The national chairman of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Dr Ajuji Ahmed, in this interview by TAOFEEK LAWAL spoke about the preparations of his party going into the 2027 elections. He also expressed concern on the security challenges confronting the country, offering panacea to mitigate the menace. Excerpts:
Much has not been heard about your party, the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in recent times; will NNPP go into 2027 alone or seek an alliance with APC?
The question is, alliance as well as silence. With regard to our silence, we are not quite silent. Just less than a couple of months ago, we held our national executive committee (NEC) meeting and it was a well-publicised meeting with resolutions that have been passed, preparatory to the first steps for 2027.
But most pointedly, the Committee also gave the National Working Committee (NWC) the marching orders to prepare for congresses across the country, which will lead to having new executives and also to run the affairs of the party from March next year and up to four years from March. Yesterday (Tuesday, November 25), we began the congresses throughout the country. As well as the Federal Capital Territory and I’m happy that it was a very successful exercise that will, at the end of the day, produce executive committees at the ward level. They will proceed to organise themselves into local government congresses. The local government congresses will lead to the state congress. The state congresses will lead to zonal congresses and the zonal congresses will lead to the national convention of the party in March (2026). They are working not within ourselves, we’re also working in order to ensure that we do have other preparatory steps that will lead to 2027.
What we are not going to do is to hurry ourselves in either forming a coalition or deciding to go alone. But these are the options. We may go alone as we did in 2023, or we may join a coalition with any party or any other group that has already been formed.
You are saying that we are quiet and we are not like PDP. We don’t want to be like PDP. PDP is loud for the wrong reasons. So we don’t want to be like that. Labour Party is the same. It (Labour Party) has factionalised itself into three identifiable groups. I don’t know which other party remains, but we are proud to be, apart from APC, to be the most organised party with no faction within our National Working Committee (NWC). And we are marching successfully, as I said to you, through these congresses, beginning with local government congresses, right up to the National Convention. The National Convention will now prepare the ground for us for 2027.
So you are not going into alliance with APC?
No. I said it before. We have options. Alliance with APC is one option. Alliance with any other group or political party or coalition is another option. Going into it alone as we did in 2023 is the third option that we have. What we did not do was to come up with any option and adopt it. And that I believe you will hear after the National Convention in March next year.
There are fears that the NNPP may lose Kano in the next election. And that’s why your national leader, Rabi’u Musa Kwakwanso, is romancing President Bola Tinubu. Is there any truth that he may dump the NNPP because he was being considered or is for VP in 2027?
I can tell you for free that the national leader of the NNPP is not romancing or making any conversation with either the President or with the Presidency and that is a genuine statement, not a political one.
On Kano, whether we are going to lose Kano or not depends on the electorate, the people of Kano. It does not depend on the APC Our success will definitely depend on the NNPP and its manifesto. So I don’t believe that because we want to be successful, we have to join the APC. We believe that joining the APC will guarantee our failure in Kano. Yes, it will guarantee our failure in Kano and that is what is unacceptable to us. What is acceptable is to expand our party and its influence across the country to make it such a viable vehicle for it to capture the presidency in 2027.
We believe that apart from APC, there is no organic party and organised enough across the country to have branches in all states of the country and its local governments. No other except the APC, Apart from the APC, only us (NNPP) and, therefore we are a viable vehicle for us to go into the election and have a reasonable hope of winning the election. And a lot of people are saying, Rabi’u Musa Kwakwanso and so on and so forth. The party is open to any individual to come and contest our primary and be our presidential candidate. That is to say, if we decide to go it alone. If we decide to join any coalition or a working relationship with any other party, he (Kwakwanso) is not the deciding factor. The deciding factor is the NWC of the party. And he knows that and he will respect that.
Will you say the APC is instigating the crises rocking major opposition parties?
No, I don’t. Whatever party is in crisis, it is in crisis due to its own internal contradictions. If the Presidency interferes, there must be a crack within the party for it to have interference from the Presidency. If they were to stand together, there is no reason why the Presidency will succeed in breaking them up. Whether actually right now it is the Presidency that interfered, which resulted to the crisis in PDP and Labour Party, I do not know. But what I know is that if they were to stand together as a party, an organic whole, there is no other influence that will come that will break them like Labour Party in three different pieces and the PDP in two broad pieces.
God knows what is going to happen to those two parties before 2027. But you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel for them. We prefer to be silent than to be noisy like PDP because they are noisy for all the wrong reasons. And we are silent for all the right reasons. At the end of the day, when we come up with our position, you will come here again and say to me, you told me so.
Off-season elections will be held in Osun and Ekiti next year. How prepared are you? NNPP’s influence appears limited to Kano.
Preparation for elections always takes place within the internal organs of a party. We definitely are preparing and we believe we will get a greater show in Osun and Ekiti States, better than what we showed in our capacity or our electoral fortunes in Ondo, Kogi and Edo states. We participated in all and we are proud that we participated. The essence of a game is the participation in it because there are going to be winners and there are going to be losers. If you lose, you should be gallant enough in your losing and pick yourself up to fight another day. And that is what we did consecutively in Kogi, Ondo and Edo.
We believe also that in our preparations, particularly as you see them going on right now in terms of re-establishing our structures and strengthening them at ward, local government and state level, that will give us a good staging post for us to fight the election in the two states.
Let us talk about the current security situation in the country. Some have alleged that aggrieved politicians are behind this, that they are the masterminds. Do you share that position?
The security situation is deplorable and it is regrettable. It affects practically everyone. Unlike what the Americans were claiming that security is one organised against the Christian population of the country, it is not so. Banditry, kidnapping are criminal offences and therefore it cuts across every strata of society without respecting any religion or ethnicity. I wish they had known that. And the government should have also taken on the responsibility to ensure that such things do not happen. Because the first principle of government is the protection of lives and property. If that does not happen, then definitely there is something that is wrong in the priorities of such an administration. I do not share the allegation that politicians are behind insecurity. Politicians could have been behind it but the bedrock of the problem is the restiveness of the youths.
They lack employment. They lack opportunities for education. They see very clearly that if their father or mother is sick, there is nowhere to take them. In addition to that, whatever they possess has been dispossessed of them, such that those who own cattle have lost all their cattle through rustling. Farmers, because of the insecurity, cannot go to the farm. So you find that it is a cyclical tragedy. And the solution to it is not to blame any politician, but to blame the security structure that failed the people of the country.
We know that we have gallant soldiers. We know that we have very good leadership in the army and the Armed Forces generally. But there is something wrong perhaps in lack of political will on the part of those who order the army here and there to perform their duties. I wish they had seen the problem more constructively coming up, particularly after Boko Haram. I think the next place was Katsina. Katsina is spilled into Zamfara, Zamfara is spilled into Sokoto and Kebbi. And now the epicenter of the problem is Niger. Only God knows where it will go next because I heard that there are incidents also in Kwara.
So you find that it is a hydra-headed monster which the government should have expended a lot of energy and attention in order to contain it. Because it is an existential threat to this country, to the population. And it will not spare either politicians or non-politicians. It will affect everybody. And we saw that when the Kaduna-Abuja corridor became a death trap. It affected everybody, including the politicians who were kidnapped and were made to pay hundreds of millions of naira. So, it is an all-encompassing problem. We, as a people and a government, should face squarely and fight it to its logical conclusion.
It is not the Americans that we will wait for to come and fight bandits for us. We have to do it ourselves. We cannot rely on any country, except our government and our people solve that problem.
Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).
