President of Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Senator Emmanuel Ibok Essien, has said that the outcome of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential primary election won by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, showed that the South-East wasn’t serious with its agitation for producing the presidency in 2023.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the Board of Trustee member of the PDP dismissed allegations of Northern supremacy by some Southerners, noting that the North didn’t force anyone to vote its candidate.
Are you disappointed over the outcome of the presidential primary election of your party, PDP, won by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar?
We had wished in the Southern and Middle Belt Forum that the presidential candidate should come from the South, but it didn’t. You noticed that most of the votes of the South went to the Northern candidate. I wasn’t a delegate because statutory delegates were not allowed to vote by the Electoral law. As far as the party is concerned, the man who has won the nomination will fly the flag of the party, and that is Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
The South-East that people had sympathy for because of their agitation to produce the president had about 100 delegates, but Anyim Pius Anyim, who is from the zone had only 14 votes; Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa also scored one vote making 15 votes. So where were the remaining 85 from the South-East? Sometimes people cry foul over what they don’t really mean; that voting pattern showed that they didn’t mean it.
But it could have been won by Governor Wike of Rivers, because the votes he scored were almost the Southern votes, which means he equally got votes from the North?
Wike tried because he got more votes than the South-East and South-South votes put together.
Was it proper at the point Governor Tambuwal stepped down, even after he had delivered his speech?
In politics, they say majority carry the votes while the minority have their way. You can wish things in democracy, but when decisions are taken by the majority, you go by that even if you are disappointed, as there is nothing you would do about it. Like I said before, the votes of the South-East didn’t go to the South-East people who wanted the presidency.
Rotation of power by the North- South is in your constitution. Now that the party has breached its constitution, how would people see the party – as a breaker of law or respecter of law?
Laws are made for people and if the same people sit and also take a decision at the appropriate level like the National Executive Committee of the party, I think they can adjust the constitution by the collective decision of the majority.
Does the National Executive Committee of the party have the power to amend the constitution at will?
The National Executive Committee of the party, apart from the National Convention is the highest decision making body of the party. So, if they take a decision for the Only NEC members sat and took that decision. If you don’t have respect for your party’s constitution, how would you obey the Nigeriam constitution?
That is for the court to interpret. I’m not a lawyer. If anybody feels that it is not appropriate, he knows the right place to go.
When the SMBF meets, what will be their reaction?
Until we meet.
Assuming that your party wins, it means a Northerner, a Fulani is succeeding President Buhari. Does it not lend credence to what people talk about the Northern supremacy?
You people in the South have subjected yourselves to them by your votes; you have given your votes very freely to somebody from the North. Then why do you complain, who are you complaining to? You freely gave your votes, nobody was carrying gun behind you to force you and you now come out to complain again. The votes were given freely. So, who do you blame? Are you blaming the person you have given your votes or you should blame yourselves who gave the votes freely to somebody?
Though it is difficult to say who voted for A or B, but at the end of the day, you found that even most of the Southern states voted for a Northern candidate. More so, Tambuwal saw that a Northern candidate was going to lose, he decided to step down for him and told those who were supposed to vote for him to vote for Atiku, the Northern candidate, but you didn’t find that in the South. Nobody wanted to step down for the other in the South.
The outcome is still baffling. Look a former governor of Ekiti State, Fayose scored zero; even Dele Momodu, also didn’t have any votes?
Their people traded off the votes.
How do you think the SMBF will be appeased?
In the first place, they cannot be angry with the man who has won. If they were to be angry, it should be to the delegates that did otherwise. However, I congratulate the Southern people that braced up to the presidential contest, including my own governor, Udom Emmanuel, who was able to get 48 votes, it was not easy. He came fourth on the scale of the aspirants. I congratulate him; he represented my state very well.
Even if Governor Emmanuel had stepped down for Wike, like Tambuwal did for Atiku, it wouldn’t have made any difference?
Well, you never know the dynamics of politics. In politics, you never finish until it is finished. So, you never knew what that could have done to the electoral process on that day.
Are Nigerians ready for Atiku this time? is his fourth attempt at the presidency?
That is left for the general elections, but being a member of my party, I want PDP to win because the condition in the country is very horrible. I want my party that was able to carry Nigeria to become the largest economy in Africa between 2012 and 2014 to come back to power.
You said the country is passing through a ‘horrible’ condition, but many people believe that PDP laid the foundation for that. Then, how can you market your party again?
How can somebody say my party laid the foundation for the rot in the country? Hasn’t the person seen what is happening now? Our party did well up to the time that we left; we were doing extremely well. The exchange rate was less than N170 to a dollar, but today it is N580 to one dollar. So, no one can say that we laid the foundation for this monumental rot or system failure.
These APC people have destroyed the foundation that we laid. If you are erecting a story building and you have done a very solid foundation and a quack structural engineer comes in and begins to destroy the foundation, that is what the APC has done. Yesterday, I saw one building and it has been built to a level, a four-story. Maybe the owner died and they sold it and the new owner came and started rebuilding the foundation. I just told my colleague that even though the foundation was already solid and you break it down and start another one, which is not solid, it is not going to stand. That is what happened to Nigeria. These APC people came and broke down the solid foundation they met and gave us what we are having now, and they keep on blaming past regimes. For 16 years why didn’t Nigeria fall? Why didn’t PDP fall?
Some of the people who are APC were in PDP, and they were doing very well in their states when they were in our party. As soon as they went to a party that has no foundation; that was built on a sandy soil, their orientation, thinking and learning changed and they joined the bandwagon to destroy Nigeria.