2019: Why I want to be President of Nigeria -Garba

Adamu Garba, an IT expert, recently declared interest to contest the presidential seat of the country with the incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari. Speaking to some selected journalists in Abuja he bared his mind on his plans for the country, why he won’t step down for anybody and his choice for the party’s national chairman, among other issues. TOM OKPE was there for The Daily Times.

Why have you decided to choose the presidency as your starting point in your political career; not even the State House of Assembly, National Assembly or even the governor of your state?
The only reason I chose the presidency is because of the program and proposals I’m putting on the table, which is called structural reform.

What I am proposing to do in the Nigerian system is structural reform. You can effectively be able to implement structural reform to the exact conclusion when you’re the president, especially in a country where 60 percent of the power is concentrated at the presidency.

If you mistakenly say you want to go for the governor or to be a senator, you will not be able to shed the light, you will complain, you will raise the Bills, you will shout like Senator Abaribe and Ben Bruce are doing, but it can’t change anything because at the end of the day you’ll still share the pile.

I became the youngest president of Jimeta Youth Association, which is actually our Local Government Association. From there I moved to the university and then also became the president of National Youth Coalition for sustainable democracy.

Now along that part I discovered that we the youths’ participating in politics is more than just and waiting for politicians to come and settle us, and it becomes a very serious problem because it is really not addressing the problem.

When you look at the surrounding, people are just going down; situations are becoming worse, nobody is adding anything to their lives. So I decided to start looking deeply into why Nigeria is what it is today and what we can we do to fix it.

You have chosen APC as your party, don’t you think you can be bought over?
I think the only thing that can make me give up in the presidential primary election is the ballot. If delegates decide to say no and in a free, fair and transparent election as stipulated by the party constitution, then that is all, but I am very sure that I will emerge as winner at the presidential primary of APC.

Who will buy me over? Why will I sell my conscience when I love my party and my country? This cannot happen. I don’t believe there is anybody that has anything in this world even if you want to bring back to life my late mum that will say I should drop out for the love of my country, it is not possible, I will go to the ballot and let me loose there. I’m not losing anyway; I will win the primary I’m sure about that.

What is your take on the postponement of APC convention recently?
It’s still not a problem to us. Our main target is to ensure that there is true, free and fair democracy within the party so that we can have a duly elected person who will be the candidate for the election.

We are looking forward to the party to stay true to the constitution and ensure that free, fair and transparent elective convention has taken place, and that is our main target.

We are fully ready for the convention, our target is for us to be there and demonstrate the fact that the young Nigerians are now ready to be the agent of change, they want to be the change themselves, but unfortunately the convention is postponed and we are actually disappointed, especially with the level of preparedness we have for this convention.

As a result of that we, young generation of Nigerian has decided to make sure that we produce within ourselves a credible candidate for the coming convention for the position of party chairman.

We believe that the internal wrangling that is happening in the party is calling for all young Nigerians to rise up and take responsibility.

Who is your choice for the next national chairman of APC?
Our senior credible and responsible citizens are getting tired with the happenings in the country which is not in the interest of the country and the ruling party itself.

We believe APC is our party, we believe APC is a property of Nigeria and therefore we the young generation are fully ready to continue with the legacies of our founding fathers.

Therefore, we are calling on all the parties involved in the wrangling within the APC to support us because we believe that we have the clear direction.

We are not in support of this side or that side, but we are in support of the party and the interest of Nigeria for Nigerians.

Therefore what we stand for is to focus on making sure that APC continue to be the party of choice for all Nigerians.

We believe that there is need for a new chairman for the APC and this new chairman should come from among the young, fresh, neutral blood within the party.

Security has been a very big challenge; call it Boko Haram or herdsmen and some say they want structural reform, how is it possible noting that your state is one of the most affected?
You see, from independence this country has not taken conscious effort to unite itself as a nation, the people that collected independence were very patriotic, very nice people and great men,

but their primary allegiance was to their origin not to the country as a common vote, from there we have regional allegiance, even the party formations becomes regionalized, so from there we now sunk ourselves into serious identity crisis that we forgot the very essence of why we are existing in the very first place.

Why we are here in this country is because we are a collection of economies, Nigeria is a market place it is not really all those rigid contents that are defined by natural boarders.

What we need to do is enable the market so that people can transact, buy and sell to each other. Once you live everything at the expense of politics as opposed to the economic opportunities that is supposed to avail the people,

people will naturally take it far and the identity will now keep polarising and you see different identities rising up, people will carry arms to defend themselves,

that is why you see Boko Haram will come out and say we don’t want Nigeria, we want our own country same goes to Biafra, simply because everything is politics, forgetting the main reason why we need to be together which is economy.

Because if an Aba man can comfortably sell his product to the man in Maiduguri and the Maiduguri man knows that he has a very large market in Aba there will be no reason to fight. That is what we need to do in our proposal.

We’re going to come up with a tangible cause to rectify the principles of why we are in Nigeria, because people are confused and don’t know where to go to.

Party primaries will take place in the next few months and you are yet to identify with any political party. What are your plans?
If you look at the structure of what is happening within the PDP and APC, the two major political parties, there is a lot of wrangling and polarisation.

Secondly, I carry a card of one of the political parties I don’t just want to disclose it because of political reasons, so I’m not involved actively in any political party,

but am already a member of a particular political party, all I need is just to look into whether they are right for me to incline with them the two major political party or maybe I’ll just go into any of the new political parties entirely.

If you have the right message now that sooner these guys are tired and they obviously know that this country is not working the way it is, they also know clearly that it is not about having plenty money,

staying in a very big place and driving a very big car, they know it’s not working, for this reason they need to open the door and allow other people to come in, serious people with the right policies, so that we can make this country work for us once.

You are aspiring for the office of the president of Nigeria, peradventure you become the president, what will be your take on re-structuring the country?
Restructuring Nigeria is a very big debate. There are areas that I so much advocate for; the area of removing state of origin, very important.

I don’t believe in state of origin, I believe in state of residence, also the area of removing (FAAC) regime, where you have people coming from different localities to converge in Abuja to collect money that they don’t work for, I don’t believe in that. I believe that these monies should be used to build our infrastructure.

The areas I have some questions is in the area of resource control. Countries that you see succeed like China, Taiwan and South Korea; they use their available resources, the strategic resources to build their country, they understand that there is need for integration across the supply chain so that the country can get a sound function,

but unfortunately for us in Nigeria the natural resources we have at the end of the month are put as piece of pie and people take their share and then it becomes a problem.

What are the challenges you are facing aspiring for Presidency?
The major challenge is, people use to ask questions, are you sure you’re serious, are you sure you are aspiring for presidency or you want to identify with any of the organisations to see if they will give you your share, or maybe make you Minister or an Adviser.

That is usually the challenge among the youthful population in Nigeria. I don’t want to say that there is nobody that came up this way, but maybe some came and they were making noise.

But what I usually give them is the assurance that the business that I do and what I have is more than what a Minister earns if he doesn’t steal money and even if he steals money.

So am not interested in any other thing other than making this country work. Personally, I don’t even like politics. What I want is to open the country economically.

Quote
I think the only thing that can make me give up in the presidential primary election is the ballot. If delegates decide to say no and in a free, fair and transparent election as stipulated by the party constitution, then that is all, but I am very sure that I will emerge as winner at the presidential primary of APC.