Ibrahim Abdulkareem is the Director-General of the Big Tent, a coalition uniting political parties, social movements, civil society organisations and candidate support groups. In this interview, he speaks on criticisms of Peter Obi as the leader of the opposition and what his group is doing to galvanise support for the 2023 presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP) in the North, ANAYO EZUGWU writes
It doesn’t look good, when supporters of Peter Obi describe him as someone who has gone from being an inspirational firework to a damp squib. What’s your reaction to that?
The truth of the matter is that we followed him, and the Obidient Movement is not something that is created just out of the blue. Young Nigerians want to see a better and new Nigeria.
And they are looking for who is best within this period of 2023. And they have found out that among all the politicians, none of them said that he sent away somebody that is, but he’s better than all the people who I have seen during the context of the 2023 election.
And young Nigerians say, okay, let’s mobilize ourselves through a social person, so that we can actualize our dream. It’s a dream of young Nigerians, it’s not a dream of only Mr. Peter Obi.
So, the opposition after is not about him, it’s about continuing with the young people, who already put their hopes on him to continue what they are doing. So, the critics are seeing it from a different angle, while young Nigerians are seeing it from different angles. And also, Peter Obi brought a new brand of politics to Nigeria.
Before, and after the election, we see people, and politicians, walk away, everybody walks away. And then they reorganise themselves and come back just a few months after the election, not giving us a chance to know them, not giving us time to have a conversation with them. But Mr. Peter Obi has always been in touch with us, we have a conversation with him. I followed him.
We went from state to state; what we understand after the election is that it is not everybody in the North knows about him and how he governed Anambra and there were a lot of lies during the election, telling us some nasty things about him, that he gave identity cards to Muslims in Anambra, that he demolished a mosque in Anambra, and things like that.
So, we thought that, okay, the election is over, the verdict has been given, but don’t go back, don’t relax. And he came up with an idea and say, let’s move around and start to talk.
And what Mrs. Donu Kogbara, was maybe, trying to say is that a presidential candidate in 2026, maybe in June 2026. But here we are, we are in 2024. There is a government in place, and there is somebody that’s supposed to give the opposition. And the young people are organising themselves.
We need the whole of 2025 to re-engineer and re-organise ourselves. What we are saying is that he needs to go and see with his eyes what is happening. For example, regarding the issue of the Almajiri, we know how it stopped during Goodluck Jonathan’s time.
We know in the North, for example, we don’t feel comfortable seeing those young people on the streets. And we now talked to him and said, come and see how this Almajiri system works and he followed us. We went to Almajiri school. He found that in one of the schools in Kaduna, they don’t even have a toilet.
They don’t have decent water and they have to crawl out to go and look for food for them. And what amazed him was that they read and they wrote in Arabic. And he was suggesting if we can take these young people that we call out-of-school children, why not bring school to them?
So, he donated money and we went back again for him to supervise the money that he had sent. That’s the leadership we are talking about not just somebody that will sit in the Villa or sit in government house and keep on watching. We went to Kebbi State with him.
People, who are close to Peter Obi know that there is going to be a reduction in cost of governance under him. He is not somebody who is going to build a new house for himself or a new house for his vice president
We went to commission a borehole. I think we trekked more than 15 kilometres into the bush. And we met the Fulani and he interacted with them. He commissioned a borehole for them and their leaders were there and they saw him. So, what we’ve been doing in 2024 is to go to those people that need to see him.
We are also doing third-party engagement, and we’re taking him to some politicians that we know, irrespective of their parties, to sit down and talk with them. He likes to see things, not just somebody just flying numbers.
So, that’s why he’s moving around. He’s been in Kogi, and you know he travels by road. As you lknow the incident was on the internet, when he saw a truck driver block the road, he just came down and talked to them, they opened the gate, and people started moving.
We went from Kano to Jigawa with him a few months ago, and when we were going on the road, we saw that one lane of the road was abandoned, the other one was being used, and then there were a lot of potholes. So, he’s not just moving around observing what is happening.
We had Muhammadu Buhari as president, we now have Bola Tinubu as president, have you ever seen any of them on a journey of 200 kilometres, like for example, coming from Kaduna to Kano on the road? They are always on their private jet. That’s why they don’t have first-hand information about the situation.
Kogbara’s point is that people want to see an inspiring leader of the opposition. Do you think Obi is inspiring people as an opposition leader?
People want to be inspired, but it is not the only thing that we have to do. What she is saying, is you look at the context of Nigeria, where you bring the term of apartheid type during the days of Mandela, people that are thrown into jail. But look at what we have today, where people are seeing a semblance of state capture.
You know the kind of government that we have under the All Progressives Congress (APC) and how they take politics as a door-die affair.
In 2015 you were almost as passionate as you are now supporting Muhammadu Buhari and the APC, what happened that turned you away from them towards Peter Obi?
I’ve just finished reading what happened in Argentina and then I have seen what a president can do if he wants to change the country. I have seen what happened in Indonesia and Malaysia. So, the most important is the leadership. Everybody knows that with Peter Obi, he will not buy a new private jet.
Everybody has seen him travelling from one place to another, flying the economy class. People, who are close to Peter Obi know that there is going to be a reduction in cost of governance under him, He is not somebody who is going to buy a new jeep, not somebody who is going to approve money to build a new house for himself, a new house for his vice president.
That’s the things I have seen. Secondly, we are trying to actualize our aspirations through him because we don’t have his capacity. We can’t be him but we can be around him, the young people that are coming around him.
What we are trying to do that we have not done in APC is that now we are going to set up a system that will checkmate us because once we promise people and we tell them what we are going to do, we are going to have a process that will make sure that at least those things are done.
Nobody will take over him and nobody will cage him because we want somebody that can move around. The first thing I love so much about Mr. Peter Obi is his movement. The way you see him maybe in a day in three or four different states.
That’s what the leadership is supposed to be because he’s coming from commerce and he’s coming from the banking. That’s the most interesting part of it because if I tell you, to buy something for me and you know that I will be in that market too, you’ll be careful not to inflate the price because I’m going to see it.
Tell us about the organisation, The Big Tent, which you are its Director General…
The difference between us and what happened in 2015 is that in 2015, the APC put themselves together and worked directly to take power. We’ve been sitting down trying to organize how we are going to see that power is not misused by anybody.
That’s the work of The Big Tent and that’s the kind of people that we assemble in The Big Tent. We brought together people from all walks of life and our worries are not just putting Peter Obi in the saddle.
Please follow and like us:
