JOHNCHUKS ONUANYIM. 
…says things will become clearer down the road
Buba Galadima, a political critic and a former National Secretary of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) has called out some ministers in President Muhammadu’s Buhari’s government who he thinks are not qualified to be councillors. He also spoke on sundry challenges facing the nation in this interview with JOHNCHUKS ONUANYIM. Excerpts…
For quite some time you have not been heard from. One will like to ask are you still in politics and if you are which political party are you in.
Reformed All Progressives Congress (rAPC).
Who are your members in rAPC.
I brought in Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, serving Senators, serving Governors to make an alliance with the PDP in 2019. All those people are still there and intact. If things are going rough there, they can return back to their root.
So, invariably what you are saying is that you are in PDP in alliance with rAPC.
Yes. I was the chairman of rAPC and the arrowhead.
The two main political parties are having serious problems. APC is having problem of leadership, people are calling for the head of Mai Mala Buni, insisting it’s unconstitutional, illegal for him to be chairman of the caretaker committee. In PDP, people are calling for the head of National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus. As a politician who is from rAPC to PDP alliance what is your take on the crises rocking the two political parties?
The game is wait and see for now because you can’t help somebody who’s infected with fourth degree of AIDS and who still believes that he can survive. He can only live longer when he takes medication but he will never be cured of that disease. This is the situation both the APC and PDP find themselves. It now behoves on people of wisdom within those parties to start looking elsewhere, looking for alternatives because the centre can never hold in those political parties and mind you; God has given me such wisdom and power that whatever I say in life had come to pass. So if for example they are down with fourth degree cancer; I know in my village people who treat cancer traditionally, but I have never seen anybody who treats AIDS. You can never be treated until it sends you to the grave. So these parties can survive on their certificate but they will lose relevancy in 2023, it doesn’t matter where all the governors go. We would talk to the people directly and the people will answer us because they have trust and confidence in our ability to steer them to the right part. Our ability to speak the truth is our ability to look at those in power and tell them to their faces what is wrong.
Are you thinking of springing a surprise by coming up with a new party when you said you will speak to people to look elsewhere outside PDP and APC? You don’t know that there are over 20 groups who are professing to do a third party?
We would look at the characters there and see who they are but my advice to those who want to form political parties is for them to look at the crises of PDP and the APC. Why are they in the situation they find themselves now? My answer is because they are unjust and unfair to themselves and to the generality of Nigerians and once there is injustice there is a problem. Peace can only survive on justice. If there is no justice there will be no peace; that is why God can never allow them to hold it together. So they have to make up their minds whichever group that wants to form a political party that they should be just and fair to themselves and to Nigerians. Once they do that God will be there to assist them, they will look at the country and know what the ills are – insecurity, unemployment, economic exclusion, lack of education and others. They have to pick each and every one of those items, analyse the root causes. For example insecurity, how did we get here and then proffer solutions to the issue of insecurity and also give not only solution but how to solve the problems with timelines because Nigerians are in hurry to get peace and engage in their normal activities. It doesn’t matter whether they get it from government or not, the important thing is they should be allowed to go to their farms. When they do that for all the issues that becomes their manifesto, it becomes their covenant with the Nigerian people. We can’t do things the way we used to do them before anymore. So people must know that whoever becomes a member of a political party, whoever wants to run for an office in that political party must take an oath to implement the manifesto of that party which we all agreed to. We have now a crippling issue in the whole country: that is tripartite dictatorship. The executives, the legislature and the judiciary are now all one. People talk to people if you have a case in court the judges will have no opinion in law but what they are told to do; that is what we see now. And I saw a film on Slovakia that was released by Al Jazeera some nights ago. In their own case, it’s even only the executive and the judiciary, the legislature was independent, now Slovakia had reached a brick wall and they can’t produce a president anymore, we don’t want Nigeria to reach that stage; that is the issue. So, we should never do things as we used to do them before.
I’d like you to as a politician who has been there to x-ray the character of the leaders of these two political parties, Uche Secondus and your Governor Mai Mala Buni?
I don’t want to talk about individuals but the system; the issue is that we have bad leaders and we have bad followership. Sometimes we push leaders to do what they are not supposed to do and we don’t have strong institutions that can do checks and balances. Today it is what the governors like that will be done in every state, it is what the governors decide that the court will say yes to, it is what the governors decide that the legislature will say yes to. That is not the separation of power we agreed to run in a presidential democracy. So, that is our problem not the individuals. It may be Secondus, it could be Mai Mala Buni, it can be you John (interviewer), or me. Once we don’t have the lion heart to stand against what is bad and the will to do what is right we can never get it right and we will continue to suffer.
You talked about manifesto and l will like to ask is it that political parties don’t have proper manifesto or don’t implement them when you said the new party you are thinking about must have a manifesto?
It is not that I’m thinking about a political party, there are over 20 groups that are thinking about that and my advice to them is that they should all come together because AIDS that have caught the APC and PDP will never allow them to get well and run the country fairly, it’s a fourth stage AIDS not cancer. AIDS cannot be cured but can only be ameliorated
Let us now look at the presidential hopefuls: we have Professor Atahiru Jega, Bola Tinubu, Yahaya Bello, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rochas Okorocha, Nyesom Wike, Aminu Tambuwal, Bala Muhammad, Kayode Fayemi and so many others. Who in your view should be the president in 2023?
When candidates emerge on political platforms I will now decide to cast my vote for whosoever I feel can run the country better. For now we are in a democracy and when I was listening to you I thought you will mention Buba Galadima. Now I’ve got my bearing that I’m not even considered worthy of being president. These are Nigerians and I don’t want to contradict myself. When Olusegun Obasanjo was in power and was trying the 3rd term because you are not doing investigative journalism, I came on national television because I was the greatest critic of General Obasanjo as President and that was why I was tried for treason. Nobody in Nigeria was tried for treason for his political views like me. I was put underground, four floors, chained and tried by 12 Generals for treason during Obasanjo’s regime and Nigerians have forgotten all these.
