In an interview on Trust TV’s 30 Minutes with Mannir Dan-Ali, a former National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress and member of a group of 100 like-minded politicians, Salihu Lukman, speaks on moves by G100 to rally the opposition parties to produce one presidential candidate to contest against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2027. What made 100 of you to come together and form a new bloc? First, I would like to correct the impression that I have resigned from the ADC, I have not exited. I only suspended my membership, but I’m still there. I still participate in the party and we are engaging leaders to ensure we get it right. Our objective is that we want Nigeria to get better. We want a situation whereby our democracy is able to present Nigerians with alternatives. We want a situation where elections can have a meaning beyond the ritual of confirming this is the leader for another four years. if you remember, one of the reasons why I left the APC is that the party was derailing from its own mission. While there, I was the national vice chairman and the organs were not working and we ended up with a government whereby it’s all about the president and almost everybody became a choir master. But you were singing on his (Tinubu’s) mandate. I have never sung it. The concern was that the APC began to attack the opposition parties to the point where you could tell, by around 2024, none of the parties outside the APC was viable. Whether you look at the PDP, Labour Party or NNPP, all of them were faced with different kinds of challenges, which you could tell they may end up going to election without a candidate because of the various challenges. Is it of their making or externally inspired? It is a combination of both. Some are of their own making while others are externally induced by the government in power. What is the evidence because they keep…? (Cuts in) I don’t want us to waste time over that because the evidence is even in the media. You have high-ranking officials in government advising people to remain and deal with the leadership of the party and keep them divided. Were you talking about the video of the Chief of Staff to the President who was encouraging a particular member of the House of Representatives to remain there? Yes. And you could tell the role of the Minister of the FCT in the case of the PDP and what have you. So, all those things are there. I don’t want us to waste time about that because those are things we have moved past. Let’s concentrate on your (G100) objectives. So, basically, when we look at the direction the country is going and we had an opportunity to form a coalition, we had the coalition, negotiated the ADC, and then the high point of it was when we went to Ibadan in April and came up with a declaration that the opposition will work together to produce a common candidate. But about 48 hours after Ibadan, Peter Obi and Kwankwaso left the ADC. When you ask yourself the question, what has really happened? And since they left, almost everybody was going their parallel way. So, the Ibadan declaration just disappeared? Yes, it almost disappeared completely and we saw that we were going back to the same scenario in 2023, whereby you have Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, contesting against the current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and getting more votes between the two of them than the president. When we attempted the coalition, we thought everybody had understood that the best way to defeat the APC was to come together and we were very clear that it was not just about defeating APC, it was also to work to ensure that there is a clear programme that will be implemented after winning the election. Which was why, if you remember, immediately after we got the ADC, the leadership set up a 50-member committee to work on the manifesto, of which I happened to be the secretary. We did a very good work on that and instead of sitting to now consolidate that and get everybody committed to it, we have the situation we have. So, we consulted widely among ourselves and felt if the country goes the way it is going, we will end up with APC again. What is wrong with ending up with the APC? That is where I’m coming to. As a person, I campaigned for Asiwaju (Tinubu) and the APC in 2023 and I did so based on the conviction that these are committed democrats, committed progressive people. But what turned out to be the case is that they are more or less monarchies. Some monarchies are even better because the APC has no consultation and no structure of democracy is functioning. But there is a party. When did you last hear the party meeting? Ask yourself. I know the organs. Maybe the NEC may have met last about six months ago. Meanwhile, in the constitution of the party, the NEC is supposed to be meeting every three months and other organs are not even functioning. But let’s not go that way. If the APC will wake up and become f
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