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| Usman Bayero Nafada |
Former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Usman Bayero Nafada, who recently defected to the APC, told newsmen in Gombe shortly after registering as party member that the APC is like a wild fire spreading to all parts of Nigeria. He also accused Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo of failing the people of Gombe. Excerpts:
Why did you decide to join the All Progressives Congress?
I have been saying it again and again that I have seen no progress in the PDP. When I was in the party, we had some programmes that would have been good for the country and that was why I insisted that people should vote PDP into power but from the way I saw things moving, I understood that all the good programmes we have for the country cannot be achieved under the PDP and that is why I decided to join the new party APC where I have high hopes that this country will move forward.
Most of the people in the APC were in the PDP. What difference are they going to make in the new party?
I don’t want to believe that majority of the people that are now in APC are coming from the PDP. Yes, there are a lot of members of the PDP that are joining APC but before it transformed into APC, there were members of ACN, ANPP and CPC. The reason why PDP members are joining the APC like I said is because we have seen a lot of hope in the party and that is why everyday people are trooping into the APC.
Now that you have become a full fledged member of the APC, what is your hope for Nigeria?
Well, like our leader, Senator Danjuma Goje said, first of all we will like this new party to be accepted by the people of Gombe and Nigeria in general. After doing that we will try and see how we can do our congresses and after that we will come back to the issue of who will be that and who will be this as the party requires.
Do you see the APC seizing power from the incumbent PDP government in Gombe State?
This is very easy. Just like the Hausas will say ‘Karbe goruba a hannun kuturu ba abune mai wahala ba’ if you were with me Wednesday at Nafada you could have seen the crowd. The last time we had this type of gathering was when the present governor of the state was inaugurated, that was the last time you must have seen such a crowd. What this goes to translate or mean is that people have now dumped PDP for APC in Gombe and that means Gombe people are ready to bury PDP and soon after the registration, we will organize a rally that will finally bury the PDP in Gombe State. Even though going by event, the PDP is dead but it’s still lying in the mortuary.
How do you intend to resolve the differences between members the three major merging parties of ACN, ANPP and CPC and those of you from the npdp?
Well, like I have seen in some of your dailies, there are lots of connivance between some of them and the ruling PDP in the state but that is not to say this is the only problem we have with them. There are other problems we have with them, they want to be everything and we know our number is about 100 times their number in Gombe State. You can see even with that difference, we try to carry everybody along.
In Nafada for example, the chairman is from CPC, in Funa kaye the chairman is from ANPP, in Kwami the same thing. About 6 out of the 11 local governments in the state are coming from the legacy parties and even if you look at the state exco, about 70 percent of them are from the legacy parties, so what do they want?
This goes to show that these people who are writing all sorts of petitions are agents of the PDP government in Gombe. Our intention is just to leave them alone, their number is very insignificant, they are not going to do anything. We know even those who are saying they are members of the defunct CPC, we know how they won elections, some of them knew how we suffered before they won the elections not only those at the National Assembly but including those at the State Assembly. We know the efforts we did before they became what they are.
What is your assessment of Governor Dankwambo’s administration in Gombe State?
He failed in so many places too numerous to mention. For example in Gombe State, there is what we call ‘capital flight,’ all the monies that are supposed to be circulating in Gombe are not circulating in the state, because all the major contractors that are working in the state are not from the state. What this means is after collecting their money they will go out with their money and they will leave Gombe without money. That is a great failure to the economy of the state. One of the most important things of democracy is to respect the people who suffered for you, by giving them dividends of democracy and you do that by respecting the elders, everybody and let them see how they could contribute in the running of government. Government is not just for one man to say ‘I am the most highly educated, I know everything, all the remaining people are just nonentities and I don’t have to work with them.’ In democracy you have to learn to work with peoples’ opinions.
Our major problem in Gombe under this administration is poverty and we all know the cause of this poverty. Like I said earlier, if money is not circulating within the state, what do you expect to happen? You don’t expect anything but poverty. It is only in Gombe that a government stayed for about a year before commissioners were sworn-in.
He has approval from the state Assembly to appoint advisers but how many do we have before the coming of APC? It was only after the emergence of APC in Gombe State that we had 2,000 to 3,000 personal assistants and senior special assistants who have not started getting their salaries. We know that some of them are just on paper and even with this I was reliably told that they would be a burden to the local governments. A critical look at things in Gombe State will reveal that we don’t have efficient local government system in the state.
With your defection to APC, there are insinuations that you are likely going to be the APC gubernatorial candidate. What is your take on this?
Like I said, our focus now is not on who is going to contest for what post.
Our focus is on the propagation of our great party in Gombe and the nation at large. Our party is a new party, we want the people of Gombe to understand that this is the best party to partner with in Gombe and Nigeria.
Those who are chanting ‘Sai Bayero” or whoever like I said earlier, our leader Danjuma Goje has warned them to stop that and concentrate on the propagation of the party in all nooks and crannies of the state. That is why when I went to Nafada my local government ,did you hear me saying Gombe Sai Bayero or Nigeria Sai Buhari? I didn’t say anything like that.
Besides northern Gombe, where APC have a strong base, how do you intend to scale your campaign to other local government areas of the state?
Today, I will be in Tangale waja. APC is like a wild fire. And you know what a wild fire can do, it is very hard to control a wild fire, APC is coming from the Northern part of Gombe State and it will keep moving at a very faster level until it covers the entire Gombe State.
As a former deputy speaker, what does the law say about defection of legislators?
Well, you see constitutionally there is a right of association, you can associate with anybody you wish to. What it means is, though I am not a lawyer, that you can associate with whoever you want to associate with. When many members were moving from other parties to PDP between 1999 and 2011 there was no problem with that because people were moving to the ruling party. But when people started moving out of the ruling party to other parties specifically to APC, it is a topic of discussion, they have forgotten that they have benefitted from this type of movement.
As a former presiding officer of the National Assembly, I have read a lot of papers, a lot of defection from ANPP during our tenure and nobody raised any eyebrow. A seat should not be declared vacant because members have that right as guaranteed by the constitution and that is why the members are moving. As far as I am concerned, you can move from one party to the other even if the Electoral Act did not specify that. The National Assembly has made a law in the Electoral Act that the time table for election should be drawn by the National Assembly not INEC. But INEC went to court to protest that and the court ruled that the constitution has given them power as INEC to draw the timetable and that is why they went ahead now to draw the time table. As soon as APC takes over we will change that system.
Download National Dialogue Committee's Reports (in PDF)I have been saying it again and again that I have seen no progress in the PDP. When I was in the party, we had some programmes that would have been good for the country and that was why I insisted that people should vote PDP into power but from the way I saw things moving, I understood that all the good programmes we have for the country cannot be achieved under the PDP and that is why I decided to join the new party APC where I have high hopes that this country will move forward.
Most of the people in the APC were in the PDP. What difference are they going to make in the new party?
I don’t want to believe that majority of the people that are now in APC are coming from the PDP. Yes, there are a lot of members of the PDP that are joining APC but before it transformed into APC, there were members of ACN, ANPP and CPC. The reason why PDP members are joining the APC like I said is because we have seen a lot of hope in the party and that is why everyday people are trooping into the APC.
Now that you have become a full fledged member of the APC, what is your hope for Nigeria?
Well, like our leader, Senator Danjuma Goje said, first of all we will like this new party to be accepted by the people of Gombe and Nigeria in general. After doing that we will try and see how we can do our congresses and after that we will come back to the issue of who will be that and who will be this as the party requires.
Do you see the APC seizing power from the incumbent PDP government in Gombe State?
This is very easy. Just like the Hausas will say ‘Karbe goruba a hannun kuturu ba abune mai wahala ba’ if you were with me Wednesday at Nafada you could have seen the crowd. The last time we had this type of gathering was when the present governor of the state was inaugurated, that was the last time you must have seen such a crowd. What this goes to translate or mean is that people have now dumped PDP for APC in Gombe and that means Gombe people are ready to bury PDP and soon after the registration, we will organize a rally that will finally bury the PDP in Gombe State. Even though going by event, the PDP is dead but it’s still lying in the mortuary.
How do you intend to resolve the differences between members the three major merging parties of ACN, ANPP and CPC and those of you from the npdp?
Well, like I have seen in some of your dailies, there are lots of connivance between some of them and the ruling PDP in the state but that is not to say this is the only problem we have with them. There are other problems we have with them, they want to be everything and we know our number is about 100 times their number in Gombe State. You can see even with that difference, we try to carry everybody along.
In Nafada for example, the chairman is from CPC, in Funa kaye the chairman is from ANPP, in Kwami the same thing. About 6 out of the 11 local governments in the state are coming from the legacy parties and even if you look at the state exco, about 70 percent of them are from the legacy parties, so what do they want?
This goes to show that these people who are writing all sorts of petitions are agents of the PDP government in Gombe. Our intention is just to leave them alone, their number is very insignificant, they are not going to do anything. We know even those who are saying they are members of the defunct CPC, we know how they won elections, some of them knew how we suffered before they won the elections not only those at the National Assembly but including those at the State Assembly. We know the efforts we did before they became what they are.
What is your assessment of Governor Dankwambo’s administration in Gombe State?
He failed in so many places too numerous to mention. For example in Gombe State, there is what we call ‘capital flight,’ all the monies that are supposed to be circulating in Gombe are not circulating in the state, because all the major contractors that are working in the state are not from the state. What this means is after collecting their money they will go out with their money and they will leave Gombe without money. That is a great failure to the economy of the state. One of the most important things of democracy is to respect the people who suffered for you, by giving them dividends of democracy and you do that by respecting the elders, everybody and let them see how they could contribute in the running of government. Government is not just for one man to say ‘I am the most highly educated, I know everything, all the remaining people are just nonentities and I don’t have to work with them.’ In democracy you have to learn to work with peoples’ opinions.
Our major problem in Gombe under this administration is poverty and we all know the cause of this poverty. Like I said earlier, if money is not circulating within the state, what do you expect to happen? You don’t expect anything but poverty. It is only in Gombe that a government stayed for about a year before commissioners were sworn-in.
He has approval from the state Assembly to appoint advisers but how many do we have before the coming of APC? It was only after the emergence of APC in Gombe State that we had 2,000 to 3,000 personal assistants and senior special assistants who have not started getting their salaries. We know that some of them are just on paper and even with this I was reliably told that they would be a burden to the local governments. A critical look at things in Gombe State will reveal that we don’t have efficient local government system in the state.
With your defection to APC, there are insinuations that you are likely going to be the APC gubernatorial candidate. What is your take on this?
Like I said, our focus now is not on who is going to contest for what post.
Our focus is on the propagation of our great party in Gombe and the nation at large. Our party is a new party, we want the people of Gombe to understand that this is the best party to partner with in Gombe and Nigeria.
Those who are chanting ‘Sai Bayero” or whoever like I said earlier, our leader Danjuma Goje has warned them to stop that and concentrate on the propagation of the party in all nooks and crannies of the state. That is why when I went to Nafada my local government ,did you hear me saying Gombe Sai Bayero or Nigeria Sai Buhari? I didn’t say anything like that.
Besides northern Gombe, where APC have a strong base, how do you intend to scale your campaign to other local government areas of the state?
Today, I will be in Tangale waja. APC is like a wild fire. And you know what a wild fire can do, it is very hard to control a wild fire, APC is coming from the Northern part of Gombe State and it will keep moving at a very faster level until it covers the entire Gombe State.
As a former deputy speaker, what does the law say about defection of legislators?
Well, you see constitutionally there is a right of association, you can associate with anybody you wish to. What it means is, though I am not a lawyer, that you can associate with whoever you want to associate with. When many members were moving from other parties to PDP between 1999 and 2011 there was no problem with that because people were moving to the ruling party. But when people started moving out of the ruling party to other parties specifically to APC, it is a topic of discussion, they have forgotten that they have benefitted from this type of movement.
As a former presiding officer of the National Assembly, I have read a lot of papers, a lot of defection from ANPP during our tenure and nobody raised any eyebrow. A seat should not be declared vacant because members have that right as guaranteed by the constitution and that is why the members are moving. As far as I am concerned, you can move from one party to the other even if the Electoral Act did not specify that. The National Assembly has made a law in the Electoral Act that the time table for election should be drawn by the National Assembly not INEC. But INEC went to court to protest that and the court ruled that the constitution has given them power as INEC to draw the timetable and that is why they went ahead now to draw the time table. As soon as APC takes over we will change that system.
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