President Goodluck Jonathan contesting the 2011 presidential election and also spoke extensively on the crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in his home state – Oyo State. Excerpts:
You are the secretary of the Southern Forum, a group which in 2005 advocated for a South-South president. What has been happening in the group in view of recent happenings in the polity?
When you look at all the geopolitical zones in Nigeria, virtually all of them have produced the president or the Head of State at one point or another except the South-South. Not a single person from that region has ruled this country for a day. We decided that there must be equity, justice, and fairness. So at a meeting in Enugu, three main officers were chosen. They were Ambassador M.T. Mbu as the chairman, Professor S.T. Igwe was chosen as the vice-chairman and I was chosen as the secretary-general. We put up a strong case and went round the whole country pleading that the South-South should be allowed to rule the country, even for one day. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo seemed to agree with this position in the run up to the 2007 election, until we were told that things had changed. That was how late President Umaru Yar’Ádua emerged as president in 2007. But, with what has happened - the divine intervention of God – President Goodluck Jonathan is going to contest the presidency on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2011.
Will this be irrespective of the zoning arrangement of the PDP?
Which zoning? I don’t know of any zoning you are talking about.
Was it not the zoning arrangement that ensured the emergence of Obasanjo in 1999 and 2003?
There is no zoning. They have always been saying it. Nobody has been able to show us. Within the PDP, the Federal Character has been manipulated to say that power must rotate. Have you ever seen any zoning formula? What the Southern Forum is saying is that now, the work which we started in 2005 and 2006 has come to fruition through the handiwork of God and that President Goodluck Jonathan should contest the presidential election in 2011.
Has the Southern Forum met recently?
Yes, off course. We had a meeting this month in Lagos and we issued a communique which we gave to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) for distribution.
For quite sometime now, there has been disquiet within the PDP in Oyo State. As an elder of the party in the state, do you know what caused the crisis?
The PDP is such a large family nationwide and you cannot have such a big organisation without some misunderstandings here and there. It is not only in Oyo State that we are having these minor squabbles. We are having in Anambra where we do not have a governor. We are having in Rivers, Sokoto, Zamfara, Bayelsa States.We also have problems in Adamawa State where Atiku (Abubakar) just returned to the party. There is hardly any place where there is a total peace or tranquility. It is usually more pronounced when it is time for the party’s convention. In some states, the problem has always been between two giant sections. In such states, you could have two separate state offices. But such a thing is not happening in Oyo State. What we are presently witnessing in Oyo State is a child’s play when compared to some other states.
But what is the genesis of the crisis in Oyo State?
In the 2006 convention, there was a court injunction obtained by Chief Richard Akinjide and others that the state congress should not hold. Despite that injunction, late Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu went ahead and organised the convention. But then, the question is: those who are now fighting, the state executive that had been inaugurated, accepted and attended National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the PDP, what were they doing between 2006 and 2009? Now, they suddenly woke up and discovered that the convention was illegal. Be that as it may, there are two groups and no member of the two groups has not passed through me. The coming together of (Senator) Lekan Balogun, former Governor Rashidi Ladoja, Elder Wole Oyelese and Chief Yekini Adeojo, challenging the legality of the executive of the PDP, only came in 2009. Luckily, they were able, in law, to back their challenge because the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that was served the court injunction not to allow the congress to take place in 2006, did not attend the election. When this came up, the NEC of the party decided to look into the ensuing crisis along with all other cases. Of course, I have a copy of the INEC report, which says there was no congress in Oyo State. But after it was confirmed, why did the other group that held the congress and that has the executive wait till 2009 to seek for the lifting of an injunction that was pronounced in 2006?
It was in 2009 that the state executive went to court and got the injunction lifted. It was after this that the NEC decided to look into it. They first mandated the zonal body to look into it. That was when we had the Alhaji Shuaib Oyedokun committee. The committee mandated the two factions to withdraw all litigations from the court. The committee also agreed that the local government chairmen and councilors, whose tenure were terminated by either the government of Ladoja or Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala, should be compensated. We also agreed that there should be an end to the press war between the groups. We also agreed that there should be two committees: the Elders’ Committee and the Stakeholders/Leaders’ Committee.
These committees were put in place to carry out these assignments. So, an implementation committee was put in place. In this committee, five people were taken from the Governor Alao-Akala’s group, one each from Lekan Balogun, Oyelese and my humble self, Dejo Raimi. It was that committee we called the implementation committee. Unfortunately, that committee did not function. After this, the Senator Ike Nwachukwu committee was set up to look into the Ogun and Oyo States problems within the PDP. Immediately Nwachukwu got the report that INEC was not present at the congress that produced the state executive, he upheld that, even when there are controversies over the emergence of the PDP executive in Oyo State. You cannot correct an illegality with another illegality. Instead of the Ike Nwachukwu committee recommending a caretaker committee to come and takeover, it decided that the members of the implementation committee should transmute to a sort of an electoral college.
But even that decision by the Ike Nwachukwu committee also generated disagreement between the two sides. Is that not so?
Yes. And the reason is this: even if the Nwachukwu committee wanted to turn the implementation committee to an electoral college, what it should have done was to recommend a caretaker committee. Turning of the implementation committee to an electoral college where members will elect officers of the party from among themselves was illegal.
Why?
The implementation committee was turned into an electoral committee to vote for itself, which is clearly outside the mandate of the committee. The decision was not accepted by the governor. He wrote a letter signed by Akinjide, Chief Kolapo Ishola, Dr. Omololu Olunloyo and some other people complaining about the decision. The NEC looked into the complaints and Ike Nwachukwu came to Ibadan to inaugurate the elders and implementation committees.
What was supposed to be the purpose of the Elders’ Committee?
The Elders’ Committee is like the board of trustees at the state level, to ensure that things go on smoothly in the party. When Ike Nwachukwu came to Ibadan, he was supposed to inaugurate the Elders’ Committee and the state executive. He only inaugurated the Elders’ Committee and he did not talk about the other committee. The Alao-Akala’s group was also quick enough to point out that you cannot treat illegality with illegality. All these happened late last year to February this year.
What is the prevailing situation now
We had a meeting of the Elders’ Committee on March 29 this year. The meeting was called by Governor Alao-Akala and we had a good deliberation about how to move the party forward and how to prepare for the next election. Another date, April 8, was fixed for a stakeholders and leaders’ forum, where all the local government chairmen were invited. It was there that an overzealous person read out a communique that Governor Alao-Akala had been adopted for a second term. Right there, Alao-Akala stood up and said there would be primaries and a level playing ground for anyone that wants to contest.
But his adoption was celebrated all over the state and in the media. Are you not aware?
You don’t know how we play our politics. If you say you want to contest for any election, immediately you signify your interest, we will start calling you by the name of the position such as governor, senator etc.
What is the status of the implementation committee now?
The committee is out of existence. They have not been doing anything. Nobody is mentioning them again. They are dead. The day the decision was taken that the chairmanship of the party had been given to the Ladoja group, they went about saying that Ladoja has taken over the party, whereas they have taken nothing.
What is your assessment of the Alao-Akala’s administration?
I am a patriotic Ibadan man. But I have always prayed that if an Ibadan man will not be useful to the majority of the people, may God not allow him to become the governor of the state. When we constituted a coronation committee for the Olubadan of Ibadan, we held meetings and we calculated how much we would need for the coronation and we arrived at a figure of N39.5 million. Out of this amount, we were able to contribute N5.6 million. So, four of us, Alhaji Abdulazeez Arisekola, Ambassador A. Sanu, Bode Amoo and myself, went to Governor Alao-Akala to seek for financial assistance. When we showed him the bill, he looked at it and sent us a cheque of N40 million. We were perplexed and shocked at his financial response. Alao-Akala is the only governor that ever thought of renovating Mapo Hall, which is a symbol for every Ibadan man. The Adeoyo Hospital had been in a very bad state for over 30 years. But we have a new teaching hospital there now. The dualisation and construction of roads such as the Molete-Queen Cinema Road, Iwo Road-Olodo and others are other achievements of Governor Alao-Akala. Governor Alao-Akala has done more for Ibadan than any other Ibadan man. I am also told that he is doing the same in Oke-Ogun and other areas of Oyo State. The present PDP government has performed creditably well in Oyo State and I pray that it is returned to government in 2011.
Source: Nigerian Compass
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