Eze: Some Northern Groups Are Up against Tinubu’s Re-election

A retired diplomat and chieftain of All Progressive Congress, Ambassador Simon Ejike Eze, in this interview hails President Bola Tinubu’s reforms of the nation’s economy and giant strides in curbing insecurity across the federation. He speaks on other national issues, including gang up by some Northern Groups against the re-election of President Tinubu come 2027. Linus Eleke brings excerpts:

The opposition is working hard to ensure that President Bola Tinubu loses his second-term bid, and that informed the current coalitions moves. What is your take on this?

My candid opinion is that the presidential election will come, but for us in the All Progressive Congress (APC), and of course, our performing President, there is no vacancy in Aso Rock in 2027. He is the only candidate we have for now, and I’m sure the party, APC, will still nominate him for the 2027 Presidential election. I believe that he has done so much for the country that most Nigerians, if not all, will vote for him for a second term because he has done well.

He has done credibly well in just a little more than two years in his first term.

Some Nigerians might feel he doesn’t deserve a second term owing to complaints in certain quarters that there are increases in hunger, poverty, and a spike in insecurity.

Why do you feel he deserves a second term?

This is a good question. You know, even Mr President himself acknowledges the hardship in the country today. But this hardship is a result of one or two things that he inherited as the president, in terms of the economy, insecurity, and reforms. He said from day one that if all the presidential candidates agreed while campaigning that the fuel subsidy was a scam and had to go, why is there a coordinated attack on his person and his administration now for removing the subsidy? It was necessary that he remove the subsidy to save the country from the fraud that characterized the scheme. Recall also that the ex-President Buhari did not even make provision for the subsidy beyond May 2023. So in June, it had already gone, even without his pronouncing it. So the bold statement he made on the day he was sworn in that the fuel subsidy is gone was a courageous one and, of course, a good omen for the country.

Today, you can see the impact of that removal of the fuel subsidy everywhere you go. Again, there are a lot of programmes now aimed at restructuring the country. We need fiscal federalism to develop and become as great as we all desire. What people don’t know about development in a country is that it doesn’t come without pain, just like childbirth; it will be painful, but after that comes the joy. Even plants you put on the ground will die first before they produce new fruits. That was why Jesus said that until a grain dies, it remains a single grain, but when it dies, it yields a rich harvest. The process of death brings pain, but again, it is a gateway to abundance, prosperity, stability, development, and happiness.

The President is not unaware of this. All Nigerians acknowledge the fact that things are difficult. But the government is on top of the situation, making every effort to see that the situation is improved.

Looking at the coalition, there are politicians in their midst who cannot be dismissed with a pinch of salt. Peter Obi, for instance is now a force to contend with, do you think the coalition is a better option for him going into the 2027 presidential race?

The project to become President of Nigeria by any Nigerian from any part of Nigeria is not a one-day or a two-month or a one-year project. Many of these people you see who have become presidents planned to become presidents. They planned their campaigns and programmes years before they became the president. And Obi just came to the national limelight in 2023.

He needs to build on that, and how will he build on that? By continuing to persevere on his own and carrying his people along. Everybody knows that the presidency has gone to the Yoruba before, as a military Head of State, as a civilian president, and again as vice president, and now as civilian president in the person of President Bola Tinubu.

So the Southwest has had its fair share. But this thing did not come to them from nowhere. It came from a painstaking plan. Abiola started it. They denied him. They compensated Obasanjo with it because of the Southwest. And then Obasanjo finished, another Yoruba man became the vice president, and now the president.

Even President Bola Tinubu, whom we are talking about today, it took him over 25 years to plan to become the President of Nigeria. That was why he said at the point in time, “It is my turn.” So my advice to Obi is for him to be patient and persistent. I respect him as a person. He has a bright future ahead of him. He is competent. He has all the characteristics to make a good president.

But then the entire Southeast elders have to sit down and begin to look at these issues.

Now, President Tinubu is the President of Nigeria, and there is a gang-up from sections of the North.

Nevertheless, we must respect this rotational presidency in the Nigerian political system. Eight years in the North and eight years in the South. Now it is the turn of the South, and a Southerner is occupying that post for now in the person of President Tinubu. I believe it is a sacred duty for all Southerners to rally around him to complete his tenure of eight years. Then it will come to be the turn of the North. When they finish their turn after eight years, then it will return again to the South. I believe if the Igbos, as a people, get themselves coordinated, start talking about the year that the presidency will come back to the South, and how we can project a single or two candidates before all Nigerians, because by then everybody would have been saying, “Look, this time it is the turn of the Igbos.” Because the South-South has had its turn in President Jonathan, and the Southwest has had its turn in Obasanjo, Osibanjo, and President Tinubu.

But the people who have not had their turn in the modern dispensation are the Igbos and these are the people who actually hold the unity of this country because they are everywhere. I’m talking as an Igbo man now. Everywhere you go in Nigeria, the Igbo man is the second most populated ethnic nationality outside the aborigines. The indigenous people come first. Second is the Igbo.

No other tribe has that in all parts of Nigeria. So I believe Tinubu should have a second term. Peter Obi has a right to contest, no doubt about that, but President Tinubu deserves a second term. His second-term bid should not be truncated by a fellow Southerner.

When you spoke about a gang-up by a section of the country against Tinubu’s second-term bid, are you saying that the gang-up is aimed at truncating the North and South zoning arrangement?

Yes, though the arrangement is not constitutional but conventional, it should not be truncated. Though we still have freedom of association as entrenched in our constitution, and freedom to aspire to any political position.

But then, to have peace and security in this country, there is a need for us to agree that this presidency must rotate between the North and the South. That is the only way this country can be very stable.

And by the way, when some Northerners begin to say that they want to take power from a Southern president, I begin to wonder. All the military presidents were Northerners, almost.

And how many years have the North been in power? We have to consider all these things before making certain public statements that could be misconstrued by a section of the country. We are not talking about just being in power. We are talking about being in power and being able to turn around the society for the betterment of the people. We are talking about leadership that leads to the development of the people.

Change is what we are asking for. The issue is that people believe that some presidents did not do well, and some have done well. There is no part of this country where you don’t have competent leaders. Bring competent leaders who can do something.

I’ll give you one typical example. What is happening in the FCT now, with NyesomWike as Minister, compare it to what happened with the Minister who was there when Buhari was president for eight years. The two years of Wike’s ministerial position in the FCT far outperform the eight years of Buhari’s minister. Compare and contrast the two, and you see the clear difference. So it’s not about who is going to come. It’s about who will come and get things done the way it’s supposed to be done in other climes of the world.

You praised the removal of the oil subsidy. What are some of its noticeable benefits to Nigerians?

The removal of the fuel subsidy by the government is having a tremendous impact on the economy. Before the removal of the subsidy, we used to buy fuel in my part of the country for between N1,250 and N1,300. Even at that, the supply was erratic. Now, with the government’s policies in the downstream sector of the petroleum industry, we find that the issues of queues and petroleum scarcity are gone. There is competition now. We see different prices with little margin. That is how it is done.

We find that now, petrol is sold for between N850 to N950, at worst N1,000. In the East, where I recently came back from, it is sold at N910, just like in Abuja. There are no longer fuel queues and scarcity. This is due to the President’s enablement through his programmes on the Naira for petroleum crude. The President’s Naira for crude policy is yielding its desired results. The Dangote refinery is saying now that it will begin to distribute fuel directly to filling stations across Nigeria. I heard in the press that Dangote has purchased almost 4,000 trucks, which will be used. Now, competition will begin. When the refineries that are working now, the government-owned refineries that are still erratic, are able to be given to the private sector, and all the refineries start operating optimally, we will find that the price of petroleum products in Nigeria will crash.

Again, due to the government’s policies on agriculture, we find that whatever we produce today attracts a lot of money. If it is cassava we are producing, the market is there. If it is products like beans and rice that we produce on the farm, they are selling at very attractive prices. Our people need to not only go back to the farm but start a programme like what we used to have, the Green Revolution.

This is because in my part of the world, there is something we drink, palm wine. Any serious palm wine tapper is now a millionaire. The cost of palm wine per five litres used to be N3,000 or N4,000, but today, it is between N15,000 and N20,000 in some areas. The same applies to other agricultural products, whether it is onions or tomatoes. Whatever we can produce by going back to the farm gives us a lot of opportunity to get enough money to take care of our family.

As for the government’s foreign exchange policy, we find that the unification of the official rates and the black market rates is almost concluded. The gap is closing, and that is impacting the economy itself. Because right now, foreign investors can come. They know that they can get their dollars from official sources at very good prices. Unlike before, when they came, they wouldn’t want to go to the black market because they wouldn’t know what the price will be for each day. They can now buy and exchange their dollars at the official rates, which are almost the same as the black market rates. This is helping the economy in many ways.

What do you think the government can do to really curtail this resurgence of massive killing by herdsmen and bandits in North Central, particularly in Benue, Plateau, and lately Niger State?

The President, I’m sure, is thinking of a different approach to these issues of insecurity in the whole country. That was why, when this attack in Benue happened, he was there personally, and he stood up the Inspector General of Police and asked him questions. The question he asked had a lot of meanings. It went a long way to tell them that this man had started probing their activities. He asked him, why the perpetrators of this crime had not been apprehended. He asked the Chief of Defence Staff, and he asked the Director of DSS and ordered them to do something urgently. We know that the political will of a leader to stop one issue or to begin another is the key to the success of that issue. I believe that non-state actors cannot take Nigeria away from us when the state actors, who are fully prepared, fully trained, and fully equipped to tackle these issues, are there, in collaboration with the local people. So, I believe the President is on the right trajectory by beginning to task his security heads critical questions in public. “What is this that has happened, and why has it happened? Why have you not been able to do something?” In order not to be asked this question again, I am very sure that military and security chiefs are interested now in getting to the root of every problem, to nip it in the bud before it happens. They are doing their best.

You know, one thing about security again is that it is not only when you hear that something has happened that you think they are doing nothing. When they nip a problem in the bud, nobody knows about that. They are there every day. Their men are there in the field. By putting security men on the road, you do not know the nature of crimes they are preventing. But it is only when one comes out openly that we begin to talk. They are doing their best. There is nobody who is in the Army, Navy, Air Force, or in the Police who is not doing whatever we think should be done. If they have gotten the enablement to do their work, they are doing their best.

The only thing is that these things are beyond ordinary insecurity. Some of these things are planned ahead of the attack, so people don’t believe that such a thing could happen.

Like the Governor of Benue State and his predecessor, Samuel Ortom, said on national television recently that this is not about coming to attack them. It’s about other things, like coming to take over their land, and these are areas where the government must come in and be decisive.

Our borders are porous. You know that because of the affiliation, the affinity between us and some of the neighbouring countries, it is not easy to tell somebody who is a Nigerian from somebody from Niger Republic because we both share one language, Hausa. They also  share a similar physique with our Northern brothers. They are from almost the same ethnic background, but separated by countries.

So the thing we need to do is to even begin now to work hard on our borders, if need be, put up a wall like Mexico and America, so that entry and exit into our country will be properly manned by security officers.

But for now, the security agencies are doing their best. They are on it, and I believe that because they are working hard, even this kidnapping is coming down. I travel by road these days. I don’t fear because everywhere you go, you see security men on the road, and the government is also thinking more now about what happens in our forests by creating the Forest Guard, the Nigerian Forest Security Services. There is an order that every state should employ Forest Guards, and it is in process. When we are in total control of our forests, it will reduce criminality because these people don’t live with us, they occupy the forests. They are itinerant people who carry arms, and then we must also check the influx of unauthorised arms and ammunition into the country in the hands of these bandits. Because if you go to Niger Republic and Libya with your money, you can buy all these weapons, and that is what they do, and then they come into this place. So the government is doing well, relating with the security agencies, and I believe the insecurity in the country is coming down.

The opposition has accused President Tinubu of trying to plunge Nigeria into a one-party state, which could lead to fascism. Are you worried about that as a politician?

Nigeria will never become a one-party state. Take this from me. But the truth is this. The genesis of all the crises we have in the PDP started with the issue of the rotation of the presidency. That’s the genesis. If the PDP had fielded a presidential candidate, no matter who he is from the South, this crisis would not have destroyed the PDP the way it has done. So it goes back to what I said earlier on. To keep this country united, we must rotate the presidency between the North and the South. And when a non-Southerner, in collaboration with some Southerners, because a Southerner was also his Vice President, went and contested against a Southern President, knowing fully well it was the turn of the South, that is what happened. So that problem in the PDP that led to what they are today is just because they refused to adhere to the simple convention of the system.

Be that as it may, I believe the coalition may not get anywhere. But they are not going to win the presidency. But if they get their acts together, they will get some states and some seats in the parliament. There’s no doubt about that. And then the remaining part of the PDP will also retain their seats. So there will also be opposition. The PDP, if they have a candidate for the presidential election, can also try. What we are saying is that the PDP is still formidable up to this moment because they still have up to eight or ten governors.  Many more may like to defect because they have seen that if, being in power for all these number of years, they have not been able to do what the people want them to do, if they go to election without going with popular parties, they will lose. Because everybody believes now that the PDP is almost a non-existent party. But it is there. It’s not going to be a one-party state. And like the President said, if you are being drawn into the sea with no life jacket, you will look for a life jacket anywhere so that you do not get drowned.

So, I believe that there will be no one-party state. The APC will not win all the elections. They cannot even win all the Senate and House of Representatives elections.

The Labour Party, depending on what they do with themselves, because they also have a crisis, will also win elections. Peter Obi came out in the last election, and many lawmakers won elections on the platform of the Labour Party. Now that they have some structures, even though they didn’t manage their structure very well, that is why most of the people that won elections under the Labour Party have left the Labour Party and gone back to the PDP. So the PDP is on its own, and people are coming. A good man, a good party will not drive anybody who wants to join them away to develop the country.