Why I’ll contest against Buhari in 2019 – Garba

Adamu Garba ll, an IT expert, is one of those that have declared interest to contest the ruling APC presidential ticket against incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari. In this interview with BODE OLAGOKE, he speaks on his plans for the country, and why he won’t step down as well as his choice of the party’s national chairman.
Why have you chosen the presidency as the starting point in your political career? The only reason I have chosen the presidency is because of the programme and proposals I’m putting on the table. These are what I called structural reform, what I am proposing to do in the Nigerian system is structural reform. You can effectively be able to implement structural reform to the exact conclusion when you’re the president, especially in a country where 60 percent of the power is concentrated at the presidency.
If you mistakenly say you want to go for the governor or be a senator, you will just be able to share the light, you will complain, you will raise the bills, you will shout like Senators (Enyinnaya) Abaribe and Ben Bruce are doing but it can’t change anything because at the end of the day you’ll still share the pile. I became the youngest president of Jimeta Youth Association, which is actually our Local Government Association some years ago. From there, I moved to the university and then also became the president of National Youth Coalition for Sustainable Democracy. Now, along that part, I have discovered that we, the youth, participation in politics is more than just waiting for politicians to come and settle us. It has become a very serious problem because it is really not addressing the problem, and when you look at the surrounding people are just going down, situations are becoming worst, nobody is adding anything to their lives. So I decided to start looking deeply into why Nigeria is what it is today and what can be done to fi x it. That’s where mu structural reforms come into play.
You have chosen the APC as your party, don’t you think you can be bought over? I think the only thing that can make me give up in the presidential primary election is the ballot. If the delegates decide to say no and in a free, fair and transparent election as stipulated by the party constitution, then that is all, but I am very sure that I will emerge as winner at the presidential primary of the APC. Who will buy me over? Why will I sell my conscience when I love my party and my country? This cannot happen. I don’t believe there is anybody that has anything in this world even if you want to bring back to life my late mum that will say I should drop the love of my country. It is not possible I will go to the ballot and let the electorate decide. Let them tell me that I don’t deserve the ticket, let me lose there. I’m not losing anyway, I will win the primary, I’m sure of that.
What is your fair assessment of the postponed the APC convention? It’s still not a problem to us. Our main target is to ensure that there is true, free and fair democracy within the party so that we can have a duly elected person who will be the candidate for the election. We are looking forward to the party to stay true to its constitution and ensure that free, fair and transparent elective convention takes place, in a fairly satisfactory manner. That is our main target. We are fully ready for the convention. Our target is for us to be there and demonstrate the fact that young Nigerians are not only ready to be the agent of change, they want to be the change themselves. But unfortunately the convention is postponed and we are actually disappointed especially with the level of preparedness we had put into the anticipated convention. As a result of that we the younger generation of Nigerians have decided to make sure that we produced within ourselves a credible candidate for the coming convention for the position of party chairman. We believe that the internal wrangling that is happening in the party is calling for all young Nigerians to rise up and take responsibility.
What choice of the next national chairman of the APC will the youth settle for? Our senior credible and responsible citizens are getting tired with the happenings in the country which is not in the interest of the country and the ruling party itself.
We believe the APC is our party, we believe the APC is a property of Nigeria and therefore we, the younger generation of Nigerians, We are looking forward to the party to stay true to its constitution and ensure that free, fair and transparent elective convention takes place, in a fairly satisfactory manner. are fully ready to continue with the legacies of our founding fathers. Therefore, we are calling on all the parties involved in the wrangling within the APC to support us because we believe that we have the clear direction. We are not in support of this side or that side but we are in support of the party and the interest of Nigeria for Nigerians. Therefore, what we stand for is to focus on making sure that the APC continues to be the party of choice for all Nigerians. We believe that there is need for a new chairman for the APC and this new chairman should come from among the young, fresh, neutral blood within the party.
Security has been a very big challenge: call it Boko Haram or herdsmen/farmers’ clash, yet you say you want to focus structural reform. How is it possible in view of the fact that your state is one of the most affected? You see from independence this country has not taken conscious effort to unite herself citizens into one united nation. The people that got independence for Nigeria were very patriotic, very nice people and great men. Sadly though, their primary allegiance was to their respective regions not to the country as an entity.
They were not concerned about the common vote.
This was what led to regional allegiances. In fact, even party formations were regionalised so much so that from that moment onward we sank ourselves into serious identity crisis that we forgot the very essence of why we are exist together in the very first place. Why we are here in this country is because we are a collection of economies Nigeria is a market place, it is not really all those rigid contents that are defined by natural boarders. What we need to do is enable the market so that people can transact, buy and sell to each other.
Once you live everything at the expense of politics as opposed to the economic opportunities that are supposed to avail the people the desired chance to function socially. Once this is not the case, people will naturally take it far and the identity will keep polarizing. You will see different identities rising up, people will carry arms to defend themselves. That is why you see Boko Haram and other insurgency group emerging. They have come out and say we don’t want Nigeria, we want our own country.
Same goes to Biafra simply because everything is politics. The people have forgotten the main reason why we need to be together which is economy. Because if an Aba man can comfortably sell his products to the man in Maiduguri and the Maiduguri man knows that he has a very large market in Aba there will be no reason to fight. That is what we need to do in our proposal we’re going to come up with to rectify the principles of why we are in Nigeria, because people are confused and don’t know where to go to.
Party primaries will take place in the next few months and you are yet to identify with any political party. What are your plans? Firstly, if you look at the structure of what is happening within the PDP and the APC, the two major political parties in the country, there is a lot of wrangling and polarization. Secondly, well I am a card carrying member of one of the political parties. I don’t just want to disclose it for some political reasons. So I’m not involved actively in any political party but ‘am already a member of a particular political party.
All I need is just to look into whether they are right for me to align my resources and intentions with them or not. Eventually, I may identify with one of the two major political parties or maybe I’ll just go into any of the new political parties entirely. If you have the right message sooner than later, these guys are tired and they obviously know that this country is not working the way it is. They also know clearly that it is not about having plenty money, staying in a very big place and driving a very big car, they know it’s not working, for this reason they need to open the door and allow other people to come in, serious people with the right policies so that we can make this country work for us once and for all times.
You are aspiring for the presidency of Nigeria, peradventure you become the president of Nigeria, what will be your take on the agitation for the re-structuring of the country? Restructuring Nigeria is a very big debate. There are areas that I so much advocate for: the area of removing State of Origin, it is very important. I don’t believe in state of origin I believe in State of Residence. Also, I will advocate for the Federal Executive Council (FEC) regime to be removed. The FEC tends to give the impression of people from different localities. Are people coming from different localities to converge in Abuja to collect money that they don’t work for? I don’t believe in that, I believe that these monies should be used to build our infrastructure. The areas I have some questions is in the area of resource control.
Countries that you see succeed like China, Taiwan, South Korea, etc, they use their available resources, the strategic resources to build their country. They understand that there is need for integration across the supply chain so that the country can function soundly. Unfortunately for us in Nigeria, the natural resources we have at the end of the month they put it as piece of pie and people take their share and then it becomes a problem.
What are the challenges you are facing as a presidential aspirant? The major challenge is that people kept on asking questions such as: Are you sure you’re serious? Are you sure you are aspiring for presidency or you want to identify with any of the organizations to see if they will give you your share, or maybe make you minister or an adviser? That is usually the challenge among the youthful population in Nigeria. I don’t want to say that there is nobody that come up this way but maybe some had come and they made so much noise but at the end they did