Kabiru Turaki (SAN) is the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview, he speaks on the creation of a National Caretaker Committee by a group led by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, and the way forward for the party, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU reports

A lot of people are worried about the fractured and fragmented state of the PDP and the situation that heralded your emergence as the national chairman of the party. How would you respond to that?

It’s important for us to understand that PDP over the years has always maintained a pattern of leadership selection. For instance, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party set up a National Zoning Committee, and that National Zoning Committee zoned the presidential ticket to the southern part of this country and then zoned the national chairmanship ticket to the northern part of this country, which meant that the status quo as far as the party was concerned was allowed to remain the way it is.

Now, the Northern Caucus met, and when the Northern Caucus met, after a lot of argument and persuasive argument for that matter, it was agreed unanimously that the national chairmanship of the party should be micro-zoned to the northwestern zone of the country.

Now, however, it was stated quite emphatically that because of the significance of the office of the national chairman, it is not only the leaders from the North-West that will be allowed to sit down and decide who will be the candidate for that position. And that was how it has always been.

I can recall about four years ago, when Dr. Iyorchia Ayu was elected, it was the Northern Caucus that sat down and then micro-zoned to the north central. However, all leaders from the three zones in the north sat down in the governor’s office and then agreed that Ayu should be the candidate.

So, the process that led to my selection as a consensus candidate is not something that is unprecedented. However, in politics, we must understand that people always have their own interest. People always have their say. But in a democracy, the majority will always have their way. How many people expressed a desire from the northwest zone to contest for the office of the national chairmanship of the party? We were four.

Myself, Governor Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna State, who later was due, Governor Ibrahim Shekarau, who later also accepted the verdict of the leaders of the North when they sat down and then produced me as a consensus candidate, and of course, my elder brother, Ahaji Sule Lamido. But at the meeting, it was agreed that notwithstanding the decision of the leaders of the North, any other person who was dissatisfied or who was still insistent on wanting to contest was free to do so.

But if you want to contest, then you must contest within the parameters set by the party. In other words, you must go and buy form within the terms stipulated by the National Executive Committee of the party. Number two, you must fill that form and submit it within the window allowed by the programme of the party. Number three, you must subject yourself to screening exercise and so on and so forth.

So if anybody wished to contest and he was unable to meet up with the criteria that was advertised and agreed upon at the National Executive Committee level of the party, then they are on their own. So I was selected by the Northern Caucus. I presented myself as a candidate. I was screened. I attended the convention, which was lawfully convened in Ibadan. And I was elected but people have their views regardless.

What you are saying is that Alhaji Sule Lamido has no case because he was threatening to take the party to court concerning that chairmanship forms. You called on United States to save Nigerian democracy, do you really believe that US is interested in local party politics in the country?

Regarding my elder brother, Sule Lamido, you see, in the Northwest, we have a pattern when it comes to sharing NWC positions. We have three groupings in Northwest zone. We have Kano and Jigawa as a group. We have Kaduna and Katsina as another group. And then we have Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara as a third group.

Usually, every zone has three National Working Committee positions, two NWC in addition to the position of the national vice chairman. Before this time, the election of the Northwest exco was done. And Jigawa held onto the position of the national vice chairman representing Jigawa and Kano.

The process that led to my selection as a consensus candidate is not something that is unprecedented

And that position now shifted from Jigawa to go to Kano. And it’s now being held by Senator Bello Hayatu Gorzo. So, as far as Kano and Jigawa are concerned, they have now gotten their own position. So the two other positions that will come will now be for Kaduna and Katsina and Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara, respectively.

And the two positions that were now micro-zoned to us were the position of the national chairman and the position of the national legal adviser.

It was now agreed that since Kaduna had just finished office of the national youth leader, so any other position that will come for Kaduna and Katsina will now go to Katsina.

And that was why the position of national legal adviser now went to Katsina. Umaru Boture had just finished office as the national organizing secretary.

So any other position that will come to that other group also will now belong to Zamfara and Kebbi. I had cause to discuss with my elder brother, Sule Lamido, I said, if you are insisting you want to be chairman, it means then that Kano is now holding the position of zonal vice chairman, which is being held by Senator Belo Hayatu Gorzo. And if you now insist and you become the national chairman from Jigawa again, it means then that either Kaduna and Katsina or Sokoto Kebbi and Zamfara will not have a representation in the National Working Committee.

I told him, this is a matter of fairness, equity, and justice. And he said, yes, he agreed with me. But as far as he’s concerned, the issue of fairness, equity, and justice will be overridden by the issue of competence and capacity. So, I said, are you now telling me that I’m not competent or I do not have the capacity? He had no answer for that.

So, the reality on the ground is that zoning had been done, Jigawa and Kano, they have their own. Katsina and Kaduna, they have their own. Sokoto and Kebbi and Zamfara have their own, which is the position I’m holding now as the national chairman. It is wrong for anybody to say that PDP is factionalized. There is no faction in PDP.

We had problems like any other political party. And since when we lost election in 2015, anything that any political party could go through, we’ve gone through as a party. We’ve learned our lessons. But we are now making efforts to now put all those things behind us while learning a lot of lessons from those experiences that we’ve had. So, for anybody to say that in an NWC of 21 persons three members were found to be sabotaging the party and they were warned in writing, they persisted.

And they were cautioned, they persisted. If you look at what happened that day, well, after our swearing-in in Ibadan, we now gave notice to say that we were going to have our inaugural meeting. When we came back, we were making arrangements to have the inaugural NWC meeting and information got to us that our friends who had been expelled at the National Convention in Ibadan were also planning to invade our office and have a meeting.

I, in company of other members of NWC, went to meet the FCT Commissioner of Police. We told him that this is what was happening. And we do not want any event to happen that will disrupt the public peace. And the CP assured me that he was going to take preemptive steps to ensure that our meeting was not disrupted and that there was no breach of law and order.

And so, armed with that confidence and assurance that was given to us, we had already extended an invitation right from the convention ground to our members and leaders to arrive. Unfortunately, when we went there, we discovered that our friends who were no longer members of our party had again entered into the party and the police were now protecting them.

And they now came in company of armed torts. And we felt that this was not necessary. So, we spoke to the superior police officer who was there. We said, look, we’ve given notice to the police in writing. I had an interface with the Commissioner of Police. What is happening? They said, okay, we should allow them to hold meeting that day and then we should come back.

I said, we don’t have meeting where they are going to hold meeting wherever they want to hold their meetings. In any case, they’ve always been meeting in the official residence of the Minister of the FCT. Let them go and hold their meeting there because they are not members of our party. But we are not going to allow them to move into our facilities and then hold meetings there because they are no longer members of our party.

So, we attempted to move into our office and then have our meeting. And then, of course, the members of public saw what happened. We were tear-gassed. Over 100 canisters of tear gas were fired at us including two serving governors who have immunity. But did we react? We didn’t. We persisted. We insisted that we had a right to walk into our office and then carry out our legitimate business. At the end of the day, the FCT Minister came with more than 200 policemen and an army of armed thugs.

And then he wanted to go inside. When the police initially said we cannot drive our vehicles including those of the governors into the premises of our party, we said, okay, we’ll park outside and then walk inside. But then, when the FCT Minister came, the police said he will now drive his car inside. We said if you do that, then at least my vehicle and that of those governors that were there must go in. And we drove our vehicles in. Now, what happened was we were attacked.

They were trying to beat us. Of course, we resisted. We have the right to defend ourselves as individuals. We have the right to defend our properties as party leaders. So, what we did that day was to call on international community because we feel that the situation was such that the APC-led federal government is trying to truncate democracy in Nigeria. Look at what is happening to Labour Party. Look at what is happening to the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Look at what is happening to the African Democratic Congress (ADC).

We, as the new leadership of PDP are desirous of getting more people into the party and not driving people away

Look at what they are now trying to do to PDP. So, we feel that America as a country should have more than a passing interest in democratic practice anywhere in the world, especially, where a country says it is practicing presidential democracy. And my call was not restricted to President Donald Trump and the United States.

I also extended the call to all civilized nations all advanced democracies to come to our aid because Nigeria is such that you cannot force a one-party system on us. That is reality on the ground. That is what we said. And everybody who saw what happened there they saw that we were victims, we were attacked and we were prevented.

Recently, your party issued some expulsion certificates to some of your high-profile members. Can you explain to us what the reason was behind these actions? Having taken decisions at the highest level of governance of the party, which is our national convention, and they’ve been expelled. And we know that our laws frown at double membership or dual membership of any person to a political party.

And we knew that not being members of PDP probably, if they still want to play politics, they may want to go to other political parties. We wanted to assist them. We don’t want a situation where they will approach a political party to say, oh, we want to register as members of this political party.

And then those people say, ah, we hear you are still fighting to remain in PDP. So, what we did by giving them those certificates of expulsion is to assist them when they go to register with any other political party. They have something to show to those political parties, say, ah, we are no longer members of PDP. We have been expelled. This is evidence of our expulsion. So, if anything, I think they should be grateful for what we’ve done proactively to assist them to get registered into other political parties they may wish to join.

The Wike faction has issued six point demand, one of them being that the national chairmanship position must remain in the North Central. How would you respond to this demand?

I think it’s uncharitable for anybody to say that anybody was asked to go to Adamawa to buy forms. I bought my form at Legacy House. Let me correct that impression.

Sule Lamido came on TV and said he was not aware of where the forms were being sold he should contact the Governor of Adamawa State because he was the chairman of the National Convention Organising Committee but the headquarters of the convention was housed at Legacy House I went to buy my form there I bought it there and every other candidate bought his or her forms there. So, it’s uncharitable for anybody to say that anyone was asked to go to Adamawa and do so.

That is number one, Number two, nobody and no individual is bigger than a political party. Four years ago when Ayu became the National Chairman of the party, where was the chairmanship of the party zoned? It was zoned to the South-South It was zoned to Southern Nigeria. Who was the chairman then? It was Uche Secondus from Rivers State. It was micro-zoned there.

Who was at the forefront of that micro-zoning? Nyesom Wike was at the forefront of that Secondus became the National Chairman. Why did anybody say, no, it must stay there? Now, subsequently when the National Zoning Committee sat again and they re-zoned the chairmanship to the North It was the leaders of the North who sat down and said between the three zones in the North, where do we micro-zone it to.

And it was agreed that it should be micro-zoned to North Central. So why should anybody now insist that that micro-zoning that was done four years ago should be allowed to start but no new micro-zoning should be done whereas the positions that were now zoned to Southern Nigeria were further micro-zoned but the North should not further micro-zone their own. It’s not fair.

The Northern leaders had the right, we sat down in a meeting that was attended by all the leaders from the North and we agreed like I said initially that legitimate arguments were advanced and then it was agreed that, look North Central Zone had had more than six chairmen over the years starting with Solomon Lar coming to Barnabas Gemade coming to late Audu Ogbeh coming to Senator Amadu Ali coming to Alhaji Kawu Baraje and coming to lyorchia Ayu. The North-West had never produced a national chairman. Yes, twice we acted when Dr Bello acted as a national chairman for about a year and a half and so it is not right for anybody to say so.

We had agreed at NEC that we are going to conduct congresses in Abia, in Ebonyi and in South-East Zone but don’t forget that there is an order of the Federal High Court in Enugu which restrained PDP from proceeding and so as a law-abiding party we had to obey that order.

So, if a court says do not proceed until the matter is determined and we will now obey that order, can anybody say that we had failed to conduct congresses in those states? No! These are the facts that they are hiding from the public and these are the facts that members of the public should know.

How will you deal with Wike’s problem because that is what everybody says that he is the problem for the party and also the financing of the party as you are losing governors in droves?

On a personal note, let me say that Nyesom Wike is a personal and close friend of mine. We do not have any personal differences. He knows that and people who know my relationship with him also appreciate that. But when it comes to the issues of survival of PDP as a political party, we will do anything under to ensure that PDP survives because the responsibility has been given to me.

However, if for whatever reason my friend and former colleague, Wike, is still desirous of coming back to PDP after expulsion, he knows the steps he should take. Let him come out and apologize, let him reach out to us.

We, as the new leadership of PDP are desirous of getting more people into the party and not driving people away. It is with a heavy heart that the National Convention had to expel them from the party but the party got to do what got to be done because we must survive as a political party. That is the reality and if they want to come back, let them apologize.