*’We are ready to perform opposition role to APC’
*Says party will bounce back in 2019
Dr. Haliru Bello Mohammed, from Kebbi State, just became the
acting Chairman of the Board of Trustees, BoT, of the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, the office vacated by Chief Tony Anenih.
Mohammed was National Vice Chairman, North West of the PDP,
comprising Kaduna, Katsina, Kano, Kebbi, Sokoto, Jigawa and
Zamfara states; a Commissioner for the Revenue Mobilization
Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC); and Minister of
Communications
In March 2008, he was elected the Deputy National Chairman and, in
January 2011, he emerged the Acting National Chairman of the PDP
when Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo stepped down. He was later made the
Chairman of a 20-member Board of the Nigerian Railway
Corporation (NRC) and thereafter the Minister of Defence.
He was appointed the Chairman, North Central Zonal Reconciliation
Committee of the PDP set up by the immediate past National
Chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mauzu. One major assignment
Mohammed undertook for the PDP before the March 28 presidential
election was as Chairman of Presidential Declaration Committee
with nine sub-committees.
In this interview, the acting BoT Chair of the PDP bares his mind on
the presidential election, the PDP before and after the election, why
former President Goodluck Jonathan refused the position of the
BoT Chair and his expectations from President Muhammadu Buhari,
among other issues.
BY HENRY UMORU
PDP lost the March 28 presidential election. How has it been as an
elder of the party?
In the first place, I don’t believe we lost the election, we conceded
the election because election is not lost until it is challenged in a
court of law; that is what Buhari did the first three times he
contested against PDP candidates.
At the time of the election, we foresaw that the mood in the country
was such that if the result was declared otherwise, the country will
be plunged into chaos and there will be protest and possibly loss of
lives and property; that is why President Jonathan decided to
concede. So I see it not that we lost the election but that we
conceded defeat because if Jonathan hadn’t conceded, we would
still be in court trying to determine the real winner and there would
have been a lot of evidence to be presented. However, I am glad
President Jonathan decided to concede so that we can have the
peace that we have now in the country.
Did your party actually prepare to win the election?
PDP prepared very well for the election. It was clear we went round
the country campaigning despite the hostility in some northern
states where our convoys were attacked. We persisted, we went to
all the states including those considered dangerous because of the
activities of Boko Haram and we mobilized our supporters. There
were a lot of negative campaigns coming from the opposition
especially with regard to religion, terrorism which was active in the
North – East of the country and these were the issues that worked
against PDP especially in the North – East and North – West.
God has designed that, after 16 years, PDP will now taste opposition
and give opportunity for the other party to also show what they can
do for the people of this country. We don’t regret the president
conceding because President Buhari has been contesting for a very
long time and maybe he has now seen some ideas which he would
like to put into practice in the governance of Nigeria. In a way, it is
good to give him the opportunity, let the people of Nigeria see what
he has to offer and PDP will stay as a viable opposition so that when
he falters, we will be there to offer alternative opposition to the
people. I believe that come 2019, it will be a clash of ideas. Let us
see what Buhari and APC will unfold and compare with what PDP
had shown in its performance and the people will choose.
Soon after the PDP lost, there was this blame game between the
presidential campaign organisation and the PDP leadership. Was it
really healthy for the party?
It is true that a lot of mistakes were made; the leadership and
followership of the PDP made mistakes. We took certain things for
granted, but this is not the time for finger pointing. This is not the
time for blame apportioning; this is the time that we should look in
retrospect, come together and examine what happened and see how
we can put our party together so that we can prepare for 2019.
When they are busy putting their government together and showing
Nigerians what to do, we will be busy rebuilding our party; we know
how we did it in 1998; we know the right people to contact in every
state who put the party together.
We are going back to those people. That is why I always say we
take this party back to the people. We will go back to the roots and,
once we do that, we will identify the founding fathers that have been
sidelined and bring them back on board as many of them that are
alive and available. We will build a formidable structure as we did in
1998 and it will be ready to offer an alternative government for
Nigerians in 2019.
In specific terms, what did your party take for granted?
We took it for granted that the people of the country had accepted
PDP as attested to in a number of states that accepted PDP, not
only as ruling party at the federal level, but also as state
governments. We took it for granted that our legislators will come
back, but, unfortunately, the leadership of the party did not handle
the primaries well. We took it for granted that whether we removed
and replaced or not, whoever got the PDP ticket will win the
elections and it turned out that it was not so. Nigerians have
become more enlightened, they are voting more on the quality of
the candidate than on blind loyalty to the party and we did not
handle the primaries very well and that is a mistake that we have
learnt from our actions and we will correct it come 2019.
We took for granted that the elections will be fought on issues and
ideology and not on religion and tribal bases. That did not happen
especially in the North where preachers in the mosques were
demonising PDP, condemning PDP to hell and threatening our
voters that voting for any PDP candidate was like buying your ticket
to hell. All these things happened, but we didn’t envisage that
politics will come down to that level; so we took it for granted that it
will be based on policies and ideologies. We have learnt from this
experience and, as you can see, PDP is full of people with ideas,
great intelligence and we will sit back and re- adjust and we will
bounce back in 2019. Looking at the APC line up, all of them with a
few exception were trained by PDP in politics, so where they learnt,
the residue is still there and we will stir it up and come back with a
bang.
I want you to comment on the resignation of the Chairman, Alhaji
Adamu Mua’zu. Was it just Muazu or the entire leadership of the
party that ought to have resigned ?
It is unfortunate that immediately after the election, some people
lost their cool and started pointing fingers and shouting at one
another. But it is not unexpected in a situation where nobody
expected what happened to happen. People will feel frustrated and
will be looking for scapegoats. The situation degenerated to what
led to some of our supporters, out of their for the party and the love
for the continuity of the PDP government, to blame and, naturally,
uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
So Mua’zu and his NWC were natural targets for this scapegoating,
but I don’t think the blame for our candidate to win this election lies
in one direction. We are all to blame including those of us who are
elders who saw what was happening and kept quiet; but, this is not
the time to accuse each other, this is the time to come together and
see what went wrong and correct it.
How prepared is PDP to play the role of the opposition?
What is the role of the opposition? The role of the opposition is to
offer an alternative to policy and to try to bring the government back
on track when it tries to derail. So essentially, the role of opposition
is to advice the government and offer alternative where government
feels to be clueless on any issue. We already have people of
experience, people of high level of integrity and knowledge and we
have done governance for 16 years. We are very well placed to play
the opposition role of telling the government this is not how to do it
and this is what you should be doing; if they listen, of course they
will succeed, but if they don’t listen, then the people of Nigeria will
see what is happening and when it is time for the next election, they
will decide.
PDP appear to be lucky to have somebody like you around,
because they only look for you when there is problem. First, you
were to look into the implementation of Dr. Alex Ekwueme’s
Committee report; you were also the Chairman, North Central
Reconciliation Committee. You acted as the Chairman. Can I say
the party is lucky to have you?
I am lucky to have the party. There are people who are even better
than me in the party. When we started, it was a party where you had
the likes of Adamu Ciroma, Alex Ekwueme, Tony Anenih, Bode
George, Ken Nnamani, Shauibu Oyedokun, Jerry Gana, Ebenezer
Babatope and a lot of them. So you cannot say we lack people of
high calibre, people who are materials to be president of this
country and people with wisdom. We have all that in PDP. So it is
just a coincidence if one person happens to hold a particular office
and I believe anyone of us, given the opportunity, if we flock
together to give our support, we will be able to deliver the party.
Like I said, we are all guilty, we were complacent; that is why what
happened has happened and now that we have learnt our lessons, I
don’t think it will repeat itself.
You have just been made the acting Chairman of BoT, Before you
came in, the immediate past Chairman, Chief Chief Tony Anenih,
said in his letter of resignation that he did that for the immediate
past President Goodluck Jonathan to take over. How did it really
happen that you came in instead of him. What are you bringing on
board as BoT Chairman?
When we lost the election, we had a president who now have more
time on his hands, a lot of people including Chief Anenih believed
that we could use the president to lead the Board of Trustees. As it
happened, after former President Obasanjo finished his term, he
was made Chairman, Board of Trustees, so we could use his
influence, experience and his wisdom because there is this plot
nationally and internationally to move our party forward.
The same thing could have applied to immediate past President
Jonathan and the offer was made as you have seen in Tony
Anenih’s letter, but the immediate past president made it clear that
he doesn’t want to be the Chairman, Board of Trustees; he wants to
be one of the leaders of the party who will stay on the sideline and
assist the party to rebuild itself. What he said was that if the party
rebuilds itself and becomes the party in government again, then if
he is called to take up any position, then he will be ready to take it.
But for now, he wants to rest and give opportunities for other
leaders to work in the party.
We respected his opinion. That is why we thought that one of us in
the Board of Trustees should be entrusted to temporally lead until
such a time that we are organised and we are ready to go into
election to elect a substantive Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
As to what my party expects; it expects me to galvanize all
members of the party, bring them together, stop the bickering that
is happening and start the process of re organising the party from
the grass roots to the national level. In doing that, of course, we
are working with the National Working Committee and, as you know,
the Board of Trustees is advisory. The executive authority lies with
the National Working Committee and the National Executive
Committee, but because the residue of all the founding fathers is in
the BoT, the role of BoT becomes very important at this point in
time, so that the collective wisdom of the BoT will be put together
and forwarded as advice to the National Working Committee and the
National Executive Committee.
We believe that the implementation of our collective ideas will bring
PDP back to what it was meant to be by the founding fathers
because we still have residue of the founding fathers in the BoT, and
we know on what premise this party was built and we know the
people who built it are still available in the various states of the
federation. So if we take this party back to the grass roots, we hand
it back to the people, it will resuscitate, revive and roar back into
power in 2019.
In taking the party back to the grass roots, how do you avoid what
happened in the past when Chief Anenih and his team in trouble
shooting efforts were misunderstood by the former Chairman,
Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, that the former was usurping the functions
of the latter?
Like I said, the BoT does not have executive powers. If we have
brilliant ideas, we should discuss them with the executive arm of the
party, that is, the National Working Committee and the National
Executive Committee. If the linkage is broken, then you have a
situation where there is a breach in communication and then the
implementation becomes fractional and therefore unsuccessful. This
time around, whatever ideas we have in the BoT, we will implement
together with the National Working Committee. If we are setting up a
committee, it will be a committee of the party not a committee of
BoT. If we are going round, it will be the party going round, not BoT
or NWC or National Executive Committee. So the party will work as a
unit not in groups of BoT, NWC, NEC. I have no doubt that we will
succeed.
Muhammadu Buhari has been sworn in as the President of Nigeria.
Before now, there were calls for the North to produce the President
and some leaders of the North operated under the ACF to have it.
Now we have it. As a Nigerian and not just as a northerner, is he
taking us there against the backdrop of the issue of change?
Change was there before he came in. The principle under which PDP
operates is that Nigeria should be seen as a united nation, but
because of the present circumstances, we believe it will need time
to blend as one people. And only when we can blend as one people
is when every section of Nigeria will be given a sense of belonging
and one of the innovative ways PDP has set out to build this sense
of belonging is by making sure that whenever we set up a
government, every part of this country, region, state, religious, tribal
factors are put together so that the federal character of Nigeria is
reflected in the government.
That is why we introduced zoning and rotation of power so that
everybody feels he has something in the government. The six zones
will feel that they have a chance and opportunity at one time or the
other to produce whatever position, whether it is the president, the
vice president, Senate president, the speaker, chairman of the party,
chairman BoT.
That is one way we feel will further unify this country until we arrive
at a time when Nigerian does not look at you as to where you come
from, what religion you belong to, but what you can offer.
Meanwhile, before we reach that, we have to create a sense of
belonging that will eventually lead us to that position that a Nigerian
is a Nigerian wherever he comes from.
That is what PDP has set out to achieve and I believe if all Nigerian
parties accept that principle, it will not be long when we will reach
the point where Nigerians will be seen as Nigerians regardless of
where you live or come from.
Expectations are very high from Nigerians. The issues of power,
petrol, unemployment, among others, are there. A new government
is now in charge and I know you are not in the position to set
agenda for it. But if you are to do that, what would you say and
think the Buhari-led government should do if it must take us there?
I can’t think of what this government can do because I haven’t seen
their performance. I was old enough to remember Buhari’s
performance as a military head of state, but as to advising this
government, I believe they have made promises to the people. The
only advice I can give is that they should keep their promises to the
people. The people expect power to operate normally, they expect
security to be restored and enhanced, they expect all aspects of
Nigerian life to operate smoothly whether it is education, health,
transportation.
PDP has tried very hard and we have tried to publicise all that we
have achieved in the last four years of former President Jonathan
and in the 16 years that we have operated. For 25 years, the railway
wasn’t working; I was fortunate to be the Chairman of railway when
President Yar’dua directed that instead of going into standard
gauge immediately we should first of all restore the narrow gauge
so that people will start using that while we are working on
developing the standard gauge and we thank God that the trains are
now moving.
We planned to have railway in every state capital, the Ajaokuta/
Warri to extend to Lokoja, the River Niger Marine transport.
The integrated master plan has been worked out and have
developed gradually from Obasanjo’s time to Goodluck’s time. All
these we expect this government to continue, otherwise the
transport sector will be stagnant. In the power sector, so many
turbines have been ordered by the PDP government, they have been
put in place, but the required infrastructure to fire them is what is
lacking and that is the next phase and we expect this government to
carry on with the next phase so that all these turbines will be fired
and, once they are fired, there will be enough power all over the
country.
The power sector is such that you can’t do it over night, but we
have set the trend, we have awarded contracts for many hydro
electricity projects and the distribution is also another factor.
Contracts have been given out for distribution system to cover all
zones of this country. Towards the end of his administration,
former President Jonathan and his vice, Sambo were opening
various stations to make it possible for these distribution stations to
send electricity to all parts of the country.
If the coming government continues with this process, they will set
up transmission, which is already awarded in many parts, and
distribution, which the DISCOs were set up to do, but you know they
are still at the take off point, so the government should help them
take off properly and they can do it in the four years they have and
hopefully, in 2019, we will come in and continue from where we
stopped.
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