 Lagos former PDP stalwart Bada Mossi declares support for Pita Ubi and the PDP faction seeks Chairman Iochia Ayuz' removal. This is Plus Politics and I am Mary Ann Acoll. The stalwart of the People's Democratic Party PDP in Lagos state Mr Babatunde Bada Mossi on Friday defected to the Labour Party, declaring support for its presidential candidate Mr Pita Ubi. Bada Mossi is a former Governorship Candidate of the African Democratic Party, a former Lagos East Senatorial Candidate for the PDP, and he made this known in a statement in Lagos. He said he was motivated that almost all youth who were not professional politicians or influencers for hire had been popularizing Ubi's presidential ambition. He also said that Ubi had over the years shown himself to be creative, prudent and a frugal administrator, as well as a trustworthy custodian of public funds. Bada Mossi also described the Labour Party Vice Presidential Candidate as a brain, prudent, practical and principled politician. What's running us to discuss this is Babatunde Bada Mossi, a former PDP Governorship Candidate who is now with the Labour Party. It's good to have you join us sir. I think the first thing that everybody would be talking about this evening is the fact that you have moved to the Labour Party. Apart from the fact that you say that you have seen a lot of young people declaring their support for the presidential candidate, what made you move from the main opposition in Lagos, which is the PDP, to the Labour Party, which some would refer to as one that does not have the structure that the PDP has? Well, around me to paraphrase Mr Babatunde when he said that the stock job is the people and when he left PDP, what he told the stock job PDP left with him? At least in spirit, not in person. A lot of people in PDP have sympathy for Mr Babatunde. And since his chosen Labour Party has been able to realize his presidential ambition, many of our former colleagues, they might not say publicly, but they all wanted those from the top, because they were probably welcome and expected to see a yield of cross-country over the next few months, especially with PDP Lagos for, there's a lot of confusion in the party of them. There are, I think, about 30 cases involving the PDP Lagos state and the federal passport in Lagos, as we speak. And these are mostly premised by the perceived injustice with, well, I think perceived, I think they're actually really dealt with, dealt with people during the last congresses and the panel on Dr Babatunde. And lots of people turned off on tickets that they never actually were in the primaries for. And some people actually lost the primaries, they're still headed up as the candidates. So the candidates that were elected at the primaries, or some of the primaries that were held, where the delegates that voted at those primaries were not the ones that matched at the world congresses and the LG Congresses and the party. And some of these people are in court and the timing to get there, the timing to get justice, you know. Now, before all this confusion came to be, I already did not participate in the humanitarian primaries, because I could see what was going to happen. The only point there is the pattern in the United States where every single humanitarian candidate, since 2003, can't be somebody who crossed the border from whatever they put in the pool as a unit. So in 2003, it was the late, in 2011, it was my good friend, he was also somebody that crossed the border from the government. In 2015, it was a new strategy by me, a lot of my big brothers, a well-known associate for Statenu and again in 2019, it was the same. So you can see the pattern. So when the young man, now the candidate, made the announcement that he wanted to cross the border with me, and I looked into the background of the people that were backing, I realized that it was the same, you know, game all over again. It's wash, rinse, and repeat. And I realized that anybody who came up to contest against it would just be looking at it against the brick wall. But this is not new for any political party, and I'm talking about the major political parties in the country. This is not new where, you know, people feel aggrieved and leave one place to another and still get tickets. We see that happening every other election cycle. So what's the difference? What has never happened to any other political party, except the PDP, particularly in the state, is that people who were not going to party from the beginning, who had been in other political associations and worked with other political parties or associated with other political personalities, known to belong to other political parties, always seem to get the government tickets. We could never put it at home, it would never happen in the cross-border state, it would never happen in the Delta state. The only place, the only other place where it has happened was in a new state, and even the circumstances of that caused a revolution in the state. So that was that revolution that brought him our last election, the first government from the other side. So, you know, at the end of the day, the latest political situation is unique in its absurdity, then it was coming back. So we have that situation, and I saw what was going to happen, and you know, it depended on the spectacle of parliament, and in fact, what the people are talking about. In the younger states, it is about the beginning of a very deep hole that we are going into, by 23 years of senior wisdom. We need to get out of that, as quickly as possible. Now, let's talk about the... Let's move back to something that you said, let's go back to the Labour Party. You did talk about the sympathies of the average Nigerian that the PTAB ticket is enjoying as we speak. Now, for many people, and I've asked this question to many who have moved from, you know, different parties to the Labour Party in different parts of the country, so in moving to the Labour Party, especially for someone like you, who has been in different political parties, are you hoping that the sympathies of Nigerians for the Labour Party, especially Mr PTAB, might trickle down to every other person who holds a ticket in the Labour Party across the country? Is that the hope for which people are moving to the party for, especially you, sir? I don't know, but you know, I'll tell you this, in Lagos, the Labour Party has managed to attract some high-quality people, some extremely high-quality people, and if they debate, or who was going to be the governorship candidate, because it has been quite intense, and I like it like that. This is sort of a dialectic that what's happened. For quality candidates to emerge, I want to believe that there's a certain young man in Labour, I'm not going to name him that, but he gets the ticket because that's somebody I can certainly work for, and we need a new generation, let's be frank, you know, and in today's world, believe me, you know that's better. Could this young man be Vivo Rhodes? Is that who you're referring to? It's just a question, is that the young person that you're making reference to? Let's move on, now you mentioned about the situation within the party, again we see that before now, a certain person was announced as the presidential candidate, the governorship candidate, I beg your pardon, for the party here in Lagos, but as we speak, there is some form of, you know, confusion, you have decided to call it something that you like, it's intense, but is that not also something that is similar to what's happening in the PDP, even though it might be a type or a shadow of what's happening in the Labour Party, but I mean this is almost the 11th hour, why have this kind of confusion for a party that you say is supposedly to bring hope to Lagosians? I know you journalists like said to me, that is what your profession thrives on, I understand that, but I'm tired of this announcement that you claim was made, was it made by the party? So to the best of my knowledge, the Labour Party had not announced a candidate for Lagos, so I think we should go back and look at this 12-hour announcement and find out who made it, was it the Labour Party? Those are the only two people, those are the only two organisations to the best of my knowledge, unless a lot of things, that can announce a candidate for the Labour Party because of the political party in Lagos, and neither of them would have made a statement with the Labour Party. So there is no confusion. So when do we expect to hear this announcement for the Labour Party going forward? Well I personally expect that within the next 14-thousand people who will hear a definitive statement from the Labour Party, we should expect to hear the candidate, the Governery candidate for Lagos. All right, let's talk about what you are doing in the Labour Party, do you intend to hold a ticket for what office and why? I mean I've seen you, I remember in 2019 you ran for a governorship, again we saw you try to run for this, you ran for on the PDP for a senatorial ticket. What would you be running for now in the Labour Party? Do you intend to run for any office, or you just want to be a member of the party? Well the only reason that would be the only thing that would make me run for office would be if the electorate decided to fund that adventure. Now if they don't, then why have they to sit down and support where it is that the party presents? Or every office, presidential, publicship, senatorial, cast of reps, because we need a complete change in the Labour Party, we need a complete change. Lagos, especially, needs a complete change, because if Lagos is the footprint of the Nigerian economy, isn't it? If the 5% of the BAT that's generated in Nigeria is generated in Lagos. Of all the banks in Nigeria, every one of them has at least a few cents of their branches in Lagos state. That tells that the engineering of the Nigerian economy is Lagos and it's been stifled for 23 years. And how do you hope that the Labour Party would be able to break this so-called shackle? Being that, again, you do still have on one hand... It's not a so-called shackle, it's a very real shackle indeed. The millions of market women and traders in Lagos will tell you that the shackle is real. The millions of taxpayers in Lagos will tell you, yourself included, will tell you that the shackle is real. Okay? It's not so common. We do not even try to trivialize the suffering that people are going through in Lagos. Really, it's very real. We spend more than seven hours of our waking day in track with them commuting from home to work. We don't have running water, we don't have electricity. The local governments are virtually comatose. And the state governments cannot fill in the gaps involving powers and responsibilities, as you said, from the local government. So you have powers of rubbish all over the place, serious health issues across the state, the hospitals are inadequate. And you have the government that keeps swallowing around, you know, finite clothing and waxing laryngeal about it a bit real and that was designed by somebody else that is now coming to implement, you know, and maybe, maybe, maybe not really, they just might finish the red line this time, but the blue line, which has been under construction since 2009, remains all finished. And there's no end in sight. How does the Labor Party help to- The period of time that's spent. I'm so sorry to talk over you. How does the Labor Party intend to take, you know, to break this cycle that you are making reference to, to take over Lagos, because this, at some point, was seen as a two-horse race. But now that the Labor Party is in the picture, how does the Labor Party hope to break grounds, knowing that on the one hand you have the ruling party and on the other hand you have the opposition, which is the PDP, how do you intend to break ground? How do you intend to take over? Let me, let me reset the reality here. In Lagos, it is indeed a two-horse race, but the two-horse race are the Labor Party and the Labor Party. Really? Yes, because the millions of youth in Lagos that will vote for the Labor Party that was turned by their votes, that will ensure that the votes are transmitted at just waiting for the election. And then you will understand that what is happening, the Obidachi 2023 evolution, is very real. It's not just an all-or-nothing. You see rallies in Benin, you see everyone in the mafia, in Nassarar state, you see rallies, I just pop up like that all over the country. More and more of that will happen and you will see very real people on the ground. You know people can't really move around as easily as we need to in Nigeria anymore because of banditry, terrorism, kidnapping, so the crowds that you see in Nassarar, they're from there, they're real, they're what's important. Now I like the idea that there have been rallies, there have been people who are coming together for making the PTOB thing a movement of sorts, but much more than the rallies, much more than the social media conversations, how do these rallies and conversations online and offline amount to votes because this is the game of numbers, it's not necessarily about talking tough or you know having a movement, it's about how many people will come up to vote. So I'm interested what is the Labour Party doing to make sure that just not just having a movement is enough, but how they will make sure that every single person who is part of a movement comes out on election day because that's what counts. Who do you think those 12 million new registrars or previous teams are planning to vote for? Do you think they're planning to vote for the PDP? Do you perhaps have some imagination that the way we want them to vote for the same hate you see that held us all down for the last seven years or so, that has punched us into a pool of debt that we currently won't see the bottom yet? You know, everybody wants the poor party, anybody with two brain cells between their heads knows that every seat is a no-no. No matter how many times they say that we don't come, the truth is we don't come. Nigeria don't come. We don't come and that's the truth. And finally to every person who's watching and maybe still making up their mind, what's the message of hope that they should hold on to, especially for Lagos State? Again, like I said, we saw what happened during the local government elections. We saw that almost nobody showed up to the polling units. You could count on one hand how many people showed up to the polling unit. And this some would say would have been a litmus test to how many of us would show up to the polls to vote in the next election. I mean, Oshun State for so many would be a great, you know, showing for what might happen. But then we're talking Lagos, how many, because in Lagos State we have a lot more people in the middle class and we hardly see those people show up to the polls. Is there a change of mindset going around that might get those people to come out and vote? Because you talk about new entrants and these are young people. But what about the middle class? These guys who are supposed to know better? The new entrants into the electoral space in Lagos are actually made up of the middle classes and their parents and their children use. Now, if you go on social media, you'll find this to be true. What was just on social media has now manifested in terms of PPC registrations. And if INEP, not their job, stops throwing away people's PPCs or trying to deny several million people their PPCs, then yes, we will see a change. If they do not, if they attempt to rig this election before it actually happens, let me not say much. I just hope that we still have a country by the time the 2023 election is over. We will definitely have a country, but I just want to quickly push you on something before I let you go, because we're almost out of time. Let's talk about the issue of insecurity. Now, it has hit close to home. Normally when we talk about terrorism and insecurity, banditry, it looks a bit far-fetched. But then we recently had a red alert about insecurity coming down south. And of course, the Commissioner of Police in Lagos State had addressed the issue saying that they're on top of the matter and there was no need for us to be alarmed. How well do you think that the governments in the south, especially Lagos State, is handling or dealing with the issue of insecurity? Now, there are people who have complained about under the bridge around on the mainland, even here on the island, several people who just leave or sleep under the bridge. We also have the issue of sudden people who have been seen in certain areas, not doing anything, just sitting around in groups. And many have called on the state government. But have you seen a swift reaction in dealing with these issues? Because these are the things that gradually become terrorist cells. Well, I'm glad that some of you in the sports place of the realm are beginning to wake up to your responsibilities as far as this terrorism thing goes. I saw it as far back as 2007. And I wrote it then, no, 2008, sorry. And I wrote the dead governor, the governor of the Russian-Iraji fashion line about what I observed. And I recommended some things. I wrote a rather long email and I made a comprehensive recommendation that would pull the rug from under the feet of a certain sector of the potential terrorists, because I could see what they want, just based on a rough observation of their adrenus. And the fact that most of the people that I saw were young males of military aid. They were trooping into Lagos on a daily basis in their hundreds of thousands, as far back as 2008. So I've worked with trepidation as government, after government, has treated this matter with pink blood. And some of the governments that did respond responded in ways that perhaps left a little bit to the disaster. I mean, the issue of deporting Nigerians or deporting people from Lagos to their home states, I'm not sure that that's perhaps the best way to handle these sorts of issues, or the issue of seizing and crushing padders. I don't know. We can do better. We can do this. We can do these things in a more civilized way, and still achieve the same end of removing any undesirables from circulation. We can do that, but we can do it in a more civilized way. And I did recommend, like I said, I recommended to Dexon Icy at the Niger Fashion Lab back then, and his response made me realize that there were totally few parents, you know, not necessary, that maybe the best thing would be to try and become governor myself, because remember, in 2008, I had no contested for a position yet. Well, I want to say thank you. Mr Babatundi Gbadamasi is now a member of the Labour Party, and he used to be a PDP stalwart. Thank you so much for speaking with us on the show. Thank you very much for having me here. Thank you. All right, thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a quick break. When we return, we'll be discussing the postponed PDP National Executive Council meeting and factions within the party seeking the chairman's removal. Stay with us. We'll be right back.