•Na’Abba Photo By: Sun News Publishing

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Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Ghali Na’Abba has told former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to perish the thought of wanting to hold onto the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), saying he would be stopped at the convention in January.

Speaking with Sunday Sun in Kano the day after the conduct of council polls in the state, Na’Abba insisted that there is no way Ogun State would be allowed to produce the BoT chairman and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The new Speaker of the lower chamber of the National Assembly, Hon. Dimeji Bankole like Obasanjo is from Ogun State and Na’Abba believes that it is Obasanjo that must be sacrificed.

His words: “My position is that you cannot have the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the party and the Speaker of the House of Representatives from one state. Therefore, one of them must give way and it is Obasanjo that must give way.”
He spoke more on this and the real reasons that compelled him to abandon the Action Congress.
Excerpts:

There is this move by some members of the PDP for the removal of the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as the chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees. What is your view?
My position is that you cannot have the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the party and the Speaker of the House of Representatives from one state. Therefore, one of them must give way and it is Obasanjo that must give way. In any event, you cannot have the party chairman and the BoT chairman, all from the South. This means that one of the positions must come to the North. That was the way it was. That is the way it has been, it is not the party chairman that would go. It is the position of the Board chairman that must be sacrificed. It must come to the North. And we are going to fight for that eventually.

Give the same premise, is it right to have the BoT Chairman from the North when the President of the country, a very influential office, is from the same North?
(Laughs) Was it fair to have Alex Ekwueme and Obasanjo as both Chairman of BoT and President of the country respectively? And after Alex Ekwueme, to have Anthony Anene and Obasanjo in the same positions?

If I am correct, what Nigerians accept as the basis of zoning in Nigeria is the six geopolitical zones and not two regions of north and south?
What you asked me was based on the regional pattern. That was not your line of argument. Whatever it is, if Obasanjo, Ekwueme, then later Anene could hold these positions at the same time, then it is also fair enough if the chairmanship of the B.O.T should come to the North, irrespective of the President of Nigeria being a northerner.

You have worked with the former Senate President, Pius Anyim. You have also had encounters with Sam Egwu. Both men are in the race for the PDP chairmanship. Given a choice, who among them would you root for?
All right thinking Nigerians should vote for Pius Anyim. He is the person I have worked with. And I know his capacity, and I know his passion for Nigeria. And I believe he would serve this party and his country very well. In the circumstance of today, Nigeria needs somebody like him. Somebody, who has his own principles; somebody who can always express himself and also apply himself to issues. We should not be in the business of electing people, who are not independent minded into positions because they are not the ones that are going to run the office, they are people who would run it for them. And these people have served and have pushed Nigerian to the brink. So, we must not allow such people to come back by proxy into any other influential position in this country.

Why do you think a calm and organized person like chief Sam Egwu would not make a good PDP Chairman?
It is not only Sam Egwu that is contesting with Pius Anyim. And as such, I am not going to talk about him alone. I would rather comment on the fine points of Pius Anyim.

Sir, we would like your general assessment of the conducted local government polls in Kano State?
You see, the way and manner the elections were conducted and the fact that as at this time, the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission is with holding some of the results says a lot on its own. First of all, the election has shown that the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) government in Kano State is a very big failure because the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won in most of the local government councils. I am indeed aware that the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission (KANSIEC) has held on to a lot of results because the ANPP did not win. This is very unfortunate. I hope that this desperation would give way to reason. The ANPP government should see reason and allow the genuine results to be announced, otherwise there is going to be a problem. The governor, who is supposed to be the chief security officer of the state should simply do the right thing by not holding on when it is clear that he has failed.

Against the backdrop of the violence that attended the polls, how do you see the creditability or otherwise of the exercise?
The ANPP government tried not to make it a credible election. Because for the past few weeks, they have been beating their chests, boasting that as far as they are concerned, and as long as they run the State they would never allow any party to win the elections in the state. Therefore, they did not prepare for any credible elections. However, the electorate have tried as much as possible to make it legitimate elections, to legitimize the exercise. Because they came out, they were angry. They came out and voted for the party they wanted and then, they decided that they must defend their votes.

Talking about the Peoples Democratic Party, you made your return to the party barely a few months back, what has the reception been like?
So far, so good. I have re-united with my family. One thing of interest here is that I was voted for under the PDP. I served under the PDP, and when I was serving in the House of Representatives as the Speaker, I had about 210 members of the House, in the PDP, spread across the country, across the 210 constituencies of the country. Up till date, 90% of these colleagues of mine are still in the PDP. When I was out of the PDP, they were not happy because it was like I abandoned them. But none of them cut off the relationship. Because this is a relationship built over a period of time. They kept lamenting, they kept lamenting. I am happy that I have now come back to them. Now they feel they have something and somebody who would be guiding them. Minus me, they feel despaired. Now that I am back, they feel they have somebody. Secondly, I worked towards building the PDP, all these years. All these years, I have been spending money and I have been helping people and it is all in helping build the party. So now I have come back and I am trying to fill the vacuum that I left and I tell you, everybody is happy.

As a foundation member of the Action Congress, you toiled so much to build the party, from the scratch, how do you feel abandoning a worthy sweat that was once worth the while?
I feel sad but I had no option than to leave. You see, life is not a bed of roses. Often enough, people undergo various difficulties. I felt I could not take what some members of the Action Congress were doing. And I thought it was better for me to return to my former party, than remaining in the AC. Remaining in the Action Congress was going to be meaningless for me.

Some people believe that you left the AC because there was no straight platform for you to become the gubernatorial candidate?
I had no business remaining in the Action Congress. If you check, even the gubernatorial elections, I was put under tremendous pressure by the people of Kano State, to be their governor because they are tired of the ANPP. But few elements in the AC scuttled that. If I don’t have a position in the Action Congress, of course, I don’t have any business remaining there. Because one, it is a party that we decided to form to fight the Third Term Agenda of former President Obasanjo, which we successfully did. Then also to ensure that Obasanjo left office. That was successful. And then, to also have internal democracy, which is the most important. But then, there has not been internal democracy in the AC. Therefore, there was no reason for me to remain. We also thought that the former Vice President needed a platform to contest the presidency. That too was successful. After all these, what is left? There was nothing left for me.

There were claims that some of you had problems with the former Vice President because you had asked him, at the dying minute, when he was eventually cleared, not to contest the election?
I was never one of those who did not want the then Vice President to contest the elections. I never told him that he should not contest and I never also entertained the idea. I always had the position that he should be the flag bearer of AC. However, the way and manner the campaign went, the way and manner certain things were done by him, cost him so much. I don’t think this has to do with contesting the presidency or not. And in any case, I was never privy to any such meeting where it was discussed that the V.P should not contest the polls.

You just talked about the way and manner things happened that cost him the election. Could yoy give us an insight?
First of all, there was no structure. By this I mean the structure that can win elections for the AC was virtually absent. And I conveyed that to him variously and I wanted something to be done about it. The opportunity was never given to me and some of my colleagues in the AC, like the former governor of Jigawa State, the former Minister of State in the Federal Ministry of Works. The opportunity was not given to us to lay a structure that can win elections. The support for the party was there, no doubt but to channel that support to win elections became the problem.

The former governor of old Kano State, Alhaji Mohammadu Abubakar Rimi just came back to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as well and has been receiving bashing everywhere. Some people said the return was wrong. Some others said it was right. Now, what is your view in this regard?
I am happy that he returned. You know Rimi is a founding father of the party before certain things happened that made him leave. And since those things are no longer there, he decided that he was coming back – and he is free to come back. I think that in today’s Nigeria, and the way things are happening, Rimi has no where to go but to come back to the PDP. Otherwise, he may have to retire from politics.

People are accusing him that he has been very mobile towards areas of benefit?
I would not like to discuss the motivation of his coming back to the PDP. I would like to believe that his motivation for coming is the right motivation; that he is motivated by the love for the party and his love for politics.

Now, we have several political super weights in the PDP in Kano state. Kwankwaso, an institution, Rimi an institution and Ghali, yet another institution, all converging at a point. Can the party be without friction?
We can only get a party without friction if we focus the party towards serving the people. Which means that serving the social ends of the people becomes an end in itself. Definitely in any polity, if people would go about promoting their own personal interest, there must be friction and the friction would continue to subsist because every one has his ambition, every one wants to become one thing or another and so on and so forth. But if we put the need of the people ahead of all of us, then I am sure there would be no friction. We would be successful and at the end of day, a lot of us would find something to do, once the party is successful.