INTERVIEW: 2027: Tinubu May Lock Up Opposition Members – Dalung

Since the emergence of a new leadership bloc in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) led by former Senate President David Mark, the party has been embroiled in a deepening leadership crisis, with multiple factions laying claim to its national structure.

Nafiu Bala Gombe has also asserted leadership, while another group led by Ogga Kingsley, comprising some state chairmen, has rejected both camps. The rival factions have taken the dispute to court, prompting the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to withhold recognition of the Mark-led National Working Committee (NWC) pending legal resolution.

In this interview with Justina SIMON of THE WHISTLER former Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung alleges that the crisis may be linked to efforts by the ruling government to weaken opposition forces ahead of the 2027 elections.

Excerpt…

The ADC appears to be facing significant legal and political setbacks ahead of 2027. How did the party get to this point?

Anybody struggling to bring change must be aware of the consequences and must also be aware of things like what we are going through. So for some of us who are of the revolutionary orientation, it’s not coming to us as a surprise.

We are even expecting more hurdles ahead of 2027. Like me, I know that the final trump card you will want to play is to behave like Salman of Senegal, where he will want to lock up all opposition elements so that they can pave the way for him, because President Tinubu is not prepared for a contest. And I always hear those who are sort of deceiving him, telling him that he has never lost an election.

No. Tinubu has never won any election. Free and fair contest, no.

He had always been manipulating himself into office, right from the Senate of the abortive Third Republic to becoming governor and how he changed three different deputy governors in eight years. He wasn’t even the person who had the ticket of the AD. So he has always been wrigging himself in.

And that is why he sort of beat his chest to say, OK, I’ve never lost an election. But this is the first election which he knows he’s going to face and he’s afraid of. Even with 31 governors around him singing on your dollar we shall stand, he’s not certain.

Even with the resources of the fuel subsidy which he has been unable to account for, he’s still not sure of himself. Even with the borrowings, external borrowings and domestic borrowings that is over 100 trillion, more than one has ever been borrowed from 1960 to 2023, he’s not sure. So there is nothing he cannot do.

So where we are is just a deliberate mischief, orchestrated to throw spanners at works of the opposition, stifle it, strangulate it, frustrate it and make it impossible for the coronation of a Nigerian monarch in 2027.

The president said he is not behind the ordeal the ADC is facing. The ADC insists he is…Is the president responsible for the cases in court?

The president said so because he was playing the ostrich until God answered the prayers of the opposition. When his chief of staff went to the 50th birthday of one of the core conspirators, they are used to throw spanners at work. He didn’t know that he was under camera and he opened up all that they were doing.

He did mention that they were giving funding, they were giving moral and spiritual support, they were giving every form of assistance to those they are sponsoring. To scatter was the language of the chief of staff of the president. So it will be shameful and embarrassing that the president will come and say he is not responsible.

I think he said that he didn’t know God was going to catch them. But for us, we thank God in heaven for disgracing them and exposing them the more so they have nothing to deny anymore.

You have nothing on ground to show your strength particularly in the south. How are you going to secure this?

Well, I’m not among those people who talk about victory because I’m a revolutionary. I only celebrate when I conquer, when I win. So I appreciate the fact that there are Herculean challenges.

That’s why I told you that for me, I’m even preparing for detention in prison. Because Cheneybo will do that. What do you mean? All these opposition leaders will be detained.

The former president of Senegal did that when he was facing a terrible situation like Tinubu because he spent what everybody thought he had conquered the political space, just for him to realize that he was going to be defeated. So when he had the intelligence that he was going to be defeated, he lumped up all the opposition politicians and detained them. Two weeks to the election, the intelligence still indicated that he wasn’t going to win the election, even with them in detention.

So that was when he wanted to cancel the election. And he realized that the election is not a national question. It’s not a municipal question.

It is an international question. So the nations of the world and its agencies came upon him, forcing him to go for election. And for him, he thought he had won because all of them are in detention.

So he wanted to create a semblance of a contest and released the list of all the opposition that are in detention, a young man, and released him two weeks to election. And the opposition defeated him overwhelmingly. That is Tinubu’s fate. That is what would befall Tinubu.

So for me, I’m not talking about victory. Those, you hear them talking about victory are people who do not appreciate the magnitude of what we’re into.

But those of us who knew, I’m not here celebrating. That is not what will make me happy now. I can only be happy when Cheneybo will bid us farewell as he walks into that airbus, which will return.

Then I will know that, oh, we have champagne to pop up. But for now, I mean, it’s a very serious business. You have seen me in contemporary times dressing in red.

And once I’m in red, it signifies the magnitude of the challenges ahead. So there’s nothing to celebrate. But those who are celebrating are all these political comedians.

INEC will be conducting this election and whoever INEC declares as the winner stands and then you go to court. Are you prepared to accept this result at the end of the day?

Well, the act of declaration of results is a constitutional responsibility imposed upon INEC. But if they betray that sacred responsibility, just like they are known to be doing, they may not get away with it this time again. Because we have learned enough from the treachery of betrayal of the sacred trust of declaration. The responsibility there requires that they declare results of election quality, not results of election fabricated by them.

So once they fabricate results, and they are giving explanations while declaring the results, we will know that they are behaving true to time. And of course, you know that the Nigerian people are more organized, more prepared, more agitated, more aware, consciously alert to defend the integrity of democracy than ever before.

You called for the removal of the INEC chairman. But he’s still in power. So what option do you have?

No, it’s not the ADC. He’s the chairman of INEC that passed a vote of no confidence in himself because he failed the integrity test. So all we are doing is that having passed a vote of no confidence himself, we are helping him to know that he doesn’t have the moral, legal authority to remain there. We didn’t ask the INEC chairman to go and exercise powers that do not belong to him.

We didn’t ask the INEC chairman to go and in 2022, publish in his Twitter handle that victory is sure for APC. We didn’t. It wasn’t ADC that asked him to do that.

It wasn’t ADC that asked him to pull down and change the name of his Twitter handle. It wasn’t ADC that asked INEC to go and embark on the incongruous and shameless internal investigation, forensic investigation of themselves.

They are the suspects. They are the prosecutors. They are the investigators. They are the judges in their own course.

These things were not caused by ADC. Ours was just a help. Because when the chairman of INEC set his father’s house on fire, as good neighbors, our job is to raise an alarm.

So we raise an alarm that this man has passed a vote of no confidence in himself. He has no integrity. He’s a caring member or a sympathizer.

We don’t have evidence of that to prove, but he’s a sympathizer of APC. And there is nobody who has integrity that will not own up to his past. So if I were Amupitan, I would say yes, I wrote that Twitter text because I believed APC was going to win. It couldn’t have meant that I am a sympathizer. But as an academician and an intellectual, a researcher, from my research, I was quite certain that they are going to win. And it doesn’t show any affiliation.

It would have been a more reasonable defense. I don’t know why he’s not recruiting intelligent people to help defend him. And he’s gathering clowns and morons around him. They are putting him deeper into an integrity scandal. Because from bringing down and changing the name, it raises a question about his integrity.

And then from there, moving to set up an internal forensic audit by INEC staff, again, exposed the degree of mental bankruptcy of the type of characters you gather in INEC. One of them should have been more intelligent to know that we can pass out of our case. I mean, but they did it.

And they were not even ashamed of even publishing it. They were happy to publish the rubbish. And these are the type of people that you project to represent the electoral integrity of a very populous, proud, great black nation with very intelligent and brilliant people. And then you have morons misrepresenting us.

He said God spoke to him. He consulted God before he took up the appointment…

Well, now that he has referred the issue to heaven, and I am a believer, I have never seen where God corroborates such things. I’ve also even known that the devil, my Bible says, when the angels gathered in heaven to submit a report to God about what is happening on earth, the devil was sent there with his own fire. Maybe that is the angel that took his own fire to God.

It could not be among the angels. The devil was sent there. And God asked him, why are you here? And he said, I’ve been going around the world.

And God said, did you see my servant Job? No, your servant job is serving you because we give him everything. Allow me. And God said, OK, I allow you to touch him, but don’t touch his life.

So from this narrative, you will know that the devil is part of the executive members of God. He’s a member of that spiritual executive council. He has to report.

So maybe that is the man that took his own report to God and replied to him. I wouldn’t know.

The Atiku supporters are canvasing seriously for Atiku. Obi supporters are threatening that if it is not Obi, then they are bound to support President Tinubu. How are you handling this?

You know, we must appreciate what politics itself is. Politics, as defined by one of the classical scholars, is a struggle for power as to who gets what, how, and why.

And then Chairman Mao Zedong, my mentor, defined politics as war without bloodshed, meaning that in politics, every tactic of war is deployed. The only thing that does not happen is shedding of blood. But every military tactic you know, in war, is deployed in politics.

And you know, in military tactics, there is maneuver, there is even manipulation, there is recognition, there is even retreat, there is advance, there is decoy. All this, they played out in politics. So sometimes in politics, if I want to sack you here as the MD of this, I will come here and mobilize the staff to come to work later.

And if one of them is asked, you know, we have been treated unfairly by the MD. He looks upon us as if we are not human beings, and you lose your job. So you can use maneuver, you can use diplomacy, you can use blackmail.

But I, Solomon Dalung, defined politics as, in Nigeria, within context, is a struggle for power using blackmail, character assassination, and all forms of mischief to whittle down the influence, the visibility of an opponent. So what you find happening in ADC is politics. Why do you have to believe me? The Ibadan Summit answers the question.

Because in the Ibadan Summit, the communique is that the opposition parties are going to present one candidate. And the gladiators that were there, because the media did not even name all, but in contemporary times, I’ve never seen a gathering of political gladiators in Nigeria like Ibadan. And none of them raised his finger there to say, I’m objecting to what they say.

It was subjected to a vote, and we all voted for it. None of them, since leaving Ibadan, had tweeted or written and said, I’m not part of it. Except maybe those who had called themselves as factions.

And of course, to thank God, they called their real names. Anybody who is a faction is a renegade element who is struggling to cause distortions within his political party. So they said, those of them who are struggling to cause disorder are not part of it.

Of course, we didn’t invite factions. We invited parties. So, in other words, would the ADC agree to allow the candidate to go to the South, since the turn of the South has been converse based on rotational presidency? You see, those who are canvassing rotational presidency are also aware that the ADC is a coalition of about seven political parties.

And this is the first time we’re even having a coalition in Nigeria. We have had majors, we have had alliances, but this is a coalition. So if it’s a coalition, how do you bind a coalition with a zoning arrangement? Unless we sit down to agree on a zoning arrangement and a power shift, then some of these things will be relevant to us.

But for now, all I know to the best of my knowledge as one of the leaders is that the leaders are committed to a credible and transparent process that will produce a presidential candidate that will be acceptable to the Nigerian people. And I don’t think we have discussed methods. So when you say a process is credible, you don’t impute sentiments in it.

It must be a standard that is generally fair. And in this fairness, other variables of the Nigerian political situation must be factored into it. So I think let’s take the leaders based on their ways for now.

What will happen if the Supreme Court judgment does not go your way?

Well, we are even ahead of the Supreme Court judgment. The majority of those in the coalition are radical thinkers and are revolutionary elements. So we think, we always think negatively. We are negative thinkers.

We think evil more than good. That’s why we don’t do evil. Like me, when I leave my house, I look at my room for the last time because I don’t know when I will go back there.

That’s how I think. So when we went to the Supreme Court, I should not be thinking about winning. In fact, I’m thinking more that the Supreme Court will not give us a judgment. So what do I do?

So I work hard even for that more than the judgment. And that is the thinking of most of the people in the party. So we’re ahead of the Supreme Court judgment, whether for or against.

Because we are determined not to allow Tinubu to coronate himself as a monarch. And so as much as he’s doing everything possible to make sure that he frustrates the opposition, we are also doing everything possible under the planet, under the sun, to make sure that he does not succeed in capturing the Nigerian state, destroying our democracy, and plunging the country into chaos.