How I’ll Defeat Buhari And Atiku – Peoples Trust Presidential Candidate

How I’ll Defeat Buhari And Atiku – Peoples Trust Presidential Candidate

PT: When you were coming back after some years in Britain, you were returning to politics, the expectation was that you were going to return to your own party, the PDP which seemed at the time to be preparing very hard to dislodge the APC in the coming election. What changed?

Olawepo-Hashim: They were preparing to dislodge APC but they were not preparing to solve the problem of economic under-development; they were not preparing to deal with the ethical crisis that the country is in right now; they were not preparing to fix education; they were not preparing to fix infrastructure.

As a matter of fact, these ones preparing are parts of the problem. You know that I left PDP in 2006. You knew the circumstances that led to me leaving that party and you also know, because you have been around as a reporter for a while, that the PDP that we formed is not that PDP that we have today.

You know the PDP that we formed was led by honest Nigerians who wanted the military to go and who wanted to build a humane society. These were leaders who were accomplished, cerebral. I was one of the youngest of them at that time. We were inspired by their examples.

For instance, Solomon Lar. He had been governor. A lot of the infrastructure in Plateau State were developed between Dan Suleiman governance and Lar’s After that you could hardly count anything until Jonah Jang came and also did some infrastructure. But those intervening periods, there was just nothing in Plateau.

You can imagine that Solomon Lar died without having a piece of land or a house in Abuja. That is to tell you the selfless style of those leaders. They were not really taken into material accumulation and we were inspired by their good examples, by their courage for the country, by their discipline.

But immediately after we formed government in year 2000, there was a clique in the Presidential Villa headed by the man who wants to be president again now, who was running riot to make sure that all the founders of the party were sacked from the party. And then they created alliances with people who were not part of our struggle to end military rule, people who lacked values, people who lacked ethics, but who could support them to just do anything they wanted to do.

So the PDP became another party entirely. It was not the party that we formed. And then it continuously degenerated until the country was tired of it and justifiably most of the electorate removed the PDP from power in 2015 because it did not deserve as a party to continue in government.

Unfortunately there was no prepared alternative to replace the PDP. The anger against the PDP was such that people who were saying anyone but Jonathan. That was what people were saying. And that is how the APC came in. So I told myself right from 2015 that as long as I live in this country, I think it will not be nice to put the country in such jeopardy where election will be ‘any idiot but the incumbent’.

There must be clear choices based on programme, based on history, and based on policy platform that the electorate should be offered. But if they choose not to take the credible alternative then it will be fair for them to live with the consequence of their choice. But for those of us who have had the benefit of having proper education and who God has been good to and who are in the position to offer alternative, we will not be doing our duty to the country not to offer the electorate the opportunity to make such alternative. I think this is one of the driving force.

PT: Were you not one of those ‘Atiku boys’ back then?

Olawepo-Hashim: No, I was never an Atiku boy. How can I be an Atiku boy? I can’t be an Atiku boy. If you know my history then you will not even venture to say “are you not one of Atiku’s boys?” Number one, we had never been in the same political platform. When we were in PDP, I was of the progressive stock and he was in the Yar’Adua group and they have their own philosophy which is just to organise and take power for whatever reason – just take power, anyhow just take power. We are progressives. We don’t share the same political history.

PT: What is your history?

Olawepo-Hashim: Well, you have sufficient materials on that.

PT: But people who want to vote for you want to know.

Olawepo-Hashim: Well, you know it is a fair statement; your question is a fair question. Why it is a fair question is that like we have said one of the problems of the discourse right now is the lacuna on history which is very deliberate.

In 1984, this man Buhari started the rationalisation of courses, decree. It was one of the reason why Shola Mike and co and some of the patriotic student union leaders then brought up some concerns that why should military people who hardly have secondary education be changing curriculum in universities and schools. And they were very angry.

The military people remove the teaching of history, teaching of some social science courses completely from the syllabus and they were more interested in making everybody become mechanics through the 6-3-3-4 system. They actually assaulted the intellectual base of the country. The product of that is what we are having today.

A lot of graduates don’t even know Obafemi Awolowo not to talk about Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim. They didn’t know Zik or Herbert Macaulay. When you even talk about Obafemi Awolowo they will say is he the one that is playing football, Obafemi Martins? So it is this historical void that makes charlatans to become celebrities.

A large segment of young people don’t even know what happened yesterday. But you know that the kind of education you and I had, you knew what happened 400 years ago. You knew Herbert Macaulay even as a secondary school student, even though you didn’t do history as a major course. So one of the things we have to do today, one of the first assignment is to restore the curriculum to that development oriented curriculum.

Most of the students and young people who went through the 6-3-3-4 system were actually programmed not to be able to think beyond two years back by this set of military elite who didn’t have education, who wanted to impoverish the whole of society. As a matter of fact they were angry with the intellectual base of the country. They were sacking lecturers for teaching what they were not paid to teach and then they assigned themselves the role of changing the whole academic curriculum.

That is one of the most important issue in the crisis of the Nigeria society today. That is more than money matter because when you assault the way a people think, it is the most dangerous wound that you can inflict on a society.

PT: That might be one of the reasons you will have difficulty selling your candidature. How many people know you and what you stand for?

Olawepo-Hashim: I have a lot of advisers now who are working with me and sometimes they caution me. When I say ‘let’s make this statement, they say it’s too long. If it is more than three paragraph, they will not read it’. So they are teaching me how to make it into two paragraphs.

You know the kind of education we had. We will deliver a 15- page paper and even compete with our professors at seminars and symposiums. They will say ‘no, no, no, when it’s just more than three paragraphs, nobody will read it; oga, we have to make it concise’. So I also acknowledge my limitation and I am allowing a lot of them to run the show.

We are getting the messages out. Yesterday, we trended and we are trending now more. I am also humble enough to listen people who understand what is going on in town. We have a lot of them around so I am confident that we will get our message out.

PT: You ran for governor twice in Kwara on the platform of DPP. Can you win Kwara in this coming election?

Olawepo-Hashim: Let me say this, number one, I am (from) Usuman Ward now. I changed my constituency. I registered in Usuman ward in Abuja. That is where I am doing my politics now and that should not surprise you. If it didn’t surprise you that Gov. Aregbesola can leave Lagos and go and politics in Osun, it’s the same thing or that Mrs Hillary Clinton can finish as first lady and go and be senator in New York or that Zik was elected into the Western Regional Assembly and still went to… this should not surprise you.

You know these issues about changing constituency. Any Nigerian should be able to run election anywhere he feels comfortable to do so. This is not a local election. I am running for presidency, not to be governor of Kwara State. It is a different election.

Even Obasanjo did not win his ward and still became president of Nigeria. So, these issues are quite different. But we have substantial support in Kwara, even in those towns you are talking about. In 2007, I was the first runner in Bukola Saraki’s election in Kwara and that election was widely rigged. I got about 70,000 votes. The next person to me was Senator Suleiman Ajadi on the platform of AC which had all the big wigs that are in APC today, including Lai Mohammed.

They didn’t have as many votes as I had in 2007 election. They had about 47,000 votes. And then you have Colonel Bamigboye who had about 28,000 votes. Now if you add all those legitimate votes of the three of us together, you will be thinking about 150,000 votes plus and that was the lacuna.

They ‘manufactured’ one million votes for Bukola Saraki in 2007 and they declared him the governor. But in the last election, the total votes in Kwara both APC and everybody was less than 300,000 votes plus. So what happened to those one million votes 10 years ago? Did they die? Did they migrate? So talking seriously, as at 2007, we had the biggest political machine in that place. We still have relatively our solid support in Kwara. We will do well in Kwara. That, I can tell you.

PT: Despite the Bukola Saraki factor?

Olawepo-Hashim: Even when Bukola’s father was the political kingpin, his father never won my base before. In 1999 when we were doing PDP, Irepodun LGA where I was, was PDP. We had a council chairman, we had state assembly, we had majority of councillors and his dad was in APP. And the PDP then in Kwara, in local government election, had 33 per cent of the votes, the AD had about 19 per cent of the vote. His own dad with Gov. Mohammed Lawal and he had about 40 per cent. He didn’t even have up to 50 per cent votes.

So, his dad who was more into politics and more loved never claimed he would defeat everybody in their local government. He was very smart with the way he did his own. For Bukola who is just less than 13 years in politics to come and say that we do an election and everybody will lose in their area because he is the kingpin….. You know he never schooled in Kwara; he doesn’t have friends in Kwara. I schooled in Kwara, secondary school in Kwara. I was a prefect. I was in the School of Basic Studies before I went to UNILAG. Are you saying I don’t have friends?

PT: But wouldn’t you be described as a politician without a base?

Olawepo-Hashim: Right now North-central is my base. As I said to you all that is not important about the way you describe or categorise anybody. Whether he has a base or not does not really matter. It depends on the election that you are running. Obasanjo never became a councillor. But if you don’t put a time limit he would have continued to be president of Nigeria. So, when you are running a presidential election, it is a different thing from the local election.

Those who have local base, how far did they go in the party primaries to become presidential candidates? How far was Bukola successful in his bid to pick the ticket of the PDP? That is a different election completely. So you have to be focused on what you are doing. I am not running to be senator of Kwara or to be governor of Kwara. So, don’t bother me about Kwara issues.

PT: Who are your political godfathers?

Olawepo-Hashim: You know that I have never had a godfather. God is my father who is in heaven. Most of the people who inspired me really that I draw good examples from are even late now. Chief Solomon Lar is one of them. They are people that I will say I learnt somethings from.

There were people like Alhaji Abubakar Rimi who were leaders of the progressive segment of the PDP that we were in. Then probably when you were in a radical movement, people like Alao Aka-Bashorun who was leading us and who helped us, who supported us, who guided us. He is also late now.

I have been around in the political terrain for about 30 years. I started early anyway Very few people have my political experience. So none of them is qualified to be my godfather. Is it Bukola Saraki that joined politics in 2003 that will be my father or which one of them will be my political father?

The truth of it is that I am more senior in terms of experience than most of the actors on the political scene. The governor of Sokoto State was a legislative assistant when we were leaders of the PDP. Is he the one that will be my political father now? Which one of them?

PT: A few political parties came together to form Peoples Trust. What was the arrangement for sharing positions and how did you emerge?

Olawepo-Hashim: The thing about Peoples Trust is not about sharing arrangement. This is my natural home. Olisa Agbakoba, Nasir Kura, who is the secretary are people that we were in the trenches together in the struggle against military rule. I have had long standing association with them. So discussion of the People’s Trust is not about sharing arrangement. It is about how to create a new Nigeria where integrity will rule, a new Nigeria with a plan to bring the people out of poverty.

When we were fighting against the military, it was not about what are we going to get because what we got then was being locked up in detention. There was also the possibility of also being killed. As a matter of fact some of your own colleagues like Bagauda Kaltho were killed in that struggle. What brought us together is not sharing.

What is driving the Peoples Trust is an uncommon determination that is rare in this environment right now – to create a new Nigeria and we are set to make a political revolution. Peoples Trust is not about sharing. It is not APC where there are people looking for office to share; it is about how to make a better Nigeria.