2027: Some APC govs won’t vote for Tinubu –Gaiya, ADC senatorial candidate

•Many in opposition still sceptical of INEC

From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

Hon Godfrey Gaiya, Southern Kaduna senatorial district candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has dismissed the notion that state governors under the All Progressives Congress (APC) umbrella will facilitate the victory of President Bola Tinubu in next year’s presidential election, arguing that many of them will not even vote for the president.

Speaking to Sunday Sun, the former Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Sports in the 6th and 7th Assemblies, equally confirmed that there is a high-level conspiracy in northern Nigeria to vote against President Tinubu for making life very unbearable for the people of the regions.
He spoke on this and other issues in this interview.

What edge do you think ADC will have over APC, particularly in the presidential election next year?

Talking about Atiku having an edge over Tinubu, we know that Nigerians have witnessed four years or above three years of total misrule by the same APC leadership under Tinubu. Nigerians have gone through what I will call hell.

The living standard of an average Nigerian has fallen, and affording what to eat in Nigeria has become a tug of war. People cannot move; there is no decency, even where they live.

In the last four years or so, we have been reduced to subhuman by one man called Tinubu. And if Nigeria must look forward, if Nigeria must recover from the years of disaster of the APC, it is only natural that Nigerians should take their faith into their hands and decide for themselves now that the way out is to go the way of the ADC.

And the ADC, not just by slogan, is calling Nigerians to arise, shine, and take over the country, because Nigeria is sliding down. We are heading to an abyss, and very soon if no captain can veer us off the iceberg, Nigeria will crash, and many countries that look up to Nigeria as some form of a giant, particularly in Africa, will not forgive us. History too will not forgive us.

Thank God we have a way of correcting it, and that way is coming on January 16, 2027. Nigerians will come out despite intimidation, despite attempts to buy out everybody, despite coercion and attacks. Nigerians know that the time has come, and that nobody else can do it for us; we will do it ourselves. Thank God for the ballot to decide, and we will definitely decide in favour of the ADC.

The presidential election is likely going to be a three-horse race: Tinubu, Atiku, and Obi. What will place each other above the others?

Having failed Nigerians, the APC candidate, Tinubu, is completely out of it. For me, it comes down to the NDC and the ADC. Of course, the ADC and the NDC were together. If wishes were horses, the NDC shouldn’t have been. They would have been together under the ADC.

But of course, disagreements come in politics, ambition comes in politics, and when ambition and/or interest clash, there will definitely be divisions. The NDC is not with us; it would have been better if they were with us.

Obi, by his rating, his person, or personality, is not a pushover. But why I give the ADC the edge is that the NDC started a bit late, as an offshoot of the ADC, and the NDC also started with persons that may not really have the sympathy of the electorate.

Persons that have been there before, who have carved a kind of a niche to themselves, who, even when they said they are not in NDC, the blend does not speak well about the union. The majority are sceptical that the real blending is subject to doubt. That again may not work for the NDC.

But like I said, Obi as a person is perfect. He is good. My dream, when we were all together in ADC, was that Obi would deputise Atiku, and if that had happened, we would have been celebrating victory months ago. But that, of course, has not happened.

We still have hope that in politics, it is said, nothing is over until over. The room is still very wide open. We are still talking. We didn’t part ways in acrimony. We parted ways at very good friends and as Nigerians who have the same ambition of making Nigeria a better place.

Atiku wants Nigeria to be better; same thing with Obi. So, since we have the same dream, I believe, as they say, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. I see ADC and NDC as friends, and I still have the hope that before January 16, next year, something can happen. And if it does not happen, I just have that feeling that the ADC may still be giving the go-ahead to lead.

Since NDC opted to stand alone, do you still see an Obi wave in 2027?

In every wave over the election year, there is always what they call a tsunami, whirlwind, a harmattan, or something that will just blow across the landscape and leave some outstanding impression or some unforgettable landmarks. In politics, everything is possible.

There was a tsunami for the Labour Party when it came out of nowhere many years ago and made an impact. Sincerely, nobody gave LP the chance. If 2027 comes, there may be a possibility of another tsunami. But the tsunami that will come may not be the LP type of tsunami.

It may be the tsunami that Nigeria will say, “Let us go for a party that has a better national spread. That even if we have the majority number of votes, we may not have the spread in terms of 25 per cent, and that is why I still think that the ADC has an edge.

The gap may be very tight in the total number of votes, but then the spread. Some people believe, as I said initially, that some of the people working alongside Obi do not have the faith in their people and subjects that they had before. When it comes to making such a choice, that element of distrust may affect the NDC.

What do you say of the complaint by some Nigerians that Atiku becoming a serial contestant may count against him?

As I said, ambition is ambition, and once you are alive with a dream, and that dream has not been fulfilled, chances are that you keep pushing for it. That makes a man. He must live his dream. A man must do all within his limits or legality to pursue what he believes is possibly due to him.

Atiku has been a serial contestant, but the good thing about him is that he has not diminished his faith in his reasons for contesting. He believes that he remains the last man standing to make Nigeria better. Some people had that kind of ambition, and at one point, people were saying that, if, for example, Buhari never won, Nigerians would have been worshiping him even at death. He came, and we saw.

Atiku has the same dream. He believes very seriously that he has something different that no other person has done. My take is that let Nigeria also give him that opportunity. If this man had tenaciously been fighting because he believed seriously in something to do, let us see that something.

That may equally play out well for him. So, looking at it that way is a plus. Looking at it as a serial contestant, to some people, may be a minus, but for me, it is a plus because let us give the 70-something-year-old man who wants to go for only one tenure, and let us see what he does in four years.

What is the truth in the claim that there is a northern conspiracy and consensus to move against APC?

That consensus is real. It is not because of any reason other than the fact that the APC has been the most unfair party to an average northerner. The ones you see near the presidency and the power, count them on your fingers; they are not up to the number that constitutes the majority of people living in abject poverty.

The North is now the headquarters of poverty in Nigeria despite being exposed to power for years. As it is now, many families in the north cannot feed. The insecurity and banditry are worse in the north. There is nothing good happening in the North now. It will be unexpected for an average northerner to go through the same route for another four years.

People are even praying that his tenure should come to a very fast end, so that something new, something positive, something that can touch the lives of the people to make them know that indeed they are Nigerians that can come on board.

But the body language of Tinubu, the body language of his government, the policies of his government, what he is doing to Nigerians, particularly the north, does not give us any hope.

The vote of no confidence is for real. It is what will happen. It is already happening. Let December come when the campaigns become door-to-door; there are some areas that the APC banner cannot even cross.

Where are APC leaders getting the confidence from that the party will win the presidential election?

My confidence is predicated on two things. They want to rig the election. They want to rig it. From the beginning of the appointment of the INEC chairman to the way they were trying to navigate and disadvantage political parties from even being allowed to contest, you can see that they never meant well.

They thought that by now Nigeria would be a one-party state, where only APC would stand in the presidential election. That had been their hope. Now, knowing the reality that INEC has published a list of parties qualified to contest, they are having very sleepless nights.

The confidence is failing and is shattering very fast. But, by the time we get to December, if you see APC campaigning, then ask me again, where is the confidence that they were exhibiting before.

The second reason is that they believe they have stolen money enough to buy voters that they have subjected to four years of hunger to the point that if somebody sees N10,000, it will be like a life-saving opportunity. Many can sell their birthrights and future for N10,000.

But we are encouraging Nigerians that N10,000 in Tinubu’s economy cannot buy more than two loaves of bread very soon. And if you have a family of four, that loaf of bread will finish in one single meal. You can even eat it without a meal. So why do we mortgage another four years that will be worse?

If Tinubu has failed woefully in his first tenure, the second tenure, where he has no hope of coming back, would be worse. If he has caned Nigerians with a horsewhip now, he will cane them with a chain in his next tenure, and then we will cry and say, if we had known.

Nigerians have every reason to open our eyes and see that whatever shenanigans they come with, whatever diabolical means they come with, we must stand strong and say no to the government that has been very unfair in the history of Nigeria.

Where is your confidence that APC will be rejected coming from when it has 32 governors to win the election for Tinubu?

The confidence is that they forgot that 32 governors can only translate to 32 votes. Why we are not afraid is that those governors are also facing a tsunami in all their states. What is happening at the national stage is even worse at the subnational levels. Every allocation is being taken away by the governors.

Many of them are preparing for their last days in office. They want to have pension and gratuity from funds meant for the citizens. The hatred to the government of APC is even worse in the states. When we hear that the governors are the leaders of Tinubu’s campaign in their various states, we rejoice and laugh at them to skunk

They don’t like the Papa Ajasko and the Papalolos we see on the street. They are jesters and like masquerades to make us laugh and clap. We don’t lose sleep over the fact that governors have those numbers. The size means nothing to us. I am telling you, even among the 32, some of them will not vote for Tinubu.

I can swear that some of them will never. So, when they are posturing as APC in the afternoon, they are ADC at night. Assuming there is a separate ballot box for the governors, the APC will be shocked that they will not get up to 32 votes. We are surprised that they sit close to the old man in the Aso Rock Villa, and he doesn’t seem to see it.

He must have been carried away by the kind of sycophancy and sweet talk he hears from the mouths of a few. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, sycophancy is key, and people in power, like Tinubu, believe in sycophancy just like the state governors. The governors are hallelujah boys. At the end of the day, they want to live in peace with the stolen ill-gotten wealth.

With the release of the final list of candidates, should we begin to applaud and pass a vote of confidence in INEC?

When you are pushed to the wall, without any exit to manoeuvre, when you know that all the forces you think you can intimidate have put their houses in order, and you have become the common denominator or common enemy, you have no choice but to do the right thing.

The way INEC started, if we have, in any way, blinkered, we will not be talking about multi-party in the ballot box by now. But when they came, the other political parties, the opposition joint forces, had insisted that INEC had no choice but to do what was right.

The fact that they are doing the right thing does not mean anything. They are only discharging their constitutional responsibilities. Of course, I am happy because it ended on a very peaceful note. They know the repercussions of not doing the right thing. It would have ended in a very sad, very harsh, very violent manner, and I always prefer peace to violence.

Since they have heeded the warning and have accurately read the sign to know that anything less than doing what is right will spell doom and disaster for Nigeria. But we are not celebrating it and saying that INEC has done what you have been given an appointment to do. If you don’t do the assignment, you should resign.

If you do well, it is not for me to clap for you for doing what it is assigned to do. We will keep watching. We are not, even for one day, carried away by what they have done. We still believe there is a mischief that we are yet trying to uncover. As long as the end exists, we, in the opposition, will never sleep until the last day the winner is announced, who emerged from a free, fair, and transparent election.

Any other thing now is what they call in Pidgin English gbujugbuju. We want to see that the real thing is done, and at the end, the real winner is announced without any change, no alteration, and nothing to suggest that something untoward was done. That is what we are waiting for.

Do you feel that INEC may not conduct a free, fair, transparent election next year?

INEC, as presently established and constituted, has no reason not to conduct a free and fair election. Whatever needs made to the National Assembly, the same has been obliged. Whatever monetary requirement they need to conduct a free and fair election has been given.

INEC, as we talk about today, has no reason not to hold a free and fair election. They have been denied nothing. But the human factor is there. The man who appointed the INEC chairman is also a contestant. The total independence of INEC is still questionable to some of us.

We hear what they say, and sometimes it is at variance with the constitution setting up INEC. We have seen a kind of tilt and bend towards the powers that be. If truly the word is independent, we still have a question mark on that word, independence of INEC.

We will look at it. We have no other place to go than to sit and expect INEC to do the right thing. But in expecting it to do so, we too, as participants, call on foreign, independent observers, Civil Society Organisations to join the opposition parties in ensuring that, as Nigerians, we have no other place to run to.

We don’t want Nigeria to break because of INEC; nobody prays for that. So, it is a responsibility for all and sundry to ensure that INEC, having given all that they require, should do the right thing, or actually seem to be doing the right thing.

What are your real fears for the 2027 general elections?

Well, my fear naturally is not whether we will win or not win. We will win, but, of course, like I said earlier, if there is a human factor in any enterprise, knowing full well that there is no perfect human, because none is God. INEC is made up of human beings.

As I have confidence in winning, I know the pressure they are going through not to allow me to win. So, if the pressure they have not to allow me to win overpowers my own confidence in knowing that I will win, then there will be a problem. And that is why I have noticed that the government of the day has mapped out so many budgetary allocations for court matters on electoral issues.

If they have already allocated money to fight after the election, it means something may not go well with the election. That gives me some little concern. If they are already setting aside that kind of hundreds of billions of funds for litigation on electoral matters, it means they don’t intend to do a perfect job, and that is where we must put our heads together to monitor and ensure that the right things are done.

Do you have sympathy for your colleagues at the 10th National Assembly, because most of them, especially in APC, shot themselves in the foot?

I don’t have any iota of sympathy for them. If I had, I would have been supporting them to continue. But because, glaringly, the 10th Assembly has not delivered up to the expectations of what a lawmaker should be.

The seeming merger between the executive and the legislator, the way bills are rushed to favour the executive, the way even the debates are conducted on the floor of the chambers, the way projects are not supervised, the way budgets, for three years, run concurrently that they don’t even know which one to monitor, do not give me confidence that they actually know what they are doing.

That is why the 11th Assembly is loaded with candidates that I have seen understand lawmaking, who said we will not rest when we come back to do the right thing. That is behind the reasoning that the 6th and the 7th Assemblies were the best we have ever had. What is happening now is that instead of becoming older and becoming more mature, we have become more amateurish and childish.

If I tell you now that I am happy with what the 10th Assembly has done so far, I will be lying to you. If I am happy, I will be supporting my incumbent member or senator to continue. But because they have failed to deliver the true meaning of parliamentary work, we are coming out of retirement to rescue the situation.

What are the mathematical chances of you winning your senatorial ticket?

I am a student of mathematics and sciences. My chances are that I am going to win. The winning chance could be 100 per cent, could be 90 per cent, could be 51 per cent. What I do know is that I stand a chance of winning. I will not put the percentage.

How strong is your opponent, and how challenging will winning him be?

I really don’t want to compare because psychology tells me that comparing myself with another person makes me unwise. I know what I am capable of doing. I know what I can deliver if I am elected, and I am happy because I have been there before. The comparison should be left to the voters. They have seen it.

They know the man there now. The chances are that the voters know who has been there for them and who will be there for them again if given an opportunity. I am very comfortable that, given the chances, given my experience, given my historical background as a former legislator for eight years, on the same catchment, my people are not that very daft not to know what is good for them.

From the months I have gone around to interact with my people, they have shown me the kind of love and vivid memory of that which transpired during my 6th and 7th Assemblies. They will tell you, it was the best era of parliamentary business in Nigeria. Most of them look forward again to seeing a revisit of similar legislation.

It is good that we are willing, and they are also willing to support us. The man there now spent four years in the House of Reps, and now is getting four years in the Senate. So, in comparison, we have all had eight years of legislative exposure. Our people see, read, watch, and I know they have a scorecard between him and me. The time they will mark and think of the good and the bad, I am sure that at the end, I will certainly flush him.

Where are you deriving your confidence from, especially as the government in power may unleash forces against you?

Well, that would be unfortunate if they do. And since they say that a stitch in time saves nine, my appeal will be to the security agencies. We all have our constitutional mandates, and they should know that their job is to protect the citizen and not to batter them.

But I want to quote my former president, Goodluck Jonathan, who said that his ambition is not worth the drop of blood of any citizen. If we believe, and practically demonstrate, that even when the heat is still on, we must go to history, learn from history, and do the right thing.

The security agencies have no reason to take the law into their hands to favour a single individual. After all, if it is not there, Nigeria should continue. So, we must do our job professionally, from the police to the Civil Defence or whoever is in charge. Let us protect Nigeria by allowing citizens to carry out their civil responsibility without molestation. When that is done, we will coast to victory.

How will history remember President Tinubu if he bows out today or later?

He will have a very bad chapter in history. A very bad chapter as the man who came with full assurance of doing good but left after failing woefully. That is what history will record for him. He is the man who came, and till today, Nigerians are still debating his true identity. Nigerians are still debating whether he is Tinubu who was abroad or Tinubu who is the president. If there is any controversial reason about a human being, if he leaves, many will thank God that finally the bad man has gone. That will be the testimony for him.

Being in touch with the masses, do you feel the pains of what Nigerians are going through?

Very much. I go home often, and hardly can anyone find me in Abuja on weekends. I know what the masses are passing through. Even I have drastically reduced the quality of what I used to eat so that I can have enough to share with people. If I insist on eating my normal diet plus two pieces of meat, I won’t be fair to the other person who has not even seen food, let alone a piece of meat.

In line with what I see, I have also adjusted to accommodate more. The fact is that poverty is real; I witnessed it more at home, I live in it, and live with it. There is no pretence because the pain of hunger is real, except for those who have not gone to the rural areas where it is worse.

Even in Abuja, it is real. If you move away from Maitama, Asokoro, and maybe Guzape, towards Masaka, Kubwa, Kuje, and other outskirts of the FCT, you will see the actual poverty I am talking about.

People now eat from the dustbin, and even when they deny it, we know that people still do that. If you wake up early as I do, you will see people looking at our dustbins. Most of the time, they are disappointed because the dustbins are empty these days to feed hungry Nigerians.

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