APM National Chairman and IPAC Chairman Alhaji Yusuf Dantalle has warned Nigerians against vote buying, calling it “one of the greatest threats to our democracy” while unveiling a “Reset Nigeria” agenda with Gov Seyi Makinde as presidential candidate.
Speaking Monday on Frontline, Eagle 102.5 FM, Dantalle urged voters: “Elect who you want. Reject a peanut or that evil called vote buying.”
In a controversial but pragmatic note he added: “If they give you and you are forced to take, take, but do what is right.”
Dantalle said he sympathizes with President Tinubu, calling his reform agenda “well-intentioned but constrained by systemic inefficiencies.”
“I sympathise with the president. He is doing his best to fix Nigeria,” he said, while adding: “Nigerians are suffering in a very terrible way today.”
He defended subsidy removal as necessary to curb corruption, but said benefits haven’t reached citizens: “Is it reflective of the life of the people? You and I know that it’s not.”
On APM’s plan if it wins power, Dantalle rejected simple policy reversal: “The APM, my presidential candidate said we will reset Nigeria.”
“Resetting Nigeria means looking at the entire value system — corruption tolerance, inequality before the law, moral decay. It has become a pride that you secure a visa to go abroad. It is an aberration. We must domesticate the solution.”
He blamed insecurity on “neglect and exclusion”: “What you are seeing today is insecurity. It is a product of neglect. It is a product of exclusion. If Nigerians are made to believe they own Nigeria, nobody would want to destroy what belongs to him.”
Dantalle reiterated confidence in Makinde: “If you juxtapose pre-Seyi Makinde and Seyi Makinde’s tenure, you will know if he is capable of replicating the same thing across board. He is people-oriented. It is not about him as Seyi Makinde. It is about the people.”
“APM is Nigeria first. We are egalitarian in nature,” he declared, calling for end to “winner-takes-all” politics and integration of electoral losers in governance.
He also cited Robert Merton’s strain theory to explain crime: “That innovation is what you see at Yahoo, you see at kidnapping, you see at so many social ills.”
