Two-term governor of Kano State and immediate past Minister of Education, Ibrahim Shekarau, was in Akure, Ondo State, to see Afenifere chieftain and erstwhile Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF), Olu Falae, on his recent kidnap. In the course of the visit, he spoke with Special Correspondent, JULIUS ALABI, on the plan to rebuild the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ahead of 2019 elections, Buhari’s anti-corruption agenda and appointment of new Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, among others.
PDP recently zoned its presidential ticket to the North for the 2019 general elections. What informed the decision?
One will be denying elementary history if one refuse to see the need to carry the North and the South together and do the balancing with the two zones. Incidentally, it was my committee that made the recommendation – the 15-member team led by the Deputy Senate President, after our deliberations. We received 5,007 memoranda across the country.
By this now, technically, the chairman of the party will come from the southern part of Nigeria. Though it is not mentioned, it is implied. So gradually, the zoning of other positions will key into these two major aspects. We believe that if we let Nigerians know that PDP is for justice and fairness, we will capture the confidence of Nigerians and that will be the take-off point.
We went round all the zones, discussed with stakeholders of the party across the country. That recommendation came as a result of this same spirit of wanting to take everybody along. If you look at it in fairness, though we have geo-political zones, the reality is that Nigeria is an amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates till today. And when you get to the North and South, you look at the various zones.
Since we started this new dispensation 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo had eight years. He is from the southern part of Nigeria. President Umaru Yar’Adua had three years. He was from the northern part of Nigeria. President Goodluck Jonathan had five years. He is from the southern part of Nigeria. So, you find out that the fairest thing that needs to be done now is balancing and ensuring sense of belonging which I had earlier told you. Ninety per cent of the crises in the world are as a result of some people feeling that they are being denied.
So we said, to start on the right footing, in 2019, the presidency is to the North. No zone has been mentioned. That is something that we will take care of subsequently with the North East, North West and North Central. But the major shifting between North and South would have been sorted out. This is why we said, in this major decision, which is the concern of most average Nigerians, it should go to the north. So, we have resolved 50 per cent of the crises that may likely come. That was why we took the decision. And it has been passed by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party, the Board of Trustees (BoT). It has also been passed by the caucus.
Would you say PDP is really making any progress right now?
Yes! Sometimes, you perform better after pausing for a while, identifying your mistakes, and trying to improve upon them. From experience, I have discovered that in whatever you do today, if you are going to do the same thing tomorrow, unless you are careless, you will do it better.
Now that PDP has been out of government after 16 years, honestly, I see this as a blessing in disguise, in the sense that God in his wisdom has compelled PDP to look inwards now. Before now, because of the presence of the federal government, the party machinery and structures were somewhat neglected for too long. Everybody was looking at the centre. The concern was all about presidency.
Even the party leaders tended to wait for the presidency to dictate or studied the body language of the presidency before acting. With that neglect, with that attitude, the party structures were breached. There were lots of abuses in the party that so many aspects of the party’s constitution were not being respected.
This is an opportunity to help look back, and this was what we discovered in committee assignment where we did the review. The review was not just about the election, it was about what PDP had been all these years. We are now committed and determined. It is like going to the hospital; the first thing the doctor does is to diagnose – to find out what exactly is wrong with you. That will determine the kind of prescription. Knowing and identifying your illness and problem is 60 per cent solution to the problem. Now that the committee has sat down and looked back, we received 5,007 memoranda across the country. There was no area of problem that was not mentioned in that committee and we believe now that we have identified the major problems. We set out with the recommendations. We will soon hold the convention in March with a new leadership. That will now catapult everybody into serious action.
I am sure that in the next two years or so, PDP will be a different story, positively. Before 2019, there will be elections. Of course, before the elections, PDP will be fully on the ground. I assure you that by the late 2016 and early 2017, PDP would have taken its rightful position in terms of re-invigorating and reviving its activities and understanding the problems that led to the situation we find ourselves. I am sure that before the end of 2016 to early 2017, which is almost two years ahead of 2019 elections, PDP will be restored in every part of Nigeria. That will be the beginning of the journey to success in 2019.
Many allege lopsidedness in the appointments by Mr. President. What is your take on the issue?
I agree with you that the appointments so far are very lopsided. I only hope they will find a way of carrying other parts of Nigeria along regardless of which party or who is in power. I think that for anybody to ignore the cultural, religious and geographical compositions of Nigeria, the person must be denying the truth of what Nigeria is. Yes, we are a single nation; yes, we look forward to living as a single nation. But even in America, the acclaimed mother of democracy, they do what they call some balancing in the different parts of the country.
We don’t necessarily have to call it zoning; we don’t call it whatever. But they do a lot of balancing to make sure every part of America is carried along. And more so with us here in Nigeria. For you to give sense of belonging, there is no part of Nigeria today that you will not get the expertise, the talent and the quality that you are looking for. So, nobody will tell us in the spirit of merit and quality that you are neglecting any part. If you look at the six geo-political zones, even if you take it in the basis of state, there is no state today in Nigeria that does not have whatever expertise, quality and people of integrity you are looking for. So nobody will tell us that the lopsidedness is aimed at looking for the best. Every part of the nation is really having the best.
We want this channel all through. Even when I am not in position, it is not my prayer that the government in place should fail because, if it fails, it is all of us that have failed. What is important is, let them do their best, when the time comes, we present ourselves and tell Nigerians where they got it wrong and where we can do it better; and we allow people to decide. We don’t pray for them to fail. That is why we are mentioning some of these instances of lopsidedness and we hope they will find whatever they can do about it, even as it is spilt milk. The appointments have been made, the error has been committed. They now have the challenge of restoring confidence in the government.
Do you suspect witch-hunt in the fight against corruption by the present government?
I support the anti-corruption crusade as it is. In fact, out of the six standards approved by the World Bank and United Nations to determine good governance, the sixth one is control of corruption. They use the word, “control of corruption”. No nation on earth will eliminate corruption, but you control corruption because these are attitudinal matters. It is the issue of attitude. When we are talking of the attitude of people, there is no way you can succeed 100 per cent in getting everybody to behave soundly and morally. There is no society without criminals or corrupt people, but the business of the government is to control corruption, to make sure every available known loophole is blocked. What is important, again, is not just enough to capture thieves, but what are you doing to change the attitude of people to even understand that some of the things that seem to be legitimised are corrupt?
That was why when I came to office in 2003 in Kano State, I institutionalised the programme of attitudinal change, which I called societal reorientation. While you are trying to capture those who steal money, what are you putting in place to enlighten the public right from the child up to the adult, that XYZ are vices? They need to be checked. We succeeded because we identified hundreds of vices and we commenced telling people what was wrong in doing this, what was wrong in doing that; or this was right, this was wrong. And we mounted a lot of publicity on that.
I applaud the fight against corruption. I support fighting corruption, but in the process, you must carry people along. If you go to the village, they are not bothered about the billions of naira stolen. A man’s corruption is between him and his village head cheating him. His own corruption is between him and the small police post, the small policeman on the counter cheating him. His own corruption is the village head snatching his farmland and denying him. Until and unless you go down to that level, enlighten people, you will not make much headway. That is why in Kano when I was establishing the anti-corruption commission, which I did, I established what I called Public Complaint Commission. It was anti-corruption and public complaint commission. So, the public complaint aspect was given serious attention to allow the man in the rural area that hardly even comes to the city, who doesn’t know anything about stealing money in the offices and so on, have his way. This informed opening offices of the public complaints in every local government. The man in the village would be able to come and report that yesterday, my village head, my small police (officer), the small magistrate in my village denied me this, denied me that, and we addressed a lot of it because I have always had the view that corruption of justice denies people their rights. It is worse than financial corruption.
Some of your party members accuse President Muhammadu Buhari of condoning corrupt members of his party. Do you share in the sentiment?
That is why we are questioning the rationale behind the president talking about coming to right the wrong of 16 years corruption, while a number of the people who ran the government for the 16 years, the key players, are now working with him. Obasanjo was the leader of the 12 years out of the 16. Governors (Rotimi) Amaechi, Bukola (Saraki), (Rabiu) Kwankwaso and several of them that are now in the All Progressives Congress (APC) were part of those 16 years that he is saying was a corrupt period; and today because they are wearing the cap of APC, they have suddenly become clean people! So, what we are saying is: you said this period of PDP was corrupt and the key players in the PDP government are now your chief aides: the (Governor Nasiru) el-Rufais were all the hit-men of the PDP. El-Rufai was one of the hit-men of Obasanjo. There was nothing Obasanjo did in eight years without El-Rufai and the rest. And today, they are the champions of APC, the champions of Buhari. How do you reconcile this? So that is why we said, on this issue of anti-corruption, let’s go the whole hog regardless of who he is, which party you belong.
We don’t say anybody who is petitioned against should not be invited. The Minority Leader of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, was invited by EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission). There are other petitions against other former governors of PDP who are now in APC. None of them has been invited. Maybe we give benefit of the doubt; EFCC may still be investigating internally to get enough evidences to invite them.
We are saying, let the government be careful not to give a wrong impression that it is selective. There is a common saying that ‘to do justice is not just enough, it should be seen to have been done’, so that you carry people along with confidence. But if you don’t see fairness across the board, people will lose confidence. Even if you get it right, people will not trust you. I pray the anti-corruption crusade, which we all support, will do the needful. I am totally for the anti-corruption crusade. Whosoever is found wrong, let the law take its course.
How do you see the appointment of the new INEC chairman?
Well, I don’t know what criteria they used. I just heard it in the news that a new INEC chairman had been put in place. Though the law does not say from which part, I was trying to explain something a while ago when talking about the balancing. In addition to the constitution of Nigeria, there is something I always call ‘Constitution of Commonsense’. You don’t have to have everything in writing. If today I am a presidential candidate from Kano and I tell you my running mate is from Katsina; constitutionally, I have not done anything wrong, but using the Constitution of Commonsense, I will sound stupid because the balancing is not there.
So, it is not just the question of meriting. Yes, he is qualified; people always want to see what balancing is there. North West has just finished. He is not too far away from the home of Mr. President, which is the argument I am trying to make. That is why I said a moment ago, whatever qualities you are looking for, they exist in every zone and you must try to balance up all these issues.
So, I have not seen the details. But whatever that may have informed the decision, I only hope and pray that they will continue to take every part of the country along. You see, as a guidance counsellor, I know that if you check 80 per cent of the crises in the world over, you will discover that they are as a result of some people believing that they are being denied their rights.
Most conflicts are as a result of this, rightly or wrongly. I don’t mean to say that every complaint is right, but if you check from the root, you will discover that when people are having crises and conflict, either between nations, communities, religious bodies, one of the parties in the crises is fighting because it believes rightly or wrongly that it is being denied certain things.