The implication is that he wanted it himself, he did two years after Yar’Adua died, he is now doing 4 years making it six years. Then he wanted additional one term of six years he wants to stay for 12 years at least, for now. That thing is not working
suddenly you did a u-turn, why?
You see I didn’t like state police, many of my colleagues wanted it. The proponent of its establishment was Amaechi, while the group against it was headed by me. But at a particular time, we all stopped. However, the recent development made it necessary for me to support the creation of state police. I have seen what happened in other state especially the Rivers and other states but the worst was what happened in Kano State.
A day after the emir of Kano died, I called the kingmakers we chatted and postponed our meeting to the following day but before they returned it was already on AIT, that the people in Abuja have already installed a new emir. It went viral on social media and the PDP congratulated the person they installed.
I can tell you once again that all the four kingmakers had Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as their candidate on their minds. I said OK! Let us think about it and we came by the time we made the announcement the state was set for crisis because they have already paid the young men and started burning and so on. They came and removed all my policemen 75 of them. Up till now, as I’m talking to you I think
today is the 12th of July, only 25 were returned, the 50 are not here. Now, with all these for goodness sake why can’t I support state police?
If you are talking about abuse by governors, we have 36 governors some are of APC, some PDP and one is of APGA. Now it is one man who is misusing the policy. Where is democracy? I am supporting state police 100 percent.
At the time they withdrew your security, did you make a formal complain to the president and what was his response?
The response is just like the one on the missing Chibok girls.
Reports about your presidential ambition keeps gaining ground, are you really interested in the job?
You see our party is relatively new, we have people from other parties who have come together to form the APC. Why are we in the APC? We are in the party to ensure as our slogan says ‘change’ because the maintenance of the status quo is not good for this country. It is not good for this country – life is all about change, PDP is saying it will rule for 60 years. It was later that I realized that what they were saying is 16 not 60 years. 16 is maximum if you want to have a good county. We continue to pray for Goodluck Ebele Jonathan who carries the ship to take it to the shore by 2015 and hand it over.
The issue of who will become the presidential candidate, I think that is what you are asking I did not tell anybody in this country that I wanted to contest for any election in this country, we have to build the party, we have to present the Constitution first, what that party wants to do to the people. We had our election from the ward to the national. Now from I think October to November, is the issue of who will want to become the president, I want to assure you that if my party finds me worthy of flying the ticket I will be very happy to do that, I have the experience, I have the qualification, I have all what it takes to do much better than what they are doing now. Not only that I am so lucky that I am loved by APC members across the board at the same time I am well known in the PDP. Most of these guys who are still in PDP are my friends and one on one they will vote for Rabi’u Kwankwaso. It is up to the party and you see this is a big position you cannot just go and start shouting. I am happy that there is clamour for my candidature when I did not say I want it people are finding me worthy.
We are still looking at ourselves, we have leaders, we have friends, we have those who are at lower cadre in the party all what we want is to have a right candidate who can be acceptable to everybody; but that we have to ensure we have somebody who can do the job who has the capacity to do much better. APC is not there to do one term and start saying that one is better and so on. We want people who can bring positive changes we want people who will not go to mosques or churches to start kneeling down and start begging, bringing in things that others in the other religion will feel bad.
The president of this country should be the president, he should not be an Imam and should not be a pastor. He should be somebody who will look at every Nigerian even those who do not have religion to treat them equally to unite them and not to divide them because he wants to remain in office.
We need somebody who has contact in all the regions, somebody who is exposed both within and outside.
People are saying the selection of your successor will be your political albatross, how do you intend to handle this?
We do not have problem with successor here in Kano. We have so many people who are competent, who have been working with this government. There are even new people who joined us recently, we have the material to govern the state but you see, we are doing so much we don’t want any interruption now.