First and foremost I want to appreciate Nigerians for being supportive of our great party the All Progressive Congress (APC). The people have supported us since 2014 and from the look of things the party will go beyond 2023 because there is no political party that can match APC in terms of agenda and what it has put on ground.

My mission is to make young people take up the mantle of leadership. There is a wide gap between the older and younger generations. I think this is the time for us to fill that vacuum. We need to take the mantle of leadership and put the country in the right direction. There is no better time than now. That is why I joined this race for the office of national chairman of the APC. What we are doing now is to take leadership positions at the party level. We are not going to do the normal thing that young people do which is to contest for the president of the country for now. But if we get things right in the party, we can get other young people to come on board and aspire to move the country forward.

We started running our campaign three months ago. After the first congresses we declared our interest and it was accepted by Nigerians who believe this is the time for young people to take charge. And what we have been doing for the last two or three months has shown that young people are yearning to take over the mantle of leadership. The population in the party is dominated by young people. We have about 41 million registered APC members, and with the statistics at hand, more than 30 million of them are young people. From the local government congresses to the ward congresses, and even to the state congresses, young people participated a lot. That is what gives us the confidence that we are going to participate at the national convention and I’m going to come out victorious. I’m optimistic that I’m going to win this election because of the large numbers of young people in the party. So with the campaigns that we’ve been running around the country, I’m 100 percent sure that if the election is held today I’m going to win.

People always say big names, big pockets. Who are the people driving this? These people also look for people, and it’s not that they bring out money and start donating it out on the streets. It is people that will think and make sure that their campaign gets to the destination. These big names do not intimidate us because what we know is that it is time for us to take over the mantle of leadership. It is about generational shift and not about big names and deep pockets. If you look at what happened in the last two or three years, young people are yearning to take charge. It’s not all about money. There are some people who have money but they do not have their way in politics. In politics it depends on the way you play your cards and your ability to mobilise that is how you get results. I know what it takes to win an election. I served as a youth leader of my local government, a member of youth vanguard of CPC and a member of the late Sam Nda-Isaiah campaign organisation, as well as a member of President Muhammadu Buhari campaign organisation in 2015, and in 2019 I served in the same capacity. So I know what it takes. Did the president bring out money to win elections? No. It is about ideas, it is about the collective interest of Nigerians who saw that they need to bring this man to power and that is the collective interest that is trying to bring me to power to make sure that I win an election, and I’m going to win. I’m not intimidated by my co-contestants because I know for sure, everybody is looking for people. Nigerians and the party know what is good for them. Everybody has his own manifesto to sell and I’m selling mine to the people and the people believe in my ideas.

You spoke about being part of the campaign team of the late founder of LEADERSHIP Group Ltd, Sam Nda-Isaiah, who was a revered chieftain of the APC. You know he believed in big ideas. How do you intend to move the party forward within the backdrop of how your mentor, the late Nda-Isaiah, a onetime APC presidential aspirant saw politics?

In politics you must have a school of thoughts. The late Sam Nda-Isaiah is a school of thought in politics. Immediately you mention Sam Nda-Isaiah, Big Ideas comes to mind. You do not have to do the normal campaign of shouting and carrying posters around. The late Sam Nda-Isaiah taught us how to do issue-based campaigns. When you are going for an election, you must know what you want to sell to people and why they should buy it. That is why I came with ‘APC Reset Agenda’ and that is what virtually everybody knows me for. I came with ‘Reset Agenda’ and it has four cardinal things. The four cardinal points in my agenda are as follows: positive rebranding of this party. We must rebrand the party and tell Nigerians that this is the party that took over power from ground zero and took us to the next level that we are in now. From the next level we are taking it to the higher level. That’s the positive rebranding that I’m bringing to the party.

Another one is party supremacy. We must believe and respect the party. Party is about coming together, forming an organisation and agreeing on dos and don’ts and that must be respected. That is why party supremacy is key. Thirdly, internal democracy in the party. We want to build a strong culture of internal democracy in the party, such that virtually anybody that comes to the party and has an aspiration must be respected. We will also ensure that the processes to make sure that we do what is right within the confines of our constitution are upheld. The last item is a quality reward system. The reward system that we started in our party is not encouraging and that is why if we are given the opportunity to lead this party, we will introduce what is called a quality reward system where people that work hard to make sure that this party remains in power beyond 2023 must be rewarded according to their capacity to deliver to Nigerians. Right now, APC has what it takes to take this country to the promised land and we have people that have the energy to drive it and that’s why anybody that works for the party must be rewarded.

There are reports that APC may opt for a consensus candidate. Do you think you will scale through if consensus becomes the case?

I told you that I’m 100 percent optimistic that I will win this election. Look at the people that are in the contest. They have been there before. Who do you think will leave the position for the other? But they look at me as a young person who has energy and capacity to deliver the party. I believe that all of them can say ‘okay, Mohammed, go and lead the party, let’s be your advisers; let’s be stakeholders in this game. I have been in touch with them since the last meeting we held. I told all of them that I have what it takes to lead this party, and so they should endorse me. And I believe when the chips are down they will do that.

You are contesting for the national chairmanship of a party that is mired in crisis. APC has suffered leadership crisis which has persisted to the extent that President Muhammadu Buhari had to come on national television to warn that if the party does not unite it will pave way for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to return in 2023. Are you not worried about this?

I think people should know that there is no political party that is crisis-free. When you said Mr President raised the alarm, it is not surprising because the president is not just a member of the party but the leader of the party. He is just trying to make us wake up to the reality that we should start doing what we should be doing and it is already being done because immediately after the president made the announcement, you could see what immediately started to happen in the party. That is what leadership is all about. You must wake your children up in the morning, tell them to take their bath and go to school and you can see the president has done that. Now, members of the party have woken up. The caretaker committee has done the right thing by making sure that the convention will hold on February 26, 2022 and they have started to put the house in order to make sure that things are done well. That is how it is done in politics because there would always be diverse interests. And putting some interests in alignment, you must envisage or go through all these processes. So, I think the party is getting it right. We are going for a convention after which we will organise ourselves again before the general election which I’m optimistic APC will win. With the kind of people I see on ground, with the calibre of people that can manage crises, the party will come out stronger, better and formidable to win elections.

The Buni-led national caretaker committee has been criticised for wanting to extend its tenure and for not being transparent on how it manages the party. Others have criticised the committee for allowing few party members, especially the governors, to control the party. Do you agree with these claims?

When you are in a leadership position, there is no way you will totally satisfy the general population of about 41 million people. So, it will be a question of your ability to manage crisis as it comes. That’s what makes you a spectacular individual. The president who is the father of the party just made a mere pronouncement and you can see the speed at which things have changed and the date for the convention was announced. Leadership is the ability to listen and make corrections. If they were accused of wrongdoings or hijacking the party, now they have done correction by doing what the majority wants by fixing the convention date, putting processes on ground, and giving a timetable for the convention. That is what we expected and he’s doing it. Now if you say he has hijacked the party that means he does not even want to do what the president said. But now you can see that things have changed and the party is going forward.