Buhari is creating opportunities for us, young people, to take over APC — President, Progressive Youth Movement
Prince Mustapha Audu, an All Progressives Congress, APC, Stalwart and the president of the Progressive Youth Movement is leading young stakeholders agitating for a better APC and youth inclusion in the party. In this interview with JOEL OLADELE, he addressed issues bordering on the APC’s National convention. He agreed to a large extent that APC is a party built around President Muhammadu Buhari and if the party must survive beyond 2023, youth inclusion must not be handled with levity. He also lauded President Buhari for being sensitive to this reality, thus mandating party leaders to ensure that credible youths are allowed to lead. He expressed his displeasure on the delayed convention, adding that youth stakeholders can conduct a successful convention within two weeks if given the opportunity.
How will you rate the APC administration in terms of achievements, considering the state of the nation?
To be honest, if we are to be truthful, we have not gotten the highest mark, simply because we haven’t met the objectives, goals and aspirations of Nigerians – that’s the truth. Do we think we can do better? Of course! Do we think that we got certain things wrong? Yes! Did we get certain things right? Yes, we did! To be honest, I’m hoping Nigerians can see that with infusion of young people in the upcoming convention and in elective positions with new faces that they can trust and rely on, I think Nigerians will be willing to give APC a chance to continue.
In what aspects do you think APC is not meeting the yearnings and aspirations of the people, let’s take for instance, the ongoing fuel scarcity in some places in the country?
Honestly, in the area of fuel scarcity, I think APC got that one right. Right now, there is an issue with the one that was imported being mixed with sulfur, which is bad for vehicles. I think it’s a temporary thing. About seven years of APC’s administration, I think we haven’t been seeing queues as something significant. If this was a constant thing, we would have said that’s a problem: But sometimes when you are facing a temporary issue, it looks like forever. I think it just has to do with the supply. In the next few weeks, I don’t think we’ll have this conversation about fuel scarcity. So, if it’s about fuel scarcity, we’ve done well. If it’s about security we have not done well; if it’s about economy we have also not done well; if it’s about agriculture, I think it’s working; if it’s about youth inclusion, we haven’t done well but Mr. President has finally given young people a chance as you can see what young people have done for the APC in the last few months. It’s because of us that we are having a convention soon or that we are supposed to have a convention. You can see all the roles that we have played, even though some of our leaders have been threatened by us, they have sent the security agencies against us, they sent DSS against us but in all of these, we are vindicated.
The report that the DSS gave to Mr. President shows that we are the largest youth group in the country and we are after the progress of APC. Although we have been infiltrated by PDP members who have not performed so well, we believe that things are going well. We are hoping, but it’s not just to hope but to actually work towards it. We feel that a lot of young people with great potentials, who can offer so much to the country, have not been involved. This is now the time that we are getting involved to change the narrative.
Few days ago, president Muhammadu Buhari said he will support the elections of credible youths. He went further by mandating party leaders like the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and his Chief of Staff to ensure the inclusion of youth in the scheme of things. You are one of the members of the committee set up to see to that. How do you feel about such, coming from Mr. President?
Well, to be honest, we are encouraged by this. This is one of the reasons we believe that Mr. President is youth oriented or, at the very least, wants to leave a legacy behind by involving young people. We are quite happy with that. We believe that the inaugural meeting for the committee is coming up on Thursday. So, we hope that this collection of young people represents the true aspiration of young Nigerians. We are demanding for every single vice position in the upcoming national convention, so we must get it right as young people because the time to deputise our leaders is now; the time to have transition is now. You cannot have leaders that will leave us with an APC ship that cannot sail. We are not interested in that one. We are interested in building a system or party that is inclusive for all young people
In November 2021, under the aegis of the Progressive Youth Movement, you declared yourself as the new chairman of APC and named your committee members. What brought about that? However, just two weeks ago, you made a U-turn and drummed up support for the Buni-led Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC). Should we say you bowed to pressure or threat?
No, no! the reason we declared the new CECPC was because we were not happy with what was going on. The challenges in the party was tremendous and we didn’t see the leaders trying to make the real genuine efforts to surmount these challenges. So, we felt as young people, we have the capacity to deliver a successful convention. We have the capacity to unite the party. We have the capacity to return things to the way they were. So, when we did that, the governors immediately started reacting. When we declared February as Convention, they too went to Mr. President and said February. We went ahead and declared February 26, they also went ahead to declare February 26. So, we know that we have put them under pressure as young people, but we will not let it end there. We will keep pushing, we will keep carrying on and we know that the time to include us is right now; so we know that and we’ve had meetings. At first, they tried to intimidate us but when they saw that we were genuine, they knew that there was no option but to attempt to reconcile. So, in the reconciliation they said everything we wanted will be done. We wanted a letter to be transmitted to INEC, they have done that; we wanted February 26, they gave us the exact day that we wanted. Now, we are asking for youth inclusion and they are ready to include us, so why should we continue fighting the party? These are very sensible things to say and as sensible young people, we agreed to that. So, we’ve come together to say, okay, let’s champion the cause of the convention: But we are also on our toes because we know that there is a difference between political promises and real promises. We want our leaders to give us real promises not political promises. So, if they are unable to conduct the convention, if they are unable to do what is right, we’ll encourage Mr. President to go ahead and disband them and ask us to complete the task that we started: but we don’t anticipate to do that. We hope they don’t do that, but if they postpone the convention, we will have a meeting with all young stakeholders and take a position as young stakeholders of the party
From your submission now, can we say they bowed to the pressure of young stakeholders?
Absolutely!
The National convention is fast approaching, do you think APC is good to go, considering a lot of lingering crises in the party? Don’t forget, the CECPC was citing that as one of the reasons to delay the convention?
Personally, any day Mr. President reaches out to us as young people, within two weeks the convention should be conducted; we don’t need two years. His excellency, Mai Mala Buni was the previous secretary of the party, and for the time he was there, between May 2nd and May 14th 2018, Ward Congresses, Local government Congresses, State Congresses and National convention were conducted – that’s 12 days. It has taken us two years, there is no reason why it should take us two years to conduct a national convention. We have reconciled, yes, but we are honest and truthful members of the party. There is no reason we shouldn’t have a convention. If they extend the convention, it means we have put our trust in a wrong place because they are showing they are not to be trusted. Even if they are to postpone the convention, there is a way to do this. There is no communication. They released the schedule of events, saying from 14th of February they will begin the sale of forms, but here we are no sales of form, no zoning, some of these things have not been done.
That’s exactly my next question. As at last Monday, forms were not available, but it was learnt they are now available. What do you have to say about that?
It doesn’t show trust, we want to build trust in our leaders; we want to see capacity; we want you to tell us something and lead towards it. If we look at our leaders, I will say they are not honest to us. What example are we supposed to pass on to our children or those coming after us? That being a dishonest leader is okay? That telling people you will do something on day X and you will not do it is okay? It’s not okay! We are not happy with this, but we are not here to challenge anybody; we are not here to fight anyone. What we are saying is that if they are unable to do it for whatever reason, we can do it, it’s very simple. And one of the reasons they can’t do it is that you cannot be the judge in your own case. When they took over, there were 36 state chairmen, today there are 93 due to factions. Although they sworn in 34, there are still factional Chairmen all over the places. So, for us, who are not involved in these issues, it’s easy for us to resolve it because we are coming from a neutral perspective, no bias is involved. Thus, we believe that if they can’t do it, we are here to assist them to do it. We have made up our minds that we are going to do our convention on February 26. Everything was set but you know they prevailed on us to give them a chance to do it and we have given them this chance. We believe that if they are honest, February 26 should be sacrosanct. It shouldn’t be moved for any reason. There are rumours that there is a court injunction aside; there are rumours that there are so many things aside ready to move this day, it doesn’t show integrity; it doesn’t build confidence. This is why APC is having issues. If we say something, and we don’t keep to it, Nigerians will not trust us.
Look at FCT elections, we lost AMAC (Abuja Municipal Area Council Area), the seat of power where we have ministers, Mr. President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senate President. We have everybody here, and we still lost AMAC by a huge gap because a day to the election we were still in the supreme court. This is showing the many issues we need to resolve and we need to resolve quickly so that Nigerians can build trust in us
With all these, can we still say February 26 is sacrosanct or we should expect a postponement?
We hope so, we don’t expect any postponement but we are not part of CECPC. We trust them to do their jobs as they have promised us, if they don’t, we’ll sit down and take a position: But we’ll not be drawn into having an extended convention. We need the convention, we needed it two years ago. The APC constitution supports a convention every two years, the Nigerian constitution says four years, so we are approaching four years from 2018 by May, so the danger facing us is tremendous. We just want a free, fair and all inclusive convention. If they cannot do it, we can do it, we have 10 days. If they allow us young people, it’s not too late, in 10 days, we can conduct a successful convention that will be all inclusive.
What do you have to say on the plans by the CECPC to amend some sections of the constitution just a few days to the convention?
I have seen the amendments, it strengthens the youths wing; it strengthens women wing. Some of the senators introduced their power to vote. So, there are few things there. Whatever their reasons, give us the constitution, we are not going to allow that to be an excuse. Are we really following the constitution? Let’s be honest with ourselves. Is it not an amendment? Come and pass it and let’s go. What else? Let’s just be straight forward, that’s it.
There are insinuations that the APC is considering a consensus option, how true is this? And to add to that, what’s the party’s position on zoning arrangements?
Zoning arrangements have not been released; we can’t preempt them. Having people involved from different zones is very important because it’s all inclusive. Then in terms of consensus, consensus is coming together and agreeing. Consensus and imposition are completely two different things. Should they try to impose any candidate, we young people will resist, but should there be a consensus, there is nothing wrong with that. After all, our Constitution makes room for that, but you need to negotiate with people. Tell them this is why we believe this is the best person for the job and it will be all inclusive. All the people contesting for the position will recognise you, appreciate you; you’ve propagated the party, so you must be compensated in one way or the other. That is politics in the real sense of the word, but to just bring a list out of nowhere and read it out and say this is the position of the party, I think that’s like calling for a disaster.
Should age be a major factor to be considered when it comes to leadership?
For us, we are not interested in the position of the youth leader. We can leave it for 80 something years old because youth leaders are inconsequential positions. What we want is the zonal positions, Vice chairman, deputy chairman, deputy treasurer, publicity secretary and deputy organising secretary. That is what we want. We want to understudy our leaders; we want them to do a smooth transition process; we don’t want imposition; we don’t want to be used for electioneering and not for leadership. So, this is what we want. We will make sure that we are included in the process. If you exclude us, you exclude the party. So, age shouldn’t be a barrier for young people.
There is this impression that APC is built around president Muhammadu Buhari and the party might not outlive this present administration and even going by the crises, what do you view about this?
Yes, Mr. president may be going away with 12 million votes, but I’m assuring you that the largest voting block that has come into play is the youths. The youths have no other space except in APC. That is why we are still struggling for these challenges. We want to still believe that we have the right set of candidates to be presented by APC youths. Young people want to see young faces – people they can relate to, people that know their plight, people that are equipped for the technological age. We don’t want the same old faces PDP has presented us with. PDP has presented us with the same people from 1999 and they are the same people. What young people want to do is to take over the APC, so Mr president is creating opportunities for us. This is the first president in the history of Nigeria that is not interested in who emerges from where. If you think you are popular, come vie for that position. We’ve never had an opportunity like this. There are challenges with that because there are people that want to hijack that kind of system, but again, there lies our advantage as young people. Why will you sit down and allow those people hijack it when the opportunity is there for all. They are trying to hijack it. We are taking it, that is why they are worried about us; because we know our right, we have come together and this is the first time. The Progressive Youth Movement is the largest youth group in the country. We measure over 1.5 million members of which the majority of us are APC stakeholders. So, imagine what will happen if we talk about leaving the APC, it will be a disaster. The same report was given to the DSS and this is what informed the APC to reconcile with us. The DSS said we are one of the most well funded organised youth raising money internally for a cause. So, the APC should take us seriously or the risk could lead to losing election if we move to another party: But we don’t want to move to another party, we are going to remain here. We are going to push out the leaders that do not provide values – after all, they are used to switching parties. We don’t know how to switch parties. If you see, the majority of young people are only in one party, so that is why we are moving forward with this party and that is why we have to challenge our leaders so that they could do the right thing. If They are not capable of doing it, we will replace them by doing the right thing for them.
In February 2019 there was this open letter written to you by some groups of people that you should come to their aid in your state, Kogi, precisely. They were calling you to consider taking over the leadership position in the party so that you can continue the legacy of your late father. Are you looking in that direction?
In 2019, I did run for the governorship but I was excluded; my birth certificate was removed, my signature was deleted. All these things were things done against us by the party. Right now, I’m not focused on the governorship election, I’m focused on cleaning up the party through the convention. By infusing more young people in the party, things will be done better. The Kogi election is not coming up soon. I don’t think this is the right time to be discussing that, but there are other elective positions coming up and to be honest, I may consider one of those positions. We have the senate, the house of representatives, so I will look into that. I don’t know for now, the convention will determine that.
Your parting words to members of APC and Nigerians generally, especially the youth…
To the youth, it’s our time. We have no other time but now; join the Progressive Youth Movement, let’s take over the APC and let us provide quality leadership to Nigerians. I thank you all, we hope we have a rancour free convention. We are here to make sure we have a convention and the rest can be resolved after that.
