adamawa open his mouth to say such, it’s an embarrassment because you are inciting ethnic tension, are we having problems with Yoruba? Was Obasanjo not a president? He Babachir Lawal that is talking today, was he not the Secretary to the Government of the Federation where he was accused of stealing money and was given an opportunity, yet he said the court has quashed it?
I have played the ethnic agenda game even at the state level and I’m still regretting it today, I worked against my own best friend – Dino Melaye of which I can’t look at his face today – a time came that some people saw me as a tribal bigot, the whole Ebira people see me as somebody who hates Ebira people. Today, some of us are regretting it, not regretting that we stood up to a government that was failing but regretting that we stood up in the name of tribal game. So anything that would undermine the National unity should be avoided because Nigeria is fragile, poverty is on the increase, out of school children is on the increase, unemployment rate is on the increase, prices of essential commodities and daily good are expensive, so what comes out from the mouth of our leaders should be something that would not undermine the National unity because it’s very key.
Why is PDP quiet and not behaving like the top opposition party that it should be?
The party is going through crisis and there is an intentional compromise to weaken the party, is like there is a standard that the party must be weakened ahead, but the people behind it did not see the coming of the coalition, ADC, but they are not resting because I can tell you that there is crisis in the ADC too today, the crisis of leadership, outsmarting each other, and as far as politics is a game of interest, you can never take away crisis.
Look at what happened, El-Rufai was eyeing SDP to be used, Amaechi wanted to register a new party, ADA, which would have appealed to Atiku, but he went for ADC which was his initial arrangement.
Can PDP launch a comeback in 2027 or 2031?
It has to be 2031, 2027 is gone. If you do a national convention by November which would usher in a new leadership of the party, but how far can they go because the most strongest unit of the PDP used to be the governorship forum and the forum is compromised, apart from Zamfara and Makinde who was part of the G-5, but how far can Makinde go? Apart from the Governor of Bauchi State, how many of them are committed to the party. From what Osun State did, its as good as out, most of these Southsouth states that used to fund the party are gone – they have lost Delta, Akwa Ibom, Edo and co – the oil states that were funding the PDP are gone, PDP’s major strength were the oil states. No Okowa, no more Udom Emmanuel, they are all gone. The party may put in their best but I don’t know.
With the number of political stalwarts in the ADC, can the party defeat Tinubu in 2027 or wait till 2031?
Why will they wait, ADC can win, it depends on where they pick their candidate from and I’m of the opinion that they go South as that is just the reality.
Will it be better for Atiku to step down and support a younger candidate or should he contest?
Why? He is qualified, there is no age limit for one to be president since that has been his dream job, that has been his ambition.
Can Atiku give the ADC coalition a better chance at winning?
What happened to him? Can’t he do it? Are you saying Nigerians don’t like him? If we are to look at past antecedents, Buhari won’t have been president. Buhari contested several times from ANPP, APP, to CPC, and at the end he became a president under APC, you don’t ask people to give up on their life’s dream.
Can ADC coalition defeat the ruling APC with the likes of Atiku and co?
Each of them have different ideas and some people believe that the Southern candidate should be allowed to complete their eight years since Buhari from the North just finished eight years. Atiku is calculating based on Yar’Adua’s death and some people are saying since the formation of Nigeria, the North has had the larger share of power, so what happened under Yar’Adua and Jonathan was a divine occurrence. I strongly believe till tomorrow that the Southern region should be allowed, we shouldn’t be suffocating people out of power, we did that against Southsouth when Jonathan was frustrated out and was massively voted out by the Northern voting bloc. Should we do the same thing to the Southwest, should the North be left alone? No matter the population, if these three regions come together – most of these populations you are seeing are not even real.
Talking of election manipulation, anybody can manipulate. Some people sit down and write the total number of the voters, so if you go by that way, Abia can bring 1.6 million votes because they have more than two million voters registered, what will you do? No region has the monopoly of election manipulation. That the other regions allowed the North to take advantage of that, it shouldn’t be used to bully other regions.
In line with that, if ADC decides to go South, Obi has come up with the proposal of one term which is reasonable, it’s in line with allowing the South to complete their rights years that some people are advocating for Jonathan’s return. A group in Northeast held a conference calling on Jonathan to come back, that is a good calculation and if things happen this way, Atiku may be out if he contests going against the zoning arrangement, though it was not penned down but we call it mutual understanding or mutual political arrangement. It’s good and okay, it’s on that basis you can say Atiku should allow Obi, Jonathan or anyone else.
So which candidate do you see as a likely threat to Tinubu going into 2027?
The major threat to APC today is Obi because they know that Jonathan may not contest because some people see him to be weak, some people see him not to be a desperate person. Among all of them from the South, Amaechi is there, Obi, and Makinde are there but Obi is ahead, every week he is in one activity or the other and the rate of acceptability he is getting in the North is increasing.
But Tinubu too has been able to play some games, today it will be difficult to take Plateau, Southern Kaduna, some of those swing states, now we have Dogara in Southern Bauchi, Dogara – Tafawa Balewa local government, those Christian areas, those places are more powerful than before, we have governor Fintiri not working for Atiku in Adamawa – a sitting governor is very powerful. When you put some of those swing regions, Southern Kaduna has Chief of Defence Staff, a university now, their key men are being appointed.
So there is a change in the political mapping for anybody to think that they can get it easy, you can’t. You have a president that is concentrating on Southsouth too and if Obi becomes a running mate, the South will not vote for him because the Southern region wants the presidency not running mate. Obi in his own wisdom came up with the proposal of one single term which is okay, though some people believe that once he gets the power, who can look at the president’s face and say this is not the agreement they had, they did that to Jonathan – so these are the realities.
But the idea that Atiku should step aside, you don’t ask somebody to step aside on their life ambition. If they say Atiku shouldn’t contest, that means somebody is afraid of him and that means he is a threat. Why will people say he should not contest, are you funding him? The major threat will be Peter Obi if Jonathan is not contesting.
Even the major threat we are talking about is that all opposition should unite under ADC; should Atiku contest, PDP contest, and Labour Party produce a candidate, it will still split the opposition votes and at the end the ruling party will take advantage.
We can’t defeat Tinubu with divided opposition, take it to the bank because incumbency alone is 40 percent of the votes. That you are an incumbent candidate of the ruling party, you are sure of 40 percent votes, you have existing structures that would deliver that, you have aides, ministers, your party has more money and you have government institutions that would work for you.
How has Tinubu’s administration fared in the area of insecurity considering recent arrests of terrorists? Is it doing enough in this area?
Yes, this government is doing incredibly well when compared to Buhari’s era, it was so terrible under Buhari. It was worse that the Emir of Daura was kidnapped under Buhari, the same place where Buhari came from, the kidnappers invaded his village and took away his Emir, which is strange.
For the first time in over eight years, we are travelling from Abuja to Kaduna, there was a time when you couldn’t. They kidnapped people even from a train in this country. Abuja-Lokoja became a death trap and if you succeeded in traveling from Abuja to Kaduna you go to church to give thanksgiving.
You saw the arrest of Ansaru terrorist leader by DSS and there is still areas like Itobe to Anyigba, there are kidnappers, they kidnapped people almost every week on that road, there were so many of them in Kogi West until the DSS carried out a lot of operations with vigilante. Now their bases are being attacked daily. You see Bello Turji calling for surrender of arms because he is surrounded by DSS.
Why do you think Bello Turji has always evaded arrest by security agents?
It’s because there must be some leaks, he gets information ahead of them and if he does, the security agencies need to be properly filtered. He narrowly escapes security agencies, that means that something is wrong somewhere.
Are Nigerians safer now when compared to Buhari’s administration?
Compare Tinubu’s administration of two years to Buhari’s eight years, there is a serious improvement under Tinubu. Though there were killings in Plateau and Benue States which we never anticipated but there were some areas that were no-go areas before like Southern Kaduna, but there is peace there now when compared to before and even in the Southeast. The killings by IPOB’s unknown gunmen have drastically been addressed, though there were flashy areas where this thing occurred but it wasn’t as it was then, so in that area, they are doing well and should maintain the momentum.
Peter Obi, Atiku major threat to Tinubu, PDP should wait till 2031 – Okai
