Senate President Bukola Saraki over a week ago in an exlusive interview with Channels TV questioned the integrity of President Muhammadu Buhari. He said the president was running a corrupt administration that lacked the moral high ground to check fraud elsewhere.
Mr Saraki, who spoke in his capacity as the head of the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation, anchored his allegation on the Buhari administration’s opaque handling of petrol subsidy and its failure to prosecute top government officials accused of corruption.
This is the text of the interview as transcribed by PREMIUM TIMES.
What is your general assessment as we approach the general elections?
The environment presently is completely different from what people are used to in the period leading to elections. By and large, major apparatus of states are ensuring that the normal flow of elections activity go as they used to be.
As far as our party is concerned, we have started regional campaigns across the geopolitical zones. From the beginning of this new year, we are going to start throughout the states, state capitals and do campaigns on the street and also we will be doing a lot of town hall meetings with different interest groups. But I must admit definitely the atmosphere now is completely different from what the country is used to be in usual campaign, people are no longer as free as they used to be as was the case in the past.
If you look at the participation of civil societies, support groups compared to 2015, you will see that people are a bit more edgy maybe because they have seen actions of government as they show gross intolerance for different opinions. That is affecting participation of people.
Are you saying the government is frustrating your campaigns?
No, what I am saying is that the atmosphere does not allow the kind of campaign we are used to. In terms of people being free to support whoever they choose it.
So the APC government is choking campaign generally?
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Yes, they are choking campaigns generally, that’s the feeling. If you look at the level of support groups, if you look at dinners, fundraising dinners. Fundraising dinners in 2015 were held everywhere, we were having dinners with the business community. Now those business communities don’t want to come out and see that they are getting involved in politics.
So the environment is different. You talk to a lot of people you will hear them also say activities are not as bustling and active as it used to be, but be that as it may, we are marching to get our message across using different strategies because our messages are about election for good governance. It is about referendum of the government. Despite harassment, intimidation, choking and trying to frustrate campaign process, but you cannot hide away from the truth, you can’t hide from the message. So we are devising many better tactics of pushing out the messages.
When you say the government is frustrating or choking your strategies, or the environment, do you have evidence of this?
I will give you an example. CSOs play a key role in working with political parties and pushing their agenda. A lot of the CSOs when you call them now, they are very jittery to come out.
I give you an example. Look at the gentleman, a young boy who came out to march, he has been locked up and is probably going to be locked up till the election. So they are scaring a lot of people that should participate.
The police are allowed to break the law and do things that are not conducive to ensure a free and fair election. So it’s those that are strong-willed that come out in this kind of atmosphere.
Some have said your campaign organisation has funding challenge. Is that true?
I think generally the funding environment is different. I am saying the apparatus of the state is going about arm-twisting financial institutions. If you talk to people handling financial institutions, they will tell you today they are being hounded.
They are being told: send us names of people that withdraw money. These are things that didn’t use to happen before. An environment like that, financial institutions as you know, once they start getting those kinds of harassment from agents of the government, they sort of crawl into their shells. These are business communities; they are scaring them with this kind of activities. I think that is happening but it is not stopping the activities of the parties. This is not what we are used to leading to elections is not the same. What we are seeing now is that the environment does not reflect us having a viable democracy.
So you think it’s an acoustic process of democracy?
Yes, it is. Of course, it is. We are going about starting state by state campaign.
When are you starting the state by state campaign?
Next week.
Oh really because it’s just about 40 days to the election.
We are going to have the campaigns and we should finish a week before, like 10 days before the mega rally in Abuja. We are doing that and as we are saying, we have done geopolitical rallies.
But you have not done that in the South-east and South-south.
Those two, yes because they came over the holiday and generally that part of the country is ‘infested’ during Christmas and we said this is not a good time, that we wait till after the holidays to do those two parts. That’s why we have met, done those two parts. Straight after the holiday, in January, we will now pick dates to do that. But the other parties are not doing anything.
Again, there are insinuations about a problem within your party, for example, some governors seem to be having problems with the party?
That’s propaganda. It’s not happening. I think at the initial stage, of course, there were some issues that came about particularly as regards the choice of vice president. In every political party, things like that will happen but immediately after that, there were discussions and everybody has moved on to work towards winning the election.
Some of the criticisms against your campaign is the choice of your vice presidential candidate. Analysts believe that your party should have looked to the South-west. Do you think the party made a mistake there?
No. I think the party has made a very good choice of a vice presidential candidate and that is not the problem within the party now. The issue with governors is propaganda to try and show that there is a division in the party. I think there is bigger division in the other party (APC) where you have governors in the party saying they are campaigning for their party for one election and openly campaigning for another party and that is happening in at least four or five states.
Now that is huge and you are not seeing that in our party. I know there is no governor in our party who is saying I am doing PDP for one election I am doing another party, openly, we are not seeing that. They (APC) are trying to cover that and that is why yo see all those propagandas that there is division in our own party.
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