Otunba Gani Adams, has declared that the
increasing popularity of the presidential
candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC),
General Muhammadu Buhari, as a mere
propaganda which he said the opposition party is
grounded in.
What is your impression of the ongoing political
campaigns?
So far so good, the parties have succeeded in
discrediting each other and that is expected in a
political campaigns. So there is nothing new.
How would you describe the overwhelming
support for General Muhammadu Buhari, the
same man a lot of people called a religious
fanatic and rejected at the polls in 2011?
I do not see overwhelming support for Buhari
yet; it is all propaganda. The opposition has a
very strong media team against the ruling party
and don't forget that with the kind of propaganda
that has been unleashed in the past three
months, no one expected that President
Jonathan will get the kind of crowd he got when
he campaigned in Kano and Kastina (those are
the core north). I think that it is out of
frustration that some of them stoned him in
Bauchi. If he was not doing well there was no
need for anyone to have stoned or thrown
sachet water at him. Go out there and vote
against him. Why stone him? I didn't believe that
he could pull that kind of crowd in the North.
That shows that with the propaganda, the
opposition is deceiving Nigerians, which is not
working in the mindset of the people. When he
came to Lagos, the entire Lagos was jam-packed
and he has not gone to Port Harcourt and
Yenogoa, he is yet to campaign in Cross River,
Edo, Delta, Ondo and many other places. It is
going to be 60, 40 ratio because you cannot rule
out the power of incumbency at the dying
minutes. I give 40 per cent to opposition and 60
for the ruling party. Don't be surprised that a
week to the election, most of the parties will
adopt Jonathan as their candidate. I foresee
Labour Party and Accord Party adopting the
President and they will work for him in their
states. So when you are talking of overwhelming
support for Buhari, though the support he has
now is more than what he had in 2007 and 2011
but is not what can be described as
overwhelming. You know that people like Tinubu
(Asiwaju Bola) are very good in media. Tinubu
can sell stone as bread, using the media. He has
that strategy. He will turn stone to bread
through media. But luckily, people still have
their conscience and you cannot because you
want to get their sympathy you now foment
security threat in your region to discredit a
sitting president. People have their own views
and they know what to do at the right time. What
of the Christians who are being maltreated in
those zones? In North Central, Christians are
about 75 per cent and with the Boko Haram
experience, they won't vote for Buhari; I am
telling you sincerely. Even in the North East, like
Adamawa and other states, we have a lot of
Christians. In the North West, Christians are in
the minority like 10 or 15 per cent. And most of
the people who got appointment, who are
contractors, who are in parastatals in Jonathan's
government will work on their Muslim brothers
and sisters to vote for him. In South East, there
is no doubt that Jonathan will get nothing less
than 90 to 95 per cent of the votes. In the South
South, no matter how people pretend about
Amaechi (Rotimi), he will get 90 per cent there.
In Yoruba land, it will be 50/50 because the way
PDP is moving with Jonathan, those who will
vote for Jonathan will be more than those who
will vote for APC. In Lagos, 90 per cent of non-
Yoruba will vote for Jonathan and there are also
a lot of Yoruba that have sympathy for him for
what he has done for Yoruba nation and the
more they attack him in the North the more
sympathy he gets. So, I think that APC will work
harder to catch up with the ruling party.
You said that if he has not achieved they won't
stone him in parts of the North, can you point to
what Jonathan has achieved?
A lot; I am not the spokesman of Jonathan but I
will just tell you a few. Apart from Shagari,
Shonekan, Jonathan/Yar'Adua and Gowon there
is no other person on that position that was not
accused of state killing. Jonathan has been in
that position for six years and you cannot link
any killing to him. Tolerance is the bedrock of
democracy sustenance; he is tolerant; he is
mature. If you don't push him to the wall, he will
not respond to your criticism. Until they are
showing his achievement, you will not know that
he has done a lot. Yesterday, I watched a
programme on TV where Vice President Sambo
commissioned a railway line from Port Harcourt
to Makurdi; the rail transportation that has been
abandoned for a long time by successive
governments, this man revived it. First time in
history, Nigeria became the biggest economy in
Africa. Despite the fact that he has a strong
opposition at the National Assembly that does
not allow most of his bills to sail through,
despite the fact that he has a security challenge,
almost 15 per cent of the country is affected by
the Boko Haram activities. Most of the major
highways are in good shape now. Privatisation of
NEPA, most of the past governments have tried
it and failed but Jonathan has done it and power
supply is improving; and talking of restructuring
of Nigeria, do you know how long we have been
shouting that we need a national or sovereign
conference? He just woke up on October 1, 2013
and told Nigerians that he is ready to organise
that conference. And after four months despite
the pressure by the opposition led by Bola
Tinubu, he started the conference with
opposition from all angles. Yet the conference
was concluded and 633 issues were
recommended. We finished the conference at
the peak of political campaigns when no
politician is interested for governance. That is
one of the reasons the recommendations have
not been discussed. I don't want to turn myself
into self-appointed spokesman of Jonathan but
the truth is that he has achieved a lot. The evil
we know is better than the angel we don't know.
I don't have issues with Buhari but I have issues
with a lot of people who surround him.
Governors who get a lot of allocations but have
achieved nothing in their states can only deceive
some people but not all the people. With time,
the truth shall come out. I was one of the people
that criticised Jonathan that Yoruba is
marginalised and that was before he made a
Yoruba son his chief of staff. I did criticise him
openly that Yoruba was seriously shortchanged.
At the end of the day, he made a Yoruba his
chief of staff and you and I know the power at
the disposal of a chief of staff. Though I will be
the last person to say that Jonathan government
is not corrupt because most of the people that
surround him are highly corrupt but compare
them to those who nearly sink a state and who
surround Buhari and who are shouting change
and yet do not want change in their states. They
want to stamp out corruption. I agreed that
Buhari is not corrupt but can he run the
government alone? This is not military regime
that he can just arrest somebody and use
decrees two or four to keep somebody in
detention, set up a tribunal to try the person.
You can't do that in a democracy. And if he
becomes too rigid he will be impeached. So let
us be very careful the way we buy into anything
we see on TV. We know this people; we know
what they have, their assets.otunba gani adams.
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