Kenny Ashaka
Former factional National Chairman of the defunct Alliance for Democracy, AD, and former acting National Chairman of the Progressive People’s Alliance, PPA, Adamu Song, has asked politicians from the South to be prepared for the nation’s presidency in 2023.
Song, also a former National Vice-Chairman of the defunct National Democratic Party, NDP, and former General Secretary of NUPENG explained that 2023 is time for southern president.
Song in this interview took on the two dominant northern socio-cultural and political groups, the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, and Northern Elders Forum, NEF, describing them as phantom groups with mistaken beliefs and ideas, saying that even without their support in 2019, Buhari still won.
He pointed out that the nature of persons in the groups appear powerful, but are actually electorally powerless and ineffectual.
Song who is the convener of “Adamawa 2019: Organize, don’t Agonize”, a group of professionals of Adamawa State extraction who want to identify with success and people who have the capacity to lead Nigeria also spoke on jumbo pensions and gratuity for former governors and Speakers and other national issues. Excerpt:
I am sure that you have some reservations about what is now being referred to by most Nigerians as jumbo pensions, especially in the face of the low level of development in the states and the struggle by most of them to implement the new N30,000 minimum wage. What is more, the debts being owed by the states, according to some analysts is a clear indication that such pensions are not sustainable. What is your thought on this?
Let me first begin by thanking some of the state lawmakers who have recently found it rather important to repeal the laws that provided for these obscene gratuities and pensions for ex-governors and former speakers of the state House of Assembly. Secondly, let me toe the line of the ruling of the Court of Appeal which viewed public office holders’ huge pensions and gratuities as an abhorrent deed that offends the sensibilities of any Nigerian with good conscience. What this has done is to demonstrate how selfish and irresponsible some of our politicians are. And I say some of our politicians because I am not unaware that some of the former governors have refused to collect these payments. I salute these ex-governors. Now, with respect to moral principles it is practically unjust to pay an elected public officer or a political appointee pension and gratuity or severance allowance for holding such an office for four to eight years as the case may be. Our attitude of living together or enjoying life in communities or organised groups does not support this kind of system that is now the trend by our former governors. This is an excessive, inordinate desire of greediness after you have made wealth as a governor because being a governor alone in Nigeria gives you many financial advantages, whether legitimate or unlawful means to make them wealthier. They had security vote which was not accounted for and they run into hundreds of millions of naira. Why would they choose to bleed their states like leeches? This is criminal robbery and a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul; monkey dey work, baboon dey chop. Take for example, a soldier who has served this country for 35 years being paid about N10 million and a politician whose burden of feeding, accommodation, transportation and all that he wants, including that of his family members is catered for by the state and when his tenure is over for just four or eight years, you now start paying him N10 million monthly and his deputy N5 million per month. That is not all. You have other entitlements like vehicles, some replaceable every four years, free medical treatment for him and his immediate family and even pay for their vacation within and outside Nigeria in some of the cases. They also build houses for them in any location of their choice in the country. There are more benefits accruing to others. Why should they get pension and gratuity when a civil servant who served for 10 years is not entitled to pension and gratuity? It is for workers to down tools and lockdown the country in protest against this obnoxious act. That is the only way they will realize this injustice. You were not even paying salaries to your workers regularly when you were in office because of lack of money to pay, but when you leave after four or eight years you want to be paid N10 million. Haba! In some countries outside Nigeria, like the US, for instance, where they practice true democracy and their states are in charge, a governor may not receive retirement benefits as long as he holds an elective position with any federal, state or local government. Even if he has to receive benefit he must have attained 62 years of age or above. What is annoying is that some of these ex-governors have burdened their states with debts, both domestic and foreign, dilapidated infrastructure, piled up arrears of unpaid salaries, gratuities and pensions of retirees. And today, some of them are ministers and senators who after serving would expect benefits. Their attitude amount to a raid on public treasury and should not be allowed to continue. There should be a national campaign by government and the civil society organizations to deal with this shameless trait of spending extravagantly and the impunity of these former governors, their deputies and speakers.
In Nigeria today, people have gone under the umbrella of religion and ethnicity to advance their political cause only for them to also ride on the same idiosyncrasies to plant hate, and venom in the minds, heart and psche of Nigerians such that what we have now is lack of unity. And what this says is that all is not well. As it is, it is only in the North that there is no agitation for Arewa Republic. Even then we have in the North today ethnic minorities, other smaller enclaves that are not willing to go with the majority tribes because of the experiences of their great grandfathers and so have lost trust in the bigger tribes. Yet, the North does not want restructuring and are insisting on the presidency in 2023 after producing the highest number of military and civilian heads of state and president. Is there something in the present structure that makes it appealing to the North than the rest of Nigerians?
If you elevate this question to the level of generalization I do not think you will be fair to some northerners. The truth about the matter is that there are a lot of northerners who are sympathetic to the cause of other nationalities. Unfortunately, the other nationalities are not helping matters by terming the whole North as their enemies. The average northerner, easterner, westerner and all other sections have common enemies in our political lineages. There is nothing natural in what they are doing. They deliberately find out our weaknesses and use them to remote control us. This does not apply only to the North, but to all other geo-political zones. In any state they know the kind of game to play. At any time when they need certain lapses they know what to do. Take, for instance, there was and there is agitation for Igbo presidency, but every now and then you will hear the Igbo lampooning the entire North, including the northerners sympathetic to their cause. I think they need to be reminded that in a democracy there is no way they alone can work to produce an Igbo presidency without people from other zones joining them. It, therefore, behoves them to reach out to other geo-political zones to sell their candidate. This is something that some of us…I can tell you that there are a number of politicians in Adamawa State who are sympathetic to the cause of the Igbo, who are willing to work for the realization of their ambition. But the concern is that they are not doing the right thing. Secondly, it is unfortunate we have terrible political allies who do not care about what happens to anybody in any geo-political zone whether it is an Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani politician; their main concern is their immediate constituency which is their family. None of them sits down to plan how he would better the lot of their people. Rather they are busy planning how to control the people and the earlier we woke up the better for us because these divisions, like you said, is a deliberate ploy to keep us perpetually divided so that we can be under their control. The truth like I have stated is that we have common enemies among our political leaders, irrespective of where they come from. Their immediate and main concern is about themselves and their families and how to remain perpetually in power.
You spoke about some northerners who believe in the Igbo cause for the presidency and how the sweeping statements from politicians of other regions concerning the North are dissuading those northerners sympathetic to the Igbo cause, for instance. But you also know how vehement and annoying statements from your people in the North can be especially when they speak under one umbrella they call the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, the Northern Elders Forum and their youth wings, all claiming to be speaking for the North, including yourself. Are these groups not actually speaking for and on behalf of northerners and also terming the whole South as their enemy as you have said of the South?
Look, Mr. Ashaka; I think all this is the creation of you, the media. You know the North and you know those who are claiming to be members of the Arewa Consultative Forum, the Northern Elders Forum who are claiming to be speaking on behalf of northerners. These two groups are just an apparition that the North was unprepared for, but are now confronting the North in a negative sense. They have only an apparent existence and occasionally, when it suits them ring loud phantom bells which the northern electorate have refused to hear. Call them an illusion if you like. They are just paper tigers. We cannot condemn all of them, but I tell you there are only very few of them who have credibility. The others are only creating avenues that would make them relevant. What qualifies them to speak on behalf of the North? If the elected people and governors cannot speak for the North, what qualifies these northerners, these ACF and so-called members of the Northern Elders Forum to speak on behalf of the North? These are people and elders without electoral values. I can tell you that today, there are northerners of our generation and the new generation who have realized that these people claiming to speak on behalf of the North are speaking for themselves. These are people and elders the North do not deserve and you can see it from results of elections. Did the ACF and Northern Elders Forum support Buhari? No; but Buhari won. They are criticizing the Buhari government today because Buhari refused to look their way. If Buhari had taken them into account believe me they would have been singing Buhari’s praises no matter what he does wrong. These people are simply selfish and Buhari knows them too well to associate with them. They supported Buhari in 2015 thinking that Buhari would look their way after winning; but when they discovered that Buhari did not work with the proposal they submitted to him, they turned their backs against Buhari. But Buhari won in 2019 without their input. They even campaigned against him. The implication is that the northern electorate no longer place value on these members of the two bodies. They do not have the kind of electoral influence that the media are ascribing to them. Take this as the truth. If we evaluate them one by one how many of them have the influence in their bases? Some of them stay in Kaduna and can’t even go to their villages and towns. This is because they are not popular. Please run a research on their background; even in the places where they were born people don’t even want to see them. Some of them with the kind of influence peddling they claim to have cannot help their kinsmen and fellow villagers. It is only their children, in laws and themselves alone. They get appointments for their children alone and leave the children of others to fend for themselves. Why would they lose their electoral value? I do not want to mention names, but some of you who have practiced journalism here in the North know them. Even in the neighbourhood where they were born people don’t want to see them. They have no electoral value because they are only a source of exploitation.
But all said and done, do you believe in northern presidency in 2023?
I don’t believe in northern presidency in 2023 and I as a person will never partake in anything that has to do with northern presidency. Although there is nothing in our Constitution that forbids the North from contesting, for me, I will not support the North and there are more than a million northerners like me who believe that for fairness and justice, even if there is no written law it is good that in the present situation we find ourselves in this country that the presidency goes to the South. At the level of our development today in Nigeria there is mutual suspicion from every zone. We, therefore, need to rotate the presidency in order to allay that suspicion until such a time when we can all look at ourselves as Nigerians. It is only then that we can talk of merit and best candidate without respect to his tribe, religion or zone. But even in all the zones we have good candidates.
For some northerners there would be no consequences should the North come out with a candidate in 2023 because in APC there is nothing like rotation and it is not a constitutional issue. They claimed it was the PDP which clearly and unambiguously mentioned rotation that broke their law and that for 16 years power was in the South except for the short period that Yar’Adua was president. Therefore, the said rotation cost Jonathan the presidency in 2015 because he breached the rotational provision in the PDP constitution and…
(Cuts in) I am coming. I am coming. After Obasanjo started, Yar’Adua came. If Yar’Adua had completed his tenure it should have been the turn of the South. But unfortunately, the will of God happened to Yar’Adua and by the law of the land the Vice-President took over. He took over and ruled for six years. During the time of the North they used only two years. So the third time which is for the North is now being occupied by Buhari and he is now in his second term. So, naturally, by 2023 the candidate is supposed to come from the South. I cannot speak for the North, but I can tell you that there are more people in the North who have this same thinking as mine.
The fear now is that it is the same people you claim have no political clout that would stop a southern candidate from emerging in 2023?
I am telling you the truth. If the people you are referring to truly have clout they would have stopped Buhari. If their clout cannot stop Buhari; their clout cannot stop Jonathan when he contested after Yar’Adua’s death, then they have no clout. You know it very well that they didn’t support the second coming of Jonathan. They were against Jonathan because they argued that he ran the tenure of the North after the death of Yar’Adua. Have you forgotten? But the opposition of these same people who call themselves chieftains of ACF and Northern Elders Forum whose voices were loud at that time didn’t stop Jonathan from winning. So, they cannot stop a southern candidate.
How do you rate our legislators at the National Assembly? Do you trust this 9th National Assembly to work in the interest of Nigerians from what you have seen of their activities so far? Are they likely to work in the interest of Nigerians?
The truth about the matter is that from the beginning that has been our problem. The problem I see is about continuity. There is no continuity in the executive, there is no continuity in the legislature and there is no continuity anywhere. People believe that no matter how laudable a programme is once it is not in their favour they feel reluctant continuing with it. For instance, if this 9th Assembly had taken the resolution of the 2014 National Conference it would have been okay. It’s just to re-evaluate it, look at the one that is still relevant and do little amendments to suit the current exigencies. But no; they want their own committee. Take a look again at the APC which has restructuring in its agenda. After people shouted they set up a committee led by governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. This committee went round, took opinions and suggestions from stakeholders and delivered their report on the need to have true federalism; what is the result today? And what is the difference between that one and the report of the 2014 National Conference? The report of El-Rufai committee is there now gathering dust. You wonder why these committees are being set up in the first place. This is equally the way the Ovie Omo-Agege committee report would go if at all the committee would be resurrected because you can see they are not even talking about it and the Electoral Act. They want to start all over because nobody wants to give credit to any officer of the past. The 9th Assembly is heading towards being rubber stamp. I admit it is good to work in harmony with the executive, but not to become rubber stamp. That does not mean that the executive is not fallible. But if you say everything the executive brings is okay we are becoming uncomfortable with you. The National Assembly is supposed to check the excesses of the executive, but I don’t see them doing that. In this country we are all cowards. Everybody is afraid to confront the main issues and it is not helping matters. We need to confront some of these our problems headlong so that if at the end of the day we find that we are not compatible we can break the federation rather than pushing on until we get to a situation where there will be bloodshed. There is no need for that and we will not be the first to do that. Pakistan, Bangladesh came out of India. Look at South and North Korea. Even at the level of Africa we have examples. From Germany we had the Federal Republic of Germany as West Germany; German Democratic Republic as East Germany. What of Vietnam as North and South Vietnam. What about Yemen as North Yemen and South Yemen. These were formerly divided regions of the world. Look at Samoa and American Samoa, North and South Ossetia, Romania and Moldovia, Cyprus and North Cyprus. We can go on and on. What of Ireland? For East and West Germany, they broke up when there was the need. After several years they reasoned there is the need to reunite and they reunited. It should be the same thing with us. If we are not compatible today let us go our different ways then at the appropriate time when we see the need like East and West Germany we can reunite. It is better we part in peace than in pieces. If we part in peace we have a lot of things that bind us together and we will still continue to do business with one another.