2027: Tinubu’ll reap more northern votes than 2023 — Senator Adeyeye
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Senator Dayo Adeyeye, a journalist, lawyer and politician is the chairman of the Nigeria Ports Authority, NPA, Board and National Coordinator of the South-West Agenda for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, SWAGA. Adeyeye, who coordinated the Media for late Chief MKO Abola during the 1993 presidential poll, was national publicity Secretary of Afenifere, and Minister of State (Works) under former President Goodluck Jonathan. In this interview, Prince Adeyeye speaks among others on President Bola Tinubu’s perceived Yorubanisation of appointments in the last two years, his performance and why the North will give him higher votes in 2027 than it did in 2023.
Read Also: 2027 polls: PDP zones presidency to South, says APC won’t play fair
By Clifford Ndujihe, Politics Editor
SWAGA was the first group that started mobilisation for Tinubu before the 2023 poll. You have started mobilising for his re-election. Do you think Nigerians should re-elect him given the suffering and hardship in the country?
President Tinubu has not disappointed us who believe in his vision for Nigeria and his capability to drive the mission. We are all witnesses to his prompt removal of the corrupt, crippling and evil fuel subsidy that had fleeced the country for decades and robbed it of legacy developmental projects while enriching a few and impoverishing the multitude.
He floated the Naira and stopped the reckless printing of currency and corrupt borrowing through the unpopular ‘ways and means’ to defend it against the US dollar thus ensuring stability in its value with increased inflow of Foreign Direct Investment aided by confidence in Nigeria’s economy. He introduced CNG and invested over N250b into it.
The Federal Government has built and is still building thousands of renewed hope homes across the country. There are game-changing road construction works ongoing across the country from the iconic Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road project to Badagry-Sokoto expressway and numerous others undergoing reconstruction.
At least, President Tinubu has signed into law between 2024 and 2025 the establishment of 11 new universities thus improving and expanding access to tertiary education.
Observers say that President Tinubu benefited from power-shift to the South with the support of the North but has offended the North through Yorubanisation of appointments and may not get the support of the North in 2027…
There is a myth of the North not voting for Tinubu as if there is a monolithic North. The North has at least three zones, they don’t vote the same way all the time.
Even in the First Republic when the North was one region, there was no monolithic North in terms of voting. There was Northern Elements Progressive Union, NEPU, winning elections in Kano; the United Middle Belt Congress, UMBC, winning in areas like Plateau and Benue while the Northern Democratic Congress, NDC, won others.
In the Second Republic, the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, won in some places; Nigerian People’s Party, NPP won in Plateau; People’s Redemption Party, PRP, won in Kano; and Great Nigerian People’s Party, GNPP, won in Borno and surrounding areas.
In the Third Republic, some northern states voted the Social Democratic Party, SDP, and others voted the National Republican Party, NRC.
In 1999, Borno, Sokoto, Jigawa among others voted for the All People’s Party, APP, while Kano, Kaduna and some voted for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
Today, Benue is All Progressives Congress, APC while Plateau nearby is PDP.
I am always amused when people go on TV and say the North will not vote AsiwajuTinubu next time. Which North are you speaking for? There is diversity of interests in the North just like in the South.
On the North making up its mind for power-shift to the South and backing Tinubu in 2023, it is true to some extent, not absolutely true.
SWAGA started because we thought Tinubu is the only man, who can fight and bring power to the South, and we have been vindicated. Didn’t Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and other politicians from the North contest? People talk as if the North handed it to Tinubu on a platter of gold. He fought for it. There was no northern consensus to give it to the South. Even at the APC presidential primaries that produced Tinubu, there was an insinuation that a northerner was anointed but Asiwaju said he was not going to agree.
That was why some of us, who had read the Nigerian political situation very well, knew that we need somebody who can boldly say ‘it is my turn’ and fight for it.
Right now, I see greater consensus for Asiwaju in the North. Most of those saying they won’t support Tinubu’s re-election have no electoral value. People don’t even know them.
I see all governors from the North especially of the APC supporting Tinubu fervently. I also see non-APC governors supporting him. I have not seen any person of great electoral value in the North that is opposed to Asiwaju’s second term ambition. All the governor’s are united behind him.
ADC’s stillbirth
The African Democratic Congress, ADC, coalition they formed, was still-birth or died at birth. Who is of electoral value that is joining them? Nobody.
This time, the North will vote for Asiwaju in a bigger way. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo faced the same thing. Jonathan faced it in 2011 and won. I saw it in MKO Abiola in 1993. People said that Othman Tofa was from the North, Abiola was from the South, that Tofa would beat him in the North but Abiola defeated Tofa in his Ward in Kano.
Tinubu will win more northern states in 2027 than in 2023.
Yorubanisation of appointments
It is not true that there is Yorubanisation of appointments. A recent statistics showed that 52 percent of appointments is from the North and they are holding key positions.
I am telling you, governors, senators and key northern emirs are not complaining. Those complaining are rabble-rousers and political jobbers. The real northern leaders appreciate what Tinubu is doing.
So, there is no Yorubanisation of appointments. It is just a way of giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it. They want to blackmail Tinubu and think that it will shift him and make him begin to discriminate against Yoruba people the way Obasanjo did.
Obasanjo was afraid that he was going to be accused of favouring Yoruba people because he is Yoruba, so he started being against Yoruba and for eight years was against Yoruba. He did something for all the other zones more than Yoruba of the South-West.
We don’t want a leader like that. We want a leader who will be fair to everybody including the Yoruba. We don’t want to suffer reverse discrimination as we did in the hands of Obasanjo, who never constructed a single road or did any major project in the South-West.
As the national publicity Secretary of Afenifere, I was issuing statements, reminding Obasanjo of these things, he never listened.
In Tinubu, we are having the right leader at the right time for the whole country.
Some people are used to receiving 90 percent, so when you reduce their share to 60 percent they will start shouting. Asiwaju is fair to all. That is what you should expect in his second term.
President Tinubu was a topshot of the National Democratic coalition, NADECO, that fought for restructuring. He is silent on restructuring, why?
Restructuring is a very sensitive matter in Nigeria. If you explain it very well to Nigerians they will embrace it because restructuring is not against anybody or zone. It is for the good of all.
In the First Republic when there was true federalism all the regions – Western, Eastern and Northern were competing with one another, growing at a fast pace and performed excellently under Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Sir Ahmadu Bello, and the country was the better for it.
This led to a rapid growth of the country because of all the Commonwealth countries Nigeria was Number 1 in terms of development then.
Asiwaju agrees with restructuring. When he was governor of Lagos State, he created local councils and challenged the system. Then President Obasanjo withheld Lagos council funds but Lagos survived.
Now, restructuring is part of the reasons he allowed direct allocation to local governments. I think Nigerians should expect that if they give Tinubu a second term, he will put Nigeria in a better shape that will lead to rapid development of each of the six geo-political zones and reduce tension and make Nigerians live together harmoniously.
He is an apostle of true federalism,and will do the needful.
On the rising fear of electoral violence especially in Lagos between the Yoruba and Igbo ahead 2027
There will always be tension during elections. As someone who has participated in elections in Nigeria since 1979, I will tell you that tensions have been reducing, and we must commend ourselves because tension has been going down.
In 1983, in my state, Ondo, which then included today’s Ekiti, as a journalist, before the election, I went to interview Chief Ajakumle Ajasin. I reported in Punch Newspapers that there was going to be serious violence. That was in one of the states then. What happened? So many people were killed and many houses were burnt.
In the First Republic, we had Operation Wetie in the South-West. There was serious violence, it was always war. Then Chief Awolowo went to campaign in the North, the man who allowed his helicopter to land on his roof was tied to a tree in the bush so that animals could kill him. We no longer see that now.
In 1999, there was a lot of ballot box-snatching. With BVAS now you do ballot snatching at your peril. So, elections have become fairer and freer.
In a Multi-ethnic and religious society like Nigeria, especially Lagos that is a melting pot, you can’t avoid little controversies among ethnic and religious groups here and there.
I have not seen a real violence breakout between the Yoruba and Igbo in Lagos.
In 1999, there was violence between the Yoruba and Hausa. What happened in the 2023 presidential election in Lagos could not have happened in 1999 with Mr Peter Obi winning Lagos. Nothing happened. People just moved on. Unless you live in a paradise, you cannot expect that there will be no argument between people based on religion or ethnicity. Those things happen but we take it with equanimity.
You sound so confident over Tinubu’s re-election Chances. Do you think Nigerians will back him given the hardship in the country?
If Asiwaju had not undertaken these reforms, if he had not stopped fuel subsidy and floated the naira, everybody would be riding bicycles now. If you recall, President Buhari said there was no money to import fuel not to talk of subsidising it. The NNPC was broke, we were doing ‘ways and means’ printing currency to pay salaries.
In that kind of situation what would we have done? It would have become like the situation of Venezuela or Zimbabwe, your naira would just gallop. So, it was better to take that decision immediately otherwise the consequences would have been terrible.
In the case of floating the naira, I don’t know the kind of economics where you borrow money to subsidise dollars for the elite. Government was pumping in money so that the dollar would not go up. And the president said, no, I can’t do that, let’s have a natural supply and demand between Naira and the dollar,and that is what we are witnessing.
Now, we are not borrowing money to protect the price of the dollar so that a few people can send their children abroad or go and enjoy a holiday in Las Vegas.
If the naira had not been floated, we wouldn’t be witnessing more exports than imports. Now people are exporting many things from cassava to precious stones and the dollar is stable.
What matters is the stability of a foreign currency, not value. With stability, you can plan with it. Now, you know that a dollar is N1500 and something, it has been constant for about one year. What economists are usually afraid of is when you can’t predict the value, which leads to speculation and people hiding their dollars and buying more to save with the hope of selling when the rate goes up.
On what Tinubu is doing to alleviate hardship caused by the reforms
The government is doing massive production of CNG vehicles, CNG gas stations are coming on board. By next year most of them will come to fruition.
When the president came there was no plan on ground. He said Nigerians will now use our natural gas that we are flaring, harness it, build pipes around, and have CNG stations all over the country. These will drag down the cost of transportation because what is fueling inflation is transportation.
In terms of agriculture, Nigeria is about to witness a major agricultural revolution. People are going back to the farms in huge numbers and the president is aiding it with 2000 tractors with over 10 types of implements attached to each truck for cultivating, harvesting, etc.
The company has pledged to come and establish an assembly plant in Nigeria.
So, Nigeria’s largely rudimentary agriculture is being mechanised and this will lead to massive food production.
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