Chairman of the Committee on Environment and Ecology, Senator Bukola Saraki, tells newsmen that the expulsion of four key members of the nPDP is a great setback for the reconciliation process initiated by President Goodluck Jonathan. ADETUTU FOLASADE-KOYI was there.
There seems to be worsening confusion in the PDP in the past four months, especially with the expulsion of some members and the migration of some other leaders to the opposition party. Do you see this as signs of the end for the party?
I think the action of the PDP, as a ruling party, of 14 years of democracy is unfortunate; it does not reflect a party like ours and even as a country after so many years of democracy. And it will be difficult to really convince a lot of us that it was not done to circumvent that decision by the Appeal Court that directed that Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola should resume as National Secretary of the PDP. These are the issues that some of us have been shouting about. An institution like the PDP would be there, long after individuals, long after Oyinlola, long after myself, long after others and in doing that, we must protect the institution.
God knows, it is the process of just to stop the secretary from resuming but in the process of that, what damage we you done? By doing this, how will it help the reconciliation process? Surely, it will not help the reconciliation process that is on because some of us thought it was a golden opportunity to really reconcile and help the party. More importantly, apart from mending fences, like the initial point I made, what the party stands for, this action does not support that. These are not the kind of actions we expected when we started democracy 14 years back; this is the kind of action we expected maybe at the local government level.
The party is an institution that we are all holding in trust. The executive is only going to be there for a certain period, so it must protect that institution and must not allow emotion or sentiments to bend the process. The process sometimes may work in your favour, sometimes it will not work in your favour. As you rightly asked, whether this situation would help the situation, of course, it will not help reconciliation and it is very bad because some of us have continued to see how we can try and bring peace to the party, efforts are being made by others behind the scene and that is why to me, I will say this action has set everything back.
What do you foresee in a situation where the expulsion of these key members of your party is not reversed?
The opportunity of Oyinlola going back as secretary was a very great one to bring reconciliation to the party. That is my personal opinion and some of the feelers we heard were that even the leadership of the party had directed that the decision of the Appeal Court should not be challenged in the Supreme Court, which we thought was a step in the right direction to bring about peace. So, to just go ahead and expel somebody, I will say, does not help.
And what that leads to depends on what happens in the weeks ahead. As you know, the meeting between the G-7 governors and the president was postponed over and over in the past, and at last it collapsed with five taking their stand to leave. With this kind of event, really, you begin to doubt whether the scenario would be corrected. Where it will lead to, I don’t know. It depends again on the steps we might decide to take. I think that definitely, in the interest of reconciliation and peace, I think that most of the actions we have taken won’t help at all.
I suspect the party leadership just played into the hands of the hawks who believe that there was no sincerity in this reconciliation and that is not going to help the PDP. There is no way these divisions can help the party. In politics, you need people. You don’t gain from losing people and that is the key thing. Where five states of 23 finally pull out of a party is not a positive development. That is a significant number and any effort to reconcile should not have been too much and that should be the spirit of everybody in the party.
If you wanted to suspend the secretary of the party, this situation started since the convention and why the suspension be carried out on the day he was about to resume? It was done in bad taste and that does not help us, it does not help reconciliation.
The splinter group had said the PDP led by Alhaji Bamanga Tukur was a dead party and if truly it was dead, why was Oyinlola going back to a party that had died?
It was the court that said he should go back to the place. So, that question should be directed at the court because it was the court that asked him to go back.
You led a faction of the nPDP in Kwara State to hold local government election recently and there are fears that the election may not stand the test of time because the outcome did not reflect the will of the people in the state. How do you think these issues could be resolved at the end of the day?
The question is that I didn’t conduct the election; the election was conducted by the Commission and it was not the fault of the PDP that at least, one of the major parties did not comply with the conditions needed to participate in the election. It was not only in Kwara. You know that by virtue of the commission of APC, and you know how many months they should have been registered before they can participate in elections.
In most of the states, they could not participate, so, there is nothing peculiar in Kwara. The other parties like the Labour Party participated. Secondly, the processes of how candidates emerged in the primary were done in conjunction with the national party. The national party sent people to oversee the primary, screen, panel for appeal so it was not a case of where candidates emerged just based on state chapters alone. National office signed most of the delegate list, signed the appeal list and did some other things. There is a report showing that they came to supervise the primary, so other due processes took place.
The fact that some parties, because of their inaction, unfortunately did not comply with the laws of local government election, it is not our fault and we should not be held responsible for that.
Yes, somebody can go to court but what are they challenging? Are they challenging that election should not have held because one party out of over 26 political parties did not participate? You should know that that cannot hold water and there is evidence to show that national PDP participated in the primary. The state on its own didn’t just sit down and conducted the primary.
There appears to be sharp division among your major party members in Kwara State. Again, the problem between you and your friend, Prof. AbdulRahman Oba, who is aggrieved that you did not support his re-nomination as Chairman of the Federal Character Commission has again deepened the crisis with some of them threatening that they would not allow you have your way in the Kwara State politics anymore, how would you handle that?
I don’t want to comment on some of the questions that some of you are asking but I learnt something from my old man in politics. He said let us meet at the poll. Politics is about people and like I said, we have a big family. Sometimes, people will stay with you, sometimes, due to one or two reasons, some people will go but posterity will judge us. It is a pity that you are here in Abuja. If you were a correspondent in Kwara State, you will not ask me that question because you will know the reality on ground.
There are insinuations that your relationship with your state governor is sour and that you are likely not to support him for another term in office, how true is this?
Like I said earlier, I will not want to comment on some of these issues, time will come when we will comment on them. But I can tell you that I have a very good relationship in the state with my governor, because I believe that if we are successful in Kwara State in showing that somebody can take over after you, then you can have a cordial relationship for the development of the state. As I said, it is only in Kwara State, Senator Shaaba Lafiagi is a former governor, I am a former governor, Hon. Fatai is a governor, we attend functions together. There is no acrimony, nothing. And I see no reason why it should be. And again, I think we are showing a model and I pray it works for me or for him, and I think this will go a long way to help development.
It will soon be a year for the drama of politics in Kwara State to start. Would you attribute some of the noticeable absence of good relationship between you and some of your loyalists to the absence of your father?
I have said it; that there is no problem in the politics of the state
But you acknowledged earlier that there are some divisions…
I said one or two. Look at those that supported us, we still have 99 percent of the support in the state; we are still one big family. We just conducted local government election, the State Assembly members are intact, the council chairmen and 196 councillors are intact. The traditional rulers’ support is there. There was a transition, even in the life time of my father, there was a process and it prepared us for this day to continue what he used to do.
It is difficult for me to talk. I would have preferred this kind of meeting to be held, back in Ilorin, when you spend an evening with us there and those of you that know what it used to be at his time and begin to see that the institution is being sustained, then you would know what I am talking about here. So, what you are seeing from some of the elders are for selfish reasons and they are local issues. I don’t want to respond to them. Those that will respond to them will do that. But I can tell you that majority of the people are still with us, those that followed Baba and some of us are still together and that is why we keep telling people that any day, anytime, we will deliver in Kwara State.
Would you say your father’s stead is too big for you?
Yes, his shoe is too big to step into because he had a large heart. You cannot train somebody to get a large heart, it is either you have it or you don’t have it. Truly, he had the ability to give, he could give you anything and I think that is rare. And to give is not just to give money but giving your time to somebody who you do not even know. I wish one can have even half of what he had but people like that are once in a life time.
The Sun