Henry Ajomale, chairman, All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State and the national chairman of association of APC state chairmen, in this interview with select journalists spoke on a number of issues, including President Muhammadu Buhari re-election bid and the state of the APC in Lagos. INIEBONG IWOK was there. Excerpts:
Can we say that the body language of Bola Tinubu, the national leader of the APC, suggests that he has endorsed Buhari’s second term bid?
Of course, what Tinubu is doing is not for his personal benefit, or what he is going to get. The reasons for his action are his concern for the country and what he is after is; how can we get out of the problems we have currently? How can the country be great? How can the common man get the benefit of democracy?
Tinubu still sees Buhari as the best candidate who can get us to that dream, that if he is given a second chance he would consolidate on his achievements; he needs it; his plans would come to fruition; it would be carried out and delivered.
You know when you occupy a position, the first two years is for learning and when you start working the other two years is up, so you need another term to consolidate on your achievements. If it is for his personal interest alone, he may have contested against him, but Tinubu still sees Buhari as the best candidate for the job.
But Nigerians think the President has not done enough in terms of fulfilling his campaign promises?
He has done a lot in term of campaign fulfilment when you; when you look at the situations, when we came to office; Okonjo Iweala and the rest were giving out figures on the state of the country, and that was the bases on which we plan,
We plan based on information available to us; but when we got in, we realise that the treasury was empty.
But the party had programmes, but there is no way we are going to execute the programmes without money; then suddenly we went into recession; if the president can take the country out of recession within one year he should be congratulated.
We know how long it take Obama to take the U.S out of recession, but if the PDP had returned to power, Nigeria would have been bankrupt by now and today you can be sure we have about 50 million Dollars in the treasure.
That mean the country can survive for the next six months, if we continue to move like this Nigeria would be among the best country in the world.
What is the state of the party in Lagos?
Presently in Lagos; we have no problem; at the moment as am taking to you there is no serious problem among our members; but when election is coming like this you would see issues coming up; a lot people have aspirants that want to contest for Governor, House of representatives, Senate and others positions.
This issues that would always suffice when election is coming up but generally there is no problem in the party.
But one of your exco member Fouad Oki, is having issues with the party, he made some allegations?
How many people where there in the press conference he called, except few of his people, the members of APC in Lagos is about two millions and there has not been problems; there are so many groups in the party and he as a right to talk.
I don’t see merit in what he said; if congress were done, for example the primary that brought the current Governor we spend more than 24 hours at the venue how is that imposition? If you have more than eleven aspirants contesting for one position and one of them win how is that imposition?
Look at what happened in Amuwo Odofin, we lost some sit, because we could not compete with the PDP money; the president at that time shifted his base here, we wanted to even register his resident here in Lagos, can you call that imposition, I don’t know where he get that imposition claim.
But is that not a sign of crisis in the Lagos APC?
Don’t you think, if one out of 33-member executives complain, it tells about his personality; it is not a serious matter. We have a group, he is not the first person that would have a group, it is healthy for the party; it gives us more members, because these people would in return bring more people to join the party, it is allowed in a democracy.
Has the party reconciled with him now?
There is no problem; we don’t have problem with him, there was a time he said we wanted to suspend him, he was carrying that news and going to the newspaper to seek popularity; let him bring the letter where he was suspended. If one out of the 33 exco members is saying this it means he is not normal.
Having a group is not bad, it gives the party more members, and they would bring us more people in as much as their activity would not impugn on the party.
If we have this issue that does not mean that when election comes we would not work together; we would join hand together and fight the enemy.
The party is still one and the leadership is still one; we don’t have problem with him, he is only one out of the 33-member exco that decides to criticise the party and sometimes as an individual one can learn from his criticism if we think it is genuine.
How prepared is the APC for the national convention and the state congresses?
A lot of surprises would be made and you would be surprised that Buhari would win.
All those ganging up against him would fail, because they try to put him in a situation and paint him bad, they have failed.
Soyinka said when the president just came in, that if you fight corruption it would fight you back. Why are they fighting Buhari? It is because they are afraid of his anti-corruption war. Why should you advise someone not to contest; are you his father? If you are not fighting him why advise him not to contest?
But some elements also in the APC do not want him to contest?
May be some people are afraid of him and his ambition and some of them now want him to step down.
The security situation in the country is degenerating daily; don’t you think Buhari has failed Nigerians on this?
It is true that the security is the most paramount thing; if you have security you have everything; there would be peace and life will be longer; but where there is no security, people would be killed anyhow. What is happening now is that our people are killed anyhow. But the killing is not new. It happened in the time of Jonathan, even the soldiers we can count how many times that they lost their lives to Boko-Haram. They even ran away and they were arrested and court-marshaled for not fighting enough.
If necessary equipment is provided for the military they would do well; only a stupid leader would open his eye and allow his people to be killed; but if you have the weapons the morale of the soldiers will be boosted.
We have been living with the cattle rustlers for years, they use sticks; you must ask yourself; how did they transform from that to using AK 47, then it means something is wrong; the answer has not been found.
I think, these are not cattle rustlers, but how many security personnel do we have in the country? You want to recruit now and they say we don’t have money; and you are releasing money and they say we cannot spend one million dollar on security; this is an issue we should not even quarrel about it.
Supposing the government needs the money now, they should wait until they get the money to fund the budget.
People are suspicious that the APC wants to use the money for campaign?
Only stupid people would say that because PDP has done it in the past; it means that is our intention; we have learnt lessons, if you know the kind of president we have, he would never do that; since he assumed office, he has not given contract to the party, not to talk of giving us money to run the party.
I have not gotten money to run the party from him, here in Lagos; it is our members in elective positions’ contribution to the party that is what we are using.
How did we defeat the PDP; if not the grace of God and the support of our people; the people wanted them to go and the money they spent became useless.
And they are the ones making statements now; those making these allegations are the ones whose pipelines have been blocked; because there is no more free money. You must work hard, that is why life is hard now, and we must realise that soon, we would come out of this situation; the country would be a better place for us to live in.
If you have criticisms, why don’t you send it to the president; if you have idea, why don’t you go to the seat of power and see the president?
But they must have made attempt to see him without success?
To me that is not true, I have directed some people to write letter and the president repied them, that is why I would be more surprised when a prominent person who has access to the president cannot go to him and make his complaint to him.
He was there for eight years what did he achieve? He made mistakes. Was Obasanjo perfect? That he felt he is the best in the world. As a former president, you don’t take part in politics; you are supposed to advise.
He has access to the president, he visits him often, how come he is saying this; everybody wants to be known, he feels he can just talk, let him tell us, what is between him and the president.
If you want people to follow your unfinished programmes, you are now advising, it is not every time you write to me that I would follow your advice, it may be out-dated, and I may have other programmes.
You now resorted to writing letters to president; you wrote to the one that died; you wrote to Jonathan; let him realise that he has done his own, let him allow others to rule.
But other prominent Nigerians have advised Buhari not to seek re-election?
He would return because the people are behind him, the prominent people don’t vote, during election days, they rest; it is the common man that votes.
Do you think Buhari has done enough for the South-West; are you confident he would get their votes?
There is no way anybody would claim, the president has done enough for his zone; Buhari would win southwest flat; the day after election come back to me.
There is this cold war between the ‘Abuja boys’ and their governors which is affecting peace in the party?
“Abuja boys”, “Lagos boys”, they are members of the party and you would find out that on the day of election we would merge. Abuja boys are benefiting from this government and they can’t work against this government
Are you not afraid of the proposed merger of some opposition parties?
We have done that before and it was a success, they can merge and win election, but I know that they don’t have the liver to do it. They need the grassroots, and I know they don’t have it.
People think Tinubu’s reconciling assignment should have started from Lagos; the relationship between Fashola and Ambode has not been cordial; Muiz Banire also is having issues with the party?
How do you know that it has not been settled among them? If you say they have not been close, they don’t have to be close; if they are friendly it is enough.
But we have to be civil to each other, that is the most important thing in the party.
For Muiz Banire, that is his problem, if he feels he as problem in the party, he should know how to solve it; he is a member of the national working committee of the party; we don’t have problem with him; we don’t have to call the press to say he is fighting us.
Lagos APC has been accused of not defending the policies of Governor Ambode, especially the controversial land use charge, etc.?
You are jumping the gun, you don’t know what we are doing, we are at it; the party would come out at the right time to talk about it, we can’t detect to him; we can only advise. We have detected certain things in his programmes and at the right time we would come out and tell him what the people think.
The Lagos APC is accused of breaching the electoral law by series of endorsements of the governor for second term, giving the impression that the race is closed to other aspirants?
I was there in one of those programmes; I was invited because am a member of Lagos west Senatorial district; I was invited to that meeting, but did you see me speak? I was there because I reside in Lagos west districts.
For the governorship race; it is still open, those endorsing Ambode are doing that on their won and they can vote for him if they like, it does not mean the door is closed to others.
It does not look like he would be the only one that would contest the governorship race; others also have the right to campaign; there would still be primaries.
Ambode is doing all this with his supporters, you cannot stop them, no one would say I should not give form to anyone who wants to contest; the race is open to anyone who wants to contest; that is what the law says.
Senator Olamilekan Solomon wants to contest in Ogun next year; he is representing a constituency here in Lagos, is that not against the interest of the people?
He is not telling us he is not representing Lagos again, as he bought the form to contest. Until he does that we cannot act on rumour; do you want to recall him? If he does that, it means he cannot contest here again; some of the people that went to contest in Kogi, there is no way they would come back and contest here again.
What if he goes to court?
So be it. If that is what the court says we would obey the court, I cannot go against the court, I am a lawyer; but I see that Faleke has transfered his card to Kogi; he is no more here; at the end of the tenure we would pick another person, but if the court says no, I would give him the form.
Aregbesola is said to be interested in contesting for Senatorial position in Lagos after stepping down in Osun as governor?
I was not there when he had a programme on that; I was only there when he came to indicate interest, in other part it is acceptable. If you build a house in Lagos Island, and you have a house in Lagos mainland; you can transfer, if the people vote for you fine, it is not my question it is what the law says.
There is growing agitations over the fifth term ambition of Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila in his constituency, how do you react to that?
Is there any law in the party that says that someone cannot go for a fifth term?
If he still wins and the people still vote for him why would I say no? It is done everywhere; Look at America, John Kennedy was there for more than 30 years until he died.
It is constitutional; it is only the president, governors that have term.
