Governor Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State was perhaps one of the most vocal of the five governors that quit the PDP mid-way into preparations for the 2015 general election to join forces with then opposition party APC. In this interview with a group of Journalists in Abuja, Kwakwanso tells the story of how they defeated PDP and what APC must not do to avoid pitfalls, Onyebuchi Ezigbo was there for THISDAY and provides excerpts…
People thought it will not be possible for any government to unseat the present PDP government. How did APC deal with the challenge?
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First of all I want to thank you for congratulating me and my party APC for this landslide victory in the last two elections on the 28th of March and 11th of April. Let me also use this opportunity to congratulate you also for that success because our success is success for all Nigerians especially those of us in government. Even you in the media have done so much to promote the party. The success of APC I believe is the success of this country of course plus our brothers and sisters across the world. We have to say that the election especially of March 28 has gone a long way in bringing in a lot of quality change in this country even before the President-elect , Muhammadu Buhari is sworn in. I am sure you have seen how the Naira appreciated, you must have seen how the stock has also appreciated and I think that is a good sign for this country. I am sure the president when sworn in, will do whatever it takes to get the politics right and by doing that many other things will fall in line like security, economy and of course corruption will be taken care of and all other vices of the economy will be tackled by the new administration. So we feel very happy that things are happening positively and I am also happy that it has been peaceful and the election went very well and the results were internationally and locally accepted as free, fair and credible.
This victory has been a surprise to most Nigerians and it sure didn’t come so easy. As one of those who were actually in the field can you recount what the experience was like?
Well, it didn’t come as a surprise to us. It would have been a surprise if APC lost the elections. Then you must not forget that PDP and the government, this last administration of PDP made so many mistakes. Most of them huge mistakes. So, some people will have been surprised if they were re-elected. This president should thank God that he spent six years and during that six years, many mistakes were made especially as it has to do with corruption. He didn’t get the politics right to the extent that many important members of the party left. Yet they had no experience in protecting the people of the party. Many vital leaders of the party and former chairmen and EXCO members of the party left. So much has happened in the party negatively and they were blindfolded to the extent that they couldn’t even take care of the problem talk less of doing something to stop it and at the end of the day this is what has happened to the party. And to us in the field as you rightly pointed out it didn’t come to us as a surprise. It came as a result of hard work, real organisation within the party, sacrifices members made among other and so on and so forth. So it came as a result of people who believe in this country, people who believe that change is imminent and it was necessary because we want peace in this country. The government made mistakes on the issue of security, when the process started it started very small and it was allowed to grow and the insurgents were allowed to have 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 the political will and at the end of the day you have seen what has happened just within six weeks and if they had used that political will right from the beginning, I believe that most of the lives not all of them that were lost as a result of insurgency won’t have been lost. Most of the properties that were been destroyed as a result of the insurgency won’t have been destroyed.
There are so many losses, like our children in the North-east that were unable to go to school, like all other economic activities that were crippled and with this in-coming administration, it will come in with a deliberate policy to help the North-east because it has been through a terrible war and therefore will need the support of the incoming administration to build their homes and to build their lives so that they can catch-up with other parts of this country.
You pulled the second highest votes during the APC presidential primaries. Kano State also had the highest votes for the APC president Buhari and you are also the Excellency with the highest vote in the country. How did you manage to achieve that?
Let me say that I deliberately 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. 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 certainly boost that figure. In order words which was better than my only candidature and his only candidature on that day and that was why I decided and accepted the offer by my people to contest for the senatorial seat. For the presidential primary I am very happy that I participated and as you rightly pointed out I was second many people thought that I will do otherwise but that is election and the point is most of the time better to be underrated and see that all of you that were speculating that it was between our leader Buhari and Atiku but when the result came you saw how it turned out. I believe that it was a fair reflection of what happened in Lagos even though I stated lately, even though most people didn’t know me at that time but I think it was great. I was happy and I enjoyed myself. My supporters across the country had done so much and we are happy that the primaries went that way even though I didn’t get the ticket but in my own way I won the election.
What does that say for you in the future? Do you think that it gives you the hope to try at it again, I mean the presidency?
I don’t want to say so much. In this game you don’t elevate yourself, it is best for one to be directed and I am happy to say that I started very well and I will continue to work to support the party and the government of APC to succeed. Because certainly we will be the last people to allow what happened to PDP to happen to APC. PDP was carried away by it successes to the extent that all those who have supported it were hit one way or the other and nobody was important. Even those of us with the highest number of supporters in the country and those of us, that by the grace of God have the confidence of the people were not been carried along by PDP. That is why we are hoping and praying that APC should learn from the bad experience of PDP. PDP elevated itself telling everybody and bragging that they will rule for 60 years and a long time before now we told everybody it wasn’t 60 but 16 years and what happened recently has proved us right. PDP was supposed to rule for over 60 years if it was doing the right thing for its members and Nigeria, but unfortunately the last leadership didn’t handle the politics right and in this business once you fail to get the politics right all other things like security, economy, infrastructure everything will not fall into place and that is exactly what we have seen in this current administration.
Following the just concluded general elections and at the same time a lot of expectations from Nigerians on change which the incoming government promised. Which area will you touch in order to start showing action? What will be the effect of this large defections from PDP to APC due to the outcome of the election?
Well, if I were to start from defection, I will say in politics there are various groups but I think you can categories them into three; the first one is the first class, people who can take risk and of course work hard to chart new ways and changes. Others will sit on the fence to see where the success was and they would start falling in line. Either head or tail they will stay where they are. So what we are seeing is that the majority are those who are looking around to see where success is so that they could join it. So, I am not surprised many people are joining us now and we are happy that they are joining but they must do it in such a way that the party can stay in peace and help us build the party and make it a better platform for us and them and especially for the future. Now elections came and if you are talking about General elections besides the by-election it will only come the next four years. Some of them want appointments, some of them won’t stay there because they want to benefit from the success of the party and it is not anything new. Many people are in PDP because of the government and now that they are leaving in on May 29, many people will definitely leave the party and that is what we have seen. They are already being accommodated it is just like a market you don’t need anybody’s permission to join PDP or APC. When we were in PDP no one told us to join PDP we did that voluntarily thinking that it would be fair to us at the end of the day the government at the centre decided it will only go round, look at faces and choose those they wanted and fight those they thought were not their friends. So that is some of the mistakes they made but anybody is free to join any party they want. Whether you are leaving your party for APC or you never joined any party and you want to join us you are free to join APC or any other party. I think we started on a good note. APC came with a tremendous good will not only across the country but across the world. All over the world they were so happy when they saw what happened and Nigerians and including PDP members were happy and have seen that Nigerians were given what they voted, were given what they wanted and therefore everything went very peacefully. People were happy across the country, so we have started with this tremendous good will and I believe all of us are aware of the high expectations of Nigerians and I have no doubt in my mind that our party and the president and his team will do whatever they can not to let Nigerians down. So we have started the good will if you look at the exchange rate, the stock exchange and so on and so forth. We don’t know what happened in the presidency because our military what could not be done in six years has been done to a very large extent in just few weeks.
People are calling the President a hero for accepting defeat. Will you likely agree with that?
Yes, I believe the President is naive because he had all the opportunities to change direction. I don’t blame him, he didn’t play the sort of game for sometime at the national level. He didn’t know who was who in this country. He was just looking at faces and those who were well dressed and carrying many cell phones and they meet at the airport, they smile and he says well these are good people and sits down to listen to gossips and sometimes he doesn’t even know their names. He made a big mistake by picking the wrong people, let me tell you, our leaders who have been in this game before us especially those who were in the First Republic told us so much about our friends in this country and he happens to come from South south where they are very close to our leaders. We have done everything possible to work with him but of course, he vandalised the opportunities. He didn’t handle it very well up to the extent that most of us saw that we don’t have any 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 his wife was saying that northerners are this and that; how could you say that to northerners? You can’t insult us and think that you will get away with it. This is democracy, it is a game of numbers and that is why we went back and put Almajiras together to get about two million votes.
Some people in this country feel the senate is like taking you away from certain Nigerians and have called that you be made the FCT minister or any other position in the country what is your take on this?
You see, 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 worked for 17 years in Kano and when I retired from civil service in 1991, I contested as a member of House of Representative and Deputy Speaker of that House. I was an elected delegate and in 1994/1995. I was governor 1997 and 1993 I was minister of defence for about four years, I was adviser to the president in Somali, I was a member of NDDC representing North-west political 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. You know I contested as you rightly pointed out to be an APC candidate for the presidency where I came second and when I went back, who won the primary elections of our party thought I would be a good asset at the National Assembly and many other well wishers came to ask me to contest which I accepted and now I am a senator-elect of the Federal Republic and you can see that so many things have been done and now the issue you are raising is an issue that I have also seen in the newspaper, on the social media and so on and so forth. I have seen some residents of Abuja asking the president to appoint me Minister of FCT, I have seen and I can assure you that I don’t know any of them and they had their reasons and I don’t see them as enemies. I see them as people that wanted to benefit from similar projects that have been done in Kano. My position has always been that whatever I am doing, I do open hearted and open handed. I am here to support the party at 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 with me, I am one of the most popular people even amongst the principle officers and I can tell you that part of my success at the elections were members of the House of Representatives in the House many of them in APC, many of them in PDP because of I had to cross the line to join APC because in APC constitution members of the house of reps or former members are to elect our president. So many of them across the country came to our party APC because of that my candidature and they have gone a long way in ensuring that the success that I had in Lagos during the primaries and so if you ask them, they will tell you that what I did in the house wasn’t any different from what I did in Kano and what I am doing in Kano now. We thank Almighty God. I always believe it is good to be good as the saying goes and we will continue to be good.
On zoning of key positions of the Speaker of House of Reps and the Senate President, what advise will you give your party?
My advise is that they should quickly do it as we witnessed what happened 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 mobilise support for themselves and if the zoning decides to come late they will be very strong in their campaign to the extent that they can disobey the party just as we have seen during the Tambuwai thing in 2011. Tambuwai went round the country, we gave him our words 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 because I believe that the man who got the ticket had more appreciation to the opposition rather than 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 to whatever has been zoned to his or her own part of the country.
But there is an on- going debate over were certain positions should go to and one of the issues is where the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives should come from and there are a number of aspirants now lined up for the posts. What is your take on this?
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, all zones must be represented and I think it is one of the mistakes of the PDP where they decided to lump so many positions while others had no slots. I think that has gone a long way in really killing the party, this country is for all of us, this country is not for Muslims or Christians, this country is not only for north or south, it is not only for Yorubas or Igbos or Hausas or any other tribe. This country belongs to all of us and therefore leadership must be fair and it is only on fairness that we can ensure the success of the party and the government and therefore at any given position, leaders must come out because if you decide to do otherwise certainly you will run into crises like 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. That is the only way they can work hard. 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 sometime now. 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 where we will go like once or twice which will be the magic because you don’t win elections on election day, you win long before that day by your program. If you are a government by your activities, by the utterances of the people around you, the utterances around the president which was instigating, you don’t abuse Yorubas, you don’t abuse Hausas at this level or you abuse north and the north if you look at any calculation and you are aspiring to be president and you or your family is abusing the north you have already lost the elections even before casting the votes so I think these are some of the mistakes and that is all about democracy. We want a situation where every vote counts that is why we always thank INEC in the leadership of Jega, we also thank the armed forces, members of the international community and of course the press who contributed to the smooth running of this elections.
If the pressure from your followers becomes overbearing that you should go and render services in the executive arm of government would you accept. What would be your own contribution to the table because you are going to be making laws for Nigerians do you have anything in mind that you would wish to do as you join the senate given your experience?
Firstly, I don’t know the finances of the national assembly or the senate but I think we have to start from our senate, if there are areas we need to settle at the senate or the national assembly I think these are the areas that need to be addressed. Secondly, we don’t know what the results of the North west and other zones but when the time comes you will look at it and see if what is brought to the North west is something that i would be very happy to do. Of course there are many other things that we have in the pipeline that we have to improve and of course establishing new ones to improve the governance of this country, there are so many things that will come in the future but I can assure you that as I stand for justice, fairness I, make sure that whatever I do I will always stand for the peace and stability of this country. We will do all what we can in our own little way to advise our government and party to be fair to all and to make sure people are judge by their character and not their religion, or where they come from. I believe that is the only way we can have the success of our party not only between now till 2019 but of course for a very long time to come.
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