Atiku will take Nigeria backward, says Olawepo-Hashim

Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN) presidential candidate Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim spoke with reporters in Lagos on his ambition, plans for the country and why next year’s general elections will determine Nigeria’s future.

Group Political Editor EMMANUEL OLADESU was there.

WHAT is your reaction to the emergence of Alhaji Atiku abubakar as the PDP presidential candidate?

By all standards the Waziri of Adamawa is qualified to be the President of Nigeria, having been Vice President before. But, the 2019 election is a different election. I think Vice President Atiku missed his chance of being president in 2007 and talking about in 2019 is like talking about the future of Nigeria and at the same time racing and reasoning backwards. I think the choice before Nigerians is between Nigeria and the whole Nigerians. A better Nigeria and the Nigeria that people like Atiku created before and most electorates from the polling that we have seen already are not talking about the maps that are been called up by some newspapers, I mean the pollings by those who have PVCs and want to vote. Eighty per cent of Nigerians want to see a new direction. They don’t want to go backward and Vice President Atiku Abukakar is a man of yesterday.

What competitive edge do you have over him going into this election?

Number one, I will be able to unite the country. I will be able to build a strong economy, given my experience and I’m that candidate that majority of voters, particularly first time voters and who are very significant, almost about 15 million of them who are not supporters of APC or PDP and then my friends in PDP and APC, who have made up their mind that when it comes to presidential election we will vote Gbenga. That’s an edge I have going for me I believe, no other candidate in this election has that.

I think the ANN as a party is not all that my political structure is all about. The Olawepo-Hashim Organisation, which is our political platform is presently in 36 states of the federation is bigger than the ANN. ANN comprises of the fathers of ANN and some of my supporters who agreed to migrate to that party, but the GHO is made up of my supporters and friends who are in APC, PDP, SDP, PT and ANN and it all these forces that we are going to be galvanizing for the next election and we have always known that we will come to this point when we started this campaign, 2019 elections is going to be a different election, you will find some states when it comes to presidency they will vote candidate A and party A, when it comes to governorship they will vote for party B so the results of the presidential election is not going to be measured by the strengths of the parties as they are established right now and because it’s not automatic that because someone’s in APC he will vote Buhari. We did an opinion polls 6 months ago, a survey of people who actually have PVCs. In Lagos for instance, Buhari scored 5 per cent, Atiku scored 3 per cent. majority of the people who are both APC and PDP said they are waiting for a new candidate. The 2019 elections is a unique election, it’s not going to be that simple and this is not just a Nigerian trend, it’s a worldwide trend. In the last elections in the United States we saw that a lot of democratic supporters, the men for instance migrated and voted for trump even though they were in a Democratic Party and that’s the trend.

I understand that in ANN you have an alliance with People’s Trust, what are the basic issues. What are you presenting?

The alliance with the People’s Trust, the PT is a party promoted by National Intervention Movement and in discussion to have an alliance with ANN started as far back as May, it’s not a new thing, we are just consummating that and our national convention which was held in Abuja proves that, it’s not just people’s trust, we have a number of organizations and parties that have also signed up in the alliance. The whole idea is to key in into the strategy of national intervention movement that promoted for almost one year running now. So this is not just any initiative, it’s just being consolidated and taken up some further steps. I think the issue is to build a stronger political platform that’s also committed to the idea of national unity, economic development, security in the land and to have a Nigeria where the life of every citizen will count and no discrimination against anyone regardless of your ethnic decent and religious beliefs and a true federal system, these are some of the issues that the platform is committed to.

I think the alliance with the National Intervention Movement shows you that this is the natural platform that I belong to. The leader was the president of the civil liberty organisation while I was the national administrative secretary of the Committee for Defense of Human Rights. In 1990 with me and some other patriotic Nigerians some are late today, we traveled the whole of northern Nigeria consistently for about three weeks in a bus to get the consensus of our people on how to end military rule so we are already working together, I quite understand that there are many civil societies structures now outside these traditional structures that we have and there’s a whole historical gap between the civil society activists of the 80’s and the 90’s and some of them are here today. So I believe that we will have a lot of buying in as the campaign progresses. You start somewhere and people get the right information that they need and they join in the process so it’s a developing story.