Dr. Abdul Jhalil Tafawa Balewa is the Co-Chairman of the National Intervention Movement (NIM) and member of the Steering Committee of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP). In this exclusive interview with JAMES KWEN, the Nigerian International Medical expert and PDP Presidential aspirant in 2014 explained how Atiku Abubakar was adopted as the CUPP Presidential Candidate for the 2019 general election. Excerpts:
As the Co-Chairman of the National Intervention Movement(NIM) and a member of the steering Committee of Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) can you tell us why and how CUPP arrived at the decision of adopting Atiku Abubakar as the Presidential Candidate in 2019 general election?
We at the steering Committee decided that we will have a selection Committee; members of the steering committee that are not Presidential candidates and some members of CUPP, especially those who were in the blueprint and manifesto committee to be able to get together. We had about three different forms worked on by members of CUPP to give the criteria to different qualities of the candidates but the letters were written and the forms were given to the parties of these Presidential candidates for them to be able to fill on behalf of the Presidential candidates of their parties and returned to CUPP for evaluation.
When this was done, there were so many different questions especially on the qualities of the Presidential candidates and what their parties have done in the past. How many Presidential elections their parties have entered into, what offices; local offices may be Senatorial and House of Representatives and State House of Assembly they have done and so on and so forth. And five of these parties, there were about 27 parties that qualified vaguely but five of them rated above all the others. Out of those five that were submitted by this election committee to the steering committee it was obvious that by very far, the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and its candidate was shoulder higher above everybody else and that was why it was announced when we reached this conclusion that it was His Excellency, Abubakar Atiku and the PDP. So, it was deftly done.
There will be questions or there were questions why the Presidential candidates were not invited to the interview and so on and so forth but if you look at the sections that everybody is talking about, we said presentations. Presentations can be written form, it can be oral, it can be in video, it can be in any of these communicative forms. But in the third paragraph it was explained that, the data of the materials submitted by the parties were not talking about individuals, they were talking about parties, it was the parties that represented their Presidential candidates. That was how it was done.
The perception of the public, let’s say the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC) about the choice of Atiku differs from your explanation as they said it was because of his perceived wide political tentacles, financial capacity and PDP being a strong opposition?
All of the above are correct but that was not why he was chosen. He was chosen because he was the best of all that presented. All of these factors that you mentioned combined, really made him the best possible.
Now, what can you say are the chances of Atiku and President Muhammadu Buhari who also enjoys large political support especially in the North where they both come from?
It is going to be upwardly difficult but you know it’s very much like a good boxing match, this time instead of the punches it is the ideas that will be thrown at one another. I expect a very good vibrant electoral period coming.
Are there written agreements between CUPP and PDP and its candidate, in terms of appointments when they eventually emerged victorious at the elections?
Nothing that definite has been done. However, all the members of CUPP met with His Excellency Atiku Abubakar and His Excellency Bukola Saraki and we spoke at length and all was positive. There were glitters of participation and the Presidential candidate said there will be an all inclusive government so I assume that’s what you are alluding to.
As a patriotic Nigerian and a critical stakeholder in the politics of the country, how will you want political parties to carry out campaigns?
One of the things that is happening in these campaigns and I must really thank God for the creation of NIM because the formation of CUPP which is really based on main ideas of NIM have douse a lot of violent interventions within the political space. As I said on one of the television programmes that by now we would have been hearing of so many people limbs that are cut off, so many villages attacked, politicians attacked by other politicians and so and so forth. We do not have that.
People are a lot better educated politically and they are listening and they want to hear from the politicians what can be done for them. There has been a very good campaign against vote buying, against violence and I must say NIM and CUPP have been very very involved and are instrumental in promoting such non violent part of the campaign. So, I expect a very good, calm, less violent political campaign with the best man winning.
Following the adoption of Atiku Abubakar as its Presidential Candidate, has CUPP collapsed its political structures into PDP ahead of the 2019 campaign?
There has been some dissent within CUPP from some of the political organisations but by and large, the large majority of the political parties have collapsed their platforms into CUPP and into the Presidential campaign of His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, not necessarily into the PDP campaign structure but that of the Presidential candidate so that they may still go alone into gubernatorial, senatorial, House of Representatives and other elections but the large majority have collapsed their structures into the Presidential aspiration of His Excellency Atiku Abubakar.
As a prominent Nigerian politician from the North, what do you have to say about the allegation that the crowd present at the PDP Presidential campaign flag off in Sokoto was imported from Niger?
You know Nigeria is still evolving. We may never know where the crowd came from. Some of the things that used to happen before is that the large number of crowd will be bought, put on trains or put on some other traffic to be able to get where voting is done. It is very difficult for anyone to say that a lot of the people came from Niger Republic since we all look the same. However, it is quite possible. This is politics, opposition politicians will like to dent the integrity of the other party and it is what they said that they think might stick. What we should do is to focus on ideas. What is it that you can do for me that this person has not been able to do for me or what is it that am going to do for you that this other group may not be able to do. That’s what we need to focus on. These other ones are already getting out of our system, it isn’t as large as it used to be, it isn’t a topic that is so daring. We need to focus on issues, we haven’t seen that yet in both parties.
How do you think the decline of assent to the 2018 Electoral amendment bill by President Muhammadu Buhari will impact the 2019 general election?
I think politicians are being touchy really because if we work very closely, even with the 2010 amendment we can still see relatively peaceful and reproducible elections. After all, we thought that 2010 was very good. Some of the improvements on card reader and being able to report immediately and having the INEC agents being more cooperative with the political parties and so and so forth; I think there will be good improvements but even without that, we can still have a credible election. So, I don’t want us to waste time on something that isn’t. Let’s look at what we have, can we work with it? I think, yes we can.
All politics is local so how is the political atmosphere like in your home, Bauchi State with the sitting Governor, Mohammed Abubakar, former FCT Minister, Bala Mohammed and former Minister of Health, Mohammed Pate in the contest for governorship election?
I think the political atmosphere in Bauchi is very vibrant. Dr. Mohammed Pate, a very good politician who has his winds spread both in Nigeria and the United States would make a good Governor. The Governor has been trying to get into the populace but the former FCT Minister has been a Senator, one of the longest serving Ministers in the former administration of Goodluck Jonathan, and like Dr. Mohammed Pate comes from the larger more densely populated part of Bauchi State which is Bauchi South.
There is power of incumbency with the present Governor. So, it’s going to be a fairly good competition. I just hope there will be no violence because one person dying in Bauchi to me, is too much and I think the campaign will be very, very vibrant but it would be peaceful by the grace of God.
The recent locust in Bauchi is nothing political it is just some young people got very exuberant about what culture dictates and what religion dictates and so on and so forth. But that has been calmed down and I hope that more of these youths will learn about who can do the best for them out of these three great Bauchi indigenes.
I expect as I said earlier, a good fight. Dr. Pate’s party (PRP) is relatively new even though it is an old party; it is relatively new to the large majority of Bauchi people because we have a lot of young men that never know of the existence of this old party. The two main parties and his party will have a very good slug out that will be clean, calm and may the best man win.
What can you say are the chances of Atiku Abubakar in his North East region comprising Bauchi where you are from, considering the fact that Buhari also enjoys wide support from the zone?
The North East has always been different from all of Nigeria. They go against the tide of whatever other Nigerians follow, they just go by themselves. Now, we had more troubles in the past than most of these zones. I think that the President enjoys a very
strong comfort in the North East especially in the more populated part of the North East. However, if His Excellency Abubakar Atiku can offer a lot more to the people there could be a tussle in the North East. It is a shame that I don’t have any definitive winner but you should consider that the North East is very fluid , today it could be Boko Haram harassing my people, tomorrow it will be the herdsmen.
Both are a little bit calm now but what do will know will happen closer to the elections? we don’t know. So, someone that can reassure them of not just security but liberty, better education and the exact security of being able to get food on the table for your family. A lot of institutions IFC, the African Development Bank, EU even the United States are giving a lot of donations to rebuild the North East but it hasn’t trickled down to the people. There is still a lot of anguish and a lot of uncertainty with the people. So, let’s hope the two Presidential candidates can really separate themselves and be able to assure and get through to the people. Since it’s a part of Nigeria where there is no linguistic difference as such between the two, I am sure that whoever can coin better future to the people can get their votes.
What is your advice to Nigerians as the country march into the elections?
One of the nice things about the political time table in Nigeria is that it is very close to Christmas. Both main religions in Nigeria do believe in the source of this merriment. The Christians see Him as the Saviour and a man of peace. The Muslims also know Him to be of Immaculate Conception and one of the greater workers of God’s will. Even better still is that, voting starts about February 16 which is just a few days after Valentine’s Day. So this is an atmosphere of love and we should all remember that the other person that we may want to fight is as loved by his family as we are. None of the politicians ever put their children out to go and die for them; so don’t die for any other else’s father or mother. If somebody asks you to go and fight, tell them to tell their children to do the fighting. If somebody says you should kill yourself because somebody hates your religion or Prophet or whatever, why don’t you ask them to do it first as an example?
We all bleed red! So, religion, ethnicity, part of the court that you come from does not matter, we are all loving people, we love our own, we should continue to do that. Politicians that have not represented us very well should be voted out. People that think along with us, that we know can represent us well or that have done in the past should be voted back to continue but most importantly, nobody deserves to take our lives except the God that created it. I love this country with all my heart; a Nigerian dying of unnatural reason should be too much. So it is festive period, it is a period of love let us love ourselves. If we love ourselves we will not do harm to others because it is do unto others as you want done to you.
