By Ishaya Ibrahim
Acting News Editor
Former National Secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and member of All Progressives Congress (APC) Board of Trustees, Engineer Buba Galadima, has narrated how President Muhammadu Buhari used him to actualise his presidential ambition and finally dumped him when he got the job.
In an interview with Africa Independent Television (AIT) Focuse Nigeria, Galadima said that he went to jail severally as an opposition against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the actualisation of the government of Buhari.
“You know when I was picked up several times, when I was tried for treason, when I was kept underground to actualise this government and today, the likes of us cannot even go near any government office, let alone the Villa. Its a disgrace,” he told the programme anchor, Gbenga Aruleba.
Galadima was one of the nine signatories that birthed the APC, an amalgamation of four political parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the CPC, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
He said politically, there was no Nigerian that knows Buhari better than him. “Nobody knows General Buhari more than I do, even his wife. And I can read him. If you are talking and I look at his face, I know what is working on in his mind. It is that deep.
“So when fair weather friends come, they worship because they have not invested. So they have to worship, become sycophants to get what they wanted. We are stakeholders. We have worked for this government to be. There is no way we can become sycophants. We are stakeholders having paid our dues.”
Galadima said that it was unfair to treat any human being like that.
“Somebody who has been very close and could speak on behalf of Buhari for 14 years! Has he ever contradicted me when I spoke on his behalf for 14 years? The best part of my life! And have things ever gone wrong as worse as this? If there was anything, we take responsibility or we try to correct or apologize on his behalf,” he said.
When asked who were those new friends around the President, Galadiima replied: “I don’t know them. I did not see them during the struggle. I just saw them when the food was served and they kicked us out to chop alone.”
He said that those who worked against the APC were the ones running the government.
“Let me tell you, one security chief was sent purposely to a certain zone by the PDP government under Jonathan to scuttle the fortunes of the APC. Today, that guy settled some people around the president and got appointed as chief of that security organisation,” he added.
Galadima, who was the former campaign secretary of The Buhari Organisation (TBO), which later became CPC, said that despite knowing Buhari so well, he never anticipated that the man would be this slow in dealing with problems.
“I never expected that General Buhari could have behaved the way he is behaving, leaving the country to drift without him trying to bring it back,” he said.
He blamed the situation on Buhari’s poor management of the APC as a party.
“I have been on record to have said that if I were INEC, I could have long time de-registered the APC for not acting according to its rules, constitution and manifesto.
“Certain things that are happening across the country, if leaders of the party meet, because when the party meets, various tribal interests even religious groups come together. When you keep track and explain, they can go back to their areas and try to educate the people on why or how certain decisions of government are taking place. We are the government! So we shouldn’t allow people to interpret issues or situations as they see it.
“The party is not even aware that public trust, confidence in us had been completely eroded. And it seems that they may not realise that until it is too late. This is why my heart bleeds because I laboured since 1999, I have been a torch light directing political discourse in this country,” he said.
