Director-General, Atiku Campaign Organisation, Prof. Babalola Borishade, in an interaction with editors in Lagos spoke on the plans and preparations of the Atiku campaign for tomorrow’s convention. Excerpts:

By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor

HOW far have you gone about winning this election?

Atiku’s declaration for 2015

We have visited 35 states of the federation basically on two reasons, to strengthen the party structure and to tell the delegates that we are interested. People have been asking us why we are not interested in consensus candidate and our reason is that there is no better consensus that the decision of more than 7000 delegates. Should we lose the election, we will have no option but to remain in the party and work for the party.

Do you see your principal, winning the APC presidential primary?

To be realistic, I believe that we have 65 – 70 per cent chances of winning. I got my last briefing about an hour ago (at about 9.00 a.m. Monday) and the beauty of it is that our momentum is growing, there is no state we are in control before now that has been taken away from us but we have been encroaching into states that we were not in control before.

Actualising the objective

So conservatively, I will say we have between 65 and 75 chances.

You spoke as a politician, always optimistic, maintaining that your principal will remain in APC regardless of the outcome of the primary, will you be faithful to that?  

I have told you that we have two objectives, one was to create a strong alternative choice of a party and that is already under our belt. APC is now strong enough to challenge PDP.

So, half of our objective has been achieved. Having actualised that objective, we are not going anywhere. We are going to stay-put and support whoever emerges from this primary. This is because you can’t get what you want and join what you hate.

On what condition will you leave the party?

There is no condition. If w had thought of any condition under which we won’t accept, we wouldn’t have signed.

Even if the process is fraud

I want to believe all will go well because, we have gotten to the process and have been screened and agreed with them on the delegates so, we will go to the convention centre, unless we go there that day and they say there is no voting.

Moral burden

If they say there is no voting and anoint somebody there, then that ceases to be the APC that Nigerians are looking for.

There are signals that the leadership of the party are leaning towards Buhari?

I have told you the reason for that is that usual moral burden. You are underrating Nigerians, you believe that one governor sitting down somewhere, will tell the entire delegates from his state to vote for a singular person and they will do that?

But that is not a new thing considering the power of the inner caucus

People are getting wiser; the governors themselves are struggling, if Bola Tinubu will tell you what he went through to be able to secure Ambode then you will understand. So, things are changing and you cannot take people for granted. This will be a secret ballot; we are not going to vote state by state.

How popular is Atiku in Adamawa where his candidate loss?

Everybody contesting in Adamawa (governorship) is Atiku’s candidate I must tell you that. There is nobody that contested governorship in Adamawa who is not his candidate. If you remember, the candidate that won in Adamawa was with us when we started campaign until he now chose to run. On our declaration day he was there.

This other young man you refer as his candidate is somebody that has the family history, who believed that he can leverage on the family and Atiku said go ahead. The difference is that because the boy is known in the family, he was able to meet the younger boys in Atiku’s house and asked them to give him vehicles. Some of the vehicles that were parked in Atiku’s house were used by him for his campaign and people said he is Atiku’s candidate because Atiku’s vehicles were used for his campaign.

Number one objective

He could have stopped him.

Getting accommodation for the delegates

We have concluded to get about 4000 rooms; we are not looking at particular delegates whether they are ours or somebody else’s. The moment it was decided the convention will hold in Lagos we knew that some people will have need of accommodation.

We are building a political party that is objective number one. When we had a mini convention in Abuja, we were not contesting election then, yet we still made provision for people for accommodation. The only thing we had at stake at that time was that the party must be good. To attract people from other party you must make it look bright. So, the idea of making sure that everybody is comfortable is not because we are contesting election, it is because we are building a political party.

Challenges

Any state we are not sure, we consider it on the other side. We are not sure of Kwara for example because Kwara has a leader who himself has already decided what he wants to do. In Imo we know that Okorocha is running but we went there to see if we can share the votes with him. Even in Kastina, we went there to look for delegates. Whether we will get Kwara or not depends on what the outcome in our meeting with their leaders in the evening will be.