Why have you remained silent on issues affecting the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)?
My silence was because I am an elder of the party and elders don’t just talk, particularly the ones who know what they are doing and I don’t believe in flippancy. You don’t get me talking because I want to remain focus.
Secondly, I have been busy doing too many things. You are all aware that APC is a new party and the party is a coalition of various political groups, which I happen to belong to one of them.
Therefore as a senior citizen and elder of the party, I have been busy building the party together with others who are desirous of building a very formidable party. I have been ensuring that we build bridges among members, particularly between the elders and leaders. It is not easy to come from various backgrounds to form a political party because our ideologies and focus about the country must be blended as one to take Nigeria forward.
While we are busy building, we must ensure that the structures are firm and we have gotten to a reasonable level. I think we have gotten to a point where we and Nigerians can assess and make 
comments.
Why is APC keeping silent on the trial of the Senate President Bukola Saraki at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT)?
Many of us have been surprised or taken aback that the party has not been living to expectations about the trial of the Senate president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; living up to expectation in terms of making the Senate president have a sense of belonging as part of the party which is very important for any  member, let alone the calibre of the Senate president, who has sacrificed lot of resources for the party.
I have been trying to make the party realise that not only the Senate president but everybody that contributed to the success of the party matters from the highest to the lowest hierarchy.

We have gotten to a level where we have to be realistic and ensure that the right thing is done at the right time and in the right manner, moreso from the fact that we belong to a group that is not very satisfied with the performance of the party.
It is not only because the Senate president is currently going through a very pronounced political persecution, but because there are other cases and instances where we are not happy about the performance of our party. A case in point is the recent rerun elections in Rivers State.
You will agree with me that before and during the elections, APC did not have the expected and desired presence in the state. With the volatile nature of the rerun elections, some of us with our humble experiences expected the presence of our party there. It is regrettable.

Today, we have counted about one 150 rerun elections both at the state and national levels across the country and our party, the APC has lost majority of the elections. Not because the party has lost popularity, but because of lack of enough presence of the party in the various places where the elections were held.
Politics is not technical but practical. If APC decided to abandon its members in the middle of the election, you don’t expect magic from such situation. The party should be proud that the Senate president is from its fold.
Though he was not wanted by some certain interests, he went into an election and won. The PDP episode with Aminu Tambuwal (former speaker, House of Representatives) is still fresh. The PDP 
then didn’t throw the baby away with the bath water, knowing fully well that such move will be counterproductive.
It was well managed and that speaker still remained the speaker of the then PDP government. Our party may loath the ways of PDP, but out of every bad situation and experience, there are atoms of goodness and every visionary leader will separate the chaff from the corn and take what is good out of it.
So, it is not as if the Senate president has gone against his party. I am a witness of how our Senate president got the seat and I can say that as at the time we went for the election, the party had no candidate for the poll. The party first made a statement that it has zoned the seat to the North- Central before all the intrigues.

 How would you assess the performance of the APC- led government at the centre?
I want to say that there had been distractions. The Buhariled administration is well intentioned. Lots of things went wrong before Buhari came in and to build is difficult. When there are lots of distractions, you would lose focus and the APC has lots of distraction created by the party itself.
In line with the constitution of the country, we have three arms of government. These are the pillars that should hold the country’s fabrics together and if one of the pillars get jeopardised, what do you expect.
The Senate president is the chairman of the legislative arm in Nigeria and he is not getting the support that he should get simply because some very few individuals thought they are more powerful 
than the party itself.
As disorganised as PDP was, everybody was a member. It was because of the tradition of impunity that was creeping into the PDP that made us raise the alarm and that was why we left and you can see the consequences. Now the same scenario is creeping into the APC.
We must sound a note of warning to President Buhari to shine his eyes. There are people in the party, who claim to be working for the success of the party but actually doing that for their own selfish interests.
But it will lead them to nowhere. We will never romance impunity. President Buhari should be wary of them and play more politics now. He has gone into the house and has seen how bad it is; he has reorganised the house and what is left now is to consolidate on the reorganisation to build on the 
foundation.
Are you playing any role in the reported formation of a new party?
We also heard it just like you. But I have not entered into any alliance or gone to any meeting with anybody. So far, so good, APC is still on ground but we want Mr. President to shine his eyes as Nigerians would say, but that cannot be done successfully except he plays politics.
Will you consider leaving the party if this alleged impunity continues?
Every politician or group has aspirations in any part of the world and not only in Nigeria. The time we were going into merger to become the APC, our aspiration was that the then government of PDP was not giving us that desired governance and Nigerians were suffering.

We want to be part of the solution to the problem and to make life easy for our people, but how far have we achieved those aspirations? There is nothing on ground now. Some will say that our group has the Senate president but he has not been in peace.
Since the coming of Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, no Senate president has had dry, blatant, politically tyrannical and open persecution as Saraki.
What is your take on the trial of Saraki?
The case of Saraki has not followed due process and rule of law. It was the due process that was missing in the case of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and he was discharged but not acquitted.

So, why is Saraki’s case different? So, as regards whether we are comfortable with where we are and whether we are joining other groups, every politician has aspirations about development of his people and if you cannot achieve it in one place, you go to another place.
It doesn’t mean that I am a political prostitute but that I am a principled person and will not stop until I get what I want, which in this case is good governance, equality, democratic dividends for my people. Impunity, lawlessness and lack of due process were not what formed APC.
With the intervention of some leaders like us, that party will continue to thrive, but for it not to go the way of PDP, the president must play politics.

 How would you react to allegation that Saraki was drawing salary after leaving office as Kwara State governor?
Immediately Saraki left office, like any other civil servant who worked for it, he began to enjoy his pension and the vouchers that pay those benefit began immediately and the banks still referred to it as salaries.
One of the major goals of this trial was to create sensation and media hype. We had barely gone out of the court that day when the media started calling for his resignation. Like you read in the papers this morning, there have been plans for some people to organise protests against Saraki in Abuja, Lagos and Ilorin.

 But I want to assure that if that happens, we will see the mother of counter protests to demonstrate that the Senate President has followers. Hitherto, APC had only three states in the North-Central and with dint of hard work, Saraki delivered the zone 100 per cent.
So, if some people are hiding under the trial of Saraki to destabilise this government, then we won’t sit down and look and that is not a threat. Nobody has called for his resignation and the senators have reaffirmed their support for him.
But if they are still hell bent on removing him, the worst will now happen because we may have the PDP taking over the Senate Presidency and that of its deputy. Maybe we should practice it for the first time and see how it would be.

 We have heard there are plans to destabilise the political root of the Senate president here at home by some APC leaders at the national level. We are ready for it, not by violence, but we want to show them that this is an area that can’t be penetrated; we are one and will remain one. If they do, you we shall see the consequences.
Is the coalition of strange bedfellows responsible for the APC’s crisis?
In politics, there are no strange bedfellows. There is only a thin line between the Democrats and the Republicans in the United States. The only thing is that when the situation comes to play, they demonstrate more experience and more maturity.
The problem has not been that of coalition of strange bedfellows. What we did was to come together 
and salvage Nigeria and if we had other motives, it has started playing out, especially to some of us who can read between the lines because the scenes and scenarios we have seen is not for President Buhari, and that is why he should play more politics.
The fact is what we have agreed to do, and we are still planting the ideologies of the APC and people based on their selfish ideas are smuggling the ideas of 2019 through the back door; that is rubbish.
The National Assembly has been involved in some kind of altercation with the executive as regards details of the 2016 budget, what is your reaction to that?
For the very first time, the National Assembly returned the budget with about 30 per cent less. They also expunged certain areas and reduced the amount for certain areas. The area I would talk on is that of some railway projects that were expunged.

When I was the chairman of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, I discovered that some structures of the corporation need to be revitalised completely. Construction of new rail lines is not now; until we get the existing structures performing again and that will cost a lot of money running into billions of naira.
So, the expunged new railway line from Calabar to Lagos is not a priority but boosting food, agriculture, fighting insurgency and so on. So, if the Senate can do that, I expect the president to call the National Assembly together to a round table and discuss with them. Not as some are saying that he should call their bluff.
He should take time to study the budget properly and iron out whatever place he is not clear about 
because the budget is that of the people.