Whoever wins PDP’s presidential ticket will get support from others —Kwankwaso

NaijaLiveTv.com

In this interview, former governor of Kano State, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso spoke about the forthcoming presidential primary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and issues surrounding the Kano State chapter of the party. The interview monitored on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, was presented by Group Politics Editor, TAIWO ADISA, excerpts:

It’s less than six months to the election and your party doesn’t have a presidential candidate yet. How can people take your party seriously?

The PDP, as it stands today, as far as the presidential election is concerned, is the only democratic party, especially if you look at it from the angle of the presidential aspirants we have today. On the other hand, you have APC, which, from the look of things, has got only one aspirant who is the candidate and also who is the president. That is not good for democracy and that is not even good for them in terms of winning the general election.

We have seen it in the past that in 2015, PDP had only one candidate and they lost the election. If you look at it statistically from 1999 to 2003, 2007 and 2011, PDP had very competitive primary elections and they ended up winning the general election. But in 2015, they decided to field only one person and they lost the election. If you look at President Buhari himself in 2003, 2007 and 2011, he was only being given ticket without any primary election and he was losing. He only won the election when he had a very good primary election in 2015.

So, if you look at it statistically, there is correlation between good primary election and winning the general election. So, that is what I can tell you from my experience and you can see it over the years, from 1999; all the major parties, if they go for primaries, they win the election. If they print one form for one person, they lose the election.

 But he still has to go through the primaries under his party the APC; that doesn’t translate to mean the sole candidate?

From a statistics point of view, that is exactly what is likely going to happen in 2019. If you also look at it from the angle of number of aspirants, you can conclude that every strong party like PDP is likely going to have as many aspirants as possible. In any case today, you have over 90 parties in the country and many of these parties are not even known by you and me and of course other Nigerians. They will find it even difficult to get one person to say he or she is contesting under the party. So, the more the aspirants, as far as we are concerned, shows the strength of the party, because if people are not sure of winning elections, certainly nobody will be in a hurry to join that party as presidential aspirant.

Of course, people may argue that the party and the aspirants should come together and see if some can agree to work together in the party during the primaries. But, of course, if that is not possible, the most sensible thing to do is to go and have free, fair and credible primary election, which everybody will see and everybody will be satisfied that there is fairness, justice and equity. Whoever wins at the end of the day, other should join them and campaign out there to make sure that APC is defeated in 2019.

 To make this a little easier, why is it that the PDP has over a dozen aspirants, but we don’t find them stepping down for themselves to make it easier for the party to manage?

Normally, it doesn’t work out that way. Everything has time. Of course, people agreed to come out as aspirants, people agreed to buy forms from the party, which is good for the party. The party, of course, raised some funds for the activities of the party, which can be funded from that resources. But as time goes on, I will very much expect and pray that many of us can come together and reduce the number, so that at the end of the day, we can have a good primary election. But even with the number that you have today, it’s still helpful. It’s still good for democracy. But if we can reduce it, it will still be better. But from my experience also, I know that if we have only two aspirants contesting among themselves, it will be more difficult to agree because the implication there is that those who are friendly to A will be with him and those who are very angry or against B will also be with him and vice versa. You find that at the end of the day, whoever wins, the enemies that are in A or B will go out there and make sure that trouble is created unnecessarily, maybe because of enmity. Yes, the number can be reduced, but it gets to two, it becomes more difficult because bitterness and anger comes in.

Do you believe that all the presidential aspirants in your party are working in the interest of the PDP, because some people have come out to say some of you are moles in the party?

Well, in politics, people will have different opinions, based on their information, their background and understanding of things. It is possible there could be moles, but I don’t know them. But it is possible because we are in the opposition, but government is there to plant anything against the opposition and I will not be surprised if there are moles and I hope there is none because I’ve not heard or seen anyone. I believe that at the end of the day, whether government likes it or not, the situation as it is on ground, the delegates will go the venue of our primary to elect and choose the best. Of course, the best is somebody who is likely going to challenge the incumbent, defeat him and have a government of PDP in the country in 2019.

Is it true that there is this disquiet about where the party’s convention will hold, either in Port Harcourt or Abuja?

Well, you see, many people have their version of argument. I met people who have said that in Abuja, you have all the facilities, many of us the aspirants live in Abuja and in terms of convenience, Abuja is the best. But on the other hand, we are living in a government that doesn’t understand people’s minds or views. I’m sure you will remember that recently, I wanted to declare and I followed all the due processes, paid all the fees but just hours to the declaration, we got information from the police, we got information from the security agencies to say that they have order from above that that place is not good, because that day was a working day and so on. Even before we applied, we were aware that many events take place during working days at that place in particular. So, I think our leaders in the party hope and believe that with the level of impunity that we’ve seen in government at that level, that it will be a waste of effort to ask them to give us the Eagles Square or any other place in Abuja. Therefore, the leadership decided to look round to see the best place and they thought that Port Harcourt is the best in terms of the stadium, the facilities and of course including the hotels and so on and so forth. Many of us are fine with it because of what we have seen from the government. But in terms of convenience, Abuja would have been the best for us and certainly, that’s why the ruling party wants to do their own in Abuja.

Why couldn’t you reach a decision, especially for those of you who think it should have been done in Abuja? Why did they not object to hosting it in Port Harcourt when they were there at the meeting and the aspirants were present?

The issue is that based on the experiences with the government in power, they believe that it will be a waste of effort to even try that. It will cost us more to go to Port Harcourt, but under this circumstance, I personally have seen nothing wrong and even if there is something wrong, we have to live with it as an opposition.

There is this school of thought that thinks that it may not be necessarily fair for people who left the party, who are coming back, such as yourself and some others who have left the and they are coming back to contest. If they get the ticket, some feel that that will not be fair because if you didn’t stick with the party in 2015, why should you deserve the ticket now.

Every day we are learning. The PDP, in my opinion, learnt its lessons. In 2015, PDP was very arrogant; it believed that no matter what happened, it would win the election. They never thought that an incumbent government could lose the election, and therefore, they had at that time some level of impunity that many of us thought that was not the best way to handle the government and of course the country. That was why we decided to defect to the APC to form the party, to work with the party across the country, mobilise the people and at the end of the day, we won the election. Of course, the PDP learnt its lesson, unfortunately, the hard way and they started thinking positively, and as far as I’m concerned, PDP is now a better party than in 2015.

But the APC refused to learn anything. They didn’t understand and they don’t want to understand, to the extent that the APC of today is the PDP of 2015 and PDP of today is the APC of 2015. In fact, there was a swap between the two parties to the extent that in 2015, the entire leadership of those they will call the legacy party, they had to go round the country to meet all of us to plead with us to come and join the party and under that circumstance, we gave them the benefit of the doubt, believing that this is a new arrangement, a new party, people of good character and integrity.

 It isn’t really a new party, just the same individuals moving from one party to the other?

The point is that the PDP has learnt its lessons. As I said, as individuals, communities and as a party, every day, we are growing and we are learning. So, the situation as it is now, we now have a reformed PDP, a PDP that is accommodating, a PDP that has improved in terms of doing the right thing. That’s why we came to the PDP. Those of us who were in the PDP, we believed that things were wrong and we went to the APC thinking that the government, the party and the country would be better. But PDP was much better than what we found in APC and therefore, we had no option other than to work together to change the change itself, and that is very important for the politicians, for the people and for the country and even for the government of the day.

There are those who will think that there are issues, especially when they read the comments of your colleague Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, concerning the reasons why he left the PDP to the APC because he didn’t quite like the sharing agreement; he’s saying how could he get 49 per cent and you 51, despite that he’s been in the party and you met him in the party? Isn’t the PDP displaying the same arrogance which you talked about?

I don’t want to go into the issue of individuals. We have individuals who have different opinion on issues. But I can tell you, those who are saying APC was wrong to have done that sharing formula, I think they are right and the evidence, for example was that in Kano, APC won 100 per cent; 484 councilors, 44 local government councila clean and clear; very democratic. The other elections also, 40 state House of Assembly, 44 House of Representatives, 3 Senators, governor and almost two million votes. It has never happened in the history of the country.

Are you saying you deserve to have been given 51 per cent of the structure?

That is what I’m saying. The other time I was governor, I was given 60 per cent of the structure and I can tell you out of that 60 per cent of the structure, I gave almost 60 per cent to the so-called legacy parties that we merged together. I didn’t take one per cent of it. This time around, my state, Kano and of course Bauchi State were rated as 50, 51 per cent for those who are in government. The idea of any party is to win elections, not to lose elections and parties will take decisions based on that, not to make you happy or to make me happy. And I can tell you that which the party has done in Kano, in Bauchi State, by the grace of God, PDP will win those states most likely 100 per cent again.

Kano is seen as a swing state. Whatever happens in Kano usually has a way of turning the results at the end of the day. 51 per cent belongs to you and your opposition now has 49 per cent, that equally splits the vote in Kano, no doubt about that and you are still confident that you will take the day in the PDP?

Maybe you don’t know much about the Kwankwasiya movement. All what we needed in Kano was the platform and now we have got a platform. Of course, we want addition as much as we can. We didn’t want Shekarau to move in 2015, but he did from APC. He was one of the founding fathers of APC and because we moved in there, he had to run to PDP and we got the votes. From APC, we are coming back home to the PDP and he ran away from the party against me and that’s not what we wanted. What we wanted was for us to sit down and work together as a family. I believe that we are all democrats and there is no permanent enemy in this game. That was why even in 2011 when I was in government in Kano, I refused to chase [probe]him or do anything that will pull him down because I believe that one day we will come together, despite all what he did for eight years against me.

I believe that in this game, people must have as much understanding as possible because one day, you find yourself in the same party or association or group. So, I think these are things that politicians must learn. I wouldn’t say he has moved alone, but those who are conversant with his style of politics, long before I left for PDP, most of the people that he was working together in that party had already decided to work together with us. So, actually, we didn’t want him to go because we didn’t want to lose the name. If Shekarau moves, everybody knows Shekarau. But if thousands of his supporters move to us, they don’t have name. So, that is the situation and I can assure you that the Kwankwasiya movement has never been as popular as it is today in Kano, in Northern Nigeria and this country as a whole.

 Why should the delegates of the PDP choose you as their party’s standard-bearer over those that perhaps came into the party either as a governor, maybe with Senators or members of the House of Representatives, members of the State Houses of Assembly? Don’t you think the party may likely think of those people than yourself who didn’t come with as many persons who were in political offices?

The entire structure of our party then the APC and 100 per cent of the elected people belong to Kwnkwasiya. Nobody won election in Kano without or outside Kwankwasiya movement. So, when we are moving, we move with all those that we are together with. Of course, you know what happened in Kano. The governor and a number of people who contested election under Kwankwasiya ideology and they voted them because of the group and you could see that hundred per cent is not an individual popularity. It’s the popularity of the movement and the popularity of the group that made it very easy for everybody, the good, the bad and the ugly to win an election one hundred per cent.

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