In this exclusive interview with ZAINAB SULEIMAN OKINO, Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa state opened up on President Goodluck Jonathan ‘s bid and the 2015 presidential election, the crisis that rocked the PDP and his relationship with General Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. He said he is not bothered about who will inherit his legacies; neither is he grooming any godson, because the office is an institution that transcends an individual’s transient desires
The airport’s near completion despite the skepticisms that greeted it
The airport is history. Normally, when we go round campaigning, we try to extract what one may call some benefits. So that by the time the government comes, one can say, ‘yes this is what I have gotten for my own people.’
So, during the campaign you do some underground negotiations. This is not to say, everything is of interest. Though we are of the same party, PDP but we have our own programmes different from the PDP manifestoes. But somehow, some interest groups within the PDP try to find out some of the peculiar needs of the people.
Therefore, I approached the President and I said, “Please, Sir the airport is a peculiar need of our people and so there was this understanding.
The federal government is creating six new zonal airports. And Jigawa is one of them; which gave me the confidence to go into it. I said maybe I can start. In all, Jonathan is my party President and he is certainly working very hard to fulfill his electoral promises. And I can say with some sense of responsibility that, yes President Jonathan is trying. As a loyal party member and stalwart of the PDP, we don’t announce what we want to do on the pages of newspapers. When I was trying to court him to give me some concessions, I didn’t do it through the papers. So, leave us alone; it is a PDP family.
The federal government has played its part; they sent in a team of contractors to decide the base of the airport. They have brought in all the containers and warehouses. The dream is fast becoming a reality.
There is already an MoU between the Jigawa state government and some airlines for normal commercial flights.
2015 and President Jonathan’s ambition to re-contest
Let me make this very clear. I have done all I can to bring focus to the debate; away from this entertaining approach to 2015. The debate has been lowered. It has been personalized in the process. Issues which are national in nature have been lowered. It is now about clash between the APC and PDP. Your approach is seen from the point of view of entertaining Nigerians so that they can write a report on the pages of newspapers. You want to hear from me something that would give you the ‘entertaining’ headline that is, screaming headline like ‘Clash between Lamido and Jonathan’.
You know Lamido and President Jonathan are party men; they are very senior PDP men in Nigeria. All of us are PDP people.
So, when you say there is a clash between Jonathan and Lamido, you are not being fair to what the PDP symbolizes; you are taking away what the PDP has as its history. By so doing, you are lowering the entire debate to a personal issue. It is not personal. So, the PDP is an establishment where people are free to aspire to whatever position they want to. It’s normal; it’s not a crime.
But more than anything else the PDP as a political party, believes in the unity, stability and peace of Nigeria. Our individual interests are nothing compared to national interest. We are all willing to subject our personal interests for the country.
More importantly, what do we do as a party? The Nigerian expectation is in the PDP. Nigerians so believe in the leadership of the PDP. So, there is no clash between us.
Some people have veered from the original ideals of the party
You are coming from somewhere as an outsider. It is my room, it’s our room. So, stop worrying about what is happening in our room. Do you want to join the PDP? Then come to the PDP; because the questions you are asking are questions that can only be understood by a party man in the party. You are looking at the party based on what you think is our tradition or what you think should be our culture. We are not prepared to think the way you want us to think. Allow us to think for ourselves. Allow us to do things as par the PDP, not as par the understanding of a political writer who is more interested in casting screaming headlines; leave us alone.
All the party men in PDP are very responsible, we believe in Nigeria greatly. We will not do anything that would disrupt Nigeria’s stability and peace.
Legacies beyond 2015
Again, I don’t know how soon we shall liberate ourselves from the captivity of our history. It is about time we came out and be what we are. This office is a public office; the office was here before I came here, it will remain after I leave. Therefore, when you begin to say, ‘What do you think about your legacy; when you are literally connecting the office to my own personality. And because you see it as my own personal entity, you get me worried. Ask me about my personal companies which I have run since 1978. These are companies which I have been managing. Here (office of the governor) is a public office and it should be seen as such. The occupant has no right or authority to impose his own policy in a public office. So, the legacies are PDP’s legacies. They are Jigawa’s legacies, not Sule Lamido’s. It is the collective commitment and sacrifices and the rare management of resources by Jigawa leadership which have yielded these legacies, not mine. And because it is the collective efforts and ingenuity of the people in various sectors of the economy; the doctors, engineers, nurses, carpenters, teachers and those who are working hard in agriculture to improve the sector, that are making these legacies a reality, not me.
The doctors, engineers, teachers and the rest of them would remain here as institutions even after I leave office.
Grooming of leaders to take over the mantle of leadership in the state
Now, look at the rest of the governors who think they are putting their “house boys” in government houses. How have they fared? The governor’s office is not an office for a “house boy”, because it is an institution. While you were here, you refused to be anybody’s boy. So, why do you think when you want to leave, you can put your own boy there?
Relationship with the then G7 governors
You must get this very clear in terms of the economy. A political party called PDP has clearly defined the codes of the party which is the constitution. They are conventions, traditions. It is not like other parties which are owned by individuals. We had been there before Bamanga Tukur. For God’s sake, how can a child begin to beat his mother or father? So, there is no way and then we have been doing this for five months. There was even a committee that was set up to restore the party. Because there were some aberrations, abuses; how do you restore them?
So, as we were fighting to resolve the foregoing issues, then the issue of CPC or APC came up in the process. Therefore, the CPC or APC and G7 thing came midway. It was a term which came afterwards. Therefore, it should not obliterate or bury the initial crisis. Joining APC was never part of the issue. APC is a combination of ACN, CPC, and these were parties who took us to court. All the governors of the PDP were taken to court by either CPC or ACN.
The ACN took away our hard-won victory in Osun and Ekiti states through the courts. We almost lost Sokoto, because of political manipulations. Even the Presidential election was challenged up to the Supreme Court. The hard-won people’s victory which was a result of people who led with diligence with all the political blackmail and insults during the campaigns caused by ethnic and religious divisions. There were issues that destroyed the fortunes of the PDP. Some of us had our property burned for simply taking a political position which is my right?
Coercion and intimidation became the hallmark. My office in Kano was burned. I was called a Christian, pagan and anti-north. Now, I don’t see how simply because of the heat we are experiencing in the PDP, in our own room, I should now ignore this historical effect and renounce my history; and then go to a political party which is now seeing the crisis in my own party playing to its own advantage. Then I join them and they are asking me to benefit from the very thing I am fighting in PDP. I was fighting impunity in PDP. Then they say, come to APC. We would deny our people those who are so-called legacy party.
In Jigawa, we would deny Farouk, Saminu and Ibrahim Hassan and so many more. These are people who sacrificed all their efforts to build the legacy party in the APC, and we are fighting each other. You are asking me, come we would take away the entire party structure and give it to you, and therefore, me benefitting from the same thing I was fighting against with Bamangar Tukur.
Alliance between the PDP and the APC in Jigawa
It was not an alliance, it is joining. I would take over “illegally” the structures of APC because I’m coming in; denying other people who have been building the party. It does not make any sense.
Secondly, the whole thing is on principle and conviction. It is ephemeral. I was in the House of Representatives in 1983. When we were having difficulties with our party, Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), we felt we had to leave. Even though we were defending the cause of the PRP against the right wing element of the NPN, but then because of the manipulation and distortions and the blackmail we had been receiving in the party, we left. I felt I would not sleep if I take the victory of the PRP which fought for me to be in the Reps. I knew what we went through during the campaign; the animosity and persecution. If I want to leave the party, I felt I should leave what they gave me. Because I came here on PRP’s platform, it was unfair of me to take their victory, mandate and give it to another party. If I was leaving the party, then it was appropriate to give them their mandate. So, I resigned from the House. I met Abubakar Rimi who was the Governor of Kano state then; I said to him: ‘Sir, because we are leaving the PRP, this office of the governor of Kano state you are holding belongs to PRP, it’s not for APP. If we are working on principles, then you must leave this Government House. It’s either you resign by giving PRP their governorship and come we fight on principle or we shut up and keep quiet.’ Of course he resigned as the governor of Kano state.
Now, if you are talking about principles, what was right in 1983 should be right now. Because right is constitutional and can never be wrong. So, G7 is your own coinage. G7 was fighting the PDP’s impunity. Even if there is no tomorrow, I will still fight it. Because the party must be what it should be; it must be transparent.
Buhari, Atiku’s visits to Jigawa
Atiku is a party man. I come from the PDP; he said leave PDP and join APC. I said, ‘I am not going.’ Here is a party man who is giving his daughter’s hand out in marriage. He invited me to come. Now, he is Nigeria’s former vice president; he is not an ordinary man. I must give him all the respect that he deserves. When they came, I gave them an accommodation. The following day he went to Hadejia and attended the ceremony of his party man with his party people and came back. Then I took him back to the airport.
Farouk Adamu is the APC man. Is Buhari not a party man? Buhari was coming, he is not an ordinary person; a former Head of State. Farouk is an APC man and Buhari’s right-hand man. He was giving out his daughter in marriage in Birnin-Kudu. There is no way I would simply ignore Buhari because he is a member of the APC or CPC. I can’t because he is a symbol of our sovereignty as our former Head of State. Therefore, he deserves all the courtesies. He was coming to Jigawa state, our state. I can’t because of political leaning refuse to attend the wedding ceremony of a friend or an associate. There are people who should not be in the realm of politics. We cannot lose our essence of human beings for political consideration, but unfortunately we’re losing our essence. Atiku came here, to attend a function of his own party man, and of course I received him.
Renewed spate of bombings
I am deeply worried. All of us should be worried. Because there is no way one can justify the crises. It is like we are under siege if we are not free from fear. We are talking about freedom, freedom from fear.
But the most fundamental of this is to be free from fear so that we can go anywhere without your life being threatened.
The bombings, as I have said are evil. The bombing is as evil as the sale of human parts. It should be a source of concern to all of us.
Today, a fellow human being would kidnap somebody and demand ransom. It is the same evil. The bombings and the people perpetrating kidnappings are part of the evil that the country is going through. It should be a source of concern to everyone, because no one is safe. We can pay any price for peace.
Effective management of meagre resources
Again, this office is a function. It carries a basic duty. If you go and campaign, and ask for the mandate and you are given the mandate, what do you do? There has been this truncation of political evolution and mentoring. And therefore, people now occupy the offices with all the money but have no idea on how to run these offices. They are willing and ready, but you cannot do what you do not know. With all the money, you cannot do what you do not know.
Today, the bridge between the old political generation of the late Tafawa Balewa, Sadauna of Sokoto, Awolowo, Zik Okpara and others who fought for our independence is broken.
Afte independence, the issue of human development came up. Because when you become liberated and free, how do you address the issue of making such a people gain human dignity?
Therefore, our founding fathers knew precisely what we meant by political independence. So, all of us were growing in that kind of culture.
In 1983, the military came in and banned everybody. They said from 1960 up to 1983, they banned all political parties so that the new generation can take over. They were working on the greed of the breed. Because if I come to your house and I say, “look your father is extremely rich, and you have become of age, how do you enjoy that money which he has? So, let me kill him for you so that you can enjoy all the money; you would grow and take over. Now, because you have not attained the age of self-management, by the time the father is killed, then you are going to depend on the killer of your father as your god-father, because you have not gotten independence.” So, the whole thing was truncated. The political evolution, mentoring, the connectivity and the historical link up; everything was truncated. Therefore, those who were in the military were the ones defining our values; values whereby to create them was for your friends to make money. You even get a taskforce to clear refuse. Because you are trying to create avenues for your friends to make money, you create PTF/PTDF, Federal Ministries of Works, Health, Education and the paraphernalia and institutions. You create PTDF and it’s buying chalk.
So, you can see how you have destroyed these institutions which are the engine of the government. You now confer privileges on people. This is because we are destroying systems and institutions to give people privileges. Therefore, in the process Nigerians lost their rights in their own country. What is yours has become a privilege. Rights are rights whether you like my face or not. My right is my right.
Today, the Nigerian citizen has no right; he relies on what is being conferred on him by the owner of the government. Either the local council chairman or the state governor to give him some privileges; he has no rights. Even fertilizer is not given to the farmer because he does not belong to your political party.
You have to draw lines between rights and privileges. So, the institutions are being destroyed. And therefore, the political operators don’t take note of the linkages of the past. So, by the time you look at a government, the man there may be very hard working but then he cannot do what he does not know. He has all the money at his disposal but he doesn’t know what to do with the money. If you look at it critically, you would discover that it is a government of privileges, not right. It is not the problem of the council chairman, or the governor. It is the fault of the system which is being truncated. Whatever I am doing here is simply that I’m lucky and I’m coming from the old order. I knew the struggle under the PRP. I knew what the people practically stood for; the masses. But I don’t know what the new generation stands for. Most of them who are under 55 years old, in 1970, they were only may be 15 years old. Therefore, their entering into public office is through the process and tradition of the military which is centralized monopoly of authority; which is given out as privileges.
We are trying; all the governors, parliamentarians and public office holders are trying under the current circumstances. Nigerians are making demands, they are asking questions. People are no longer docile.
This is what Jigawa’s money has done for its own people. It is not me.
