Chief spokesperson of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council (LP-PCC) and National Chairman of the National Conscience Party (NCP), Dr Yunusa Tanko, speaks with IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI on the 2023 presidential election, the scorecard of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration and why the Northern region is determined to make a decisive electoral decision during the election, among other issues.
With the way things are now in Nigeria, is there any hope for the country this year?
Of course, there is hope. At least, for the first time in Nigeria, we are seeing that the youths of the country have spoken in unison that they are interested in taking back their country for the interest of everyone, because someone has been able to galvanise their hope and bring them together. The person has also been able to connect with them and make them see reasons why the current narratives must be changed as well as why the country need to move from a passive country to an active one, from an unsecured country to a secured country, from a non-employing country to an employing country and from a less dignified country to a very dignified one. And these are the messages that resonate with every Nigerian. So in that case, there is hope for the country.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s government will be leaving power in a few months; how would you rate its performance in 2022 and the next seven and a half years?
With all due respect, for me, there is no scorecard to rate, because we are in a country where Nigerians students were kept at home for nine months. We are in a country whose [debt] is in trillions of naira. We are in a country where we cannot travel from point A to point B without fear of being kidnapped or killed. So in this regard, where is the scorecard that you can use to measure the performance of the present government? Morally, legally, educationally and in all other indices of good leadership, the present administration has failed this country.
In what ways?
Well with regard to the basic necessities of life, Nigerians cannot even feed themselves. Nor can they even boast that their country is secure physically and economically. Every week, the best of our medical doctors and best brains in other sectors are running out of the country. We are now indebted to many other countries. These are indices of failure. Recently, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that about 133.3million Nigerians are wallowing in multidimensional poverty out of 200million people. Is that not shameful? So these are the areas that you use to measure the performance of a government and to look at how failure is being established by the leadership.
Being a year that will usher in a new government for the country, what are the likely issues you believe will shape the country this year?
They include issues relating to security, economy, unemployment, food security, indebtedness, and international recognition for Nigeria as a country. These are major things that will shape the country this year and even decide the direction that the upcoming will swing to. And they are also part of the campaign promises of the Labour Party (LP).
But with the way Labour Party has conducted its presidential campaigns in the last few months, what gives you the assurance that it will really have any big impact in the upcoming election?
Well, just as I have said, the LP is being driven by the Nigerian people and youths. And remember that they constitute the largest portion of the population. More interestingly, they are the ones that the politicians use to rig elections. They are the ones the politicians also use for thuggery and for various kinds of manipulations. So it is a really big factor to see them now saying that they are no longer interested in being used to perpetrate all these vices, but now determined to make their country a good, equitable and egalitarian society. This alone gives the LP all the confidence that it will win the election, because the youths own the country.
But there have been many insinuations that a larger part of the Nigerian youths only voice out on social media and do not vote on election day. It is said that the people that mostly vote are the market women, area boys and others. If this same line of thought plays out, don’t you think it will affect the chances of your party?
Well, if you will agree with me, at some points in time, the people said the LP is only on social media. But the latest projection by the ThisDay newspaper said that the LP will win 15 states of the federation. Does this not tell you something that those people believed to be on the social media are already coming out to say that they are now physically present? And that is why on 1st October, 2022 in about 40 cities, the Nigerian youths came out on a nationwide march in support of one presidential candidate. So the idea that the youths are only on social media and will probably not vote has been put to rest as all indications now show that they are ready to come out to stand for their country. Meanwhile, according to the demographics of registered voters released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), about 12.5million new prospective voters, mostly youths, have registered, which took the whole registrants to 96million. I know some may disagree, but I believe the new young registrants must have been motivated to do so by the emergence of Peter Obi. So we really believe in the youths, just as they believed so much in us.
You are from the North, and just as you know, the largest portion of votes that bring in every Nigerian president comes from the Northern region. Are you really saying that in the 2023 election, Nigerians in the North will vote for a Southerner ahead of their own son?
I am glad that you said I am from the North. And if you look at my political history, you will discover that I have been very consistent in my struggle for a new Nigerian. My case is an attestation that there are some Northerners who are not happy with the present state of the country. This is because if there is any execution of a wrong economic policy, it is the Northerners that feel the heat most in terms of their level of poverty, unemployment, educational development and all. They are the ones that feel the problem most. As we speak today, the majority of them cannot go to their farms. As we speak today, many of them cannot travel outside of their state to another state, even to the states very close to them.
As we speak today, they are also being challenged in every part of the country they went to. So are you now telling me that they will be seeing this kind of decay and will not be thinking of drastically changing their narrative? So I believe the North is determined to get back its old glory. And they believe it is not only by voting their own son that their aim can be achieved, because at the moment, it is also their son that is in leadership and it has brought about no benefit for them, but pain, deepened poverty and worsened security challenges. Or can you quantify the number of killings that have befallen the North under the present administration? It will interest you that as I am speaking to you now, someone is being killed in the North. And this madness has continued unabated. Yet, we have a president that is from the North.
You have clamoured greatly for the LP, but it is being generally said that the party does not have a winning structure across all the wards and polling units in the country that can win it an election, won’t this be a big hitch?
Well, many people are using a conventional way of running politics, but we are looking at the unconventional style, which entails appealing to the people directly, not through certain delegates, which we have been able to do. So our structure is the people. And as I speak with you, we are mobilising across the polling units in the country and liaising with people irrespective of their region or states. This is because a poor man in the North is also a poor man in the East, while a poor man in the West is also a poor man in the South, because we are all affected by the same economic policies that have made us poorer and tightened the grip of hardship on us. So, we all have to fight to take back this country from the level of abject poverty to prosperity.
But should your candidate not win the election, do you see this as being resulting in post-election violence?
Not at all, even though it will be very horrific to even think that he will lose the election, because we believe the Nigerian youths are in the stand-by to vote for him.
But talking about your candidate, Obi. In recent times, key chieftains in his state, Anambra, and across the South-East have been saying that they won’t vote for him in the upcoming election. Even a few days before Christmas, a popular billionaire in the state, Arthur Eze, who is a former presidential candidate of the LP, also said he is not in support of Obi’s ambition, warning him to withdraw from the race. If these people in the region producing Obi can be saying this, where do you think it leaves your party as regards having votes from the region in the forthcoming poll?
The billionaire you mentioned did not represent the total population of the South-East. He is just one man that can deliver one vote. But while we respect his elderly position, we believe his opinion and that of others opposing chieftains in the South-East will not determine the outcome of the election in the region. They have only made their positions known as individuals. So also with the governor of the state, he as well only spoke as an individual even though he is the state governor. But as we are concerned, we will continue to speak and engage with the people across the regions, because it is not everyone in a region that will accept and vote for a candidate. The fact that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is from Adamawa State doesn’t mean everyone in his state will vote for him. And same thing for Bola Tinubu, not every Lagosian or resident of the South-West will vote for him.
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