 I am your stepping stone to the presidency atiku tells Igbo Nation and EFCC, responsible for my ordeal in UK, Aquarium Madu tells KOT as KOT is to decide vacation order on temporary for future of Aquarium Madu's properties on January 25. This is Plus Politics. My name is Nyam Ghul Aghaji. I'll had ya tiku abubaka at the People's Democratic Party's nominee for president and if I knew kowa the governor of Delta State visited a Nambra State on Thursday to continue their campaign. The PDP candidate met with the state governor, professor Chukumasoludo, at the governor's lodge in Amawbia, under strict security after arriving at a Kweme Square in Oka at around 2.10 pm. Atiku made a commitment to his followers to bring Nigerians together by treating each zone fairly and ensuring everyone's security. Also speaking during the rally, a former vice presidential candidate Senator Beno B said atiku decided to pickifanyo kowa because Ohanese had directed that no Igbo man from the southeast should depict as deputy to anyone. According to him, atiku had been friends with the indigbo even as a vice president of the country and decided to pick an Igbo man from Delta State. He also promised to direct the river Niger and make Onitsha a functional seaport. We have joining us to discuss this, Osse Aneni, a PDP chiften. Pogratu have you on the program, Osse. Always a pleasure. Okay, well thank God that you are a chiften of a PDP. How is atiku really a stepping stone to the Igbo presidency? I think, well again thank you for having me and these types of statements you know when you take them out of context they sound a little bit curious. What atiku actually said was that he is a stepping stone to, he is the most viable stepping stone to an Igbo presidency because every time he has run he has he has run with an Igbo man, he ran with Senator Beno B, he ran with Governor Peter B and he is currently running with Governor and Senator Ifa Yokoa and even beyond the fact that he runs with, he always runs with someone from an Igbo man, it's the fact that he makes and I think a very valid argument that he is the only one determined after his presidency if he ever assumes office to deliberately work for a South Easterner to become president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We haven't really ever had a president since I think Namdi Atikuwe who was by and large a ceremonial president you know so he is committed to that, he is committed to it not just by the fact that he has run with Igbo vice presidential candidates but that he has publicly and verbally and vocally and consistently said that if he ever becomes president the person that will succeed him would be an Igbo man but again you know I was happy you picked up on I think the most significant statement he made about making the Southeast an economic powerhouse Atikuwe intends to use the private sector to drive Nigeria's economic growth and he has said he will drive the river Nigeria and he will actually create a port in Onitsha if you come president so that you know the South is again you know it doesn't just become a manufacturing hub or trading hub that relies on ports in Portugal to Lagos but actually becomes an engine of growth for import and export and production so it excites me you know my mum is from Amor Bia not Amor Bia and I'm sure she she'll be happy I've corrected the pronunciation of Amor Bia so for me it's it's almost like a homecoming you know I'm from Edo state but like I said my mum is from Anambra state from Amor Bia you know and we are truly excited not just at an Atikuwe presidency but for what it means for the entire Southeast and for Igbo's in general but I don't know how we can hold Atikuwe as a man of his words we will come to that anyway is it not supposing by this statement that he's saying it's only the PDP that can produce an Igbo president what of the many other parties that we have even at this time so two things to this the APC just finished fielding a northern president and the right thing the APC should have done if they were going to be fair you know and in answer to your question would have been to zone the presidency to the southeast they didn't zone it so everybody contested you know so you cannot look at the APC as an option the second thing is that in a democracy you really only have ever have two main political parties that can ever secure power there was a recent projection by SBM intelligence they are Nigeria's premier data and intelligence consultancy firm and they said you know if things remain as they are pita bia labor party have no roots to power they are actually predicting a runoff between APC and the PDP so and and that sort of is unfortunately just the nature of first past past the post electoral democracies you have two main contender and if you are lucky you have a third force party that can flip or tip the scales one way or the other and I think you know in reality you know that pita bia role in this election he's a third force candidate who if he decides to either align with the APC or the PDP will almost surely guarantee victory of whoever he aligns with because he's from our fold because he's one of us because you know he's manifesto is almost a copy of everything we want to do we hope that god forbid we don't win the election at the first ballot we'll be able to form an alliance with pita bia labor party I don't know when when you said pita bia is part of you I don't know how that will be something to rejoice about because Atiku can be claimed by APC as well as being as part of them so we should be talking about the party that they are belonging to now otherwise we can be classifying Atiku as an APC member by proxie as well no origins matter I think an ideological foundation matter even more so Atiku is a PDP member he's a foundational PDP member as um so a lot of people will not know that even before pita bia joined afga he was actually a PDP member he left for afga did his stint as governor and immediately returned home after his tenure as governor in anambra state so again ideologically pita bia is one of us again you know the data says he has no root to power we hope to win at the first ballot but even if we don't we think we can form an alliance with pita bia okay my concern right now is that our funding fathers brought what they call federal character so that no ethnic group no section of the the country will be marginalized whether really or perceived and PDP came in 1999 and brought what gladdened our heart and they called it zoning which may not be part of our constitution but they thought it's fit to zone but when it came to the 2023 election the PDP did some abracadabra and a lot of people have said that the person behind these was atiku abubaka he didn't want the zoning because naturally whether it was PDP that was leaving office or not it didn't matter the presidency should have come to the south but atiku abubaka made sure according to speculations that okay it was thrown open so that he too can get it and this is someone who is preaching unity how can a man like that bring unity let us walk us through the qualities of atiku abubaka that will make us have the confidence that if he gets the power he will work for the unity of the country so before I do that I'm I'll just take you in a brief historical tour you're absolutely correct in our party constitution we do have rotational presidency but if you remember when Abbasan you're finished in 2007 it was pita oddili from the south who was actually the front runner for the PDP and if Abbasan had not single handili intervened would have had a yoba presidency and then a Niger Delta presidency fast forward to John Yaduwa presidency when he finished he didn't go to the it didn't go back to the north good Lord Jonathan decided to run in 2011 atiku contested against him he didn't leave the party in 2015 many people don't know that even though there were agreements that power was supposed to go back to the north the PDP only printed one presidential form in fact some candidates took us to court at the time and in almost single handili installed Jonathan as a candidate which was why a lot of people left at the time so I'm saying you know we observed these things in breach it was cured in 2007 by Abbasan Joe in 2011 it wasn't cured power was supposed to go to the north we violated the agreement in 2015 it was supposed to go to the north we violated the agreement and so when you come to 2023 and you say it's atiku abubaka that has you know been wanting to to turn away and is only an agreement it's not historically accurate I just wanted to make that point to why he is a unifier it simply is because he is the only candidate pushing a message of national unity we have seen one candidate come out and say it's the turn of the yobas it's emilokan we have seen other candidates go to churches and say this is their turn the only candidate pushing a pan Nigerian message saying even though I am a northerner I want to run a presidency for all and even though or even when I win government I know Nigeria's problems are so deep rooted that I will need to form a government of national unity that brings together everybody from all political spheres of life and all ideological spheres of life as well he's the only person pushing that message loudly and consistently our manifesto is five points and the first one is unity then you have security the economy education and restructuring unity is first because atiku has consistently said that unless we we unite ourselves as a nation because we've never been this deeply divided since perhaps the civil war that unless we unite as a country we can also any of the issues whether it's security whether it's restructuring whatever it is because we must unite this nation before we're able to build the consensus we need to push through the constitutional amendment we are promising to make so you know literally the success and failure of any parties manifestos whoever wins lies on the ability to unite this country and the only person that has shown that he has the political weight and the will to unite this country to build a network to build consensus across this nation is atiku abubaka and that's why I support him and from the Niger Delta he has told me in the room where I was that he will push for resource control he will push for state police those are things that matter to me as someone from the south south today he was in the southeast and he was speaking to an economic regeneration those are the things that perhaps matter to them he was speaking to a sense of belonging that regardless of where you are from if you are from the south east you too can dream of becoming president everywhere this man goes he speaks to the things that caught to the hearts of people i'm confident that this message will resonate come february 2023 and i'm confident that he will not only unite this this country but recover lost prosperity well when you talk about the political will so many people will argue with you they will have some divergent views about political will to do something that is really tough political will means that you have the the the the resolve to to take a stand no matter how difficult that decision might be now i give two instances the first instance is the case of debra in the north that was killed and someone according to your principal said wrote and condemned it and he came and deleted it and that was after a few comments came from some people that he has lost the vote of the noranas and it was deleted yes he has said a lot of times that it was because he didn't he didn't sanction the tweet but we know that someone who is handling your your social media handle should be someone who at least knows a little bit about your mind that's the first one the second one is that till now there's a lingering crisis that has produced a g5 and we've not been able to resolve that the person in question is the head of pdp so he cannot be the judge and the prosecutor the guilty one everybody all in one so we cannot hold him that he's not uniting the party but atiku who is the presidential candidate for the party is expected to be the one to to unify the party and is not able till this moment to do that in fact it has gone to the stage that the other governors the five governors are campaigning for some other people so how would you call this man a man of unity i just want you to keep telling us and assuring us how he can be a man of unity when he cannot unite his party and he cannot take a stand no matter what or whose ox is god as they say and so very i was a very loaded questions i'll try to answer them as best as i can i'll take probably the easiest one which is the debora tweets as you are aware he he had a town hall recently broadcast nationally where he's he condemned her killing and went even further than condemning her killing by saying that you know nowhere in islam is jungle justice allowed um and he he he earned that the perpetrators he brought to book and i think maybe that's the the important point we sort of have capitalized or certain sections of the political class have capitalized on this poor deaths and this poor girls death they do not care about her they do not care about her parent they do not care about justice all they want to do is whenever atiku comes out to speak of or his surrogates like myself come out to speak they hit us across the head with the question why they he deleted debora tweet and like atiku said i'll just repeat what what what he he has stated repeatedly is that he has a process of signing off on his tweets and he was not reachable when that incident happened and just like you said someone assumed he would be okay with it and then they put out the tweet record that at the time you know sometime we we we don't connect real world occurrences with the online world at the time they were about to burn the palace of an emya at the time they were about to start lynching people in in so koto and there was no clarity about who was responsible or what had happened and so many people did not speak many people didn't speak and so when he found out that the tweet had been put out he deleted it but he has come out publicly and repeatedly to condemn her killing and he has called for her murder for her killers to be prosecuted and brought to justice you know so it's it's unfortunate i know it's political season and people will will try and capitalize on where they can they've seen this poor girl's death as a probably a weapon they can use to weaken at katiku's candidacy it's very cynical and now that he has once again come out to publicly condemn it i hope we can we can let the girl rest in peace okay on the five governors you yeah go ahead you can only do so much to make peace atiku has met wiki about five times he has met him in a buja he has met him with jerry gana he has flown out of the country to meet him at wiki's behest you know and there's only again there's only so much you can do and when people start making requests that um on the surface or on the face of it make no sense you know you start to to ask ask yourself whether they're acting in good faith so wiki of sanabili is saying that you know he wants the party to be balanced so ayu should go now that's his his point but the pdp constitution says if ayu goes ayu is a christian from the middle belt if ayu goes he's going to be replaced by muslim from the northeast so how does ayu's removal cure what wiki says his problem is and atiku has says he's a man of process he's a believer in the constitution and there's a process for removing the chairman he is not beholding to ayu ayu has to go ayu will go but these steps have to be followed constitutionally you ask about will because you said why does how do we know if atiku has political will because he did a tweet i want to speak about one of the things that probably cost atiku the presidency in 2007 he was one of the leading fighters against obasan just third 10 billion if you recall in fact he left him he was driven out of the party atiku was locked out of the villa obasan just fought him because atiku said he wasn't going to compromise on our constitution or on our democracy even if he was going to cost him personally which he did so you know when you talk about political will i don't think anybody to date has shown that type of resilience since 2007 the presidency has eluded him because he refused to compromise or bow to obasan just pressure so if we're talking about a man that has strength and will he has he has shown it time and time and time again a lot of people don't remember that when sharia was first introduced by obasan job atiku was one of the people that pushed against it because he called the political sharia to the point that he was even stoned when he went to the north so you know you you talk about debora street in 2016 a woman was killed in kano she was beheaded she was a christian they accused of how blasphemy those tweets are still up he sanctioned it and he condemned her killing and again asked that the killers be brought to book so it's it's um you know it it's funny when i hear people say atiku does not have the will or he's playing you know he's he's just playing politics restructuring is deeply unpopular in the north atiku is the only person that goes to the north and says i will restructure nigeria because he said it will benefit us in the long run it's deeply unpopular but his his consultants will say when you go to this space don't talk about restructuring because message you know the the polls show that it's not popular there but he goes there and said look if you vote me in i will restructure this this country removal of fuel subsidy is deeply unpopular atiku the only person calling in and saying if you vote me in i will remove fuel subsidy because we can no longer afford it so he's he's broaching unpopular positions head on even though they might cost him politically you know so so i am not i'm not i'm not concerned at all about his program because i don't think he's speaking politically i think he's very clear about what he wants to do he has a clear vision of how to get nigeria working again and he like he said to the guild of editors he actually has draft executive bills ready to go from day one on how he wants to restructure this country it's going to be difficult you need a national assembly and state assemblies to push to constitutional amendments which is why it's important i think it is vitally important to have a candidate who becomes president who can build consensus in the national assembly and across 24 states of the federal public of nigeria okay well there there were some so many other questions regarding that unity of a thing um but we have to trash other issues and our time is up already uh but let's just just take a peek if you cannot answer all of them just take a peek he talked about security he talked about the economy he talked about so many things that we are feeling like it's now a deja vu even because we've heard this economy will be better the nira will become one nira to one dollar the security will be everywhere and everything that we heard prior to this time the government seems to have failed so people say talk is cheap so just tell us walk us through the various steps that he is going to take maybe just for security because without security the economy cannot grow everything hangs on security so what is it going to do specifically to bring about this security that he is talking about because from security you can get unity you can get economy working and every other thing like right now farmers don't go to the farms anymore because there's no security so food insecurity will set in people can't make money anymore and so many other things so what particular things is he going to do to give us this security that we much we so much desire in our country today so the first thing i think is important to note like i said is political season so everybody will say what they think you want to hear i've heard tinubu talk about state police for instance i've heard pita we talk about it um this is a book on restructuring uh tiku um it's a compilation of his speeches the first speech goes back to i think about 1999 and in this book he talks about restructuring this country he actually talks about you know in the in the independence of inek and you know making sure their funding is a first line charge and what he has consistently said about security is that states should be responsible for their own security the constitution recognizes state governors as chief security officers but they don't have command and control of the police or the armed forces so article proposal proposal is a very simple one he says look the federal government will be in charge of the military and the military will be focused on protecting Nigeria's territorial integrity from intel and external aggression but states should be able to control and command their own police forces so that they can resolve and attend to local policing issues there's no reason why soldiers are checkpoints or chasing armed robbers that's a local policing issue any state that can do it should um you talk about so so that's for him that's a basic security plan the problem with Nigeria is not just that we have been hearing people saying the same thing all over over again is that a problem because we haven't tackled them haven't changed so that's why you hear politicians coming and say the same solution because the problems are not changing the economic variation he says the private sector is going to drive economic growth article did it at head of the economic management team 1999 we took over GDP growth on military of 0.56 i think in three years he had he had grown into 15.5 percent and it was a very simple tactic he used the small a medium scale enterprises to do it article created smitha if you recall it was under the article and a bus and your presidency that was what powered that good in just now i think smitha just wrap it up wrap it up please yeah okay recently smitha this report saying the smaller medium scale enterprise we've lost about two million of them two million not jobs have been lost we've lost about two million million companies and i think we're saying you know our problems are the same i've solved them before trust me so that i can solve them again okay thank you so much we wish your principle and yourself lock when it comes to when we get into 2023 but um as you go forward you also advise so that we will be we'll start hearing channels that will be created when or if he gets into office for people to uh say their concerns ask the relevant questions and get the answers because we don't seem to find that in our polity right now we don't have avenues that we can hold government to account and every other thing that will want them to uh talk to us about so osi aneni thank you so much for being a part of the show today always a pleasure thank you my brother okay we'll take a short break now and when we return we'll be looking at the organ harvesting case of the former deputy president and moves to forfeit his assets stay with us