Why Buhari’ll win in 2019 – Akpabio

A former Akwa Ibom State governor and former Senate Minority Leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio, in this interview, speaks on President Muhammadu Buhari’s chances of winning next year’s election to get a second term in office and why he defected from the PD

Daily Trust: Looking at current political developments in the country, what are your projections for the 2019 general elections? I am not God and I am not a prophet, but sometimes God reveals things to people He loves and I know God loves me because I love Him. The projection is that in terms of the political rigmarole that is going on in alignments and re-alignments, 2019 victory will belong to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and most especially President Muhammadu Buhari will be returned for a second term in office. I am saying so because God loves Nigeria.

This is a man that had tried for so many years to be president of the country. One time he gave himself that he was no longer going, he thanked all the supporters but from nowhere, a group of people, some from the PDP, some from CAN and his party, CPC, came together and went back to appeal to him to come and they even opted to buy the form for him. In spite of his resistance, he came and then of course confusion entered into the PDP family and God is a master designer, he eventually emerged president. When he emerged president of Nigeria, the incumbent president that time did not even wait for the final result of the election, he immediately called him and congratulated him and Nigeria had a very smooth and peaceful transition.

I believe that in 2015 we all had our choices but God had his way and when God has a hand in something I don’t think He is a master of uncompleted projects, this was not a decision of man, this was a decision of God and therefore He can give him the second term through Nigerians and you can see why I will be bored enough to say so, that you can see the kind of political personalities that he continues to attract despite the rigmarole of some members of his party. That is why I can project that come 2019 general elections, the APC will be victorious.

DT: Nigerians are still wondering why you left the PDP despite your exploits as governor and senator in the party.

I left the PDP in the national interest because I believe that the nation has to survive first before we have an election but if you saw what was going on in the country there was an amalgam of forces to truncate the administration of Muhammadu Buhari even before the election but those actions were also capable of bringing democracy to an end, in other words, the intention there was to crash the government even before the election.

The major forces including state governors of APC extraction were defecting to my then party, the PDP and this was capable of destroying the polity at a time when we have a lot of security issues in the country when we are managing to contend with most of the security challenges in the Northeast and all that there was a major distraction coming and when I looked at it I said some of these characters were also the people who crashed the then PDP in 2015 but they did not did so for national interest, they did so for their own personal interests and they went to a man who has following, who stands at least with nine million votes in his pocket because of the number of the less privileged people in the country that support him. But the same people probably because they are not satisfied now came out again and now attempted to gang up again and conspire, not just to remove the government but to ensure the removal of the president even before the election.

So there is need for us as a people who have a stake in the country to come out and stabilize the polity before the election. That was why I said I came out in the national interest. There was need for me to come out to support the president to stabilize the polity before even the election. When I was coming out I pointed out that I would like to join a conspiracy where we conspire to end Boko Haram, to bring peace to the Southeast region and then bring an end to IPOB, where we conspire to see the end of military rule and vandalism of pipelines and end unemployment, not to conspire to bring down the government.

It is not a good idea if people bring a government into being

There is need for us as a people who have a stake in the country to come out and stabilize the polity before the election. That was why I said I came out in the national interest. There was need for me to come out to support the president to stabilize the polity before even the election