Abdullahi Shehu
Abdullahi Shehu
is the secretary of the Sokoto State chapter of the All Nigeria Peoples
Party (ANPP). In this interview, Shehu explains why opposition parties
in Sokoto would have no problem working together in future elections. Excerpts:
How do you see the emergence of APC?
The coming together of the parties
that formed the APC has given Nigerians more strength and courage and
people are becoming more comfortable that we will certainly have a
change in Nigeria. ANPP as an opposition political party felt it was
necessary for her to go into merger with other strong opposition parties
so that they are repositioned to become stronger to make democracy
stronger.
But do you think APC has the capacity to bring about the desired change?
Certainly, if you look at the caliber
of people there, I think it is enough to say it is going to make it. The
composition of APC shows that what we are going to experience
politically in future will take a different dimension. If you look at
ACN,CPC,ANPP,APGA, the people who are championing the cause have the
belief that if they stay on their own as opposition political parties
they would not make it, so they’ve agreed that everybody should keep
aside his feelings and sentiments and put Nigeria first, forget about
our differences and work together to save the country. So APC has a
national outlook, it is not a sectional party because we have almost all
regions participating and agreeing on the matter. I think with this
national outlook everybody would agree that it will bring the desired
change.God willing PDP will become a minority party in Nigeria, I don’t
have any doubt about that.
How far have you gone with the APC issue in Sokoto?
We have lot of strategies we are
trying to adopt. We are doing our homework. We have lots of promises and
by God’s grace, when political activities begin, people will see
wonders in Sokoto.
At the national, they have different
committees, currently, they are working on the Constitution to see how
they can register the party. Officially nothing has been done yet in
Sokoto but we have close contacts with all the parties that are involved
and we are all happy that we have come under one umbrella and we have
agreed to work harmoniously.
Some think the opposition parties in the state were not rising up to the challenges expected of them…
It depends on how people are looking
at opposition. Some people believe that opposition is all about
attacking government, it’s not like that, we have different ways of
achieving what we want to achieve. In the past elections, when people
felt there was no ANPP in Sokoto, we did our home work very well and on
the eve of election people became surprised that we pulled crowd. So it
is the same strategy we are adopting now. Opposition is not about
attacking people. We don’t feel we should remain in opposition because
we want to oppose, we believe things are not going well and we have the
belief we can make things go right, better than they are going now.
Politics is not all about war but
service delivery. I am calling on the people of Sokoto to make the best
use of APC, certainly APC is the way out for us.
Some say APC will encounter problems that may hinder it from achieving its aim…
Whatever assignment you are doing and
it is hitch free, check yourself, don’t expect you wouldn’t have
problems. But I believe any problem that we may have God will give us
the wisdom to be able to tackle it and we don’t expect to have a free
driving process, there’s bound to be one or two problems but the ability
to solve the problem determines if you are a man. APC has come at the
right time coming at the time PDP is in crisis. We have three major
camps in the PDP now and they are not willing to compromise, many of the
PDP members would fall back to APC.
DailyTrust
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