INTERVIEW: Tinubu Would Be Rejected In 2027 – Dalung

Former Minister of Youth and Sports Development Solomon Dalung has recently been in the news concerning the recurring civil strife in his state of Plateau, where he has been a strong voice against the alleged misrule of President Bola Tinubu.

When THE WHISTLER reached out to him for an exclusive interview, he immediately agreed and accepted to hold the interview at THE WHISTLER’s Abuja Office. It was a no-holds-barred interview, Isuma MARK.

Lately, you have been carrying out public engagements concerning the crisis in Plateau State, your state. What have you found?

I have engaged at different levels, and the information gathered can only be related depending on the nature of the engagement. I’ve been close to the intelligence community, some of this intelligence I have been picking, I’ve been relating it to them, and they have been processing it. They’ve also been acting, they have been stopping and preventing some of the things; otherwise, maybe we would have had some recent attacks again. So, we are engaging with communities on the plot because what is actually now playing out is that terrorists are capitalising on the vulnerability of the people of Plateau.

We have been trying to make sure that non-Indigenous communities that have a history of long stay on the Plateau, that have also been integrated, that now share maybe ethnic similarities or religion with some of these criminals, to as well maintain a level of awareness so that people would understand we are not attacking identities. We should narrow our concentration on the very group of criminals that are in the forest.

We are trying to ensure that we don’t assist the criminals in localising this conflict into the community, because that is their intention. So, once that is done, we will help them by fighting, while they will continue to grab our land because it will not be very easy for them to attack.

The people are not united, they are divided. And then you will also have the alignment of interests, because communities will now begin to realign with even the criminals in order to protect their own interests. It has happened in other conflicts across the world, where you have communities living together, and they couldn’t manage the crisis very well. And so, the criminals relocated into the community, and then the community got divided and started fighting itself.

And either of the sides will now beg for protection, just like what is happening in Zamfara. The Lakurawa, who are terrorists from the Sahel, from places like Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, have found their way into Nigeria.

If you were locked in the room with the President, what exactly would you tell him to do regarding this crisis that appears intractable?

Except maybe if he decides to say, Oh, please, do you have anything to contribute that will help me on this issue that is happening in Plateau? And then I will tell him, OK, you have to do this, you have to do that. You see, all these issues of semantics, of kinetic, non-kinetic that the military is saying, all these, in the circumstance, will not pay off. It will not yield any positive results on what is happening. First, the government must designate these people as terrorists, as they have been designated by law, and deal with them as terrorists.

Some of them have been arrested on the plateau. And after one week, they walk away, majestically, assuming it was their bad days, from the cells, into the community, and they meet those who had provided intelligence for the arrest, or were physically involved, to tell them we are back again.

Is that what has been happening?

It has been happening. One of the greatest challenges of the plateau conflict situation is that impunity reigns supreme. All the reports of the Commission of Inquiry since 2001, people who were indicted, people who have been arrested, even in action, none of them have been prosecuted and convicted.

So, that is the major enabler of the Plateau crisis. Not even this sentiment we’re talking about. The enabler of impunity. Because, I mean, you can see somebody who had eliminated your parents, just like the young lady in Manguna, who survived this recent attack in Bokkos.

She narrated that she and her father, mother, and two of her siblings went to the farm. When the marauders were coming, and it was plain, there was nowhere to run and hide. As God would have it, they saw a hole. Who was occupying the hole was not their business. They went into it. Their parents pushed them into it. But only two were able to be pushed. They gathered dry leaves and survived, while three of them surrendered and resigned to their fate.

The young lady said they were seeing through the narrow holes of the leaves what was happening to their parents. They slaughtered her siblings. When that was done, the father collapsed. The mother also collapsed. Then they wounded the father fatally. When the father knew that the siblings had been slaughtered, and even those in the village had been slaughtered, the father collapsed and died.

So, today, the young lady and her mother and two of the siblings are the only survivors. And that village, the memory of that village, they will not want to remember too soon. Now, if any of their faces are arrested, nothing is done.

But you have a governor in the state…

Yes, we have a governor. You have to understand that security is completely the business of the federal government, the control of the instrument of coercion. So, all that the state will do is to rely solely on the federal government, and then on collaboration and partnership. The attitude of the federal government, from my personal view, now is that they are playing politics with security. Because if you look, the governors now are too uncertain about what will happen next. So, some of them are now migrating to the ruling party.

So, governors who are in the opposition are just shivering and jittering. What has happened in Rivers has also compounded their situation. They are more confused. So, instead of thinking out of the box on how to deal with the problem, they are busy running to Abuja.

Are you saying the president and the APC are deploying instruments of coercion and are trying to create a one-party state?

The agenda of the APC and the President is not to provide good governance, no. What is on the table now is 2027. So, every resource is mobilised towards state capture.

So, they are using that to whip the opposition into APC, and they are complying. Now, strong-willed governors, like Fubara, the weapon of state of emergency, have been used against him.

Now, Governor Mutfwang, who is working tirelessly, is an opposition governor. So now he has insecurity in his domain. And he faces two challenges. It is either he worships the God of the broom, or the insecurity will lead to the creation of a state of emergency. He knows that one very well. And the state of emergency now is that two senators can meet in the National Assembly, will talk about the order, and they will say, ‘the ayes have it’. And the state of emergency will be endorsed. So, it has sort of scared the governors and killed initiatives and intellect because they don’t know what to do.

Is Mutfwang being pressured to join the APC?

Mutfwang may not be pressed to come to the APC, but he will need to survive. It’s not about pressure, no. It’s about survival. The governor of Delta State had started singing. He’s singing that song.

I thought that the circumstance would have been that the National Assembly, if it was the National Assembly of the People of Nigeria, would have sung the National Anthem. So if they are singing about Tinubu dollars, the Nigerian people should know that it’s over.

There’s ongoing coalition talks to counter all these moves. What is playing out in that coalition front?

Since 2023, I have been involved in mobilization of Nigerians. Even the idea of coalition is just recent. I’ve been involved in mobilizing Nigerians. Immediately the President floated the Naira and embarked on asking Nigerians to sacrifice for a renewed hope while he himself and his government are living big and lavishly, buying Airbus, 200-seater Airbus for N450 million, they are renovating the house of the Vice President for N21 billion, and the man has refused to go there, to live there. With over four billion Naira, they are buying SUVs for the President and his wife, over four billion. They are giving the National Assembly N50 billion to buy SUVs. So, when I saw this, I knew that it was a renewed hopelessness.

So, I’ve been involved in mobilizing Nigerians. You see, we are where we are because we caused it for ourselves because these people had our votes, they used religion, the Muslim, Muslim ticket to divide the people, mislead some, and got themselves into power.

They are showing their true colours. People are dying of hunger, which I’ve never seen in the history of this country, of over six decades of existence, even during the civil war, Nigerians were not living so terribly like now. I started mobilizing the people to tell them, you see, we need to find a solution to leadership. And that can only be done by electoral reforms and the people becoming more aware of their civil responsibilities.

So, that is the job I have been doing. So that Nigerians can be empowered. People are so hungry. People may not be able to even go and vote where the polling booths are far.

Between Atiku, Peter Obi, El-Rufai and….?

It’s even more than that. It’s more than that.

How far will this coalition go?

You see, we are only good at calling names, we call big names. But it’s more than that. And I also want to put it on record that defeating APC in 2027 is not even going to be a political party or a coalition but the Nigerian people. Because the battle line is drawn between the Nigerian people and Tinubu’s government. So, this political alignment is to offer a platform and provide an alternative leadership.

While there is a huge movement to APC in the South, nothing of such is being witnessed in the North, does it mean the North is united against Tinubu and would be able to defeat him?

Well, you know, democracy is about numbers. Look at the number. If you look at the electoral capacity of the North, put together, you’ll be able to say with certainty that despite desperate attempts to fracture the North, the North had consistently remained intact. Why? Because, you see, the factors, the challenges confronting the people are the same. Hunger has no religion. It has no tribe. Poverty is the same. Unemployment is the same. Hardship is the same. This is commonly shared by the people. Because once you make that mistake, it’s irredeemable.

They have been trying to use religion to divide the North. But of course, those that are foreigners of this religion are people that do not have any weight or influence. But the North, as I know, they work hard and live as the closest modern community.

This opposition to the president coming from the North, is it about alleged bad leadership or power must return to the North? Because the unwritten agreement is that there must be eight years of Southern presidency before power returns to the North.

The issue on the table is that some sections of the media and promoters of President Tinubu’s reckless leadership have been trying to paint a picture that the issue is about power going to the North. No. Those who advocated and fought for Tinubu to emerge were northerners. So, if not northerners, who would have done that?

El-Rufai started shouting that power will have to go to the south, and he mobilized the north to support the south. So suddenly, they are now complaining. We should look at what is making them complain. Now, would you be advising the people of the north to surrender and die in eight years, simply because Tinubu is from the south?

The president is telling Nigerians to endure the sacrifice. His son is living big, sharing billions all over. The president is asking Nigerians to endure his sacrifice. The wife is going everywhere, sharing money.

So, it is not about the north wanting power or justice for the south? No. The justice of the circumstances is that people want to survive.

In other words, you could support a southern candidate for the coalition?

Any move by Nigeria now is how to save this country, because if this country continues like this, we are going to end up in disaster. The poor people have sold everything they have. Even those with their small business, they have sold their assets, they have nothing to depend on anymore. Yet, we have a leader. He said, oh, I don’t care. And he’s saying, oh, sacrifice for the future. Yet, we can’t see the sacrifice from him.

Let’s be clear, would the coalition allow a candidate from the south?

The coalition’s strategy is to change the status quo, and they can use any method. And in politics, sentiment is not the issue. In 1999, the South West was so bitter and was not willing to continue in the federation as a result of the annulment of June 12. The politicians sat down and said, look, we must hold them back. And it was northerners, not even southerners. It was northerners that came with the idea of zoning. And they zoned their presidency to the south and they went and produced a Yoruba man in the PDP as a president. They discovered that, no, we have not done enough. If we do not do something about this, the Yorubas will still have good reason to cry foul.

So, they went again. People from different political parties went and negotiated, and Falae won the ticket under the Alliance for Democracy.

So, don’t preempt the Nigerian politician. The only thing that can cure this, which is already belated, is that the president, as at the time we were advising him, would have changed his method. But as it is now, whatever he is going to do, despite the cooking of food and sharing of money, even if Tinubu is sharing the Central Bank, Nigerians believe that he is doing this so that he will come back and finish them.

Do you agree with Hakeem Baba-Ahmed in his letter to the president that he should step aside?

Everybody has his opinion about Tinubu. But my opinion about Tinubu is that he has disappointed many people who had hope in him. We had hope in Buhari because when he was a military leader, he did some things we believed in. We had hope in Tinubu. When he was governor of Lagos, we thought what happened there was Tinubu’s magic. But the presidency has exposed the big masquerade. It is clear that what happened in Lagos, he knew next to nothing in it otherwise, he could have replicated it.

So, Tinubu had disappointed Nigerians. He had failed the people. Because, I mean, it’s only embarrassing to say you set up a standard which you are known for then given the opportunity, in two years, there is no evidence. That’s all the evidence. You can’t even deal with poverty. You can’t deal with hunger. You removed subsidies of billions, trillions but no concrete shock absorber policy on the ground to tackle the issue of hunger.

So, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed wanted him to step down. For me, him stepping down is just going to be like an adage in my village that says the butcher has died, has the knife also died? It’s the same APC. So, change the table with another APC. In my candid opinion, it’s not the issue. That monstrous political party that has unleashed devastating pains on Nigerians, the entire political order should be changed and not individuals.

Finally, if you look back at 2023, the presidential election was condemned for lack of transparency. How prepared is the coalition concerning this?

The role of INEC in 2023 was ignoble and criminal too, because INEC mobilized Nigerians and assured them that 2023 was going to be driven by technology. So many Nigerians travelled from different countries of the world to come and vote. During the collation of results, INEC invented a very criminal concept, technical glitch, and dismantled the entire investment of Nigerians. At the end of the day, in a very shabby and suspicious manner, declared the results. It announced that the collation was going to be suspended till 10 o’clock in the morning. But at 4 a.m., that same INEC declared a winner. And those who were declared winners were not asleep. How did they know that the result would be declared at that time? It’s only God that knows, but we saw them jubilating and celebrating.

So, I have appealed to Nigerians that if we are going into 2027, nobody should spend money to go anywhere and campaign. All campaigns should be in an INEC office, because if you waste your time, like I advised people of Kogi, and they didn’t list them, they were going around campaigning to people and they left INEC, just for INEC to come and declare a candidate. INEC has done that in Edo, they have done that in Ondo. So, elections now in Nigeria are not about the numbers. It’s about what the commission will do. So, my advice is don’t campaign, go to INEC. Because if you win their mind, even if you are not a candidate, they can declare you the winner. And once they do that, Professor Mahmoud will tell you, if you disagree, you should go to court. I mean, imagine the INEC Chairman declaring a result in the night, and concluding it by telling the candidates, if you disagree, go to court.

In East Africa, if a thief asks you to go to court, he’s sure that the judge is his brother. So, 2027 is going to be a watershed in the history of Nigeria. INEC must save this country in 2027. But if they think they can get away with it as they did in 2023, that would be a great mistake. Nigerians will not allow them to wake up and make an announcement of anybody they like. They must back it up with the results.

INTERVIEW: Tinubu Would Be Rejected In 2027 – Dalung is first published on The Whistler Newspaper