AT BARCELONA HOTEL
27th October, 2018

BECOMING AN ELDER STATESMAN
BY SENATOR BUKAR ABBA IBRAHIM

Your Excellencies, Honourable Ministers, Distinguished Senators, Honourable Members of the House; all other protocols are duly observed.

Today, marks my first stride in becoming an Elder Statesman. I have served my nation well all my life from the day I finished my Youth Corp service. I was immediately employed by the Civil Service and I was lucky to be the only Quantity Surveyor in Borno State. This made me to advance rapidly in the service. I brought in a system of direct labour in which I was directly involved in paying ordinary labourers and insisted on ordinary people being employed in our projects all over the State.

By the gracious will of Allah I was made a Commissioner and continued the direct labour policy. What I did not know was that ordinary people were benefiting so much from this policy which was putting food on the mats of many poor peasants across Borno State. They were taking note and marking me for leadership.

I was also strict with contractors and only rewarded good contractors with more work. II accepted no bribes. This made me enemies but also won me respect amongst contractors. I helped many contractors to get a mortgage and build a house for the first time by recommending them to our bank manager. This again spread my name across Borno State but I did not know.

When Babangida introduced politics again in 1991, I was innocently supporting my friend to be Governor of Borno State, when suddenly we heard that Yobe State had been created. Before I knew it, I was besieged by friends and ordinary people to become Governor. I had only about N20,000 in my account. I did not know how I could campaign with only N20,000, but immediately I announced my intention to run for Governor, the people took over. Friends appeared from everywhere with money and their vehicles. The campaign offices suddenly appeared. Ordinary people joined. Posters came from everywhere. The contractors and the people ran that campaign.

We faced impossible odds as I had formidable opposition from a well-resourced camp with money, thugs, branded vehicles and powerful national godfathers. It was supposed to be easy for them. I was an inconsequential upstart, but they had never witnessed people politics. They believed money did all the talking. I did not know either. It was a sharp learning experience for me also and the people swept me to power, resisting and sweeping away all attempts to rig me out.

The rest as they say is history. On becoming Governor for the first time I felt I belonged to no one but the people, and that was the politics I played – people oriented politics. I went on to become Governor three times and Senator three times. I believe I have served my people well and my nation well and it is now time to retire.

At my age, as I nudge 70 years, I am painfully aware that there is a new technological age and a new generation of modern technical whizzkids out there in the business and political world. The Not Too Young To Run bill should not just be a bill but should be a practical reality. The children of the modern social media leave us all behind, and if we insist that we must rule them with our old ideas, because we have the power, then we are merely holding back our nation and the youth.

I will always be available to serve my nation in any capacity, and in this I give advice to the young people of this nation: do not assume that the elders will give way to you in the way I have chosen to do, you must go out there and take power in the way I did at the age of 42, when I first ran for Governor.

I have given you the book Poorlitics, to tell you how I did it and to encourage you to use the force of people politics, to dislodge those who believe in money politics and the old ways. Those of us who are now analogue Statesmen can, and must be displaced by those of you who are digital youngsters, and the book Poorlitics, shows you how. Go and serve your community with all your heart and they will make you, their political leader. People poorlitics will always defeat money politics any day.

The book Poorlitics is a project started about 5 years ago. Sam Agha Egwu, my co-author approached me and said that he wanted to record my style of politics for posterity. It took years of research and hard work to finally produce the controversialbook called Poorlitics. It took so long to write because it turned out to be more than a biography of my life. I became a laboratory animal, for a sociological study of how to play people-oriented politics successfully. It is a political, historical, sociological and biographical work, not just of myself but other great progressive leaders greater than myself.

As I begin my road to being an Elder Statesman, I am clearly not running for, nor seeking any office and there are certain things I need to say to bare my mind and speak the truth to save my nation. At my age I have no reason to lie. I have been a socialist progressive all my life and will remain so. I have honourably handed over my Senate seat to my Governor, Alhaji Geidam, and I was very happy to do so. They declared me the grandfather of Yobe Politics. It is a title I most heartily accept.

The only other time that the progressives nearly came to power was in the 1964 elections when NCNC of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Action Group of Obafemi Awolowo and Aminu Kano of NEPU came together with other left of centre parties and was poised to defeat Ahmadu Bello’s Northern People’s Congress in alliance with Akintola of Western Nigeria. Whilst other Northerners from the Northwest were fully behind Ahmadu Bello, most of us from the North East were fully behind Aminu Kano’s NEPU and we saw Ahmadu Bello and the NPC as an aggressive party that was ruthless to us. The people in the Middle Belt also thought the same.

In fact, the politics of the North East has always been different from the politics of the North West and it was under APC that we all united for the first time. I began that first move for unity. My co-author, Sam Agha Egwu, kept nagging me about the need to build a progressive coalition against the then very corrupt PDP. I took the matter to my friend Dr Onu, who was then Chairman of the ANPP, the party of the North East. We now reached out the ACN, CPC and APGA. This finally led to the incredible merger called the APC that went on to defeat the PDP.

When I began this process, I had in mind that progressives will be in power and will show Nigeria how to run a progressive nation. Without mincing words, as an elderstatesman, I must say that my dreams and hopes have been dashed. We have certainly not done what I dreamed we will do, and in many ways, we are no better than the PDP that we sought to displace.

As we move towards the elections, I have to give a dire warning to the APC. Things are no longer the way they were in 2015 when we road to power on a cloud of Euphoria believing that things will change. Simply put, things have not changed and many things are worse and the people are bitter. We should not assume that we can win even with massive rigging.

There are just certain things that progressive parties do, and must be seen to do. We must be seen to obey the rule of law. If the courts rule we must obey. We must respect the separation of powers and let the legislature make its independent decisions. The economy has gone down because of our actions and we are blaming the past too much rather than solving the present problems. I am going to give a dire warning. Let the North East not be taken for granted that we must support APC. Our interest in the North East has always been progressive and I will personally be watching for improvements in the APC. Improvements that will guarantee us victory such as respecting the rule of Law and releasing political prisoners. If we are fighting corruption let us fight every corrupt person and not select people in what may be seen as a one-sided witch hunt.

I shall sit back and continue encouraging my Party do the right thing. But if we don’t, I still reserve the capacity to ask my people to go our separate ways, and do what must be done for good governance to reign in Nigeria.

I salute you all.

Thank you.