By Sunday Ani

In this interview with Hamza Ahmed Gudaji, the People Democratic Party(PDP) candidate for the House of representatives from Kazaure, Roni, Gwiwa and Yankwashi Federal constituency in Jigawa State is a lawyer, solicitor and notary public of the supreme court of Nigeria. The masters degree holder in business and commercial law from Bayero University, Kano says he will offer and render selfless and exemplary service pivoted on integrity and diligence that can serve as a benchmark for efficiency and productivity in both public and private sector.

What is the motivation behind your interest of running to represent your constituency at the House of Representatives in 2023?

To God be the glory, I won the nomination of my party, the PDP to contest for an election into the House of representatives to my constituency Kazaure, Roni, Gwiwa and Yankwashi Federal constituency in the forthcoming 2023 general election.

And in respect to my ambition and motivation, we all know that Nigeria is at the crossroads and no place, senatorial and Federal constituency is spared by the misrule and mis-governance of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Therefore, I feel and thought I had my quota to contribute in righting the wrongs being perpetrated by the APC maladministration especially in the areas of economic mis-governance, mismanagement of our security and security architecture, the mismanagement of our diversity, and the polarisation of the country. I thought you know I have a lot to contribute to solve or resolve some issues that have been bothering the country for decades now; that is why I decided to contest.

What actually is your mission and vision of going to the House of Representatives?

My mission at the House of Representatives will be the social economic upliftment of my people and I believe as a lawmaker, I will be able to bring up legislation that will solve the issue of joblessness and that will hopefully improve agriculture and food security in the country and also protect and advance some of the economic activities of my people and this basically is my mission. And again you know that my people have been left behind in terms of economic opportunities and I believe they need somebody at the National Assembly that will be able to champion their cause and that will be able to propose a legislations that will have direct impact and bearing that will bring about economic development and even political advancement of my people.

Why are you running on the platform of the PDP knowing your relationship with the late Alhaji Dauda Birmah who was a strong member of the APC before he died?

Well, you see, Alhaji Dauda Birmah like you have said was a pillar of strength, he trained me and one of the cardinal training that he gave me was to have a broad approach in life and to always be accommodating, to also try to endanger a sense of belonging to anybody around you. I believe that it is the PDP that represents that, it is the PDP that is able to accommodate all the diversity in Nigeria. It is the PDP that has a nationalistic outlook. It is the PDP that plays the ostrich rather than the exclusive kind of politics; so of course my foray into the PDP has a lot to do with that and by the way APC treated him, I don’t think anybody that associated with him should come close to APC because all the sacrifices he made for the APC was a waste of his time, energy and resources because he spent over a decade of his life virtually, politically worshiping ANPP’s and even the APC and the candidates but you can see the way he has been or was treated.

We are not saying that politics is a game of personal favours or political partronage; however, we believed that before he died, he has the capacity to contribute to the development of this country but we all know that he was treated fairly.

And of course, even before his demise, I had informed him of my decision and had told him that this is why I have gone the PDP way, and of course, I had to obtain his blessings and here we are so far, so good.

And God willing I am going to be making him proud and will be making my people proud.

So what will be your cardinal points of going to the national Assembly as a member representing your federal constituency in Jigawa in the House of Representatives?

Like I have told you, I am a legal practitioner and I have experience in legislative matters because I have done some works for the National Assembly as an external legal party and I have been consulted in some of these issues and I believe as a lawmaker, I will be in a position like I have said to improve the social economic wellbeing of our people and I will also be in a position to foster national unity, and I will also be in a position to propose motions and legislations that will have a direct positive impact on my people and on my constituency. Like I said especially in the areas of agriculture, healthcare, education and other empowerment initiatives and benefits that will be geared towards poverty alleviation and economic empowerment of our people.

How will you rate the performance of the All Progressive Congress (APC) government in Jigawa State in the last seven years under the leadership of Abubakar Badaru?

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The truth of the matter is that the APC government in Jigawa has not been doing things out of the box because when the administration came in, it complained of paucity of funds and a very low revenue base and because of that, it took a very convenient approach of saying that all he needed to do is to make sure he settles salary every month. And apart from that, we have not been seeing much from the administration especially in human capital development, infrastructural transformation of the state and the performance has not been as good as what happened during the PDP-led administration under our leader, Alhaji Dr. Sule Lamido.

I believe that Jigawa as a new world is in dear need of teething programmes and policies that will last and quickly drive a positive economic growth not only for the civil servants but across the board. We have seen some initiative in agriculture; however, I will say that what obtains on the ground does not match some of the rhethorics that we have heard. Really, we should have gone far in agriculture. We should have been practising serious mechanised agriculture in Jigawa because we have a swamp of bearable land and we can grow quite a number of crops.

I would love to give specific attention to that by the adminstration in terms of serious funding so as to actualise that and then I would have loved to see that the ICT prpgramme initatived by the first civilian administration in 1999 because I would have loved to see that initiative is seriously pursued because ICT is one of the main drivers of the modern economy across the globe.

However I cannot point out one thing that I will say this is something that is being done out of vision to really transform Jigawa economically.

So are you sayin that the government under Abubakar Badaru leadership has failed the people of ?

In my own assessment, I am not satisfied with the level of performance and development because my joy is to see our people living above poverty and see our people afford the basic necessities of life. And whenever I visit my constituency, especially when you go to the rural area, you will be shocked on what you will see; therefore, my expectation has not been met.

Very soon active campaign will start towards the 2023 general election and there are three major contenders to the throne to Aso Rock. What is your take on Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of APC and Peter Obi of Labour party?

I will stand to correct you because in my side of the country, there are two contenders and there is no presence of Labour Party in my constituency.

Labour Party does not have a nationalistic base and what we have in Jigawa and in my constituency is the PDP; the party that is deeply entrenched in every nook and cranny of Jigawa, every unit, ward and every local government of the state. And of course we also have the presence of APC, but with every due respect, the Labour Party does not have any structure or any presence from where I come from in Jigawa. And permit me to divert and say one or two things about Peter Obi, the former governor of Anambra and LP candidate. We don’t doubt his competence. We don’t doubt his affection for the country, however, we believe also that politics should be played with decorum and principles. Immediately Mr. Peter Obi left office in Anambra, we all learnt about his laudable achievements while in office. And you know that Atiku Abubakar went against the wishes of the PDP establishment, governors and stakeholders to nominate Peter Obi as his running mate in 2018. And you know Atiku did that with a level of conviction because he has looked at the track record of Peter Obi , his performance and the kind of values that will bring to their ticket and that was why they won the election in 2019 though what happened after that now is history and that brought Peter Obi to national limelight.

What are chances of PDP wining the governorship race with Mustapha Lamido as its candidate come 2023 in Jigawa?

I will like to take you back to history and explain to you the phenomenon of the man Sule Lamido. Sule Lamido has been an active politician and has been actively participating right from 1999 election. But he has always taken politics as a way of life because he thinks, breathes, sleep politics and virtually everything about politics. And here in Jigawa, PDP in particular and Sule Lamido are a political institution. He has trained and retrained so many political heirs and fans. He knows what is good to achieve in politics and abhors corruption, mis-governance and abhors politics without people’s interest. Now, having a father like this will automatically educate you politically and imbibe some political values in you. Now, our candidate Alhaji Mustapha Lamido having a father like Sule Lamido was born and trained by such a political heavy weight and has been trained in the line of politics, trained to serve people and has been trained to manage people.

And that is why our candidate, Mustapha Lamido since 2023 has been part and parcel of setting up of party structure, so you can imagine the level of experience he has acquired from 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019 all under the watchful eyes of his father.

Therefore, he is equipped and prepared to partake and participate in politics because he has been giving the advantaged opportunity by God .

And he is sufficiently educated; has the temperament and he also has the idea of what the youths want and how to develop and manage a modern economy that revolves around ICT on youths employment, empowerment.