Why Ribadu Will Not Step Down For Buhari

Posted by admin National Politics, Party Politics Saturday, January 29th, 2011

Former chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, Abuja chapter, Sunny Moniedafe is the head of logistics and protocol of the Nuhu Ribadu Campaign Organization. In this interview with Chibuzo Ukaibe he gives reasons why Ribadu cannot step down for Gen .Buhari which may lead to the collapse of the current ACN/CPC alliance talks. He also talks on the ongoing voter registration exercise.
What is situation with the alliance between the CPC and ACN?

As far as I am concerned, there is no basis for such an alliance. Buhari is a wonderful man and a former head of state; but with due respect his time has passed. He was president in 1983 – that is about 28 years ago. Luckily for him, he has somebody now of the same character, similar stature and record of nonsense. I think it is only fair that he would say let me step aside for this young man. Now people in the media have been coming up with a story that alliance will come up, and I think that is just deliberate mischief; because we have crossed that stage. I can tell you that a meeting was held by the national caucus of our party ACN, last week, and the issue of Nuhu Ribadu stepping down for any body was totally done away with. With due respect to Buhari, he was part of the mega discussion in the past. Suddenly, he said he was no longer interested and went to form his own party. However, from what we were told, he observed the fact that among the alliance partners then, including Chief Olu Falae, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu, he was the only one who did not have a political party. So he craved their indulgence to go out and have his own political party and then to come back to the alliance platform. He was told to go ahead. We were expecting him to form the CPC, come back on its platform, and then we will have congress and primaries for the various offices. Suddenly, we heard he wants to go it alone. Now he abandoned the building half way, later Atiku also left. ACN and some other individuals from DPP, PDP and other groups, in exception of the AD which came in as a party, moved on. Now Buhari wants to come back when the building has been completed and he wants to be given the master bedroom; he wants to decide what happens. That is not fair.
The alliance was perceived as strong enough to challenge the PDP, what are the chances of Ribadu going the battle alone?

His chances are centered on the youths and women of this country. If you check the statistics of Nigerian population of the 150 million figures, about 20 million are youths. Don’t forget that the youths are the future of any country and they actually do the voting. Now Nuhu Ribadu has got very huge youth fan base, a very solid structure on ground and all the permutations and mind set about somebody not going it alone belongs to the past. The Ribadu Campaign Organization has done a lot of work with the youths and the women. And you need to go out there to see the followership. Much as we would have love to have the alliance it is just not possible, except Buhari wants to say look I see this young man as a prospective president who can deliver and I step aside for him. But we believe that we have the most credible and viable candidate in Ribadu and time has come for generational shift.
Talking of generational shift against the lineup of leading presidential aspirants, including President Jonathan, Gen Buhari, and Ribadu, he (Ribadu) seems to have the least experience when it comes to party politics and holding any elective position either at state or federal level. Would this not count against him?

I totally disagree because this young man set up EFCC totally from the scratch, with just a piece of paper. Today EFCC has achieved a tremendous record. At EFCC he was able to make about 200 convictions and recovered over 50 billion naira. As a result of his performance the pariah status of Nigeria was removed because he was able to project positively the image of Nigeria to the whole world. He built the most prominent crime Training and Research Institute (TRI) in West Africa; helped to sanitize the banking sector through the activities of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and that effort resulted in delisting Nigeria from the list of financial action task force non-cooperating countries. He started many of the cases that we are witnessing judgments today. He was not accused of any crime or being corrupt while at the EFCC. He received the inspector general of police awards in 1997, 1998 and 2000. He is a key member of the economic management team that raised Nigerian foreign reserve. Under him, the EFCC was a reference law enforcement agency in Africa. He rejected 30 million naira bribe from the country’s major laundering offender in 2005. He turned down 15 million dollars inducement from a former governor. Again, he was put on the African Union Advisory board on anti corruption. Recently he was named in a three member committee to fight corruption in Afghanistan. I have been told that some former presidents sleep at 5 am or there about. That is for somebody that wants to do more than he is expected. Administration is so simple if you delegate. All you have to do is supervise. For those that place some much emphasis on experience, let them tell me how much public experience Obama had before he became president of the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world. What experience does the president of Russia, Medvedev, have before he became president? What experience does the prime minister of England have at 43? We have so mystified leadership in Nigeria for selfish reasons. When Buhari became president in 1983 what experience did he have? Gowon was head of state at 32. Murtala was 38. Now, somebody here is 50 with a huge track record of over 200 convictions which he built from a mere piece of paper and has become a reference point worldwide. He rose to the position of AIG, he has gone through National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru. What more do you want? He is a fellow in the Oxford University in the United Kingdom and Harvard in the United States. By comparison what does the current president have? He was lecturer, deputy governor, acting governor for a few months, and today president by default. What experience does he have more than Ribadu? None. Ribadu is a listening man. He has people around him. You will agree with me that the impact he has made shows that he knows what it takes to lead Nigeria; and I believe that if the youths and the women give us that chance, Nigeria will become a better place.
Some have berated the ACN against the background of the process that produced Ribadu as not being democratic for a party that claims to be in the lead when it comes to internal party democracy?

Every party has its rules you must follow, before you become a candidate of the party. We have the voting process. People purchased our forms and they were screened. What people do not know is that there could possibly be the fact that one or two did not pass the screening requirement and meet the standard. Now, though people make those insinuations, we are not surprised. We are still the most credible party today in Nigeria, far above PDP, and people will want to run us down. But what was shown on TV live is, two gentlemen: Bafarawa and Malam Uba Said Malami on their own took a survey of the mind set of ACN members and realized that everybody was for Ribadu and they said let us save the process of going to voting and just accept Ribadu. Anybody who said anything else, we are not surprised; because people are beginning to feel threatened by our spread and popularity. What happened in Lagos was free and transparently considered by the other two contestants that Ribadu was the most popular among the followers of the party.
What is the position of the Ribadu Campaign Organization on the voter registration exercise?

Speaking for myself now, I think there should be an extension of time because using Sokoto state as an example, the resident electoral commissioner said about 700,000 have been registered and this is half of the registration period, and we have only 700,000. Now with the INEC calculation of 500 voters per machine multiplied by 120,000 machines that are at least 60 million registered voters – that is going by INEC Projection. Now, if you divide that by 37 you will arrive in the range of 4 million per state. Now that raises some questions. Using Sokoto as a point of reference, do we really have 4 million registered voters? If they have after about 9 days of voters exercise we only have 700,000 thousands, can we registered the remaining in 9 days? No. So there is a loophole somewhere which is why we are asking for more time to register. And I believe that people of like minds, when they study what is on ground, will come to the same conclusion. Having said that if you are going to extend time for registration does it mean that schools will be closed for that period also? That is another problem. INEC has to work at getting a solution. For me I think registration should be a continuous process.
Amidst reactions to the problems with the registration exercise how would you react to allegations that this might introduce another rigging pattern to the April election?

They should not have been, but because they refused to do a test run of the machines when they came in, now Nigerians are beginning to think that the hitches might open the process to rig. You cannot blame them going by what we have experienced in the past. That is why Jega should have been more careful in doing what he is now doing. He should have listened to the fears that we expressed and do something to correct the situation. People are skeptical and we can’t blame them. The thumb printing problem we are having goes to show that the technology we are using is not 21st century compliant, because in this jet age thumb printing should be one of the least problematic aspects of any process. Now, we have somebody who wants to register to attempt 10 or 20 times before all his fingers are captured and accepted. More so, a computer expert told me that the thumb printing computers that they brought is sold for 5 dollars, if not less, in the streets of China. So somebody would have shot-changed us. That also brings another problem, which is that the capturing of these thumb prints and what we have done so far is localized. INEC told us that we are going to have a central data bank. Such that if you are registered anywhere your particulars enters the central data bank. I do not think it is so; every registration is localized, which means somebody can register in 10 places. Now, if these fears are genuine or not, I think INEC owes it to Nigerians to try and ameliorate the situation on time and come out to ensure Nigerians that our fears are not true – which are that we are going to have a rigging process like we had in the past; and secondly that the thumb printing and record of those not registered are they localized or are they going straight into a central data machine?

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Posted by admin on Jan 29 2011. Filed under National Politics, Party Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry