Is there any semblance of genuineness in the planned coalition of NNPP, PDP, LP and other like-minds?
You should know that PDP is not merging with anybody because PDP is a branch of APC. Nobody needs to tell you that. Labour Party has been taken over. So, only individuals can merge, I mean, can come together and go under one umbrella.

But, you should also know that it is not good for us to commit the mistakes of 2014 or 2013, just to remove Tinubu for removal sake, because you may remove Tinubu as you removed Buhari and still bring in Tinubu and be looking, using torchlight during daylight, in search for Tinubu.

So, my suggestion had been, and I have said it wherever I find myself, that like-minded people, based on ideals and ideology, should come together and challenge this system.

But, if you just go there as a crowd, say you want to remove so and so, immediately you remove the person, then quarrel starts among yourselves on how to share.

I don’t think this is when we will be gambling with the lives and future of Nigerians. For me, definitely, this is the situation where we find ourselves.

But usually, when politicians talk about structure and all that, we are talking about human beings. At the end of the day, how would a credible alternative candidate emerge?
That is the one-million-dollar question for all of us Nigerians to ask. Once we rely on primordial sentiments of religion, where you come from, Calabar, Sokoto; we will never get it right. That is why I said it has to be an ideologically-based union. That it is the principles on which you unite to pursue the set targets.

It doesn’t matter whether it favours you or does not favour you. Once those principles are being adhered to, and will be run as government, then you will have satisfaction.
But, this one will say that I have to be minister, so as to to steal trillion, (because) the other one has stolen billion, so my own time is to steal trillion.

Now, I don’t know from trillion, which one is another figure you people call, I don’t know. But, we can never get it right, definitely. That’s our palaver, and this is why people like me, for whom the clock is ticking again, feel very bad that we may not likely see the Nigeria we are looking for all through our lives.

Words making the rounds suggest that it will be hard for your two friends – the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the former Governor of Kano, Rabiu Kwankwaso – to work together based on what transpired between them in PDP, during the North West Zonal Executive contest. Is there anything like a change of interest and alteration of plans?
All I need to tell you is that today, in Nigeria, there is no politician with the political base like Kwankwaso and there is no politician that any Nigerian can die for, except if he is paid to die, like Kwankwaso. Kwankwaso can get one million people who can die for him, without giving a penny.

But, the truth of the matter is that all the big people don’t want to see Kwankwaso, because they are jealous of him. Their pain is why should he claim that he is the best, that he is the one that performed as governor, that he is a friend of the people. Why should he? So they hate him.

Yet, what you need to look at is, who are in the majority? Is it the few big people or the masses? But, you can have the masses, but can the masses defend your vote? So, that is Kwankwaso’s dilemma, or our own dilemma.

Let me come, let me land properly. Can’t Atiku for once think of giving way and support other people? Can’t he think of that? People have been supporting him since 1992. He should also support others.

Our major problem is even age. That is the truth, and nobody wants to say the truth. If I were Atiku’s adviser, I would advise him to quietly step aside and assist the country to move forward because it doesn’t look like now 85 per cent of those who supported him before will support him again.

When it comes to this issue of 2027, where the likes of Nasir el-Rufai are saying that there is need to support a Southern candidate to remove Tinubu. Where do you think this falls into Kwankwaso and Atiku’s presidential ambition?
I don’t think you got it right. el-Rufai has not said you should support a Southern candidate to remove Tinubu. I don’t think he said so. And if truly he has said so, he has further eroded his base, if he has any.
https://guardian.ng/politics/why-like-minded-nigerians-must-align-to-challenge-status-quo/