Dr Ladan Salihu is the spokesman of the League of Northern Democrats (LND) and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on objectives of the group, underdevelopment in northern Nigeria and crisis in the PDP, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU reports

What has the League of Northern Democrats been up to recently?

The kind of politics that is empirical now in the context of Nigeria,; you have to ensure that you make contacts, you collaborate, you deepen stakeholding, and you reach out to the prime movers and shakers of politics in Northern Nigeria, and indeed the Nigerian nation.

So, we’ve been having conversations and we had a meeting with the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) in Kaduna, and the meeting was essentially to forge an understanding, form a common front, to collaborate, and to listen to each other and synergize on the way forward in addressing the plethora of challenges that bedevil the North, which we’ve discussed severally.

Before then, we’ve had contacts with the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), and Prof. Ango Abdullahi has been having a conversation with our leadership. We’ve also crossed the Niger to talk to President Olusegun Obasanjo in Abeokuta, and we’ve also talked with General Theophilus Danjuma.

Just recently, we paid a courtesy call and had a very enlightening and inspiring conversation with the former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. All of this is to aggregate views, to understand the opinions, to have a kind of mindset that is not predicated on politics as usual.

The business of politics has to change if we must get it correct in the North. So, what we said we should do and we must do and we are doing is to ensure that we make contacts with people that are not only opinion leaders, but people of quality leadership, quality national standing, and quality administration, both in terms of politics and in managing the state.

So, we will continue in this framework, and the whole idea is that we work together, we work in unison, we congregate and marshal out a strategy that we will not be firing or misfiring from several directions.

Nigerians would be curious to know what your goal is in forming this League of Northern Democrats; is your interest also political?

What we are doing as League of Northern Democrats, first and foremost, we’ve made a sort of analysis of the political situation in the North.

And we’ve discovered that over the years, and when I say over the years, we’re talking about the transition or the gravitation of politics from the times of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Sardauna of Sokoto to this moment.

And those who collected the buttons across several stoppages politically have kind of missed the way politics should be done in the North.

So, what we said was the elites in the North must bear responsibility for the sheer backwardness, for the kind of challenges, the constraints, the limitations that the North is experiencing, because the elites are the ones that ordinarily should be the eyes and ears of the larger society.

We must ensure that the next generation of leaders that we will have from the North are those that are well grounded, sound in education, good with integrity, quality minds with everything that you want to put your hands on the plough

They should have been more coherent and they should have had a more robust understanding of the challenges. So, we said in the League of Northern Democrats, that we need to focus on political recruitment. If you want to employ any person in any company, you must make sure you get your best hands, so that you will get some profit.

Now, in politics and leadership, leadership recruitment matters, we must ensure that the next generation of leaders that we will have from the North are those that are well grounded, sound in education, good with integrity, quality minds with everything that you want to put your hands on the plough.

These are the ones who understand the challenges, the constraints, the limitations, and the state of backwardness that we are in the North. If you don’t have quality minds in leadership, then you’re going to have a repeat and a complication of the same problem.

So, what we are doing in the League of Northern Democrats is first and foremost to make an awareness campaign to the rest of the North to ensure that, when you are recruiting leaders from the councillors to state Assembly, House of Representatives, Senate, and what have you, you must make sure that you bring the best that we have and the best are in the elites.

How is that going to manifest in 2027, which is coming up in the next three years?

When we say moving things politically back to the North, there are lots of spins that are given and interpretations, and a lot of pontifications are being put forward.

And those who want to ambush the League of Northern Democrats will tell you that we are here because we want to see a power shift to the North. We are yet to get to that bridge. When we get to that bridge, we will make a decision.

In the back of our minds, we want equality leadership that will deliver Nigeria from the plethora of problems that are so intensive; the issues of insecurity in the North, the issues of multidimensional poverty, and the issues of out-of-school children.

What we are saying is that the kind of leadership that is on board right now either cannot address these problems or is simply not willing to address them.

So, we must ensure that the narrative is not necessarily about who leads Nigeria in 2027. No, our narrative is who will bring quality leadership irrespective of where he comes from. But then, if we get to 2027, the leadership of the League of Northern Democrats will then make a pronouncement on who is going to be there. But right now, it’s not on our shoulders.

When you say that you’re going to make a pronouncement; it raises people’s ears and does that goal seem viable and feasible for the rest of the North and indeed the rest of Nigeria to accept?

As I said, the bridge is upon us, and when we get there, we will define how to cross that bridge.

When I said we are going to make a pronouncement, we’re going to make a pronouncement that will leave no one in doubt as to our vision and mission and the aims and objectives of the League of Northern Democrats, and that will speak to the issues of local government elections, states Assembly elections, gubernatorial elections, senatorial and House of Representatives and Senate, and then maybe the presidential election.

And I think people are putting a lot of premium on the issue of the presidency because that is the ultimate prize, and what we are concerned about is the issues that I’ve told you.

The issues of getting quality leadership, the issues of getting a variety of northern elites from reputable backgrounds, quality education, that will now anchor the future of politics in the North. Right now, I am not by any way putting those on the saddle now, down, but what we are saying is that we need to up our game. We need to up the ante.

Somebody said that what might be the most immediate way that what you’re doing can start to yield fruit, or at least even have the potential to develop, is for you to start focusing on the things that would prevent this kind of selection process that we have. What do you think about such opinion?

That is entirely true. If we don’t put our house in order, if we don’t understand, appreciate our setbacks and confront them head-on, and confront them in a very methodical, strategic way that will bring about the positive results that the North needs in tackling the issues of poverty, insecurity, out-of-school children, the issues of multidimensional poverty and so on, then we will just be oscillating around the issues. We don’t want to oscillate.

We want to move from point A to point B, where we will see clear and present, tangible progress politically for the North. In doing so, we must tell ourselves that we must come out of our comfort zones to understand that we have a challenge, and no one can address these issues more than ourselves as northerners.

But in doing so, General Yakubu Gowon, President Olusegun Obasanjo, and other statesmen that we’ve spoken to quietly have harped on the importance of extrapolating our objectives across the national divide to ensure that you have the League of Southern Democrats and the League of Eastern Democrats and what have you.

That shows you that what we have started with all sense of humility, the nobility in it is gaining momentum and traction and attraction across the national political elite. And so we will continue to advocate our missions and visions for a greater North and a better Nigeria.

Do you think there’s an element of mistrust from the other parts of Nigeria?

The problem we have is that we are immersed in our challenges. The challenges of insecurity, the challenges of poverty, and the indices are there for everybody to see. If you look at the West, and you look at the East, and the South-South, we are catching up.

So, what we said is, these problems have to be, they are homegrown, and so we have to develop home strategies and policies to address them. But you see, the Nigerian state to me should be a state of, how do you put it now, symbiosis of aggregation of attitudes and principles and objectives.

If you look at the fact that the North is right now in a political limbo, in an economic limbo, and in a situation where we don’t have the house in order and you can’t have a house in order where you are bedevilled with poverty, insecurity, people can’t go to the farm, you have a large number of unemployed youths, and you have a system that is not necessarily addressing these issues.

So, what we look forward to having in the North, and we have always said, and I will continue to advocate in the League of Northern Democrats, is that our elites, and that is why we have the likes of the son of the late Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa; the son of Shehu Shagari; the son of Musa Yar’Adua, and a lot of like minds like this.

What is it that we are missing? Where are the missing linkages? So, we stitch them together, and I assure you that we have an aggregation of quality minds, sophisticated minds that are so versed in politics, economics and industrialization, that will give us a template that will begin to recover.

Are you surprised with the recent letter written by the acting National Chairman of the PDP, Umar Damagum to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) demanding the immediate conduct of by-elections to fill the 27 seats vacated by lawmakers loyal to Nyesom Wike in the Rivers State House of Assembly?

I think what this has shown is that it is the way most people, I think, see it, that there is a lot more to what seems to be out there in the public domain than what obtains inside the PDP headquarters.

Ordinarily, one would have expected, following the kind of narrative that is out there where a lot of people see Damagum and some members of the leadership, presumably backing Nyesom Wike, and will see what has happened as a kind of a twist in that direction. But then, to be fair to Damagum, he has been consistent from day one.

He has insisted that those members that defected from the PDP to the All Progressives Congress (APC) or whatever party, with the pronouncement of the speaker, their seats are vacant. So, from that moment, I think the PDP headquarters wrote to INEC to ask that elections be conducted again for the vacant seats.

This letter that has recently been sent to INEC, to me, is just a revalidation of that stand. It may have also been propelled by recent events around the country. We don’t have a party that is hitting the bull’s eye as an opposition party.

We’ve let all the opposition activities, all the opposition talks to be done by Atiku Abubakar, our former presidential candidate. We need to see a robust political party that is talking about opposition.

But right now, I think he has seen some of the loopholes and he is taking decisive action and he wants to, if he must, go out on a high note.