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Tinubu can’t lead Muslim prayers! *He’ll face northern rejection *He thinks he’s Yoruba god – Hajiya Naja’atu
Hajiya Naja’atu Muhammed, was the Director of the Civil Society Directorate in the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC), before she quit the job a fortnight ago on the ground that the party’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu did not have what it takes to be President and it would go against her conscience to be part of selling him to Nigerians for the job, being fully aware of his poor physical and mental state of health. In this interview, culled from The PUNCH, the firebrand activist, who had since joined the campaigns of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, gives further reasons of why a Tinubu presidency remained a danger to Nigeria. Excerpts:
At what point did it occur to you to part ways with the APC presidential campaign council, where you oversaw civil society organisations?
Let me tell you what really happened. In the first place, I did not support Tinubu as a presidential aspirant; my support was for Professor Yemi Osinbajo from day one. In fact, I had sent emissaries to Osinbajo to come out and contest, that he is relatively young, well educated, proactive, and brilliant. We noticed that each time Buhari leaves the country; we regain some semblance of sanity, including the value of the Naira.
When Tinubu emerged, he emerged in the most corrupt way. I knew how delegates were given money to go and vote, but it was not just to go and vote; the name Asiwaju was written on each ballot paper. They were only paid to go and drop it in the box. For that reason alone, I had no interest in that primary election. Yes, I was in the APC, but I couldn’t even liberate myself at that point in time. I waited, but I never attended any of the meetings, and I was not interested in anything.
One day, Hon Faleke called me. I didn’t know Faleke from Adam. I was on a flight when he called to introduce himself. And then he said, “Please, ma, we want you to be on the campaign council; we want you to be a director.” I said no, why? I don’t want to be the director of your campaign. He started saying, “Please, ma,” and I said no. “You are embarrassing me,” because it is not good for anybody to be begging you; it is very embarrassing, and if you don’t accept it, you appear to be arrogant. He asked why I didn’t want the appointment. I said because I haven’t sat with Tinubu, I haven’t seen him, he hasn’t told us what he had for us up North, and at this point in time and at my age, I cannot be a zombie. He kept pleading with me, and we agreed half way.
So, he said, “Okay, ma, by the time you see Asiwaju, if you are not satisfied with what he has to say to you, then you can opt out. We agreed on that. After that, I saw a call several times, which I did not answer, and then they sent me a text saying that Asiwaju wanted to talk with me, and I said I would be waiting.”
So, what did Tinubu say to you on the phone?
He said, “Hajiya, please forgive me, but I respect your stance on not accepting my appointment. However, I want you to hear me out. Can you come over to London?” I said yes. That night, I purchased my ticket, and I took a Lufthansa flight the next day to arrive in London the day after. That same evening, I was taken to Asiwaju by one Ibrahim Masari, and we sat down.
You finally met him in London?
Exactly, I said, “Sir, what have you got for us up north? What is your blueprint for our situation? He said he didn’t have a blueprint. I said, “Sir, how can you rule without a blueprint? He said the reason is because he would be stepping on too many toes, and they might kill him. I thought that was silly. I said, sir, if you don’t have a blueprint, then how do you rule? By the time you get power, there will be a lot of distractions. So, he said, if I have anything that I want to include in his manifesto, I should go ahead.
What did you do thereafter?
I sat with my elders; you know that we have been networking for the salvation of the country for quite a while now. We sat down and came up with a brochure on the Almajiri, agriculture, the economy, and out-of-school kids. But I was not allowed to see Asiwaju again. I was still in London, so I called Ibrahim Masari, and he said, “Sorry, your proposal cannot be said because Governor Nasir El-Rufai has already told them that all the North needs is the state police.”
I came back to Nigeria, and it took an eternity to even inaugurate the campaign council. The person that was helping the campaign council is the secretary, Senator Mohammed Hassan. Meetings are held in his house. He sponsors the meetings, buys the refreshments, and gives everything, but nobody has received anything.
After a while, Faleke and Senator Hassan asked us to come up with a budget. We set up a technical committee and got to work. We came up with a document and handed it over to Faleke, but nothing happened.
Asiwaju was not accessible. It is easier to see Prophet Mohammed because, during his time, if he doesn’t see you, he goes looking for you. Buhari was accessible to the lowest of the low when he was contesting. I had never seen anything like that. To see Tinubu, you have to lobby, but I can’t condescend to that level. In all this, however, I persisted, so what did I do? I said, “Okay, let me look for the who’s who of our northern leaders in the APC. For about three months, I was shuttling to get us to sit and give Asiwaju the position of Northern Nigeria, but they refused to sit.
Why did you insist on making demands for the North?
Before the South-West decided to support Buhari in 2015, they gave him a blueprint of demands. That was how Babatunde Fashola got three or four “jumbo” ministries. Go and check; the highest amount Buhari gave to the North-West, his own region, is 12 per cent of his total budget. The biggest beneficiary of Buhari’s government because of their deal with him is the South West.
Meanwhile, I was getting overtures from Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar, and Rabiu Kwankwaso, and I kept rejecting them because I didn’t want to come across as a hypocrite. Obi and I wanted to meet, but we were both very busy, and I outright refused to meet with Atiku. I am quite close to Kwankwaso, and this is even beyond politics. I knew what he did as governor of Kano State. He prioritised education, provided an enabling environment for businesses to thrive, and rehabilitated drug addicts.
What stopped you from joining the Obi or Kwankwaso’s camps when you decided to leave Asiwaju?
I respect Obi very highly. He has been the rallying point for the youth in this country. However, both Obi and Kwankwaso are handicapped now. They started their parties too close to elections, and they don’t have structures. So, no matter how hard you try, it is difficult to make it.
Our experience is similar to that of Buhari. Nobody has ever been as popular as Buhari in Northern Nigeria, but why does he keep losing? He was getting his 15 million votes consistently, but he never made it until he got a bridge to cross to the other side. Unless and until Obi and Kwankwaso get across that bridge, it is going to be difficult. The Obi and Kwankwaso movements, if properly managed, can outlive them.
You had a personal encounter with Tinubu in London. What’s your assessment of him in terms of preparedness and readiness for the job?
I saw him firsthand in London. He was sleeping most of the time. He cannot stay for ten minutes without dozing off. Sometimes, Pa Bisi Akande supported him like this (shrugs off her right shoulder). It is so frustrating! He didn’t even understand what I was saying. The man is not mentally alert. I asked some of those around him, as well as some of our clerics, who claimed that having a Muslim-Muslim ticket is a Jihad. I asked them, “Can you allow Tinubu to lead you in prayer? Can you allow Tinubu to be your Imam? If you say yes, I will join you. But they said no, so I asked why? They said because he is sick.
APC has a candidate that cannot be deciphered, a man that the chairman of the party helped to be able to hold the party’s flag. Let us not crucify Tinubu because of his ill health, but we should also not sacrifice the lives and properties of over 200 million people because we want to be sympathetic to a sick person.
You once described the APC candidate as an emperor. What makes you see him in that light?
He claims he made Lagos what it is today. He claimed that Lagos and the entire South West revolve around him. How else should I qualify him, if not as an emperor? Who gives him that right? How did he manage to get that right? Over 20 years after he left the governorship, why? Why was Akinwunmi Ambode removed? Ambode was doing a great job. He was removed because of the emperor.
The campaign council dismissed your claims that Tinubu has no plans for the North, stating that in his manifesto, there are specific programmes of action for the region.
These people don’t even know the difference between a manifesto and a blueprint. I can tell you that I have a menu in my house. I want to have rice and I want to have beans; that is the menu. How do I cook the rice and beans? That is the blueprint, and Tinubu does not have that for the North. He’s too superficial because he told me he wouldn’t make a blueprint until after the election. Is that impossible?
Culled from The PUNCH
I will always refer to the encounter I once had with Kenneth Idiodi. He was then the leader of the Rosicrucian Society in Nigeria, otherwise known as Amok. It was a sit-down at Zodiac Hotel Enugu. Then, I was the reporter of The Guardian in the Coal City.
You know the Amok faith bases its philosophy or belief on the law of Retributive Justice – the law of Karma. That is to say, everything you do in life has its rewards or punishment in equal measure – much like the measure you give, the measure you receive.
I don’t know how much this society draws or links this belief from or with the Bible, but I do recall Jesus Christ warning Simon Peter – return your sword to the scabbard – for he who kills by the sword, dies by the sword.
As a child growing up I listened to one of the epics of Oriental Brothers with the lyrics – ogbu mma ga-esi n’mma na, ogba egbe ga-esi n’egbe na ooo! Translated – he who kills by the sword will die by the sword, he who kills by the gun will die by the nozzle of the gun.
Now, here is where this is relevant in present Nigerian reality – the reason I’m putting details of that encounter out publicly once again, having done so previously.
During that encounter, Idiodi used one event in Nigeria to illustrate his point. He told me of a Nigerian leader who commanded the troop that carried out the Asaba massacre in the heat of the Nigerian civil war – an episode, said to have claimed over 2,000 able-bodied men who had come out to welcome the Nigerian soldiers with songs and dances only to fall in the hail of bullets that descended on them like rainstorms – was not spared by fate.
That commander was to meet his own death in a hail of bullets even as a Head of State. He never mentioned the name of the military top brass. But I used my tongue to count my teeth to come to the answer. You could also do same – use your tongue.
Now, how does this relate? You may have followed the outing of General Yakubu Gowon at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, where he presented his autobiography titled: My Life of Duty and Allegiance, that contained what seemed his memoir on the Nigerian civil war, which he prosecuted as Head of State.
I’m sure you must have been observing the debate therefrom that event. Now, I’m not so much enamoured of the debate as I’m of the nuances surrounding that unfortunate episode and the role of Gowon in it, given my takeaway from that Idiodi encounter some two decades ago.
Does Gowon, now a nonagenarian really believe that presenting a pious, if not saintly account of himself to the world as snippets of his book, which I picked up here and there suggests, truly suffices for the atrocities of that period?
Take the Asaba massacre for example. Was that the handiwork of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, whom the former Head of State seems to blame for everything that went wrong. Was he also the one that commanded that mass slaughtering of innocent men?
Under your nose as Head of State, you watched citizens slaughtered mercilessly like infested herds in the streets – you watched young girls corralled into leprosy colonies and wantonly raped before being wasted – you watched as train coaches bearing people fleeing the scene were stopped and their human cargoes thrown alive into River Benue like rotten goods for fishes to feast on – you watched all these and didn’t lift a finger.
Then as Head of State, you not only supervised but watched millions of children with distended stomachs, tiny feet, glazy eyes, heavy heads on ropelike necks, practically begging for death to come quickly and save them from further punishment.
You supervised and watched the cataclysmic eruptions from the blitzkrieg on churches, markets and hospitals – all to keep Nigeria together. In your mind the brutal and merciless butchery of innocent people who were not soldiers and had nothing to do with the war could be explained away just like that?
O! It was Ojukwu that caused it. Ojukwu was the one who released the bombs, caused the blockades that led to the kwashiorkor that killed millions or other atrocities thereof? What a pity!
Now, I return to Idiodi. How else could anyone interpret today’s Nigeria without introducing the law of retributive justice that the Amok leader spoke of? How do you fault the link of the commander who massacred over 2,000 souls dying by the barrel of the same gun, even as Head of State?
How could anyone fail to relate what is happening to our Gowon today with the past? This is a Geneal that wakes up to see hundreds of his brothers and sisters being buried in mass graves as was done during the onslaught he supervised against another people and he still thinks it has nothing to do with him?
Now, the story you told at that event in Abuja on Tuesday, is not new. You simply repeated yourself. My interpretation of that event is that you’re a man undergoing daily torture. You wouldn’t be a human being otherwise, given what is before you, which didn’t start today.
You’re probably trying to escape your fate by appealing to public sympathy. How helpful could that be in the face of the clear evidence of your culpability in the deliberate wasting of more than three million souls? Nobody would believe you.
Yes! They could humour you. But that’s the best anyone could do for you. I hear money rained like a fountain and that you left the scene with billions of naira in your kitty. At 90? Haba General!
Now, here is the thing General. None of these would help.
None would work. You have tried prayers. But you forget that the prayer of sinner is an abomination and a reproach before God, unless he repents. You have also written the book. Surely, this too would end up in the trashcan of history – meaningless piece of conjectures, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies – perhaps!
But, why don’t you try the one thing you have been running away from, for more than five decades – go on your knees in total supplication and surrender, repentance and penance – then rise, call all Nigerians and empty yourself with the truth.
Thereafter openly apologise to the millions of souls whose tormenting wailing you probably hear every day during your disturbed sleep and in your quiet moments, but choose to suppress with these baby tales. Ask them for forgiveness, genuinely and see. There may lie the answer you seek.
Try that and see if it wouldn’t be a more efficacious cure for this decades-old wound than this Ojukwu-bashing and those wasted prayer sessions. You might not only have atoned for the past, but saved the future. May God guide you.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice
“Now that the court has ruled against it, we are sure that, in the coming days, we will witness a mass exodus from the ruling party,” were the words with which the African Democratic Congress (ADC) welcomed Wednesday’s ruling of the Federal High Court, Abuja reversing the deadline for party primaries, among others.
Bolaji Abdullahi, spokesman, who conveyed the party’s excitement over the development, said it viewed the ruling as vindication of its objections to key aspects of the electoral body’s guidelines at the time they were issued.
Recalling its specific objections to the strict timelines on membership registration as well as the conduct of party primaries, the statement, said: “The decision of the court on these issues, including those that directly contradict the constitution, is therefore a welcome vindication of our position.”
Stressing that the ruling, which removed the impediment placed by the guidelines on politicians who wished to seek alternative platforms to contest elections, was a positive development that would promote freedom of association, the statement, added: “We believed at the time that that particular restriction was designed to prevent people from leaving the ruling party, APC.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba on Thursday that the United States was laser-focused on changing the communist system, after the island was stunned by a US indictment of its former president Raul Castro.
The US military announced that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its escort warships had entered the Caribbean, although President Donald Trump, asked if the deployment was meant to intimidate Cuba, said, “No, not at all.”
Rubio, a Cuban American and vociferous opponent of Havana’s government, described the island 90 miles (145 kilometres) from the US shore as a “failed state” as it suffers a major economic crisis.
“Their economic system doesn’t work. It’s broken, and you can’t fix it with the current political system that’s in place. What they’ve gotten used to all these years is just buying time and waiting us out.
“They’re not going to be able to wait us out or buy time. We’re very serious. We’re very focused. The US preference is always a diplomatic solution, but President Donald Trump has other options at his disposal.”
Stating that Cuba had tentatively accepted an offer by the United States of $100 million in aid in return for reforms, he said it was unclear if the United States would accept Cuba’s terms, as Washington insists on circumventing the military-backed conglomerate GAESA, which dominates the island’s economy.
Rubio said Thursday that the GAESA chief’s Florida-based sister, Adys Lastres Morera, had been arrested and was being held by US immigration authorities, adding in an X post: “Managing real estate assets…while also aiding Havana’s communist regime, until I terminated her permanent resident status.”
The charges against Raul Castro — younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba’s communist revolution that culminated in 1959 — stem from the deadly downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots in 1996.
Cuban authorities called on citizens to protest the “despicable” indictment, with the official newspaper Granma urging Cubans to gather outside the US embassy in Havana on Friday at 7:30 am (1230 GMT).
“This isn’t really an accusation, something from more than 30 years ago, but rather a public attack on a public figure,” Fabian Fernandez, a 30-year-old accountant, told AFP in Havana.
Trump in January seized on a US domestic indictment of Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro to send in US forces to depose him and take him into custody.
“The idea is to say, we can do to you what we did to Nicolas Maduro,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The Maduro operation led to the end of free oil from Venezuela to Cuba, which relied on its ally for nearly half its needs.
Cubans have suffered power outages of up to 20 hours a day and taps running dry.
Runaway inflation has caused the price of basic goods to soar and mountains of trash have piled up on the streets of Havana.
In addition to murder, Castro has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and destruction of aircraft.
The Cuban government called the 1996 shootdown was “legitimate self-defense” against an airspace violation.
China and Russia both criticized Trump’s steps on Cuba, which come as he tries to end an unpopular war he started with Israel against Iran.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a press briefing that Washington “should stop brandishing the sanctions stick and the judicial stick against Cuba and stop threatening force at every turn.”
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We believe that under no circumstances should such methods — which border on violence — be used against either former or current heads of state.
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