The many ways Jonathan baffled me — Na’abba

By Levinus Nwabughiogu:

Erstwhile speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Ghali Na`abba in this interview reviews the recent elections and how and why his former party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP faired poorly. He also advocates lessons for the victorious All Progressives Congress, APC to learn from the miseries of the PDP. Excerpts:

What is your assessment of the last general election?

The elections have been conducted and I believe that substantially INEC did their best. The elections may not have been perfect but I believe some degree of confidence has been put back into Nigerians to the effect that their votes will begin to count and I pray that INEC will do what it can to maintain what it has done for itself.

I believe that the card reader that was introduced in this election has shown that credible elections can hold in Nigeria. It wasn’t the intention of Jonathan’s government to have a free and fair election and that was why the Jonathan people and the PDP were hell bent on discrediting the use of card readers.

In fact the INEC chairman, Professor Jega had to concede the non use of the card readers in some parts of the country, particularly in the South-South and in the South East so that the election could be conducted peacefully and we have all seen what the non use of the card readers did in those two zones.

But what is important today is how to conduct internal party elections in the manner that the general elections took place, because in the outward analysis, electing people that the generality of the people want is the ultimate objective of democracy and it is quite prevalent in this country that there is an occurrence of impunity whenever it comes to internal party democracy.

And in this enterprise, all our political parties are guilty. Therefore, this is the next political project; the enthronement of internal democracy.

How would you describe the victory of General Buhari after three attempts at the polls? And what would you say went wrong in the PDP?

The perseverance of General Buhari paid off because this was the fourth time he contested for the presidency. In fact, after the third time he decided he wasn’t going to contest again until he was persuaded to contest the fourth time and God gave him. It is remarkable that he has been pursuing that ambition and the PDP had been doing its best to bring itself down as a party. The president brought himself down through so many ways, ways that have baffled some of us who had been members of the party.

Most of us in the party particularly the elders were not carried along in Goodluck Jonathan’s enterprise. Rather, he recruited from a class of people that we never knew were in the party because they never belonged to the party. He recruited opportunists who crossed over from other parties. He recruited entertainers who had never been politicians to come and manage his election. Apart from this, events happening within the government have also caused so much disaffection within the PDP. The president demonstrated that he didn’t possess the necessary capacity to govern and this was expressed in so many ways to the extent that Nigerians started feeling this lack of confidence in themselves. It got to a situation that even the Nigerian leadership in the comity of nations particularly here in Africa was diminished because we have a president that has a clear lack of confidence in himself and we also had a situation whereby affairs of government were conducted in a lackadaisical manner.

If you take for example the issue of this insurgency in the Northeast, there was a time this country spent over nine months without a Minister of Defence and it was the Minister of Information of all the Ministers that was overseeing the Ministry of Defence.This was very amazing and suggested that the president didn’t take the issue of insurgency seriously. I thought that if there was any problem it should be the Defence Minister that should be supervising another ministry and not another minister supervising the minister of defence in this circumstance. And simultaneously, Nigeria had no substantive foreign minister for nine months.

These are very important and crucial ministries. These insurgents had bearing to both our internal and foreign affairs and we had no substantive minister of defence and no substantive minister of foreign affairs. I believe this was the highest of his failures and this disqualified Goodluck Jonathan from holding that office. When this insurgency came on in full stride, the attitude of Jonathan was that this was a Northern problem and he never took it seriously and his mindset along with those around him was that let the northerners stew in their juice and unknown to him, because he didn’t have people on the ground, the propaganda was going round in the north that he was the one fuelling the insurgency along with the PDP. This propaganda became very strong. What angered most PDP members was that this man didn’t care in empowering people to begin to discontinue these rumours and it got to a situation whereby even ourselves began to feel that the allegation that himself and the PDP where the ones sponsoring this insurgency was true and at a point most of us in PDP started feeling that we really don’t belong to the party because we weren’t being consulted.

Our people weren’t being treated fairly and we felt that he was even using religion and ethnicity to divide not only the north but the country. The president was in the habit of going from one church to another here in Abuja even to the embarrassment of a section of the Christian community, preaching and sending out political statements from the church. It got to a situation that the Archbishop of Jos had to warn him to stop using the altar to spread political messages. So, in this manner, he divided the people along religious and ethnic lines which I believe is not what a leader should be doing and a situation arose where both the Christian and Muslim communities of Nigeria began to feel that this man was incompetent and that was why he was seeking refuge in religion and that they should never elect him again. These things along with other unpalatable occurrences like the Governor’s Forum crisis where he failed to show leadership, where he failed to lead by example contributed. There is no way 16 will be greater than 19, but because of politics, this man made Nigerians to have to accept that 16 was greater than 19.

I felt that wasn’t leadership because a leader should be exemplary. What happened has distorted the thinking of our young children who are still puzzled to how the president should support such a situation. No matter how, he shouldn’t have interfered in that mathematics.On the part of the party, we are aware that the PDP headquarters became like a market where the highest bidders were getting tickets to contest for elections and we are also aware that the president and the national chairman were going at cross purposes because even the national chairman had the ambition of becoming the president.

So, when Goodluck Jonathan was busy with his ambition, the national chairman was also busy installing people in his state who would be sympathetic to him in the pursuit of his own ambition and while he was imposing those candidates on the people, it was regardless of whether those candidates had the blessing of their people or not. That’s why in most states you will find out that the party was divided into two, in some states into three, in some states into four. So that was the situation in which PDP approached the election.

Were these the reasons why you left the party or are there others?

Well, these are the fundamental reasons. Nobody was consulting us, the founding members of the party. Those of us that believed we were really stakeholders of the party, we weren’t consulted on anything rather the party moved to the Villa. That was where every aspect of the party was being decided. If we were called for a meeting of the board of trustees for example, it would have been after a selected few had met and decided on particular courses of action that we will now be called to just be told that was the decision and nobody could challenge it. We were made to feel irrelevant and some of us felt that the PDP we joined in 1999 is not the PDP that is in operation today.

Would you also say that the northerners who remained in the party also misadvised him?

You see, what was happening is that when they realised that Jonathan and his people only wanted to hear what is nice and good, they started singing music to their ears. That was the only way they felt they could survive the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. A situation arose when the Minister of Defence once advised the president and he was sacked. Dr Bello was sacked because he had the courage to advice the president to pursue a particular course of action in his opinion would have been better than the course of action that Jonathan wanted to take on a particular matter. He was relieved of his appointment and this is because they don’t simply want to hear the truth. They want to hear what their mindset has dictated to them. So that was the kind of administration Goodluck Jonathan was running.

Now the PDP has lost the elections, would you want to go back to PDP perhaps to help reorganize it to become what it used to be or have you moved on finally?

Well, this is the second time that I have left PDP and I believe I have moved on. There are no persons presently that will give PDP that attraction. Today, most of us that attracted people to PDP have either died or are not in the party or if they are in the party they have been sidelined and are not visible. The people that are visible are the people that are busy destroying the party, people who have no value and such people can’t attract people to PDP. Someone like Goodluck Jonathan who I am told is going to assume the leadership of the party can’t attract any person to the PDP. I have gone for good.

How did you feel about President Obasanjo tearing his PDP membership card?

You see, it is very ironical that the person that is perceived to be the greatest beneficiary of PDP would tear his membership card and claims that he has left the party. We know that he only left because of his frustration with the PDP which was because Goodluck Jonathan refused to allow him to be dictating to him. That is the only reason and all the damage that happened to this party was Obasanjo’s handwork and today some people see him as a saint. Nigerians seem to have forgotten all the damage he caused. This idea of internal democracy, it was Obasanjo who killed it. The imposition of candidates was promoted by Obasanjo. Finally he was the one who imposed Umar Yar’dua/Goodluck Jonathan on Nigerians and look at what Nigeria has become today on account of that.

Have you met Obasanjo since you both left office?

Of course, we have met.

What agenda will you want to set for the incoming government of General Buhari?

First of all, the President-elect when he assumes office must do whatever he can to restore the confidence of Nigerians in Nigeria. It is a general rule of underdevelopment that what leads to underdevelopment is the loss of confidence in the individuals, and subsequently, the state. Most Nigerians don’t have confidence in this system. Exemplary leadership is what will begin to restore the confidence of Nigerians in Nigeria therefore General Buhari should embrace all Nigerians. Let all Nigerians see him as their leader and apart from that, there are so many problems plaguing the country and it is also important to look at the principal problems

What is your advice to the incoming National Assembly on the selection of its presiding officers?

In 1999, with the exception of the South West, the PDP won in most of the zones therefore it was convenient to allocate the six highest political offices amongst the zones. The president came from the South West even though the difficulty there was that his party lost that zone, so that was a problem for him. The Vice president came from the North East, the speaker of the House of Representatives was allocated to the North West, the senate president was allocated to the South East, the deputy speaker was allocated to the South South and deputy senate president North central but you see in our case in 1999, it was us, members-elect House of Representatives who virtually forced the PDP to allocate the speakership to the North West. When the permutation started, those of us that were going to come to the House decided that we wanted the speakership and we campaigned for it vigorously throughout the country and amongst the leadership of the party to the extent that we made our points to the chairman of the party, Solomon Lar and he accepted it. So, that became the matrix with which other offices were allocated.