THE APC has given several assurances of conducting its convention, but it has since been aborted twice in the last three months. Why is it difficult for your party to hold its convention?
We are in the process of having our convention and you are aware that about two weeks ago, we conducted congresses that generated the delegates that will come for the national convention. If we are not serious about holding the convention, we wouldn’t have selected those delegates or elected those delegates that would come. So, I think after our next meeting, a date shall be given for the convention.
We also learnt that certain chieftains of the party and governors were not favourably disposed towards holding the convention in the absence of the leader of the party, Muhammadu Buhari. What is the true position?
It is true that a lot of people believe and I am one of those people who believe that our president is indisposed and since this is a mid-term, non-elective convention, it will be a nice thing to have our leader present at the convention. There are certain persons, including myself, who would like to see my leader and the president of our country in our convention. That does not mean it is the official position of the party. The party will take a position when the relevant organs of the party meet and decide.
You have just spoken the minds of certain elements in the party’s National Working Committee, who are not comfortable with holding the convention in the absence of President Buhari because they believe that the table might be turned against them.
I told you that I am speaking for myself and I am not holding brief for any other person. I am speaking as a two-time National Vice-Chairman, South-South. That is the only person I speak for on this matter.
There have been observations that failure to hold the convention for over two years is a breach of the party’s constitution, which stipulates that it must be held every two years. Is the national leadership not worried that something must be done along this line?
I just told you that one of the processes and things that would make the national convention to hold has been done. Congresses were held all over the country to elect three persons from each local government area to come as delegates to the national convention. If the party was not ready to do the national convention, it would not have gone to that length. So, I just believe that we must exercise patience; we have found ourselves in a very peculiar situation. Nobody envisaged that the president of the country and the leader of our party would be indisposed. You cannot say that the input of our president and the input of our leader is not important in an event such as the national convention. The law was made for man, not that the man was made for law. I am not saying that it should become a rule to disregard the constitution. The convention is very important. To uphold the tenets of our constitution, which is very important and also the health of our leader is very important. So if you put all of these together, you will know that we have found ourselves in a very peculiar situation.
Crisis has trailed outcome of the congresses in some of the states. Even in your zone, South-South, Senator Magnus Abe squealed against it and alleged that in Rivers State, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, manipulated the process to ensure that only his loyalists made the delegates’ list. The same allegation was made in Kaduna and some other states. What’s your take on this?
My take on this is that it was an exercise conducted by human beings. It was acceptable to the state and so some mistakes might have been made. Again, one of the fundamental tenets of politics is conflict resolution. In the exercise, the party recorded very remarkable success; you are just talking about two or three states out of 36 states. About two or three states had the issue and the party is on top of the situation.
The party has set up a committee to look into all of these matters. Every concern of members of the party with regards to that exercise will be addressed. But I tell you that the party, if you do your research, you would come to the conclusion that the party recorded remarkable feat and success.
Are you not worried that Rivers, where your party appears to have a strong presence in the zone, is also heavily polarised now?
As I said earlier on, one of the fundamentals of politics is conflicts resolution and a political party is a human organisation. People who populate political party come with their idiosyncrasies and in trying to cohabit in these political parties, sometimes they have acrimonies and disagreements, but let us not blow them out of proportion. These are friends and brothers and if they have disagreement, what makes anybody believe that they cannot have an agreement? So, I believe that these things have been blown out of proportion. The situation in Rivers is under control.
One burning issue in the polity right now is restructuring and your party recently constituted a committee to look into it .There is this resentment against the choice of governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai as leader of the team, because Nigerians are of the opinion that he has taken a stance against the issue. How do you react to this?
First of all, we must define what we mean by restructuring and it seems to me that for every protagonist, there is a particular definition. There are people who look at restructuring as the devolution of powers. There are others who look at it as resource control. There are others who look at it as a confederation. So we must come to a consensus. What do we really mean about restructuring? Some of the hardliners in the South-East believe restructuring means secession and some others, it is returning the state structure to the regional arrangement of the past. Some also believe in the shifting of revenue allocation. There are so many schools of thought regarding restructuring. I always pray to God and say, let’s us come to a consensus. If it is possible for us to come to a consensus, we will understand what restructuring means. This El- Rufai in the past, had spoken about restructuring and I heard him talk about devolution of powers to the states and if he was very emphatic on this, how can anybody now say that he is not interested in restructuring? After all, the restructuring that we have in our manifesto speaks to the issue of devolution of powers and that is also restructuring. My attitude is, I stand by my party with regards to our manifesto, but as a South-South person, I also can never run away from the issue of resource control. I also hold a very strong view that the creation of local government must reside with the states. So, if you want to have 200 local government areas, that is for the states to decide. But it should not be the basis for revenue allocation.
There are so many interpretations and schools of thought as regards the issue of restructuring. I think the first thing that we ought to do is to define and have a consensus on what we actually want as Nigerians with regards to restructuring, and then we can have a proper discourse, a proper debate on the issue. But for every speaker, whether the person is against or for restructuring, they have their individual definition, understanding of the concept.
But Nigerians have dismissed the committee as a mere platform created to buy time to deceive gullible Nigerians that the party hasn’t abandoned its promise on devolution of powers. Each time you hear the national chairman [Chief John Odigie-Oyegun] or Lai Mohammed speak on restructuring, they do with a proviso, that the present administration must put the economy in proper shape and deal with insurgency before restructuring.
I am not on the same page with the national chairman on that issue, because if we were minded enough to put it in our manifesto, we must be minded enough to implement it. So, I’m not genuflecting. I’m not unsure of what the party and the government that we have produced ought to do. We put it in our manifesto that we would devolve powers to the constituent states and my take on it is that we must do it.
Are you optimistic that this committee will come up with something that Nigerians will applaud?
The committee is not government. We have already produced the government. It is unfortunate that, like I keep saying, no matter how much power an acting president has, he is still not the president. That is my position and it is unfortunate that the president is indisposed because before the manifesto was presented to Nigerians, it went through the crucible of the party structures and it was accepted before it was presented. So, we must make very coherent effort to implement what we sold to Nigerians.
Will it be valid to say that the health of the president is taking its toll on good governance, particularly the economy?
That is not the position of a lot of people, but that is my position. That, no matter how strengthened, no matter how empowered an acting president is, he can never be the president. Look, in a country where our fault lines have been so accentuated, the vice- president not coming from an area where the president comes from can only be as careful as Professor Yemi Osinbajo has been. We know that Osinbajo is a highly competent fellow and that he can superintend over the affairs of the country in great distinction, but there are certain decisions that he cannot take on his own being the acting president and because that is a fact, the ailment and the disposition of our president has affected our economy negatively. A lot of people might be politically correct; I don’t want to be politically correct on this.
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