Are you saying this because of your long time relationship with the president, although you are no longer together?
It is Buhari’s handiwork, not Emefiele’s.
So the claim by APC governors that Emefiele is behind it is not true?
It is because they don’t want to attack the president; they are attacking the messenger.
But why are they doing that?
It is because Emefiele is gajeriyar danga (short fence), which is the easiest place to jump to the other side.
Our presidential candidate and leader (Kwankwaso) has said he is begging Mr President, for the sake of that man with N1,000 in a faraway Tulotulo. Let them extend the time. The president listened and extended the deadline by 10 days, but that was not enough.
Our candidate said there was no need for an ordinary man to lose his legitimate earnings; God will not forgive Nigeria if that happens. He said that when he wins the presidential election, let everybody go to the bank and get his money exchanged. And unless there is something unusual, there is manipulation and rigging, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso will win the election on February 25, 2023.
banks. Before the news ended, another message came, a special announcement, that he thereby dismissed the chairman of that local community.
With military dispatch?
Yes, it happened.
It is believed that President Buhari doesn’t listen to advice, do you think these meetings he has been having with some people would change anything?
Well, whether he listens or not, he is in charge; and history will judge him. When Buhari came out, nobody that had an experience of his regime in 1983 would have touched him with a long spoon. We know the kind of brain work we did in order for him to be accepted by the masses because of his high-handedness during his regime.
Are you surprised at some of these things that are happening?
I am not surprised because I knew he would do that.
Is it good for Nigeria’s nascent democracy?
We thought he had reformed, but when he started manifesting his old self, it didn’t surprise us; that’s why we left.
People are saying that what is happening is actually a recipe for chaos because we have less than three weeks to the elections and money and fuel are not there; is the president not worried?
No. He is falling into the trap of some powerful people who do not believe that elections should hold. They are already working on an interim government.
Do you also believe in that?
They want to portray him as a failure that could not even organise a successful transition, having failed in the administration of the country for eight years. They will cause problems for him, and it would be self-inflicted.
We are seeing pockets of protests, especially in the South, people attacking banks, some even made attempts to attack a CBN branch; are you worried?
Are these not the problems of the masses?
But will the masses give you the Villa?
Are you telling me that it is not one man, one vote?
You followed Buhari in 2003 but he didn’t win until he reached out to other regions; how is your party reaching out now?
We are doing what we are doing. We will go from village to village, hamlet to hamlet, ward to ward, local government to local government, state to state, even by road, to meet the people because we believe we were told that their votes would count.
No, I have my reason why I’m saying this because you were with Buhari in 2003; you were with him in 2007; you were with him in 2011 and you have done all the campaigns by road and Buhari could not get the presidency until he stretched his hands across the Niger to go into alliance with Tinubu and others in 2015…
Until they used the card reader…The card reader, the card reader, God gave him (Buhari) the presidency through the card reader.
Not his relationship with Tinubu?
No, how many votes did Tinubu bring? The whole of South West, the difference between APC and PDP…
Tinubu brought a lot of votes from the South West for Buhari.
The whole is 100,000 votes. We, without money, without the press, without anything were getting 12.5million vote for Buhari every election.
So the much-hyped relationships across Niger is not valid?
All of them, including the governors and Tinubu, added only 2.8 million votes.
But was that not what made him president? He couldn’t make it all those years.
If you subtract the ones we have been bringing without them, could he be a counsellor?
