 I will correct A.P.C.'s errors and support state police, says Attico Abubaka, and D.S.S. calls for calm after the United States issues security alert. This is Plus Politics, I am Mary Anacorn. The presidential candidate of the People's Democratic Party PDP Attico Abubaka on Sunday or Saturday said he would reverse the wrong of the ruling all-progressive Congress if elected in 2023. Attico Abubaka specifically vowed to establish state police that would not be used to harass Nigerians at the local level. He was speaking at the presidential campaign of the People's Democratic Party at the Samuel Uguimudia Stadium in Benin City, Edo State. Take a listen. Whatever it is going to take off to do, we shall restore this purity in this country, so that you can travel there at night, so that you can go to your farms, so that you can go to anywhere secure. Again, we promise to revive the economy of this country. What do we mean by that? We mean we will make sure that our industries, our factories, resume production in this country. We will make sure that there are enough jobs for our youth who are passing out from these schools. This is what we mean by reviving the economy. Joining us is PDP Chiftein Osset Anneni. Osset, it's so good to have you join us. Good evening. Glad to be here. Great. We listened to this on the weekend. Saturday, everybody was watching to listen to what your presidential candidate had to say in Edo State. But I want to start with some of the things that he talked about, the rots in the system, talking about corruption. He talked about different aspects of the economy, but let's start with the corruption because it seems to be at the bottom of everything that's wrong in this country. There are many who would say that your candidate is not in a position to speak about the issue of corruption, being that his principal at the time, former president of the Shogun ambassador, had written a book called My Watch and had somewhat rubbish his personality and made some allegations that were yet to get some certain responses to. But they're saying if a Buhari who we all thought was going to be a no-nonsense person is unable to deal with the issue of corruption, what place does Anaticu have in that fight? Once again, I'm glad to be here. You mentioned allegations of Basan Jomind in his book. I think it was called My Watch. It's a really good book. It details his stint in government. But when you talk about corruption allegations and you're actually accusing someone of crime or of criminality, this isn't something that you can just take off hand or just trust me. I believe he's corrupt and therefore the person is indicted just off your world. Anaticu is one of the most investigated political actors we have ever had in Nigeria. He was investigated by Basan Jomind and nothing was found to indict him or to even convict him or to even prosecute him. So Basan Jomind himself in 2019 I think endorsed Anaticu. So I think it just is a distraction, especially when you look at what Basan Jomind and Anaticu did while they were in government. They were the ones that actually created the crime fighting institutions we have now, like the EFCC and the ICPC. So if you're looking for a track record of someone who has shown an appetite to actually fight corruption and want to move beyond just mere allegation, Anaticu is the person that has that track record. I just want to put that on the record. And that sort of dovetails into the second part of your question. When you ask me if someone like for example, Hari failed to fight corruption when he came into office, why do we think Anaticu is going to be successful? And again it boils down to almost like a forensic investigation of people's track records. When Puhari came into office in 1984, he was removed by his fellow colleagues because his very, very short tenure was also plagued with corruption. It was also plagued with impunity. And it was that record we somehow decided to bring forward in 2015 to say this man was a disciplinarian even though he had no track record of fighting corruption. And let's give him another bite at the apple. Like I said, Anaticu has been part of a government that created institutions that fought corruption successfully. The PDP administration has been one that has gone beyond just mere words. If you recall it was the PDP administration that introduced the single treasury account. But failed to implement it, introduced but failed to implement it. It was being implemented. There actually is no society that doesn't have corruption. So what you try to do is reduce it to its barest minimum. And what the good luck journal administration was doing at the time was a phased introduction of the single treasury account. So it was being rolled out but in phases. When Puhari came into office high on the mantra of tackling corruption, he adopted a whole-scale implementation of the TSA. And that was one of the reasons why our economy crashed at the time. Yes. So as I was saying, I was talking about why Puhari, one of the reasons why Puhari failed to fight corruption successfully. I think he didn't understand that its institutions and processes that actually limited in any society. And he thought it would just be the toga of his personality that would drive it. Of course that has failed. Corruption has never been at level this high ever before. And we sort of, you know, and it's a sad state of affairs where we sort of are now in 2022, asking to go back to where we were in 2015. What I'm hoping that will happen is, you know, even better than 2015, we'll go back to where we were in 1999, where things were really bad. And in three years, Artiku and Abasando had made Nigeria the fastest-going economy in Africa, one of the fastest in the world. Okay. Let's move away from that and let's talk about the issues that he raised. He talked about the fact that he was going to do whatever it took to, you know, bring security to Nigerians and we know that insecurity is rife. I mean, every part of this country, whichever direction you look, there's always something that's happened. I mean, there's been kidnaps in Lagos. Soldiers have been killed. Sorry, not Lagos in Abuja. I mean, we've seen all kinds of things happen. Thank goodness, the train kidnap victims have been released, finally, the last batch of them. But this is, for a loss of Nigerians, this is something that almost every government campaigned, you know, on. The Bahá'í administration campaigned on it in 2015, campaigned on it again in 2019. The APC government, of course, the Tunibu who's the APC candidates, is also campaigning on those things and I'm wondering, why is it that insecurity seems to be a thing that we're unable to deal with? Because one of the things that President Mohammed Buhari did say he was going to put an end to was insecurity. He was going to decimate, I choose that word carefully, you know, Boko Haram and now we have a hydroheaded monster, which is not just Boko Haram, but we also have banditry, we have kidnapping and unknown government in every part of the country. So is it just another campaign rhetoric as opposed to the action plan that we need to deal with this insecurity? So interestingly enough, you know, I've been at home all day. I don't know if you guys saw the, there was a security alert sent out, I think by the US Embassy, warning its citizens of possible terror attacks in the capital city of Abuja. So most of us in Abuja really didn't go out, we didn't go to schools, we didn't go to the markets or malls or hotels or hospitals, just because of literally fear for our lives. And I think for me personally, my frustration is that Nigeria has always tackled these problems and the solutions really haven't changed. Most societies that have tackled insecurity have done so from the bottom up. So it's county level, it's local government level, it's state level before you start dealing with national and territorial issues. And that's literally what Attico is saying. For more than 27 years, a lot of people don't know there was a constitutional conference in 1995. So for more than 27 years, he has been pushing for a devolution of powers, one of which is state police, is devolving security issues to the states and local government areas so that at that local level, they can tackle those local security threats, whether it's petty crime, whether it's more serious issues like domestic crimes and murder that occur within local communities, local police are better able to handle them. And then what that does immediately is it frees up the army, the military, the Air Force, the Navy and all these military arms to actually focus on what they are commanded is to protect the territorial integrity of the nation from external internal threats. So they will then be able to tackle Boko Haram completely with no distractions at all. It's not the norm when you see soldiers at checkpoints. It's not the norm when you see soldiers. I don't know if you guys have seen soldiers escorting VIP personnel. Soldiers are trained to kill. They are trained to protect the nation. And part of Attico's plan is to devolve the police's infrastructure so that you have state police, maybe even local government police, and then you can rearm, re-tool, re-equip, retrain and recruit soldiers so that they can then focus on protecting us from threats like Boko Haram. Again, it's not rocket science. It's not a new problem. It's something that has worked all over the world. And I think maybe what sets Attico apart from all the other candidates is that he's first of all the only person who has consistently helped on this message. And secondly, he's the only one that can build the elite consensus you need to get this push through the national and state assemblies. As much as this is a brilliant idea and it's something that people have tinkered on over and over again, but then there are concerns. Some of the major concerns are these people becoming a private militia to governors in different states. Another thing is the issue of financing, knowing that certain states always go cap in hand to the federal government or to Abuja every month to get some form of handout. What's the certainty that states would be able to cater to these police officers? Again, when we talk about Attico's plan, it's focusing on the unity of Nigeria, its security, its the economy, its education. And I think more relevant to this conversation is the devolution of powers. So that would include things like fiscal federalism, it would include things like resource control, and that would address the legitimate concerns you raise about states being able to fund their state or local government security outfit. For a lot of people who don't know, most states already have vigilante outfits that they fund. Most states already have security networks that they support. I think the only distinction here is that these outfits are not allowed to carry heavy weaponry. So they might get firearms, licenses, but are limited to using shotguns. State police would actually allow the governor command and control and equip a police force that would be able to match and even exceed the firepower of these bandits and criminals. So that sort of is the distinction. It's not a pipe dream. It's something that is part of a recipe of policies that my candidate Attico wants to push through. And you don't pick one without carrying out the other. You don't pick, for instance, state police without carrying out fiscal federalism. You don't carry out resource control, for instance, without devolving things like healthcare and education and agriculture and sports, so that the resources that states use can then be used to drive other areas of development at the sub-national and local government levels. So that's why this plan would work and it's why other plans are failed. Okay. Let's move away from that and talk about the politics around the campaign. You know, you and I always get into this. Now, Governor Wike had some things to say about the Edo State rally. Now, for what you've noticed, the fact that Governor Wike was not there, Iqbalzou was not there, Shea Makinia for your state was not there. Governor Tom, Governor Wying, Wying, I beg your pardon. And then a faction of the Edo State Legacy Group were also absent. And what does this mean for the PDP? But before then, let's take a listen to what Governor Wike had to say over the weekend. So people have asked me, oh, why is he not there? They don't see the President and there's the picture, the party chamber and also what are you talking about? What are you talking about? The President candidate entered my state and picked members of the Presidential Council without the whole governor of the state having a contribution. The President candidate entered my state, picked those he wants to pick, without the contribution of the governor. So they said they don't need me to campaign for them. But they don't want me to campaign for them. Will you force yourself? Will you force yourself? Will you go and push yourself? I don't know what I can do. And that is the end of it. I have never seen how people would interpret a state like the other states. I'm going to choose those who are enemies of the state, enemies of the state, with all the contribution of Wying. So that is what they did. And so most of you may not even know him, we don't even understand. Who is our nominee? And the campaign council they have. Do we have anyone who wants to campaign? So last campaign for those who have told us to campaign for them. The governor's candidate, the senator candidate, they told us to campaign for them. And so we are here to campaign for them. They told us to be involved in the campaign. They will come and tell us, is it not? So we won't go and force anybody. So I'll say, there are too many questions that he raised. I'd like to start by the, you know, with the one he's talking, making allegations about the fact that your presidential candidate came to the state, picked people without the consent of the governor, didn't even ask for a nominee from the governor. I appreciate that you're not at Ticuabuboka, neither are you sitting at the head of the campaign council. But you must have an idea. So help us understand these allegations that Governor Wiki has made. So first of all, you know, as we always do when I come on your show, and we talk about Governor Wiki, I gush with praise. He's our star governor. I think he was recently awarded by the president himself. So, you know, whenever I speak to him and what he has done in his eight years almost, you know, it's one of pride. He's sort of like set an example of what governors should do or what you can actually do when you get into public office. So I dove my heart off to him. But when we come to the politics as it involves rescuing Nigeria from the precipice, I sort of feel there may be, they may sort of have been, and I'm trying to be very careful with the words I use as you can tell, but he may have been sort of like a, he may have taken a wrong turn. I think Governor Wiki feels to realize that, you know, this isn't about article and this isn't just about river state. It's about Nigeria. Literally is about rescuing Nigeria. You spoke about the hydra-headed monster of insecurity, for instance, when you tackled Boko Haram or tried to tackle Boko Haram in the northeast, they then spread to almost every other part of the country and then other head-spring of kidnapping, bandaging, or non-government militants in Niger Delta. And this is replicated in almost every sector, in the economy, in our agricultural sector. I think we're almost reaching, heading towards 30% food inflation because of the recent flooding. We're hitting record levels of flooding. We've never had this before. It's actually higher than the devastation we suffered in 2012. We have more than 600 people killed. We have more than 2 million people affected and displaced by the flooding. You know, so when I hear Governor Wiki playing partisan politics with Nigeria's fate and future, it's sort of concerning. What exactly do you mean by he's playing partisan politics? Remember your party, your political party. He's one of the people who highly criticized this government. And if he's saying certain things because he feels like he's been robbed, especially for what he said in that video clip, he's saying he's not being carried along. They're not wanted. They do not want us to campaign for them. What exactly is partisan politics there? Well, partisan politics, for instance, is going into Lagos State and endorsing J.D. Samwulu when your party has a candidate who is offering a plan better than what J.D. Samwulu is offering. Partisan politics is when you... I'm so sorry to talk over you, but did he really endorse Governor Samwulu or did he just say that he has done well? And for someone who's done well, he deserves a second term. Did he say we're going to make sure that you become governor a second term? I mean, it's debatable, isn't it? Because many of his people have been on this show and they've made that, you know, they've tried to draw that line that he only just, you know, applauded a governor who has done well in his first tenor. It's semantics. You know, Governor Wiki doesn't have a vote to cast in River State. So if he goes into the state, his word then is what carries weight. And if he says you've done enough to deserve a second term, he's telling the PDP in Lagos that their candidate hasn't done enough to earn a first term or doesn't have plans that surpass whatever Samwulu has done in his first term. A first term that included, for instance, the shooting of a non-protestors at the Lakitu Gate. And I can go on and on. It really is, for me, almost disheartening when I see emotion getting the way of, you know, like I said, nation building or nation rebuilding. There is no way. My candidate, Artiku, has met Governor Wiki several times, has met him in Abuja, has actually flown out of the country and met him abroad. And so when Governor Wiki says he isn't being asked to campaign for Artiku, that isn't quite correct. In fact, before Governor Wiki's recent statement, he actually said he has no problem with Artiku as a candidate. He has a problem with the party and national chairman. The vote phase, when you now come and say, because the campaign council was put together, when you clearly showed no interest in being a part of his composition, and that's the reason why you're not going to campaign for a presidential candidate, is problematic to me because, again, Wiki is a very influential governor. River State is very influential and very important to any chance we want to have of winning the 2020 elections. I think maybe what gives me some hope and some comfort is that we still have three months between now and start of elections. My candidate continues to make up rapprochements to Governor Wiki and his five, the other four governors. The door continues to be opened. We are constantly looking to find the middle ground. Again, just so that we can come together, not to fight between ourselves, but actually put forward a coherent plan and a campaign that can win in 2023. I think that should be uppermost in everybody's mind, and it's sort of distressing when Governor Wiki, my leader, doesn't seem to realise how precarious the situation is. Let's talk about the issue of unity, the unity of Nigeria. It's one of the most important things that we need right now, being that, of course, it's a country we know that we're very divided along religious, political and, of course, ethnic lines, and these lines have become broader and broader by the day. But then, like I always say, pundits have said that at this point, Nigerians need a unifier. And I'm going to put it to you. Does your candidate prioritise unity? How much of it does he prioritise? And what are the characteristics that we can point to in your candidate over the years that we've known him in the political scene or on the political scene? Can we really point to certain things that would say this qualifies him as a unifier and this is why people should vote for him? Well, I'll speak to the President before I speak to the past. We have a five-point agenda. It's for ease of remembrance. It's called the unity seed. So it's unity, the full word, and then SEED, security, the economy, education and devolution of powers. And if you notice, it's only unity that's spelt out in full. It's unity that's the first point of that five-point agenda. And it just shows, you know, it was deliberately so to send out a clear message that Nigeria's most fundamental problem is that we are deeply, deeply divided. I don't think we've been as divided as we are today since maybe the Civil War. And my candidate realizes that unless we tackle those divisions, unless we sit down at the table and address them, you cannot address anything. You can't address insecurity, for instance, because if you go after or non-government in the southeast, for instance, they'll say you are pushing a persecution against the ebos. If you go against kidnappers in the southwest, they'll say you're going against the Yobas. If you go against Boko Haram in northeast, as happened in 2014 and 2015, they'll say you are oppressing northerners. You know, so you need to unite and build consensus across the nation. And Anteco is the only person that has said Nigerian problems are so big, are so huge that one person and one party cannot do it alone. So if he wins, he's going to build a coalition of like-minds. He's going to form a unity government that will work together to rescue Nigeria. If you talk about what he has done, go ahead, sorry. Because we don't have time. I just want to quickly put in my last question so that we can wrap things up. Your party, alongside the Labour Party and some other people have criticised the manifesto of the APC candidates saying that it's a plagiarised version of MKU-Abiola's Hope 93 manifesto. What's your take on it? And why are you bothered about another person's manifesto when you have your own plate full? So first of all, I'm personally bothered because I realise that we have three leading candidates. We have my candidates at Ticco, we have Tinibu and we have Kitahobi. And any one of them can win and become president of Nigeria. And I'm concerned particularly about Tinibu's manifesto because it's literally a recipe for disaster. I think it's an 80-page document. If you haven't read it, I think you should because it reads like a horror novel. The only good thing about it is maybe his housing plans. He wants to give Nigerians access to mortgages so that we can buy cheap and medium-priced houses. So that's good. But everything else was ridiculous. He wants to triple, quadruple all production to four million bios per day by 2030. And does that mean we're going to leave OPEC because OPEC actually sets quotas for Nigeria. He wants to remove budgetary spending caps and delink spending to revenue. And actually say, you know what? If Nigeria's budget is $50 trillion, the government should be able to spend $50 trillion. It's very similar to the plan that Roosevelt did when they had a great depression back in America. But the difference is that they had a depression and we don't. We're suffering from inflation, pumping this amount of money because he's literally saying he wants to print money to employ people and give them value by just paying them a salary. If you do that, we're going to spiral into hyperinflation. I can go on and on about everything that's wrong with the document. It's plans on insecurity. He doesn't actually say he's going to give state police. He just wants to strengthen existing structures. He doesn't actually say he wants to push through fiscal federalism. He just says he'll give a greater share of the piece of the pie to states and local government areas. He talks very glibly about blockchain and fintech. It's clear he has no understanding of what that is. And his idea of youth empowerment is literally hiring an army of young people to go into the farms and become subsistence farmers. When Dr. Yemikali, the NBS status in general, said, the greatest poverty trap in Nigeria is subsistence farming. If you get into subsistence farming, you might be able to earn a living, but you will never rise above poverty. So it's a plan designed to enrich, I think, a few people but impoverish the nation completely. He wants to give us a national career when we are already drowning in debt. I think it was a manifesto put together by consultants who have no idea of Nigeria's present state. I don't think Tinibu himself believes in that document, apart from maybe printing of Naira, which he has said he would do for... I've heard him speak several times about printing Naira. So apart from that, it's a very troubling document. Just on the strength of that document, I pray Tinibu never becomes president of Nigeria. Well, Osir Neni, always a pleasure to have a conversation with you. Osir Neni is a People's Democratic Party shift team. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. All right, we'll take a break. Thank you all for staying with us. When we return, we'll be talking about the U.S. government security warning of terror in Abuja and of course what the nation must do to avoid these attacks. Stay with us.