Mohammed Sani Musa is the Senator representing Niger East Senatorial District in the 9th National Assembly. Prior to being elected Senator, Sani Musa has been a leader in the All Progressives Congress since 2014 and held at different times party positions in the defunct UNCP, UNPP and ANPP.
Whilst serving as a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC), Senator Sani Musa brought his wealth of experience in the public and private sector to contribute immensely to the growth and development of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
He has undertaking numerous assignments for the party, including funding party activities and other logistical supports at the local, state and national levels. In this interview with Joe Nwankwo in Abuja he barred his mind on why he wants to be National Chairman of the ruling APC at this time and other issues excerpts;
Senator many people have been wondering why a lot of you in the Senate would prefer to lead the party than your legislative duties as a Senator what is the interest?
Thank you very much I don’t know about three or four Senators I only know about two, myself and Senator Al-Makura that have declared interest as well. So I don’t know about the other people that you are talking about. And then secondly there is nothing so spectacular with what we are doing at the Senate and what we want to do at APC National headquarters as the National Chairman. It is about Service, National Service and I don’t equate it that this one is better than this. This one has some kind of qualities in terms of leadership that he can be able to present to whatever entity he found himself and for that entity to be able to excel and work perfectly. My vision is to see a political party structure that is institutionalized in the APC, and not only the APC but let the other parties learn from us that we started a revolution and the other parties can follow and copy us by doing it differently and in accordance with the dictates of constitutionality and making political parties become as corporate entities that people will subscribe to and would be able to follow to the latter the constitution and guidelines that govern the party.
I was going to ask you, you have over 20 governors in the APC and you are a serving Senator and people are saying that if you are going to be the National Chairman it has to be for the 36 States and the FCT what experience are you drawing from to want to lead the party? What are you bringing to the table because party administration is a different ball game?
There is nothing spectacular about party administration, the experience you have in leading successfully an organization is the same you need to lead a political party, it all depends on the qualities you have, you cannot tell me that because you are running APC that means you cannot run another entity, state government or a country?. It does not make sense, it is all about the qualities you have, what we are talking about is the new innovations that would be able to develop the party and restructure the internal workings of the party or entity that you are leading. Or are you telling me that operating as a political party administrator is different from being a politician that contested an election and won, defeated an incumbent senator? It does not make sense, let us be realistic it is just about how you are structured what do you have upstairs, what are you bringing to the table, I believe I have the visionary ideas of a realist that can come to the APC and make it a party that is anchored on the tenets of democracy.
What I would do differently is to initiate a kind of new order in the APC, the first thing I would do as National Chairman is to bring the party to constitutionality.
I will make APC a participatory one that carries every stakeholder along. It all depends, a leadership in the party that will allow and give everyone in the different organs of the party their right of place. And allowing each office to function based on its responsibilities example If you are the Secretary you have an objective to work as the Secretary, if you are the National Organizing Secretary you have an objective to work as one, everyone should be up and doing to his or her responsibilities that the office confers on you but when there is no cohesion, when you see a leader that is dictatorial in terms of leadership, then there is certainly going to be a problem. Failure to adapt the norms and rule of law, once you are not going by the books, such as the constitution of the party and the guidelines or conventions that the party set down, flouting these guidelines and refusing to abide by them how can anyone expect achieving any set goals? So it is all about the qualities of one as a leader, style of leadership and experiences. For me, I have been in business for over 30years and I have been a very successful business man, if I can work hard to provide something that aid our political development and in a country of over 200million people… why will I not be proud to say that I have done it, and what can stop me from running a political party with 40million members successfully.
What is that service that you have provided for over 200 million Nigerians?
I initiated the card reader and everyone in this country knows it and I am very proud to say it. We initiated the card reader that INEC uses presently, I have a technical team, we sat down and looked at how elections have been going on in this country and we felt that there is something we can propose to make the elections better and we made a proposal and that proposal scaled through.
When people look at Senator Sani Musa, what really comes to mind, is your sponsorship of the anti-social media bill so is it not a paradox that you initiated that bill?
How is is a paradox? Have you read that bill? What did you take out of the social media bill that we sponsored? Tell me one thing that you can take out of the bill that you said will gagged you as a journalist? Or tell me one clause in the bill that said that we are banning social media in Nigeria. Just tell me one clause? It is the making of the press. It is your making. I am sure you have not read that bill, and also know what the intention of the bill is?
The bill is meant to regulate the social media?
When you say regulate, you are giving it a vast outlook when you say regulate it, regulate what? You have to be concise. Why do you have firewalls? Why do you have intermediaries? Are you getting access to Facebook directly? Why do you have the search engines? Are you telling me that in advanced countries they don’t regulate or there is no censorship? If they don’t regulate these things why is it that when you are 14years you cannot go into certain sites without being warned of the legal implications? And why are advance democracies regulating that when you are an adult you cannot go online to chat with underage like underage kids, if you do you can be picked up and is it not regulation? Why was Facebook or Twitter fined in France, why was Twitter fined in Denmark? Did you check all those things? Did they ban people from using it in Denmark or France? Did they ban people from using the internet in the United Arab Emirates? If you are there you will still be using Facebook and Twitter and everything you want to use, but there are certain things you cannot do, walk into your room and download VPN to bypass and get access to certain regulated sites, by the time you go to an adult site in the next few minutes, you will get an alert warning you, even with the VPN it will warn you, the site is not allowed but that does not mean that you will be arrested, but if you failed to adhere to their rules you will definitely be charged for violating a certain legislation.
The Bill is aimed at a move to check certain irregularities and we said that the intermediaries should be held responsible and if the intermediaries have asked you to go off certain things and you refuse to go off those things whoever is affected will go to the court of law and present his case, and if the courts finds you wanting so be it. So that it will serve as deterrent to others, imagine that in Nigeria I can photoshop your face and bring you out naked, it has been done to a Governor here, but if these regulations are there, the first people that the Governor will charge if he cannot get the person directly he will go after the intermediaries and who are these intermediaries Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. why did the Nigerian government say they should come and open an office in Nigeria? It is because they are legal entities elsewhere but they are not legal entities here, so that they can operate according to the dictates of Nigeria laws. Do they pay tax here in Nigeria? But they operate in Nigeria when you heard somebody say that Nigeria has lost close to over N40billion in transactions, are these transactions not supposed to be taxable? So you see when we are talking about development, I spend almost 16 hours of my time on the internet working and searching, there is no single hour I will not pick my phone to check something or go on social media or my emails. And remember our children do not know anything today more than technology, from my 13year old to my 23year old they are versatile to use of internet and IT, my son is doing Artificial Intelligence and my other son is reading Business and Information Technology so how can I propose to ban it here in Nigeria? This is very mischievous by a loud minority.
In other words what you are saying is that it was the media that misinterpreted the social media bill?
Of course, I have always said it, otherwise why is it that the bill has not been thrown out? Let me tell you the narrative here the way it came about, Bala Na’allah brought his own and said it will do this and do that people now assumed that it is the same bill that we brought but it is a completely different bill. Then people will say it was copied from Singapore, but we need to know that laws of this nature are universal, it is always good to domesticate every law according to each country peculiarities, the law that is being practiced in Ghana when you bring it here you domesticate it, so that you know that if this is an offense you won’t go to another country and commit the same crime. Let me be honest with you I don’t even want to talk about the social media bill because it is been mischievously misconstrued.
So let us go back to your ambition to lead the party, we have seen the trend of the past APC National Chairmen from Bisi Akande, John Oyegun, Oshiomole and that at every turn the issue has been that they were autocratic and not carrying people along and in the case of Oygun he was very weak. If elected the National Chairman what would you do differently?
What I would do differently is to initiate a kind of new order in the APC, first thing I would do is bring the party back to the path of constitutionality, all the things happening today is because people are not following the rules and the constitution of the party. If today I am elected as the National Chairman and a leader of the Party I should not look at you and say you are mine or that you are not mine because we have all subscribed to be members of the APC as our political party and we should be able to abide by whatever terms that binds us together, that is one, political parties are supposed to groom leaders, but are they really grooming leaders in our parties today? Most political parties today instead of grooming leaders will wait until the election period and then they groom thugs and they thereby make our youths irrelevant. I want to make the Nigerian youths to own the Nigerian politics. The time has come, if countries that are more democratic can give their spaces to everyone why can’t we do the same? Why are we always putting burdens on our Governors and elected officials? To say bring money, the party is broke why? Political parties when you make them viable entities they should be able to thrive, they should be able to stand on their own and be independent. Although they are not profit making organizations but they should be able to pay their bills, they should be able to make members that subscribe to be financial members, today we are in the age of technology our political parties can make money without putting pressure on anybody to bring money. The APC has over 40 million members according to our database, we will be able to make money for the party. How I will do it, I will not disclose here so that people do not steal my ideas.
A few days ago state excos were inaugurated and you will find out that a lot of states are still in crisis, assuming you become the National Chairman how do you intend to resolve all these issues?
What did I tell you? How do I intend to do it? We are all members of the same political party we will go back to the drawing board, we will sit down on the table and dialogue, we will always allow superior arguments to prevail. If you did not follow the due process or the constitution of the party and you want to bulldoze your way through it, somebody should be able to look you in the eye and tell you the truth, somebody should be bold enough to tell you that you are wrong that you have erred. We are not going to throw everybody away, we have to come together and agree. Is there any problem that does not have a political solution? Political solutions remains the easiest way to resolve these crisis because it all about give and take.
But if you follow the trends 99% of the state excos that were inaugurated were handed over to state Governors is there an unwritten code?
I have always spoken about lack of internal democracy in our political parties, when I started this interview I told you guys that one of my cardinal objectives is to restore internal democracy in APC. We will use the three R’s Reconciliation, Reorganization and Restructuring. When I am talking about reconciliation I intend to bring everyone to the round table while we are working to reorganize the administrative internal workings of the party. We will restructure our system to carry everybody along. We need to come together to rebuild the party. The Governors are a very strategic organ of the party, we need all to build the party together. The governors needs the party as much as the party needs the governors. So we must work together as they are a very strategic organ of the party that cannot be done without. But there must be cohesion and where there is none it would be very difficult to find a solution. What is happening in advanced democracies like the US, assuming I am a democrat and a sitting Governor wants to re-contest in an election then nobody will come out to challenge him it is automatic though we are not yet there but we will get there, it is a convention and not a written law. So what makes you think we can’t do the same thing here? We can do it if we all agree that everything we will do will be premised on the constitution of the party, guidelines or conventions and due process. I guessed you will say it is easier said than done, but if you have a leader that is principled, that is selfless and not there for his selfish interests, somebody that would use his position to be soliciting for contracts from State governments and Ministries then he cannot be firm. But for me to come to seek this office it means I want to make sacrifices and I am going to give it my all. We need change in this country. If at 55years one is still being looked at as a young child or man then what will we tell of our children?
If I can take you back to 2015 your party the APC promised is change and now you are still talking about change, how would access the change that your party promised us?
If you are talking about the general change are you telling me that you have not seen change in this country? Are you telling me that you are not seeing the massive rehabilitation of the express roads across the country? If we had done these roads when oil was $130 per barrel we should be using our income today to do other things. Are you telling me that the second Niger bridge that is almost 70% completed is not a change? They have been promising the people of the South East that they would do the second Niger bridge but only this government fulfilled that promise and has almost completed it. Or are the rail revolution, the abandoned airports that are being completed and commissioned, the Enugu/ Port Harcourt express has been rehabilitated or the East West road that has been abandoned for over 20years are not change today? Imagine the Social Intervention Programme of the Federal Government in the four thematic areas – School Feeding Programme, Conditional Cash Transfer, N-Power Programme and Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP)first of its kind in Nigeria initiated and implemented by the APC administration is that not a change? Definitely you would agree with me that the APC led federal government has achieved a lot.
