Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, a former acting National Chairman of the PDP, announced the formation of a faction of the PDP in 2014, at the height of electioneering campaigns ahead of 2015 election. Baraje recently addressed journalists in Ilorin, Kwara state, on the state of the nation, including the ongoing trial of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. UMAR BAYO ABDULWAHAB was there for Blueprint.
Why has the ruling APC appears to have maintained a sealed lips on the trial of the senate president at the CCT when he is also a member of your party?
Everybody is taken aback that the party has not been living to our expectations about the case of the senate president. Living to expectation in terms of making the senate president to feel belonged and feel as part of the party. That is very important. One thing that is very necessary in political is to feel that the party cares for you, and that is part of the thing that has been making me keep quiet.
I have been busy trying to make the party to realise that not only Saraki, everybody in that party matters. From the highest hierarchy to the lowest member, everybody is important. Like everybody would agree, our party has been docile, feeling unconcerned, and this is the party which the senate president has contributed immensely to build.
He worked together with other people to make sure that APC won the election in 2015.
We are coming to the level where we have to be realistic, we have to be honest and ensure that the right thing is done at the right time, and in the right manner. I must say that I belong to the group that is not very satisfied with the performance of this party. Not only because the senate president is having a very serious political case, because that case is very political. But because there are other cases and instances where you are not happy about the performance of our party.
The case in question is both the main and re-run elections in Rivers States. As journalists, you would agree with me that before and during the re-run elections in Rivers State, we do not have the desired and expected experience of presence of our party in the state.
With the volatile nature of that election, some of us with our humble experiences, expected the National presence of our party much more during the re-run elections, we didn’t see that happen. It is regrettable!
Today, we have gone into re-run elections of the parliament both at the state level and at the national level. We have had over 115 re-run elections, APC has lost majority of the elections. Not because of lack of popularity of the party, but because of the lack of more presence in the various elections, that is causing the APC to loose. Politics is not technical, it is practical.
If the APC decided to abandon its members at the middle of elections, surely, you don’t expect magic from that kind of thing. So, those are cases in point before you now come to the case of the senate president. By hierarchy, the senate president is number three citizen in the country. If a ruling party has number three, they should be so proud of that position.
Fine. You want to advance a reason that there was an argument that the party didn’t want him (Saraki), but he went into election and won.
Yes, you may not want to here example from other parties, particularly PDP, but it happened. It is part of history and we can never remove it from the history. I was the National Secretary when the former Speaker of the House of Representatives now Governor of Sokoto state went into election without the approval of PDP, that was his party then, but he went and won. The party then didn’t throw away the baby and the birth water, knowing fully well that if we do, it would be counterproductive. We managed the crisis. How we settled our internal quarrels was not for the outsiders.
Our party may loath the ways of PDP, but out of every bad experiences, there are good things. And any visionary leader or a group of people will always come together at the end of the day.
So, it is not as if the senate president has gone against his party and that was abomination. After all we are in democracy, and majority they say, matters in democracy.
Assuming that the senate president went against his party wishes and won the election, I think this is not the best way to have it. And in any case, I am a principal witness and even acted on how Saraki became senate president. I can tell you, there was no party candidate as at the time we were going in the senate presidency election.
You would recall that at the beginning, before the election of the senate presidency, that the party first of all made a statement and said the senate presidency was zoned to North Central. I think there was a kind of double thoughts of which many of us were not aware. And they can see that that day has become history. Those of us who were witnesses to that session knew that the party has no candidate for the election.
How would you react to the belief within some circles that the ruling party was only interested in taking over power but not prepare for governance?
I disagree that APC was not ready for governance. No! We were ready. We have manifesto. We have the various strata of the party. If we are not ready, we won’t form that.
I want to say that there many distractions. Another reason is distraction. The Buhari led APC government was well intentioned and have very good ideas. But what has been stopping him from achieving?
I want to agree also that a lot of things went wrong before APC came in. And like people have been saying, I agree with them. To destroy is easy, to build is very difficult. It could be part of the reasons why the government is slow in picking up.
Another reason is distraction. When there are a lot of distractions, it makes you to loose focus. APC has a lot of distractions. However, many of the distractions were created by the APC itself. In line with the constitution of Federal Republic, there are three principal parties of this kind of government we are running. The fourth and the fifth are there, also very strong. The executive, the legislative, the judiciary and the media, which we referred to as the fourth realm.
Therefore, these are the pillars that are holding structure. So if one of the pillars got jeopardized, what do you expect? The house wouldn’t stay.
The senate president is the chairman of the legislative arm of government in Nigeria and he is not getting the necessary support that he should get, simply because, some very few or minute individuals thought they are more powerful in the party than the party itself.
As disorganized as PDP was, everybody was a leveller. It was because the inequality of something is higher than another. It was because that tradition was creeping into PDP that made us to say that there is fire on the mountain here, quench it or it will quench the party. When they refused to quench after we have shouted, we couldn’t bear it, we left and you can see the consequences of our warning. The same dragon is creeping into APC.
And at this point, we must sound a warning. I’m not a pessimist, I am not a coupist, but I am a realist. And I am a politician, who doesn’t deceive himself or deceive my followers. The dragon of I am more important than you is creeping into APC, the dragon of impunity is creeping into APC, and at this point, I must sound a note of warning to our dear President Muhammadu Buhari that he should take note, like Nigerians would say, he should shine his eyes.
There are people very much in the party, who in the guise of reconciling people, in the guise of working for Buhari, in the guise of ensuring that Buhari programmes succeed, are doing that at their own selfish peril, because it will lead them nowhere.
We have seen them galvanizing all over the country, organizing meetings in the pretence of putting APC together. I want Mr President to be ware. I want him to play more politics now this is the time for politics. He has gone into the house, he has seen how bad the house is, as left by PDP, he has reorganized the house now, what is now left for him, is to ensure that he consolidates on the reorganization, which he has done to build up the foundation. And how does he do that? He should play more politics.
There is formation of a new party in the country. Are you playing any role there?
Just like you heard it, am also hearing it. I have not been in any meeting with anybody. So far, so good, APC is still on ground. But we want Mr President to shine his eyes and also those of us following him, definitely, we will shine our eyes. But we cannot shine those eyes successfully, except we play politics.
If you get too dissatisfied with the happenings in the party, will you cross over to another?
Every political group has aspirations. You can deny that. If you see any politician in any part of the world, taking a particular stand, he has his aims and such aims include his own aspirations. He might want to belong to a particular group because he felt that is the area where he can get the problem of his people solved. That is an aspiration.
At the time we were going into merger and become APC, we have our aspirations. And the aspiration was that the then government of PDP was not given the best to this country, and we want to be part of solution to make life easy for Nigerians. That was one objective of our own goals. And we thought the best way we could achieve it, is through the merger and become part of the APC. We are there now.
And like I said, we have been busy to build the party. In building the party, we want to ensure that that aspiration is achieved. How far have we then achieved those aspirations? That is why we want to shine our eyes now. Because so far, so good, there is nothing on the ground now to assess. Now, we want to start the assessment.
If I say that our good man is the senate president. If we have have it, do we have it in peace? Since the coming of Obasanjo in 1979 up till date, which senate president has seen a persecution as dry, as open, as blatant and political tyrannical as the one we have now?
What is your reaction to the trial of Saraki?
In any case, the case of Saraki has not followed due process and rule of law. Before last week, there have been series of motions and objections in court, and as procedural as those motions are, they were thrown out.it was the due process that was missing in the case of Tinubu and he was discharged but not acquitted.
So why is the Saraki’s case different?
So as regards whether we are comfortable with where we are and whether we are joining other groups, every politician has aspirations about development of his people and if you cannot achieve it in one place, you go to another place. It doesn’t mean that I am a political prostitute but that
I am a principled person and will not stop until I get what I want, which in this case is good governance, equality, democratic dividends among my people.
Impunity, lawlessness, lack of due process are not what form part of APC. With the intervention of some leaders like us, that party will continue to strive but for it not to go under the drain, the president must play politics.
There are revelations coming from the trial of the senate president that he is drawing salary after leaving office. What’s your take on this?
What the so called witness in chief from the EFCC and not the court read was a statement from the bank. But let’s wait till the witnesses are cross examined by Saraki counsel.
Immediately Saraki left office like any other civil servant who worked for it, he began to enjoy his pension and the vouchers that paid those benefit began immediately and the banks still referred to it as salaries instead of calling it pensions.
One of the major goals of this trial was to create sensation and media hype. We had barely gone out of the court that day when the social media started calling for his resignation. Like you read in the papers, there have been plans for those people to organise protest against Saraki in Abuja, Lagos and Ilorin. But I want to assure them that if that happens, we will see mother of counter protest to demonstrate that the Senate President has followers.
Hitherto, APC had only three states in the north central and with dint of hard work, Saraki delivered the zone one hundred per cent. So if some people hide under the trial of Saraki to want to destabilise this government, then we won’t sit down and look and conclude that is not a threat. Nobody has called for his resignation and the senators have reaffirmed their support for him. But if they are still hell bent on removing him, the worst will now happen because we have the PDP taking over the Senate Presidency and that of its deputy. Maybe we should practice it for the first time and see how it would be.
We have heard there are plans to destabilise the political root of the senate president here at home by some APC leaders at the national level. We have also heard that information but we are ready for it, not by violence, but we want to show them that this is an impregnable area that can’t be penetrated we are one and will remain one. If they do, you we shall see the consequences
Is the coalition of strange bed fellow responsible for the APC’s problem?
In politics, there are no strange bed fellows. There is only thin line between the democrat and the republican in the US, the only thing is that when the situation comes to play, they demonstrate more experience and more maturity. The problem has not been that of coalition of strange bed fellows. What we do was to come together and salvage Nigeria and if we have other motives, it has started playing out especially to some of us that can read within the lines, because the scenes and scenarios we have seen is not for Buhari and that is why he should play more politics.
The fact is what we have agreed to do, and we are still planting the ideologies of the APC, and people based on their selfish ideas are smuggling the ideas of 2019 through the back door that is rubbish.
The national assembly has been involved in some kind of altercation with the executive as regards details of 2016 budget, what is your reaction to the issue?
For the very first time, the national assembly returned the budget with about thirty per cent less. They also expunged certain areas and reduced the amount for certain areas. The area I would talk on is that of some railway project that was also expunged.
When I was the chairman of the Nigerian railway (corporation), I discovered that some structures of the corporation need to be revitalised completely. Construction of new rails is not now; until we get the existing structures performing again and that will cost a lot of money running into billions of naira. So the expunged new railway line from Calabar to Lagos is not a priority but boosting food, agriculture, fighting insurgency and so on.
So if the senate can do that, I expect the president to call the National Assembly together in a round table and discussed with them. Not as some are saying that he should call their bluff. He should take time to study the budget properly and iron out whatever place he is not clear about because the budget is that of the people.
