Former Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, Farouk Aliyu, has expressed concern that certain people are struggling to ensure President Bola Tinubu does not win his second-term election bid. He, however, vowed that he and other strategic members in the ruling party will not sit by and let the opposition drag them out of power.
According to him, his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, is out to make sure that the opposition, including the coalition under the African Democratic Congress, ADC, is frustrated out of their way.
Conversely, Aliyu claimed that the current government and the ruling party have no problem with opposition, while reiterating that they will do everything possible to make sure the opposition do not rear their heads, declaring that “that is politics”.
Aliyu said, “We used to be one family, one party, one people. You remember when all those people in, I mean, out of the APC now all ganged up to bring down Goodluck Jonathan. That’s what happened.”
“That’s what we did together, all of us. So certain people are, you know, going out after some script to make sure APC does not see the light of day, or Tinubu does not win his election. Sadly, we will not allow that to happen because that’s politics.
“You see, I was the leader of the minority in the House of Reps. I was in the opposition. And when we were in the opposition, back from 2003 when I won the election, that time, we opposed the government of the day, and we opposed constructively.
“We made sure we put them on their toes. So if, in the course of that, anybody…, look, there is no democracy without opposition; we have no problem with anybody trying to oppose us, absolutely no.
“In fact, look, we don’t want to be left just to ourselves because the country does not belong to APC. This country belongs to all of us. And those in the opposition are respected Nigerians. We respect them, we respect their opinion, but politically speaking, we shall do everything possible to make sure they don’t wear their heads.
“And I mean it, because, look, that’s politics, if, in the course of this political thing, whatever happens politically speaking, we don’t want insults, abuses and so on, because the elites are one and the same.
“You know, the honourable Farooq Adamu Aliyu will never be fighting honourable Emeka Nwajuba and so on,” he said.
He admitted that the elite class are responsible for most of the social problems in the country, the major problems, adding that down below, the masses “will kill themselves because of us. Absolutely.
“You see, at the down level, the masses still have not understood that at the level of elites, there is no Muslim or Christian; at the level of elites, we are not enemies.”
