Hon. Moshood Mustapha is a former governorship aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kwara state, who once served as special adviser to Senate President Bukola Saraki. Prior to that appointment, Mustapha was a member of the House of Representatives for Asa/Ilorin West Federal Constituency, Mustapha, who recently celebrated his 56th birthday in Ilorin, the state capital, a day after the APC victory in the governorship election, speaks to journalists on his political sojourn and why he parted way with his former boss. UMAR BAYO ABDULWAHAB was there.
APC victory and 56th birthday celebration
It is a special day, special in the sense that it was on Monday 56 years ago that I was born. So, you can see the coincidence. And we are equally celebrating the victory of our great party, APC. I thank God that in our lifetime, we have witnessed what we have been yearning for, for a long time, and that is freedom. The freedom that we were able to achieve and the electoral process, the one that took place a fortnight ago and the last one, I think they are all a manifestation of the wishes of the teeming masses of Kwarans.
To me, we should not see it as a matter of victor and vanquished. We should see it as something that is divine. Divine in the sense that when time is ripe for anything to happen, like the changes that just happened in Kwara, what we need to do is to go into sober reflection, and find out at what point did those people who did it in the past, got it wrong. And now that we have been able to change the status quo, what exactly will happen and what direction would the new government take Kwara to? And that exactly was what I discussed with the governor-elect.
So, to me, I believe we have to thank Almighty Allah, the good people of Kwara, the press and of course we stakeholders in the APC. I’m happy that the state chairman of the party was here and who is who in the APC, all of them came to felicitate with me. We are happy and we thank God for what He has done for us.
APC structure in the state is perceived to be a congregation of political heavyweights and with tendency for crisis in the nearest future. Do you foresee any problem?
Without sounding pessimistic, I think it is not out of place for anybody to exercise this kind of fear, which is normal. It is normal in the sense that one thing that is difficult to manage in life is success. We have achieved success, how do we manage it? Coming together of strange bedfellows or political heavyweights from different camps to get to the level we are now, I know, of course, it is going to be difficult for us to put things together.
But, if all of us can apply our wisdom, especially those of us that vied for the seat of the governorship without one single person exiting the whole arrangement, and we all work together for the common interest of the party, I believe that wisdom will equally prevail on how to move the state forward, now that we are forming government. What should be paramount to politicians is the service to the people. The people have spoken and they have delivered. The onus now lies on us to see what next we can do so that, at the end of the day, they will be able to compare between the past government and the new government.
Before now, you were on the same page with the outgoing Senate President. You have been talking about freedom. Were you enslaved when you were with him?
When we talk about freedom, it is not about slavery. It is about freeing the system in such a manner that everybody will be able to express himself and vie for whatever position he wants. The issue of one person dictating the pace is what we are talking about, that we have brought to an end.
I saw it coming about two years ago. I’m very close to the grassroots, I’m not an Abuja-based politician. That is why all my investments are domiciled in Kwara. I challenge anybody to point at other states where I have investment, apart from my office where I operate. We felt the pulse, we saw it coming and I cried out loud that we have to change the course.
I said let us go to the basics and find out what exactly is happening and why people are getting agitated. Nobody cared to listen. If you are following a particular path and you know that path will lead to perdition or it will not lead to what you desired, there is nothing wrong in making a detour, and I made a detour. So, if I had to exit, I exited not because I knew that this will happen, I’m not God.
I exited and I took the risk, and I was ready to bear the consequences of my action as a human being. If we had failed, there is no way I would go and beg anybody, I will count my losses and I will prepare for the next programme. But God made it easy for us. God sees my heart. It is not a case of betrayal.
I have never detached myself from being part of the system. But I decided to align myself with the progressives because I knew that the yearning and aspiration of the people is that they wanted a change. They wanted the change from poverty and from one man show.
Because I wanted to be governor, they took it upon themselves to tell me there wouldn’t be primaries. That was the bone of contention. And I told them that why wouldn’t there be primaries because the constitution of the party is very clear that there must be primaries. When I said let us go into primaries, they said I was going to use my wherewithal and resources to take others away. When they said there wouldn’t be primaries, I took my position and I think I have been vindicated.
What should Kwarans be expecting?
This is the time for us to sit down and look at what the situations is. What are the challenges and level of infrastructure? Are they in very deplorable conditions or how do we need to get them done? We need to look at the civil service, the burden on the day-to-day running of government. How can we ensure we reduce it to the barest minimum so that we can have more into capital projects and overhead?
There is one thing that we should know. This was a state that can actually take care of itself without the almighty federal allocation. But there are more to it because we must try and attract federal presence. I want to allay your fear. To me, I believe that anybody that we entrust our state or our government into his hand, we must try as much as possible to look at the background. If you do not have a business idea, it is difficult to run a government affair, and that is exactly why Americans chose Trump over Clinton. This is a man that brought his business from ground zero to the level that it is today.
