Kwankwaso opens up on APC , says stalemate by APC leaders on Speakership dangerous

Outgoing Kano State Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, now senator-elect, is, perhaps, one of the few governors who have built a solid political structure to outlast

him. In a rare display of political sagacity, he has handed over the reins of power to his deputy in election that saw Kano deliver the highest votes to the APC thereby helping to change the political configuration in Nigeria.

In this interview, Kwankwaso justifies his decision to stand by Muhammadu Buhari to defeat incumbent President Jonathan and his party, the PDP in the March 28 presidential poll. He also says that the allegation of under-aged voters in Kano during the election is mere conjecture. Excerpts:

How do you see the outcome of the presidential and governorship elections across the country?

The success of the All Progressives Congress in the elections is the success of this country and the success of our brothers and sisters across the world. We have to say that the elections, especially the ones of March 28 have gone a long way to bring quality change in this country even before the president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, is sworn-in.  I am sure you have seen how the Naira has appreciated, you must have seen how the stock market has improved in the past few weeks because of the victory of Buhari; I think that is a good sign for this country.  I am sure that when the president in inaugurated, he will do whatever it takes to get the politics right and, by doing that, many other things-like security, economy and corruption-to name but a few, will be taken care of in order to give Nigerians a new lease of life and move the country forward.

So we feel very happy that things are happening positively and I am also happy that the election came and went peacefully and were generally accepted as credible by the international and local observers except in some states.

To many Nigerians, the outcome of the election is a big surprise that the opposition party the ruling party? What do you think happened?

Well, it didn’t come to us as a surprise. It would have been a surprise if APC lost the election. Look, don’t forget that the outgoing PDP administration made very costly mistakes which they never stoop to reflect on and make amends despite complaints from many members and leaders. So, Nigerians would have been surprised if PDP had been re-elected.

Besides, President Jonathan should thank God that he spent six years and, during that period, so many mistakes were made and he made no effort to correct them. The issue of corruption remained very high; he  didn’t get the politics right to the extent that many important leaders and members of the party left them, yet they had no idea on what to do in order to protect the party from collapsing in the middle of his presidency. All these things combined to work against the PDP and its candidate.

The government also toyed with the security of the nation and it became very expensive at the end of the day for the administration. When the insurgency challenge started, it did not appear as it could rock the boat, but it was allowed to grow to the extent that the insurgents developed the capacity and even took a large chuck of the country as well as some forces. At the end of the day, we really don’t know what happened, but government decided to improve on its political will and you have seen what has happened in just six weeks of the government putting down its feet to confront the insurgents. I want to say that if they had used that political will right from the beginning, most of the lives and property lost would not have fallen to the insurgents.

There are so many losses like our children in the North-East who have been prevented from going to school for some time now, you can see the complete disruption of economic activities in the region and the general gloom that has been visited on the people through no fault of theirs. My hope is that this new administration will come in with a policy to help the North-East because the area has been through a terrible war. It is my hope the government will assist them to rebuild their homes and means of livelihood and have the opportunity to return to their normal lives.

How do you defend the fact that your state returned the highest number of votes during the presidential election and you also scored the highest number of votes as a senator-elect?

I joined the contest to become a senator firstly to ensure that Buhari got the maximum number of votes. It wasn’t a matter of just winning in Kano but to get the maximum number and to make sure PDP didn’t get 25 percent in my state.

Let me also say that Buhari is a popular man in Kano and many parts of the North, but my candidature and his candidature on the same day was needed to boost that figure. In other words, I actually contested the polls in order to enhance Buhari’s chances of winning the election.

That was why I decided and accepted the offer by my people to contest for the senatorial seat. Don’t forget that during the APC presidential primary, I came second at a time many people thought it would be otherwise. But that is election for you because sometimes the underrated person may become the front liner at the end of the day.

There are calls from certain persons that you should forgo your senatorial seat and take up the FCT minister post in order to replicate what you have done in Kano in Abuja. Which of these are you disposed to?

In this game, if you look at it very critically what you need to do is just to be a politician first. In 1991 when I left my job as a civil servant,  I contested as a member of House of Representatives and Deputy Speaker of that House. In 1994,  I was an elected delegate to the Constitutional Conference. I was governor between 1999 and 2003.  I was Minister of Defence for about four years, I was adviser to the president on Somali, I was a member of NDDC representing North West l Zone. Now, you can see that from legislation to political conference to executive at state level to executive at national level and so on and so forth, you don’t go there with a fixed mind; you have to be this or you have to be that. I contested as you rightly pointed out to be an APC

candidate for the presidency where I came second but when I reviewed the situation, I realised I could be an asset at the National Assembly and that was what made me to contest and now I am a senator-elect. I have seen some people resident in Abuja asking the President to appoint me the Minister of FCT. I see them as people that want to benefit from similar projects that have been done in Kano. My position has always been that whatever I am doing, I do it with open heart and mind. I am here to support the party in any position. Those talking about Kano, Kano is only the recent development and, if you like, go and ask those who were in the House of Representatives with me, I was one of the most popular people even amongst the principal officers. I know that most of those who were with me in the House at the time also contributed immensely to my success at the primary election in Lagos.

What do you think about the plan by the APC to zone key positions in the National Assembly?

My advice is that they should quickly do it so that we don’t have the kind of problems that we witnessed in 2011. I believe the party shouldn’t waste anymore time because the implication of delay is that some people will go around the country to mobilise support for themselves and, if the zoning comes late, they will be very strong in their campaign to the extent that they can disobey the party just as we saw during the Tambuwai thing in 2011.

Tambuwal went round the country, we gave him our word as a person that we will support him and, when the zoning came late, we had already committed ourselves to that project and the party, at the end of the day, was humiliated because we didn’t want to change our position because we promised to support him and, with some members of the opposition at that time, he won the election against the government’s candidate and things have never been the same again with the PDP. I believe that the man who got the ticket had more support from the opposition than from those in the party who rarely supported him. I don’t want us to repeat that mistake again. I think it is high time we finish the zoning but anybody can aspire for whatever was zoned to his or her own part of the country.

There is a debate over where certain positions should go to and one of the issues is where should the Speaker of the House come from and there are many aspirants already struggling for the positions.

I don’t want to be particular about Senate President or Speaker or Majority Leader or anything.  I think what is important is to have a fair distribution of the posts to ensure that all zones are represented and I think it is one of the mistakes of the PDP which decided to lump  in certain preferred places while others had little or nothing at the end of the day. I think that has gone a long way in really killing the party. My belief is that this country is for all of us, this country is not for Muslims or Christians, this country is not only for the North or the South, it is not only for the Yoruba or the Igbo or the Hausa or any other tribe. That is why the leadership must be fair and it is only on fairness that we can ensure the success of the party and the government. Therefore, at any given position, leaders must come out because if you decide to do otherwise, certainly you will run into crisis like the PDP. What is important is to work with what is on the ground and see how it would be fair. Of course performance is an issue but even those that didn’t perform as much as others, they need to be encouraged. We have those in the South-East and even South-South that have not done as well as others, but you know we have been in this game for some time now. We know that many people, especially those who take business seriously, only want the best for the government and it is only a matter of time these people will certainly join APC either because of APC ideas or ideology or even because of business. Whatever it is, this game is about interest. So I look forward to seeing people from the South-East and the South-South joining the APC so that by 2019, our task in terms of campaign will be minimal. This will make it possible for our party to win elections easily because elections are not won on election day.

We know how strong you feel about the offshore and onshore issue. As it is now that you are going to in the senate is this one of the areas you will want to see worked on?

I was in the conference when we decided to allocate or recommend 13 percent for derivation. I was part of it because I believed there was need to give certain money to that part of the country for many obvious reasons. Now many things follow like NDDC, the Niger Delta Ministry and many other things in the budget; of course, these are the issues we are going to handle critically. I am sure you remember when I raised the issue of onshore, offshore at a time the issue of constitutional amendment came in and many people were talking of 25 percent and so on. Of course, it is for us to look at issues critically. One of the failures of the PDP government then was that they neglected issues that were on ground. I remember when the Yar’Adua administration introduced the issue of supporting the ex-militants, a lot of resources was pumped into that area. Now the issue of losses came in the budget, I think 5 billion or so was allocated to the north-eastern states to help the people. I will like to see the Buhari administration working deliberately to support the north eastern part of the country so that the people can live their lives and join other parts of the country. I am not from the North-East, but as poor as we are in the North-West, I know that we are much better than the North-East. They really need urgent development to take out of their present socio-economic woes.

People are calling the President a hero for accepting defeat. Do you agree with them?

I believe the President failed for inexplicable reasons.  I don’t blame him. He failed to play national politics that would have launched him out as a statesman. He didn’t know who was who in this country, he was just looking at faces and those who dressed well and carried many cell phones and they met at the airport and they smiled and he must have assumed that these were the good people he needed to do business with on behalf of other Nigerians.

Unfortunately, he made a big mistake by picking the wrong people and surrounding himself with such treacherous elements. Let me tell you, our leaders who have been in this game before us, especially those who were in the First Republic, told so much about our friends in this country and he happens to come from South-South, our very close and dependable ally. The people of the South South were very close to our leaders and we always work and vote together. But we have done everything possible to work with him but, of course, he squandered the opportunity. He didn’t handle it very well up to the extent that most of us saw that we don’t have future as PDP members and as individuals and, that is why we had to come together to organise ourselves to defeat him. Look at what the wife of the President said about us-northerners. She was just castigating the North almost at every opportunity. You cannot insult us and think that you can get away with it. This democracy is a game of numbers and that is why we went back and put almajiris together to get about two million votes.

But many Nigerians suspect that the two million votes from Kano was possible because of under-aged voters and almajiris?

I think it is only in Kano and other states that we have real elections in this country. We had about four million registered voters and just two million voted and you are saying under aged and all rubbish. The issue of almajiris have been open to abuse in this country and turned into insults for us. Almajiri here is a positive word but the way they see it is that we are beggars, that we produce so many children that we cannot take care of, and that is what the First Lady was saying and we kept quiet because we had our own way of answering her and we did exactly that on the 28th of March.

So we are happy that things went this way and what happened is a lesson that we won’t allow anybody to go to the Presidential Villa and reduce the whole place to religion by saying I want this religion and I don’t want this one. If we vote you, go there and do your job, we don’t want you to be dancing around and jumping from one church to the other, going from one mosque to the next, and kneeling down before this and that or going to any country and be disgracing and embarrassing us in the name of speaking for Nigeria. You are the President of the country and you should stand by that; if you are the First Lady, everybody is your child and if they are bad, try to reform them and not castigate any of them. We don’t want anybody to come and abuse Yoruba, Igbo or Ijaw; you are the father of all and we have to move this country forward.

By Soni Daniel,Regional Editor, North for Vanguard