*Says “None Of Those 600 Professors Should Be Recruited For The Elections”
A chieftain of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and close ally of the party’s vice presidential candidate, Alhaji Buba Galadima, has questioned a reported meeting in France between President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission and other prominent Nigerians, suggesting that it may be preparatory to electoral fraud.
He spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
Asked what would distinguish the coming election from the last, the party chieftain said the conduct of the governing side gave cause for suspicion.
“If they are doing the kind of politics that we see in Nigeria, he may announce himself having met the INEC chairman [and] some prominent Nigerians in France, and we don’t know what they are doing,” he said.
He linked that to a gathering of academics in Kaduna.
“And having assembled 600 professors in Kaduna to declare support for him, is it preparatory to maybe what we consider a fraud in this election?”
He then issued a direct warning about the electoral duties of those academics.
“We are saying, as a political party, that none of those 600 professors, and I want to tell [you], none of them should be recruited to serve in the elections, because they have already taken sides by declaring their support for a candidate in this election.”
“Seven Of Us Meeting Under The Coordination Of Kayode Fayemi”
On opposition coordination, the party chieftain disclosed his membership of a group convened by the former Governor of Ekiti State.
“I want to say on record publicly that I am part of the group of opposition candidates, seven of us, meeting under the coordination of Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, to try to work on that, and we are making progress,” he said.
Asked what exactly they were working on, he replied: “Defeating Tinubu.”
Put to him that the former governor is a friend of the President, he did not dispute the association but said it did not trouble him.
“Well, I don’t know. At least he has taken that on oath to himself that he’s coordinating us, and I don’t know him to be an active member of the APC,” he said.
“And even, there are a lot of ministers and governors who are with Tinubu in the day and with us in the night.”
Asked whether that meant there were fifth columnists within the governing party, he said the traffic runs both ways: “[They are] also sending people to destabilise us. We are also doing our best to know his way of thinking.”
Asked what he believed the President was thinking, he answered: “Taking power by force.”
He added, of the President’s stated position on campaigning: “He said he’s not even campaigning. So how do you win an election if you don’t campaign?”
“We Face Tinubu As A Hydra-Headed Snake”
On the repeated calls for the opposition to field a single candidate, the party chieftain said the moment had passed and that it was never his preference.
“Technically, legally, other opposition parties cannot produce one single candidate on the ballot,” he said. “We have gone past that stage. Coalition or whatever cannot happen any longer.”
He explained his objection: “If you allow one candidate against Tinubu, Tinubu will finish him before the day of the election, either with propaganda or using state machinery, ICPC, EFCC, to [spread] information.”
“So my idea has always been that we face Tinubu as a hydra-headed snake. And if, a day to the election, we are convinced that Mr. A or Mr. B is the person that can beat Tinubu, we can just tell our supporters, as is happening all over the world, to vote for that single person. That is the only way to tackle Tinubu politically and defeat him, and I stand by that.”
On The Support Groups And The Party
Asked about the friction between the party’s leadership and the support groups backing its two candidates, the Kwankwasiyya Movement and the Obidient Movement, he set out what he described as the correct position after 48 years of managing political parties and processes.
“Support groups are not even likely to be members of the party, and are not supposed to be. They can carry on their activities independently if they want. But if they subordinate themselves to the party and sign up with the party as a support group of the presidential candidate, or governorship, or senate, or House of Representatives, or House of Assembly candidate, then they have to toe the line of the party.”
He disputed the suggestion that a support group had announced a campaign council for the party. “No, they didn’t announce a campaign council for NDC. What they announced is a campaign council for their own group,” he said, adding: “It depends from which angle anybody is looking at it. I don’t think there is any conflict. Legally, you can support a candidate without being a member of his political party.”
“We Are Harmonising”
He disclosed his own role in the campaign structure.
“For now, for today, I’m the chairman of the coordinating strategic committee of the presidential candidate and his running mate, and we are harmonising issues, because both leaders ran in 2023 on different platforms and they have different blueprints, which we are now harmonising,” he said, adding that he had left that meeting to appear on the programme.
Asked whether the two men were on the same page, he was emphatic. “Never,” he said of the suggestion that their ideas run parallel. “We are harmonising some grey areas, and I’m sure they will accept our recommendation. They are on the same page. They are close to each other every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year of the calendar.”
On the division of labour between them, he said: “It is a single ticket for Nigeria. But obviously, when it comes to issues of knowledge, Peter Obi may be more conversant with issues in Anambra than Kwankwaso, and Kwankwaso may be more conversant with certain issues in Kano than Peter. So they complement each other in every move.”
“We are not going to run a divided government of one belonging to Kwankwaso and one belonging to Peter. No, we are running a Nigerian government. That is why we call this ticket a healing ticket for Nigeria.”
The Three Issues
Pressed to name three issues on which the ticket would seek votes, he listed them.
The first was the healing ticket itself. “We want to carry out surgery on Nigerians so that we become one people. We can never progress if we don’t [act] together. No nepotism. Everything is shared. You get your small share, I get my small share.”
The second was public confidence. “We want to create public confidence in governance, in government, and in the people running our country. Because if there is no confidence in the system, nothing works.”
Asked how that would be achieved, he said: “By doing what is right and to be seen to be doing what is right, whoever’s ox is gored. When [anyone] steals, we will send him to jail, irrespective of his relationship with Galadima.”
He added: “We are telling people now what we are going to do, and they know that they will trust us. There is nobody in Nigeria that does not trust Buba. The only thing they don’t [like] is that I don’t have money that I stole to share to them.”
The third was security. “We are going to bring security such that everybody, without fear or favour, can go about his normal business, go to farm, trade, walk in the night, walk in the day without fear, and there is nobody [who] will intimidate you because you are in the opposition.”
“The Most Clean Politicians”
Asked why Nigerians should trust his candidates over the others, he said their records had been tested.
“Obi and Kwankwaso were people that were assessed, and they have performed in public office, and they have creditably discharged their responsibility. And as I speak to you now, unless somebody is going to manufacture disinformation, they are the most clean politicians.”
“I heard people are talking about Peter will be borrowing money. They didn’t say he stole,” he said.
He contrasted them with others in the race. “But you know, there are people of no fixed address in this race. Nobody knows their name. Nobody knows their village. Nobody knows their parents.”
Asked to name them, he declined: “When you go to the market and ask, some people will volunteer you information.”
On Subsidy
Turning to policy, the party chieftain attacked the promise by the candidate of another opposition party to restore the petrol subsidy, pointing to that candidate’s record in office.
“If somebody comes and tells you ‘I will restore subsidy’, you don’t need to look at his past and his background, you just believe [him]? I thought you knew that the Vice President was the chairman of privatising Nigerian enterprises when he was Vice President. He sold the public assets.”
“And in 2023 he was the first person to please Europe and America. He said he will remove subsidy. Not only remove subsidy, that he will sell NNPC and all assets. Then he concluded that he will even sell the refineries to his friends. What is the roundabout turn? Is that desperation to be president, that he said the impossible?”
He said the promise is meaningless without figures. “Removing subsidy, did he tell you how much he’s going to bring the fuel price to? He has never told you how he’s going to do it.”
He offered an illustration: “If Atiku becomes president and he says he’s going to remove subsidy, and fuel is selling now in my Gashua village for 1,650, and he removes 10 naira and it sells for 1,640 naira per litre, didn’t he remove subsidy technically? And what is 10 naira?”
“A Subsidy Called By Another Name”
The party chieftain went on to argue that no subsidy is in fact being paid, and that the present government makes payments under a different label.
“Do you know that as of now even Tinubu himself pays subsidy, which is called energy security expenses? And in 2023 he paid 5.1 trillion. In 2024 he paid 7.1 trillion. This is [what] you should call him to explain, what energy security expenses mean. It is a subsidy called by another name.”
He said the party’s position is that the entire arrangement is fraudulent. “We don’t even believe now that there is any subsidy. You people are stealing the people’s commonwealth by sharing the money.”
He set out a timetable. “Our belief is that in the past three months of us being in government we can reduce fuel price to a certain level. In six months, when we plug all the loopholes, we would have discovered that there is no subsidy even being paid to anybody.”
He added a comparison: “Before the Iran-America war, fuel was selling for 820 naira. When we investigate and catch people who are stealing our money with subsidy, it may even come down to less than 400,” and said the price could fall to less than a quarter of its present level.
“Leading In Four Of The Six Zones”
On the state of the race, he cited a poll he said was commissioned by one of the presidential candidates.
“One of the presidential candidates organised a national poll recently, and Peter and Kwankwaso came out clearly leading in four zones of the six zones of the country, namely north central, south east, south south and south west. Tinubu came a distant third, with no zone accredited to him.”
He also dismissed the argument that the governing party’s control of 31 states makes it unbeatable. “Which state will APC win on a free and fair election? Count to three,” he said.
He offered a comparative example: “Do you know that Macron won election without a political party when he first ran for president? He had no political structure, no political party. It can happen in Nigeria. Are we different? If there is a free, fair and transparent election.”
“Only God And Tinubu Know What Will Happen”
Asked whether he expects the 2027 election to be free and fair, he was doubtful.
“If you are dealing with criminals and fraudsters like these ones we have, you can’t be sure of anything,” he said. “Only God and Tinubu know what will happen to this election.”
He alleged a pattern of attacks on the opposition. “Can’t you see something happening, that they have coordinated attacks on all the opposition politicians? The other time people were meeting in Enugu, they went and killed about seven, eight people, NDC people. Did you see what happened to Peter himself in Benue? Did you see what happened to the ADC governorship candidate in Kaduna?”
He said the press was not doing enough. “We should be doing more than we are doing, because these criminals don’t want anybody to breathe air.”
Mobilising The Young
The party chieftain said the campaign is targeting young voters.
“The people we are mobilising, the young boys between 18 and 35. We are not talking of people like you,” he told the presenter. “They can say no when it is apparent to them that they are cheated. They will not accept.”
Asked whether that was his target, he said: “Yes. Because they form 65 per cent of the population of Nigerian voters.”
Asked whether he was behind the street campaign calling for the President to go, he replied: “Do I have to be one of them?” adding that those who dismiss such protests do so from comfort. “If you are in our position, you will even mention something beyond ‘who must go’. Go means he will take his leg to go.”
Responding to the governing party’s accusation that opposition figures are instigating and sponsoring young people, he said: “When they want to arrest you, they can say anything against you.” He questioned the government’s standing to prosecute corruption at all, alleging that it is “spending public money without being appropriated for.”
Asked directly whether he was equipping young Nigerians ahead of the election, he declined the framing. “I am more intelligent than that. You can’t get me into that hook, for them to pick me and go and dump [me].”
He noted his own history. “I was tried for treason, put underground. There is nothing I didn’t experience. Thirty-eight times I was arrested, questioned, interrogated, jailed.”
Asked whether the election would go the opposition’s way, he said: “We will force it. We say we will force it.”
A Sharp Exchange
When it was put to him that some analysts believe the President cannot be beaten in 2027, the party chieftain responded in violent terms, saying of anyone who made that claim: “Just find a cutlass and chop off his head.”
The presenter immediately objected that this would be murder. The party chieftain replied: “Somebody who is killing you, if you kill him, what is your offence? Are they not killing us?” before adding that “anybody that tells you that is a fraud.”
On His Own Record
Confronted with the observation that the candidates he supported in 2019 and 2023 lost, he said: “Because they didn’t steal.”
He claimed a record of a different kind. “I had an excellent record of integrity, honesty, intellect. You can’t rule that out from me.”
He said of an earlier period: “I built Buhari from scratch to being president.” On 2019, he maintained that the result was wrongly declared. “I said on this platform several times, it was taken away from him. He won that election. I can bet my life. I can swear by the holy Quran.”
Told he had no evidence, he replied: “It’s the person that sits on the chair that owns it, not the man who bought it.”
He attributed his losses to what he called the Nigerian factor. “I didn’t steal. I don’t have money, and your grandmother can take 20 naira to vote for somebody she has never seen. That’s the Nigerian factor. Not his ability, not what he can do, not his record.”
“He Is From Katsina”
In a closing exchange, the party chieftain responded to a remark by a former Speaker of the House of Representatives and former Governor of Katsina State, whom he described as a prominent friend, to the effect that any northerner who does not support the President is an ingrate.
“Maybe. But I just want to remind him that he’s from Katsina, where every day Katsina people are being displaced and killed, and himself and his friend Tinubu did nothing,” he said.
His central claim, repeated through the interview, was conditional.
“Obi and Kwankwaso will win this election if it is free, fair and transparent, unless somebody decides to use the machinery of government and take it away from them,” he said.
... “We Don’t Know What They Are Doing” — Galadima Questions Tinubu, INEC Chairman’s Reported France Meeting, Raises Electoral Concerns ... TheNigeriaLawyer.