An associate of President Muhammadu Buhari and member of the Board of Trustees of the All Progressives Congress, Buba Galadima has said President Buhari will leave Nigeria in pieces by 2023.
Galadima disclosed this in an interview with the PUNCH while speaking about the crisis in the All Progressive Congress, the Buhari presidency and political intrigues ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Asked, what will happen by the time Buhari leaves in 2023 and where he espies Nigeria as a nation, Galadima said “ In pieces! That is the imagination of everybody! We are already in pieces; it is just that we have not disintegrated. It is difficult to divide Nigeria, not because it cannot be divided, but because of our own internal contradictions. If you say the South-West should form a country, of their own, I want to assure you that Lagos will object, Ekiti people will object. They will never go back to Ibadan. If you say let those who were part of the old Eastern Region go back, I want to assure you that the ordinary Efik man, the Oron, Ibibio, Anang, Kalabari, Ekwere, Ijaw man will never accept to go back as citizens of Biafra, the ordinary Ebonyi man will never agree to be part of an Eastern Region that will take them back to Enugu. These are our internal contradictions. How do you now define the North-Central?
He went on saying that “If you say we should form a country of the North-East, I will not go, I will take my people of Bade out, because we don’t belong. These are internal contradictions we can’t sort out. That is why we are better off remaining as Nigerians to make this country work. Let’s look for leaders who can do the job.
Galadima, citing reason Buhari cannot change for the better and run the country better said President Buhari cannot run a better government because he is already about 80 years old and no man can change at that age.
Asked if APC can survive the crisis rocking the party, Galadima said the APC has seen nothing yet. The country has seen nothing yet about the APC. They are already in factions. At least I know of about seven presidential aspirants and Buhari has not anointed his own candidate.
Speaking on his choice of Candidate for the next Presidential Election, he averred that “ The man with the largest of hearts, the man that can carry the whole of Nigeria along. Somebody who believes in our plurality and who believes that the faces of everybody have to be seen in the governance of Nigeria, not only his relatives, his in-laws or his friends or where he comes from. That is the kind of President I would want to see for Nigeria. It is now left for Nigerians to take a cue from me, forget about sectional, tribal or ethnic affiliations, who is the best, who has the largest heart, who has a vision to take Nigeria to the next level? Malaysia now has five prime ministers. First, Tunku Abdulrahman, Tunku Abdulrazaq, Mahatra Mohammed, then Habib, who is now the sixth person coming. You don’t go to any village in Malaysia to tell them “I will give you light and water” to campaign. They have a type of ethnic and religious composition. They have Muslims, Buddhists and other types of religions. There are essentially three ethnic groups in the country. They are ethnic Malays, ethnic Chinese and Indians. You don’t go to any part of that country and say you want to contest an election because you want to bring water, electricity and roads. This is because they sat down as a country and decided where they wanted to see Malaysia after 20 or 30 years; they enumerated how they wanted their roads to be and all that. So, everybody that was elected after then was only coming to ensure that the plan which was accepted by the forefathers of Malaysia is still on course. Alternatively, they also make laws for the good of the people; that is the only thing they do. No Malaysian parliamentarian takes more salary than that of a director in any ministry; is that the position here? Now, has this government ever heard about the allegation that during a common recruitment into any security agency or even into the civil service, you have to pay a humongous amount of money? Do they know? When one of my friend’s sons wanted to join the Nigeria Police Force, he was asked by these faceless people to pay an amount of money for him to be recruited. My friend told his son, “Even if I had the money, I would not pay, besides I don’t even have the money, because once you are recruited because I paid money, you are also going in there to help yourself regain the money.” Do you know that promotion in the civil service now is cash-and-carry? You have to pay for examination-nobody marks the papers. And the allegation is that when you want to move from deputy director to the position of a director, the price tag is N5m? When you want to move from an assistant director to deputy director, it is N2m? When you are to move from Level 15 to 16, you pay between N500,000 and N1m? These things are happening and do you know that parastatals have vacancies they take to the National Assembly as slots? So, when you don’t know anybody in the National Assembly, you don’t get anything. Now, I have about seven children with Master’s degrees. I have medical doctors but none of them can be employed because I don’t have the money to bribe anyone. Even my friends in government are running away from me because they wouldn’t want to be seen with me, let alone for me to ask for a favour. I can’t ask for a favour from a government formed by Buhari whom I worked for more than any human being including Buhari himself, to bring into office? That I can’t bring even a son or a daughter for employment? Or my daughter could work in the Villa for four years without salary? Not one penny. If they claim they don’t know, they will read it in PUNCH now, let’s see whether they can pay her. When #EndSARS protest started, they didn’t know that the sons and daughters of Mr Nobody who could not get food to eat could make them lose sleep and they have just seen a tip of the iceberg. They are leading this country into a revolution that they don’t want to accept.