In this interview with JOHN ALECHENU, the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Timi Frank, speaks about the crisis in the party and what he feels should be done to save its imminent disintegration
Why did you predict that your party the APC may disintegrate before 2019?
I said that because I want my party to sit up. I want my party to get its act together; there are a lot of things that are wrong with my party as of today, because of the kind of leadership Chief John Odigie-Oyegun is providing. I say this without fear of
contradiction; major political re-alignments are going on in this country. I don’t want a scenario whereby my party will lose out at the end of the day. I don’t want Odigie-Oyegun to run this party aground, he has mismanaged this party; I don’t want us to lose our members to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party or any other political party for that matter. I am shouting today because I love this party we all laboured to bring into existence, we cannot be repeating the same mistakes that the former ruling party made, lost members and eventually lost power.
What is your relationship with party leaders like former vice president Atiku Abubakar, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki?
All of them are leaders and founding fathers of our party who I respect individually and collectively. They are all useful and important. They have sacrificed so much to bring the party to where it is today, we must find ways of ensuring that they are carried along in whatever the party is doing. This is the reason why I will continue to fight to ensure that the APC takes Nigeria to the right place but as long as Odigie-Oyegun remains as national chairman, we cannot achieve anything. Now that I am calling for his resignation, some may think it is personal, but it is not. We need a national chairman that will add political value to our party, we need a national chairman that can lead the party to victory during elections and we do not need a national chairman who will clearly be a political liability to this party as we head towards elections. We need a national chairman that will understand and follow due process in carrying out functions within the party. We need a chairman who understands the constitution in words and indeed. As of today, my national chairman does not understand the rules of this party, he does not understand the constitution of this party otherwise he would not try to carry out the kind of impunity he is about to by appointing somebody as spokesman for the party. He knows that appointing anybody into a national office outside the constitution and outside the National Convention is illegal. How can he do that? He should know that this is not the civil service where he was a permanent secretary; no position in the party is permanent. He cannot run this party like the ministries where he was permanent secretary. I will continue to stand my ground, I will not be intimidated.
The party recently constituted a five member panel to investigate an allegation against you. Don’t you think your tough stance on party issues led you into this trouble?
(Prolonged laughter) Are you talking about the Kangaroo court that (Odigie-) Oyegun has put in place? For God’s sake, if he understands the constitution of our party he will not set up this kind of kangaroo tribunal. He should understand that it is the National Executive Committee of the party that has the power to suspend a national officer of the party after following due process. He is desperate and in his desperation, he has forgotten to follow laid down procedure. I suspect your next question will be whether I will attend their sitting; my answer is no. I cannot appear before an illegal body. How can somebody from Akwa Ibom State that does not know me, a person who is not even a party member, sit in his bedroom and concoct a baseless petition and you want me to go and attend a gathering of people who say they want to look into it? It is not possible. I don’t even know the committee members; they are not card-carrying members of this party. This is what I can say about this for now. I am prepared to take this struggle to the next level. I respect elders but when they go wrong, I should correct and advise them and that is what I am doing. Whatever I am doing now, I am only doing it to ensure that my national chairman tows the part of honour and do the right thing for himself and our party.
Can you give your assessment of the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administration?
The President as a person has done very well, I can say that anywhere. It is only disappointing that the President does not have a strong party that can give him the needed support to do better because the party as it is today is in deep crisis. It is divided; the President can only get the best from the party when it is united. The only way he can get the best from the party is to step in and stop the current division in the party. I am disappointed that so many party members are living in denial; they keep saying everything is fine when we all know this is not true, we cannot continue to pretend. Is it until party members begin to shout at each other that they will agree that there is crisis in our party? Come on, we must first agree that we have problems, then we can take steps to address them or ask for help.
What is your reaction to claims in some quarters that it is the struggle by one of your political leaders specifically the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, and those of you from the defunct New PDP to hijack the APC that is responsible for the crisis?
How can we try to hijack the party? We cannot hijack the party. This party belongs to all of us and that is why we are insisting that the right things should be done. We cannot behave like the former ruling party — the PDP and expect a different result, it is not just possible. All of us have spent time, energy and resources to build this party and make it work. I can tell you clearly that those who do not want this party to succeed are those who continue to keep quiet when they see things going wrong, those who pretend that everything is alright when it is clear to even the blind that things are not going well. We cannot watch our party being destroyed by a greedy few. I can tell you clearly that people like the national chairman, who does not care if the party is destroyed, are the ones behind the crisis and that is why he has refused to heed calls by our leaders like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu for him to resign. Tinubu came out clearly to ask him to resign after making very strong allegations, which have not been disproved.
Why are you insisting that the chairman steps down when his tenure still subsists and the party has in fact won elections with him at the helm of affairs?
There is nothing personal about what I am doing. It is about the good of the party I love so much and in the interest of my country. If the governing party is not well, it cannot give the President the kind of support a party should give to a President who is the number one representative of the party at the highest level. I can assure you that there are leaders and followers of this party that are committed to this cause and in due course they too will speak out. I can tell you clearly that the picture will become clearer about where we are going. I don’t want this party to fail, but like I said before and I am saying it again, if we continue the way we are today, there may not be APC by 2019. The struggle I am in today is a struggle for Nigeria’s future, a struggle for our youths and democracy. We must defend this democracy that our founding fathers have fought for; we must not allow this democracy to die because of leaders who enjoy impunity. As far as I am concerned, today the APC has been mismanaged by the chairman, who has shown a lack of understanding and respect for our constitution. I have taken it upon myself to visit all the founding fathers of our party on a rescue mission.
I will be writing officially to the President to seek an audience with him so that I can have the opportunity to brief him on why Odigie-Oyegun has to go. I am also going to write the Vice President, the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and other founding fathers of our party.
I will also be paying a visit to all party leaders because it is important that I bring to their attention my reason for calling on the chairman to resign or be voted out; we must not allow this party to die. We have all invested emotionally as a people and as a country to say government must work for the people this time around and that is all what I am insisting on. We must do things better than before and I cannot keep quiet when I see things going wrong. I fought ex-President (Goodluck) Jonathan and the PDP when the party derailed. Jonathan is from Bayelsa State like me but my love for my country is bigger than any sentiment; we must all make the sacrifice for Nigeria to work.
What can be done to save the party from disintegration?
It is simple: justice. Let us follow our constitution in doing things. Let the party do justice to its members and avoid repeating the mistakes of the party we pushed out of power to get here.
What do you think about Buhari’s anti-corruption fight?
The results are there for everyone to see. He has done very well and he is doing very well. So far so good, the President has done what many thought was impossible in Nigeria. We should continue to pray for him to do more because his success as a leader is not only for him as a person, it is a success for the APC and by extension for our great country Nigeria. I don’t want Nigerians to think this anti-corruption war is Buhari’s war alone. It belongs to all of us because as Nigerians, we are all victims of corruption. If past leaders had fought corruption genuinely maybe what the President will be doing now is to improve on what they had done. Because of the President’s political will, I can tell you clearly that Nigeria is more respected now outside this country than before. We are not yet there but we are getting there.
We will also like you to share your thoughts about the feeling among some of your party members especially from the South that some Northerners are plotting to undermine the South in the scheme of things?
How? I think people who quickly jump into conclusion when things happen don’t understand a lot of things. Nigerians are now politically wiser than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Our problem is not whether you come from the North or South, the issue is can you deliver? Like I told you earlier, former President Jonathan, a nice man from my own state, Bayelsa, was not doing well for Nigeria but the fact that he was from my state did not stop me and several enlightened Nigerians from my part of the country from criticising his policies and the way he was running our nation. I do not think it is true that the North is undermining the South because the way our country is, no part can win an election without the others, the same way we cannot govern without the other, we need each other. The APC is a national party, whether people agree with me or not, nobody can succeed in making it a sectional or regional party, we have passed that stage. Those who want to destroy the party will definitely say things that will poison the minds of Nigerians against us just like some people said even before the 2015 campaign that the APC was a party of one religion in a multi-religious country like ours. If people had believed that, maybe the PDP l still have been in power.
Why has your party not been able to constitute its Board of Trustees almost two years after? What is happening?
This is one of the questions I want you to ask (Odigie-) Oyegun whenever you see him. He is the chairman. It is his responsibility to call for meetings for these things to be done. This is our disagreement with him, the BoT of every party is the conscience of the party, if we had it in place, some of these problems we are having here and there would not even arise but today, because Oyegun enjoys the power he gives himself in the National Working Committee, he is not interested in having the BoT check his excesses. The last time we held our NEC meeting some months ago, we agreed that we were going to have a BoT or Elders Council in place within the next few months but as I speak with you today, after the last NEC meeting we had in March, there has been no meeting. No caucus meeting, no NEC meeting, no BoT meeting, nothing. Is that how to run a party? As bad as PDP was, leaders held regular meetings with members in the National Assembly and the Executive. Such meetings, whether formal or informal, provide the opportunity for members to interact and issues are dealt with before they get out of hand. Let me ask you a question, how many disputes has Odigie-Oyegun’s leadership been able to resolve?’ Rather than resolve, his leadership style has added. Is it the issue of Kano, Bayelsa, Kogi, Bauchi, Kaduna or Gombe? Before PDP became lawless and impunity became the order of the day, there was sanity and members removed chairmen who failed to live up to expectations, some failed to call regular meetings as demanded by the constitution of the party. Refusal to call for meetings alone is an offence because the constitution says how many times in a month, a quarter or a year the party must meet at various levels and when this is not done, it is an offence, which must carry sanctions.
But some of your leaders have insisted that there is no crisis in the party. What can you say to this?
If there is no crisis, why do you have non- NWC members of the party giving the national chairman a 14-day ultimatum to convene a NEC meeting? I have been saying this for a long time; Odigie-Oyegun is scared of a NEC meeting because he knows that if he calls a NEC meeting today, there will be a vote of no confidence on him. I can assure you that some of us will mobilise NEC members even on that day to make him take the path of honour. He knows the capacity of some of us but he should know that this party is bigger than him. He should call for a NEC meeting to allow members talk about these issues. I have a feeling that (Odigie-) Oyegun does not want issues affecting the party to be resolved because he is more interested in him remaining as party chairman, nothing more.
Do you think Asiwaju Bola Tinubu should be called the party’s National Leader since there is no provision for it in the party’s constitution?
Asiwaju deserves to be called a national leader or any other name he so chooses within this party. He has paid his dues the same way leaders like Atiku Abubakar and Bukola Saraki have paid their dues for the party to succeed. He has contributed so much in human and material resources to make the APC what it is today; he deserves more than just this title. The party today is not giving back to these men because we have people like (Odigie-) Oyegun who are not doing what is right. It is very painful that people who made this whole arrangement to work are not being recognised. I will not keep quiet because I was part of this party from the very beginning. I will do all within my power to ensure that this party remains in power beyond 2019.
What do you think about claims that a certain cabal is in charge of the Buhari administration?
Whether there is a cabal or not, you cannot hide certain information from the people for too long. If there is a cabal, Nigerians will know, if there is no cabal, Nigerians will know. It is not something I want to bother my head about, all I am after is to pursue a change that all Nigerians will benefit from.
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