I’ve Done My Maths, Confident of Winning PDP’s Ticket

Mohammed Hayatu-Deen:

Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, a Peoples Democratic Party presidential aspirant, founded the Alpine Group in 2005, a project development company, focused on intervening in high-growth sectors of the economy through direct investments. With rich private sector experience, he has served in various advisory committees in several political administrations in this country. An experienced banker, economist, project finance executive, administrator, and an elder statesman, with about 40 years’ experience across multiple Nigerian industries, Hayatu-Deen, speaking with THISDAY ahead of the PDP primary election this weekend, addressed in an unusual way, why he wants to be Nigeria’s president, that he is a square peg in a square hole, and has all it takes to govern the country. Excerpts:

A few days ago, you were quoted as saying you wanted to change the character and complexion of Nigeria’s politics. What did you actually mean by that statement?

What I mean is that democracy has been at its feet since 1999. So, I think there is a lot of credit to give for sustaining, nurturing and developing our democratic institutions till date. It’s the longest period of uninterrupted democratic government in this country, therefore, that’s a good thing. When we compare this to other well-established democratic countries, there is plenty of room for improvement.  Firstly, I would like to see much growth and deeper citizens’ participation in the democratic space. Secondly, I will like to see the Nigerian people, who are actually responsible for electing politicians to serve their interests holding them (politicians) fully accountable for performance, and where they do not, they should exercise wise and independent judgement in ensuring that people who do not serve in the interest of the people, in accordance with the promises made to them based on their platforms and campaigns, are thrown out of office.

Thirdly, I will like to see the process and recruitment of leadership into political office taken far more seriously than had hitherto been the case, so that people, who are competent, experienced, passionate about the need to serve the will of the people and to look after the best interest of Nigerian people are then elected into office. This should actually begin right from the bottom, so that political parties through their various vehicles and through their leadership, should actually seek to find people, who are really fit to govern this country across all three tiers of government. So, that’s what I mean by the need to change the character and complexion of politics.

Some people believe that you and some other persons aspiring to become Nigeria’s president and have never held political offices before, may be lacking the requisite experience to lead a country like Nigeria. Don’t you think so?

Well, I think that’s a point of view and I must say that point of view is wrong in the sense that, what we are seeking to provide is leadership, and based on all of the attributes of leadership, I believe that I can tick all the boxes and be a square peg in a square hole for purposes of administering and governing this country. I said this for many reasons. Firstly, it is not necessarily true that my experience has been limited to the private sector. I have deep-seated experience, both from the public sector, the private sector and the civil society space because of the work I have done. I have actually never worked in government myself as a full-time member, but as an economist, who is very passionate about development issues in this country, I have naturally been inclined towards participating in public policy in this country and I have served in the Economic Advisory Council of a number of presidents in this country.

And if you recall, I was also the Chairman of the Committee on Finance and Economy for President Buhari’s Transition Committee. You might also recall that in 1992, when the economy of this country was in  free fall, at a time that both the public and the private sectors were mutually suspicious of each other, and especially the public service would not allow the private sector to operate on their own, when the economy was actually more or less a closed system that did not allow for  very bold reforms, at a time that government did not allow the private sector to unleash their creative energies to get  very bold reforms to transfer assets from the public to the private sector, I, and a couple of other people in corporate Nigeria decided to get together to  identify the factors that had actually prevented this country, the society and economy from achieving some of the lofty aims that other emerging market powers had achieved.

We therefore decided to come together to identify the underlying structural issues that had prevented the public sector, the civil society and the private sector from   joining forces in order to build a new Nigeria. That new Nigeria, being the need to actually foster sustainable long-term structure and economic development by embarking on major economic reforms anchored on liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation and we brought Nigeria closer to where the world was going then, bearing in mind that we were actually standing at the dawn of the 21st Century. This was in 1992. The year 2000 was not far from it. We were also fully aware that there was going to be major revolutions in information and technology by the turn of the new century, and that the world was changing and changing very fast, and therefore, it was important to get Nigeria connected to the globe.

We did that work. Thank goodness! We were able to achieve substantial progress in bringing about collaboration into various segments of the society: in the public space, in the civil society space and in the private space.  I was a core founding member and I became the chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG). In that group, for a period of almost 20 to 25 years before I became chairman, as a member, we had done a lot of work. So, I have tremendous government experience based on everything I have told you. The requirements for leadership are such that you do not need to be a run-of-the-mill politician to be able to govern an institution, because the principles of management and leadership are actually applicable universally across all kinds of institutions.

Whether you are running a family, a hospital, a church, a government agency, an NGO, or a state, or a country, there are these universal principles. In some of them, you look at the individual concerned and see what is the difference in whatever he has done. Secondly, what is the person’s character? Thirdly, the passion and energy of the person to actually unleash change? Does such a person actually understand the country inside out? And because of my very long career in various things that I have done, I’ve come to understand this country in terms of the forces that are shaping and defining it, in terms of the opportunities and challenges that it is facing and also in terms of understanding where the world is going and where Nigeria should be, and what are the sort of actions that need to be taken to get Nigeria moving again by actually getting it to move in tandem with the way successful countries around the world are moving.

Let me also mention the fact that there is nothing under a democratic form of government that says it is only if you are a politician that you should vie for the highest office in the land. As I have said at other places, there are numerous examples around the world of people who actually were never politicians that vied for the highest office in their land and became successful. The examples that come to mind is, over a hundred years ago, in 1920, Warren Harding, was elected President of the United States. He was a publisher like you. The second person that comes to my mind is President Herbert Hoover, a mining magnate, in 1928, he became elected president.

The third person is President Harry Truman, who dropped that bomb at Nagasaki and Hiroshima as a sitting president of the US in 1945, he was an oil and gas and mining investor. The two Bushes were both oil men. Do you remember Saad Hariri of Lebanon, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, who was unfortunately assassinated in that big bomb blast about a decade ago? Then a reformer, he was a billionaire businessman elected prime minister and started turning Lebanon around, transforming it into a major power within the Middle East. Macron of France was an investment banker, he just popped out on the scene and captured the French presidency. Zelensky, stand-up comedian and yet, as soon as he got into office, look at the nature of the crisis he is facing today. This man stands very tall amongst global leaders. So, it is a fallacy to say that somebody who does not have experience in politics should actually not go into politics.

I think it’s a white-wash. That’s my view. Everybody should be seen for what they represent. Nigerians in general should actually look at the person for whom he is. People’s records are not hidden. They are out there in the public domain, their personalities are fairly well-known and well-defined, their thoughts on issues are fairly clear. I’ve been delivering public lectures and doing things and for 32 years, I’ve been living in Lagos and even before then, in my previous job as the Group Chief Executive of New Nigeria Development Corporation (NNDC) in Kaduna, I have done a lot of stuff for people. I think I’m a well-defined person.

You have been visiting states, meeting and interacting with people and delegates across the country, how bright are your chances of emerging PDP’s presidential candidate and eventually, winning the election in 2023?

Let me first and foremost say that I’ve been in politics for a couple of months, but I’m not a stranger to the Nigerian political scene. There is nothing you do in your life, from your home to the school, to your workplace, to the clubs that you visit, to the mosque or church that you go to, where there is no politics. Politics is part of our life. Politics is nothing but the art of actually knowing how to work with people to agree to make a deal, to agree to make compromises here and there, to agree to resolve conflicts. When you are negotiating with your wife, you are actually playing some kind of politics. The only difference is, in partisan politics, you are talking about elective office. So, politics has been deeply ingrained in me for a very long period of time.

Secondly, the kind of institution that I ran, the NNDC was the single-largest diversified holding company in the mid-80s, when I was given the responsibility at the age of 30 to administer that institution with 145 subsidiary companies reporting to my office. The NNDC was actually owned by the 19 northern states. When I started off in the mid-1980s, I had 19 shareholders. These shareholders were the military governors of the 19 northern states, most of them were Major Generals and Brigadier Generals. There was a lot of contesting tension among these states in terms of laying claims on the group. Everybody wanted one thing or the other. So, it was a complex relationship, which I managed effectively.

So, I’m deeply experienced in these matters. In the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, you go into a room, on any issue, you get about 100 different opinions. The leader has to negotiate on each of these things. We had to negotiate with labour unions. I ran the largest portfolio of textile companies in this country. I had about 13 textile companies under the group from Lagos to Kano to Zamfara, Sokoto, Kaduna, all the textile Mills. Adams Oshiomhole was a labour leader at that time and he gave me hell. That’s politics.

So, you asked me about my chances. First of all, I don’t go into anything without actually reflecting very carefully about it. Secondly, the reason why I went in is not because I want anything out of it personally for myself, my family or my friends. I see this country standing on a brink, almost approaching a failed state. All the sounds and stresses are there for who wants to see; the structural holes, the cracks are there for anybody to see. I don’t want to be a bystander watching what is going on, only for my conscience to say, if something terrible happens, what were you doing then? That you decided to stay in your private comfort and you refused to get into the murky waters of politics.

I don’t want my children to hold me accountable down the road and say, ‘daddy, what were you doing?’ Or ordinary Nigerians to say, ‘we know this guy, he has so much to offer, he’s sitting down, because he doesn’t want any mud on his face.’ I think the time for courageous people in civil society space, in the private space has come. There is no better time than now for us to enrich the pool of politicians in this country and get many men and women of quality and distinction, who are going to be there not because they are going to help themselves, not because they are going to help their friends and families, but because they believe they have something they can give.

And we have highly experienced politicians in this country. I do not agree with those who say that all politicians are bad. Contrary to the case, there are politicians even now who are very passionate and who are doing a good job. I have done my maths very carefully and I’m going in to win and my message has resonated very well with all of the delegates that I have actually visited. And it’s a competitive race, I know there are many competitors there but we have grand deals worked out, and I’m confident that I will put up a very good show at the primaries coming up this week.

What will you say to some of your fellow contestants in the PDP who see you as an underdog?

Well, when people are involved in a competitive race, a couple of things come into play, everybody wants to win, and that is everywhere in the world. Secondly, everybody thinks he is better than the other person or everybody else and so will want to put other people down. They are not the electors. The electors are Nigerians, so they are the ones to judge. That’s what I will say.

Why do you think you should be Nigeria’s president come 2023, especially now that there is a general sentiment that power should shift to the south?

I think this argument that power should shift to the south, if you had asked me three or four weeks ago, it would have been appropriate to spend a lot of time on it.  The party leadership in its wisdom has decided that this is an open contest. This issue had been up in the air and travelling at just 1000 miles per hour, it’s now a shut case that had gone to the highest policymaking body of the party and they decided to open it up for all. Let me tell you this, first, in 1999 beginning from preparations in 1998, this is now almost 23 to 24 years, there was a major event that took place during MKO Abiola’s election followed by a lot of commotion from many places leading up to 1998, and it was decided by the party bigwigs that given what had happened, it was important for us to stabilise this country to hand over power to somebody from the South-west to compensate the denial of Abiola’s mandate. There was no constitutional provision, there was no referendum taken among the south, and this was how the world works. It was an open contest. People like the late Abubakar Rimi,  Philip Asiodu and others ran to me and contested about that. That was a private arrangement that was done. So, we were able to organise to shift the votes to Obasanjo.

Secondly, it’s now almost a generation and after 23 years, we are still bugged down with power shift. I think it’s unreasonable. Thirdly, it goes against the principles of democracy as far as I’m concerned. You cannot shut anyone out under a democratic contest. Anybody who is eligible that meets the criteria to either vote for somebody or to be voted for, let him go on. I refuse to accept the lazy argument that this thing should be zoned and given to a particular zone. Abiola invested almost 20 to 25 years of goodwill across the country. Tofa, who was a very popular person in Kano lost Kano to Abiola. Anybody from the South-east, or South-south or the north who wants to become president should go and do that hard work and build alliances. Nigerians are good people. If you show them that you actually have their back and you are waiting for them, you will be amazed.

In 1999, a large section of the northern establishment, over 80 per cent of them, who were military, were backing Alex Ekwueme for the presidency. As journalists, I will actually encourage you to send messages to people, to actually go out there to build friendship and relationships and sow the seeds. You will be surprised that an Ibibio or an Igbo guy or Ijaw man can easily get elected president, because the democratic space is very free and very open, and it’s all about relationships. That investment has to happen. There is no reason why Mohammed Hayatu-Deen should be prevented from exercising his own democratic and human rights. That’s my answer to that question.

You were part of a previous arrangement in the north for a consensus northern candidate, but that arrangement later collapsed. Why did it collapse?

Let me say that the reason for putting in place that framework for producing a consensus candidate from the northern part of the country was informed by two or three reasons. First and foremost, the field was getting large both in the north and in the south to the point where it would become difficult to manage at the convention. Secondly, the election of 2023 is PDP’s to lose and if caution is not exercised the APC may actually snatch victory from the jaws of defeat if we have an acrimonious convention. Thirdly was that the consensus arrangement was actually going to happen in stages. That the north should reduce the field to one person or maximum of two and second, that this particular message should actually also be taken to the southern part of the country.

At the time, we knew more people were going to come out, but only Pius Anyim had come out as at the time. Lo and behold, after a few weeks, there were far more contestants in the southern part of the country than the north. So, we now started going to various parts of the country, preaching to the governors of the PDP to do other things in their powers to actually shrink the field in the south so that when we go to the convention, we’ll have few people to narrow this process. To answer your question, the consensus arrangement in the north fell apart simply because the candidates felt that the basis for it existed no more and therefore, it was better for each person to actually run their own independent campaign. In so doing, taking cognisance of two things: That we would be able to establish very good relationships amongst ourselves. Also, it provided a teaching moment as we go to the convention to begin to put together some kind of framework even before the convention as to how these things will coalesce and still have a very successful convention and produce a candidate. So, those were the reasons.

How many states have you visited so far?

I have covered almost all the states. I’ve been to the north, but I still have one state there to visit. I’ve been to the South-west. For the South-east, we attempted twice. The first time, our plane had actually taken off for Anambra, when we were told that a sit-at-home order had been issued and we were not aware. So, we decided to come back.  A day later, we tried again, and we had informed all the delegates, when we were told a sit-at-home order had actually been extended to Thursday (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday).

So, we’ve not been able to go. There are a few days left, we will still attempt to go, but we have also heard that there was a warning that people should not attempt to enter there now, that things are beginning to heat up. And the delegates, I understand, are already beginning to travel to Abuja. So it’s a matter of great regret to me that we have not been able to embark on this trip. But  we intend to meet all of them in Abuja. Yesterday (Monday) I had about a few hours meeting with their representatives in my house here in Lagos. Every single part of this country is important in every inch we are taking.

From your travels around the country, meeting with these delegates and other stakeholders around the country, what lessons would you say you have learnt about Nigeria and its diversity?

Speaking to my background, even though I was born in Maiduguri, Borno State, I left the state as a child. My father was a veteran educationist and has been all over northern Nigeria. So, I grew up as a very cosmopolitan person, because the kids that I mingled with in elementary school, in secondary school were drawn from different languages, different religious backgrounds. And you know, as a very young boy, your puberty years are very important. When you begin to form a view that is broader and you are not eccentric and you are not limited to just yourself and your religion, it actually gives you the opportunity to have a much broader outlook about life.

By the time I went to Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), my vista opened the more. When I went to ABU, I had come to meet almost all of Nigeria, because ABU was the most diverse. So, I had formed  relationships with people from all over this country. I went for my NYSC in Ondo State, which further reinforced my Nigerianess. And by the time I came to Lagos, where I have spent 32 years of my life, I further enlarged my relationships and friendships with Nigerians from other backgrounds. So, I’m already used to diversity. And so, I love this country with a passion. I love the people of this country because we are a happy people no matter how much hardship we face.

The ordinary Nigerian, wherever he comes from, loves the other Nigerian to death. The elites seek to divide us. So, wherever I go and see these delegates, they all resonate with my message and I have found these town hall meetings exhilarating and heartwarming, and I was able to capture their moods and come to clearly understand and reconfirm what I already know about who they say they are, their feelings about their community, their feelings about their country, their feelings in terms of their pains, and the need for somebody to just give them hope and optimism. And I believe I’m that one person who can restore hope and optimism to Nigeria, so that we can build a much stronger and more prosperous country.

One of the challenges in Nigeria today is insecurity. How do you intend to tackle that when you become Nigeria’s president?

Twenty-five years ago, whenever and wherever there was a hotspot in this country, it’s isolated in one or two places. Today, the entire country has virtually been gas-lighted. This did not happen overnight. We saw it coming for almost 25 years. Much of it was the product of poor governance and this applies across all the three tiers of government. And corruption has become a cankerworm, almost a cancer in this country. When leaders are aloof and distant and run away from their mandates and chase shadows, they don’t have interest in the welfare of the Nigerian people at heart, things fall apart, like Chinua Achebe once said. So, the economy is flying up in a million dollars with absolutely no cohesion, and there is no comprehensive and clear vision as to how to manage the economy in a way that it is stable and in a way it is able to deliver the highest standard of living to the Nigerian people.

Our social institutions have also broken down completely. Given that our population is growing in leaps and bounds, we are probably the highest, growing at the highest rate, with the rate of population growth in our country, standing to about 210 million, compared to about 106 some 23 years ago. There is no need, having a large number of people that are human assets, if you cannot actually open up the economy; create jobs so that they can become gainfully employed. The human being is a rational mind. When people have food to eat and they can engage themselves and become very productive economic and social agents, they will not lift a pin to hurt the other person. When people have got nothing to lose and their backs are against the wall, animosity instinct will begin to kick in because they have nothing absolute to lose.

You wake up in the morning hungry, you go to bed hungry, you have malaria, you don’t know where to treat yourself. Your children die, your wife is pregnant, you don’t have money to go to the hospital. People either get paralysed or die. Children die in their mothers’ womb. This is what is happening to the 70 or 80 million people. The greater majority of them are not able to have an opportunity to go to school and get quality education. So, the problem of insecurity must be located within the economic and social system. And unless we are able to fix this, all we are doing by deploying guns and bullets is providing a bandage. You haven’t cured the problem.  Therefore, As  I have said in other places, security in today’s world is defined broadly across a number of parameters, because it’s like the human body.

We have so many organs: the brain, nose, the kidneys, the liver, the lungs. There is something that actually runs this machine, the human body, and unless each part is running and they are synchronised together, the body gets challenged. It is the same thing with human organisations.  Essentially, what I’m saying to you is that when we are looking at security, we need to define it in very broad terms. So we have economic security, political security in terms of the kind of politics we have and how we practise it, creating a very stable political environment that is based on democratic principles and applying them as we should. You are talking of social security, there are questions about the environment, population, values, character, our interest and values. Many of these have dropped. We now have drugs, fraud, alcoholism, sex slaves.

Given the state of the country now, where inflation rate is at double-digit, with high rate of unemployment, how do you intend to reset the economy to galvanise economic growth and national development?

I think when it comes to the economy, the way to look at it is to approach it in a very methodical and systematic manner. First of all, long before I get into office, I would have fully come to terms with the operational and structural problems confronting this economy. I’m not one of those who will get into  office and begin to find out what happened. I already have available facts, what the issues are.

To answer your question, firstly, I intend to work with a first-class team of people located in the executive office of the president in the cabinet, in the parastatals, departments and agencies of government. The way we hire people in the private sector, those are the same set of principles that I’m going to apply in actually hiring every chief executive officer in the parastatals, because they would be responsible for generating the revenue. I will like to develop a 30-year vision for this country leading us to 2050. Every country that you have seen that has become successful in modern times, has always looked at the long-term strategic vision of that country. So, the fundamental question is, where do you want Nigeria by the year 2050?

I want Nigeria to be one of the seven-largest economies in the world. I will like to see a Nigeria that is earning high income per capita, one of the highest in the world; a country that has long fully integrated the society, where people who live in rural areas are enjoying the highest standard of living; a country that has been fully industrialised, that will be in a position to actually manufacture aircraft, put people in space, do all the things that we know Japan and America are doing today. Countries like Brazil that have gone very far. That we become a high-earning service economy, where 95 per cent of citizens have access to their own housing. So, all of today’s ills will be fully cured under three development planning cycles of 10 years each. Under each plan, we would decide the goals that we are going to achieve in the next 10 years, say 2032 -2042, 2042 to earlier 2050. So, that’s the end state. It’s a long-term strategic plan.

But immediately, what we need to do is that when you see a patient who is involved in an accident, you need to actually stabilise that patient and stop the bleeding. There are many bleeding points both in terms of inflation, interest rate, exchange rate, high levels of unemployment, issues of gender, issues with youths, issues of crime, all those low-hanging fruits, there are hundreds of them there. I will immediately deal with them. Once you start dealing with that, Nigerians are actually very easy going people. They can rally to your friends to say, these guys know what they are doing, they are working for us, let’s get onboard and help, because they will immediately begin to see the fruit of their labour. That’s in the short term. In the medium term, you now want to begin rebuilding the economy to the point where unemployment is going to be reduced tremendously, when you are getting to work by providing them with incentives.

You would have reformed government institutions, because critical to these things is the need to get the government to work.  There is no president, no minister, who can do anything all by himself, no matter how much he wishes. We need to reform the public service and infuse a lot of energy and dynamism and motivation in the public sector, reform it and make it look more and more like the public service in Malaysia, Dubai or other places. That, I think, is critical in the medium term. When I said medium term, it is within the period of two years. That is to say, if we start now, you are going to see the results after two or two and a half years. And then in the long term, I’m talking about linking it to the vision. So, that’s the way I will actually address these problems.

When you visited former President Olusegun Obasanjo, one of the things he said was that Nigeria’s next president must be someone that has ‘mad passion’ for the country; someone who is innovative and someone who can confront present challenges facing the country. Do you think you are that person, and why?

What President Obasanjo said will come out in full very soon. Both of us had a very long private conversation before he went out to meet with the press. Whatever was said in the press, we had actually discussed in private. And essentially, what he was trying to say was that both of us are passionate about three things, but the media actually reported his own side. But he had actually said, I’m one of those persons, who have a passion in the drive. When he mentioned madness, people should not translate it literally. He was talking about someone, who has the passion and hunger to get things done in this country, that was the context in which he mentioned it. And, in all of those qualities that he mentioned, I do have them and I’ve shown them in the past and I intend to demonstrate them even the more on a much larger scale with far more ferocity and intensity.