Chairman of the Bauchi State House of Assembly Committee on Information who represents Ganjuwa East constituency, Gazali Abubakar Wunti, speaks with Ishola Michael on the crisis among All Progressives Congress (APC) members of the House, the refusal of the Speaker, Abubakar Y Suleiman to sign a statement by the caucus and other issues. Excerpts:
The Speaker of either state or national assembly can declare vacant the seat of any member who defects from the party that brought him/her as member if there is no genuine evidence of internal crisis in that party. Why are Nigerians finding it difficult to implement such constitutional provision?
It is true that the constitution has made that provision that if any elected member quits his or her party without a cogent reason of internal crisis in his party which has defied solution, his seat can be declared vacant. It is the Speaker that will declare the seat of any affected member vacant. So, it is not the fault of the Assembly members. It is that of the Speaker, because he is the person who is constitutionally responsible to do that. So, I think the question has to be directed to the Speaker. I have no power to declare anybody’s seat vacant. It is the Speaker that will tell you why those members that left APC to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) even when there is no conflict in the party are keeping their seats. So he is in the best position to tell you why the seats have not been declared vacant.
A few days ago, you issued a statement, signed by about 12 or 13 of you in which you accused the PDP-led government in the state of wooing your members with juicy deals to join them. How sure are you about it? Or it is just an allegation?
Yes, it is an allegation of course but we are also sure about it. If it were not true, why did they defect to the PDP? It is two years now, the relationship between the Assembly and the governor of the state has been peaceful and cordial. We have been cooperating with him to ensure the progress of Bauchi and its people. One does not need to defect to the governor’s party before one gives him support. What type of support have we not rendered to the Governor despite being in a different party? You don’t need to be in the governor’s party before government will work in your constituency. It is his responsibility to execute projects in all the constituencies. It is equally the responsibility of assembly members to lobby the government for projects to be executed in his constituency. I have been to the governor several times to lobby for projects for my constituency and he promised to do them. Must I join PDP before he would do it? No. Now, if the governor fails to execute any project in your constituency will he tell your people during campaigns that he didn’t do it because their representative in the House of Assembly refused to join him in his party? So, it is illogical for anyone to just dump his party so that government will execute projects in his constituency.
Don’t you think that politics is a matter of choice where everybody is free to join any political party of his or her choice?
Of course, it is a matter of choice but the law says if you want to defect to another party, two things are involved: one, there has to be a crisis in your party, in such a situation, you can leave the party because you have the right. The other is, if I want to defect to PDP, what is expected of me is to honourably relinquish the seat that I occupy on the platform of the APC and join the PDP. That is the choice that we are talking about and not just to say I have dumped APC for PDP while I am still occupying the seat I was voted into on the APC platform. If I do that, it means I have betrayed those who voted for me and my party. I have even betrayed myself. Yes, I have my rights but such rights must to be within the law.
What do you intend to do if the problem continues?
There is nothing we can do about it, we have made our position known. Everything we are doing is for the benefit of the people of Bauchi and not our personal interest and then just like you said, the constitution has given the right to state our position and make it known and that was what we did, the 17 of us, including the Speaker, although he didn’t sign the paper. We are 17 left now in the APC and we don’t think any of us will leave again. We are very sure about ourselves. Even those that just left us, we have good intention about ourselves but they decided to leave on their own. So, now assuming that their seats were declared vacant, it could have been an indication to any one affected that he has violated the constitution, but we don’t know why it was not done.
We learnt that the Speaker did not sign the resolution. Do you know what was in his mind?
No. I think he was not comfortable with our resolution. He said we should be patient because he wouldn’t want to sign the paper after he saw the content. I told him that was our resolution. We are 17 APC members and when we call a meeting, about 10 to 11 of us would attend. So you see about six members, including the speaker, were absent but our resolutions are written and we contacted every one of us on our position and we endorsed it. I sent the document to him while he was in Ekiti. He called to tell me that he had made some observations on the content of the paper, but I told him it was a collective decision by all of us. To be fair to him, that was what transpired.
Do you think you were fair to him as the speaker? Don’t you think he should have been the leader of the caucus?
If an issue has to do with the entire members, the speaker is responsible but if it has to do with party affairs, the majority leader is the one to lead because he is our leader and he was at the meeting where we arrived at the decision. The Speaker though has his constitutional rights, he should know that the party is supreme. For now, we leave it at that.
What is the next step now considering that the issue is gradually becoming a controversial one?
There is no controversy here, we as APC members of the Assembly have made our stand known and the public has heard us. We are not saying that we will stop supporting the Executive in working for the people of the state because it is not yet time for politicking. Our collective responsibility is development and progress of Bauchi State. So, we will give our maximum cooperation to the PDP-led administration but it should stop coercing and inducing our members to join PDP. We remain APC members.
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