Nigerians prefer money bags as leaders –Muttaqa Darma, Ex-Katsina Commissioner for Women Affairs

By Sunday Ani

Dr. Muttaqa Rabe Darma, former Commissioner for Women Affairs, and later Works and Rural Development under the administration of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as governor of Katsina State has lamented that politics has been so monetized in Nigeria that if you don’t have money, you can’t be a leader.

In this interview, the former Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF) under Yar’Adua as the President, Federal Republic of Nigeria and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), before but defected to the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), where he contested the governorship as running mate to Nura Khalil in 2023 general elections, spoke on a number of issues.

You once said you would die if you leave the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), but you jumped ship twice before the election; what changed?

Yes, I said PDP and I was one. However, I left PDP with cogent reasons. Let me repeat it, from Katsina State, I was one of the foundation members. I was in the camp of the late Umoru Musa Yar’Adua alongside other people. We attended several meetings, including the last one that was held in August when the memoranda of formation between parties and PDP came together, and PDP was formed. So, PDP was in my blood. Even while working in Lagos, I would drive all the way to Kaduna every Friday for meetings and return to base on Monday. Unfortunately, the PDP became what it was not meant to be. The foundation members were made useless in the party. The likes of late Solomon Lar, Adamu Ciroma, and all those that formed the party became useless; they no longer listened to them such that everything became a matter of cash and carry. It became a party for the highest bidder. People who have money can just come and hijack the party. At the time I was leaving, I listed 12 items that were agreed upon during the formation of the PDP. I said nine of the things on the list have been completely abandoned. That meant that I was no longer in the party, and that was why I joined other parties.

Yet, in the new party you joined, you were still involved in anti-party activities by openly supporting the All Progressives Congress (APC)…

I am an honest politician.

Are there honest politicians in Nigeria?

I am one; take it from me. If you have never met one, you are now meeting one. I don’t want things that are shrouded in secrecy and mystery, which won’t help the populace. I had the chance to join the APC directly when I left PDP. I didn’t want people to say I left PDP for APC because it was the party in government. My people and I stayed without a party until we were invited by Mallam Rabiu Kwakwanso. He called and invited me. From the National Movement he initiated, to the NNPP, though some of the founding members of the National Movement like Professor Attahiru Jega, refused to move with him to the NNPP. So, I became a foundation member of the NNPP both at the state and national levels. I was in the NNPP until after the presidential election because I still believed in Kwankwaso’s philosophy, like human capital development, which was what he promoted while in office as governor. He believed that by developing people, you are developing a nation. I lived and followed that philosophy until the end. After the presidential election, I resigned as running mate to our party’s governorship candidate because I realised the candidate was not really politicking. He wasn’t campaigning to become a governor. All my contributions and ideas were turned down by him. I realised that this man had a total meaning of what politics was all about. Of course, I admit that he was my boss when we were both at the PTDF during the Buhari era. He was a principal consultant, and I was working under him. I knew him as a sharp, smart person, and someone who wanted progress. He took me as his running mate because he was not living here in Katsina. He was staying in Dubai. He wanted someone on the ground to help him attain his political ambition. I sat down, took about three months, and developed the blueprint of what I thought we could do from the beginning to the end of his tenure. But, he wasn’t interested in all that. We waited for him to bring forth his own ideas to work with, but he never did. Those with him in his house told me that he believed that spirits would vote for him, and that was why he was not going out to campaign for peoples’ votes. Then, I confronted him. I said ‘you asked me to make a list of people we can contact, physically or via phone, and I made a list of 1, 050 people in the state from each local government, ward and polling unit, these are the people I believed that had at least 15 people following them. Why don’t we start going to them?’ He only said we would do it. So, I wrote a nine-page letter to him, explaining reasons we could not work together. I am still interested in politics. Of course, there are candidates for other parties, including APC and PDP. I realised APC was better for me to help win, and Dr. Dikko Rada was much better. That was why I helped him to become the governor of the state.

What made Dikko better than the candidates of the other parties?

The man I was supposed to be his running mate didn’t believe in people voting for him. I knew the candidate of the PDP, Senator Yakubu Lado Danmarke, like the back of my hand. We worked closely together, so I knew his capacity and limitations. There was only one person left. Dikko had gone through the mill, education wise, civil service, and local government chairman. He is a critical thinker. You don’t think for him.

As one of the allies of late President Yar’Adua, what lessons did you learn from him that stood you out in your later years?

Yar’Adua was God-sent to Nigeria. I was a commissioner under him when he was a governor. I was Executive Secretary for the Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF) still under his government. My house is five times bigger than Yar’Adua’s house. His humility is incomparable to anybody’s in this country. Yar’ Adua had only two landed properties; the first one is in Katsina, which he built from the loan he got from the former Habib Bank in 1985. The second one is in Kaduna, which was a gift from his late elder brother, General Shehu Musa. At a time, he would tell us that if you acquire all the things you are planning to get, would you take them to your grave? He was never materialistic. He told me three things when he appointed me as ES, PTDF. He said remember this was the same place that was in the news for all the bad things. ‘Make sure you don’t break the law. Make sure you comply with the laws of the country and the establishment you are going to run.’ In four years, during my time, we built polytechnics and universities from scratch. There was Ekowe Polytechnic in Bayelsa, and Bonny Highland Polytechnic for Oil and Gas. I started them from ground zero to the completion level. There is also a university built in Kaduna. They are all up and running as we speak. The headquarters of PTDF we built are among the most beautiful structures in Abuja, all within two and a half years. We also upgraded petroleum based departments in all the tertiary institutions where we built completely new departments from scratch. We did this in 15 universities. We built two energy research centres in the country. In addition to this, we trained over 5, 000 Nigerians, whether as undergraduates, master’s degree holders, PhD holders, and training, which are mostly outside the country. This was achieved because of the training enjoyed under the tutelage of Yar’Adua.

You said you couldn’t afford the N21 million to purchase the form to contest the last governorship election. The question is, why did you show interest when you knew you didn’t have the purchasing power?

If we want this country to be run well, there is no way we will go and pay N21m just because we wanted to contest governorship. That was in the PDP. That money is equal to your 10 months’ salary as governor. Let’s assume you just purchase the form and become governor, it means that you would have spent your salary for the next 10 months to buy just a form. We need to be serious about all these things. The parties, all together, realised over N50 billion on the sale of forms. Ask all of them about the N50 billion, and what they did with it. We are opening many rooms for corruption in Nigeria. If you don’t have money, you cannot be a leader in Nigeria. You can’t be a local government chairman or councilor if you don’t have money. At the end of the day, you will hear a candidate contesting for governor, spending over N1 billion for the election. The process is faulty. This kind of attitude can only lead us to perpetual corruption. What it means is that Nigerians only allow corrupt people to be their leaders. You allow people to buy their way into leadership, yet you are complaining they are not good and corrupt. What do you expect?

Whose fault is this?

Obviously, it is the voters’ fault.

But you will agree with me that voters are already dehumanised through the same government policies to a point that they would say rather than continue languishing in their fate, why not collect whatever pittance from the politicians, after all, whether they give or not, they will still rig themselves into office. Is that not the reality?

If the voters refuse to vote for them even after collecting their money, you will see that nobody would want to entice the voters with money any longer. Once they can make up their minds that irrespective of whatever he gives them, they would vote for a better person, you will see that all these wrongs will abate.

We are celebrating 25 years of uninterrupted democracy, but do you know that the only time the people freely voted their choice was in the 2015 general elections that brought in President Muhammad Buhari? I am saying this with every sense of responsibility. I was in the PDP, and I was campaigning against Buhari. People tried to lynch me at the polling booth in spite of the fact that I was popular and contesting and the fact that the people knew me somewhat as a good man. Despite the fact that they knew I wouldn’t go away from them; so, that is why I know I don’t have the wherewithal to contest for any future election because it is all about money and more money. I don’t have that.

Is it right to assume that you are against money politics now because you don’t have money?

Yes, you are right. I don’t have money. But for a second, why don’t you forget the messenger and focus on the message. Does the message make sense? Look at the substance of the statement and not the poor man’s statement. But even if I have all the money in this world, I will never use money to win the election because I know I am not going to steal. Tell me how much they sell nominations in American politics. Tell me how much they give their delegates to elect their candidates. Tell me how much the former UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak or the new one, Starmer, bought forms before contesting the election they won. Can you tell me? Honestly, we must change our attitude towards politics in this country.

It is believed that Madam Turai Yar’Adua had a domineering capacity over her husband such that her words were law. How true is that?

Nigerians always find ways to disrupt the process of doing things, especially in the government. The late President Yar’Adua had the capacity to withstand any and all pressures. I can tell you for a fact that all these adjectives were used against her because they could not get the husband. When he was governor, I would come to him as his commissioner and complain that they wrote something negative about us. He would ask me, ‘Is what they wrote true?’ I would say no. He would say, ‘Why bother your head when you know what they wrote isn’t true?’ Then, people realised that he loved his family very, very much. When they realised there was nothing else to use to break him, they started talking about his family members, especially his wife. The only way they could disrupt that government at that time was to give Turai all sorts of names. Unfortunately, they didn’t know that the president had the capacity to absorb any shock arising from their negativity. They said she controlled everything and all things, but that was not true. When I was Commissioner for Women Affairs, there were programmes I would take to him as governor to discuss with him, and tell him that I wanted to get mama’s programme to include in the government programme, that was what we used to call her then, he would just look at me and ask, ‘Are you going to give her the money for the project?’ That was the last time I discussed such an issue with him. The only way you could disrupt his government was to go through his family because he was a family man through and through. Let me tell you another instance to further denounce that insinuation. Before the Doctrine of Necessity was brought into force to bring President Jonathan into office, someone very high in Nigerian politics, quite popular and still alive, I was still in PTDF then, called me to his house. I told him I didn’t know his house. He then sent somebody to my office to take me to his house, where only he and I were together and it was in the meeting I heard, for the first time, that the doctrine was going to be initiated against Yar’Adua. He said the Senate was going to do something to Mallam or Babangida. You know we called him Mallam, Babangida or Umoru. His followers like us called him Mallam. He told me that they were planning to do something to him or his government but that he could stop them and I would have to go and talk to Mama Turai, and that he would call them to stop what they wanted to do at the Senate, but after the expiration of his (Yar’Adua) tenure in 2011, he should be allowed to contest. He promised to nominate me as the candidate. Walahi talahi, this was what he told me. I only told him that I would tell her. They were still in Saudi Arabia. He said ok. Then added: “If she agrees, you and I will have to go and meet her in Saudi Arabia.” He said he was going to Dubai the next day. “If she agrees, meet me in Dubai so that we can both go to Saudi Arabia and see her.” This was around 11 pm.

I knew I was not in a position to tell her what he said. I am sure if Mama is reading this, she will remember this event. I just told Mama that this man said he was coming to see Baba in Saudi Arabia. I was not going to follow him there. Mine was just to deliver a message. She said there was no need for him to come because they were coming back soon. He could come and see her when she returned. He believed very strongly that when they returned and Mama talked to Yar’Adua, he wouldn’t contest the 2011 election. But I know it was not true. This is the mindset of many who want to be your leaders. To be a leader in Nigeria is a major advantage to enrich yourself and your family. There was another incident like that. I used to know a young man, quite wealthy. It’s been ages since we communicated, especially since I left Abuja. He came to me and said he wanted to see the First Lady. I said no problem, I will tell her so that if she agrees, you can come and see her. Because she listened to us as her children, I just told her, “Mama, there is this person that wanted to see you. He is a good person.” She said okay, and they called the chief security officer to the president. He came and asked me to repeat what I told her, and I repeated it in the presence of the CSO. Immediately, the CSO flared up and said Mama was not going to see him. The security must have had something against him. If she was that high handed and domineering, she wouldn’t have sought the clearance for the man knowing that the man was from one of her children.

One year later, has Gov Dikko lived up to the people’s expectations?

Yes, he has. I will give just two out of the lot. From my own perspective, some people have said he performed because he had more money than his predecessors. Well, this is my own assessment. Dikko has done what a governor would do in four years in one year. Between 2007 and 2011, there was a governor in the name of Ibrahim Shehu Shema. Shema gave about 4, 000 people employment. In 2015, there was Aminu Bello Masari, there was less money coming in, there was Coronavirus pandemic and others, and he was still able to employ around 4, 000. Put the two of them together, the total number is just about 8, 000 or more. But if you take one year of Dikko’s administration, he has employed over 10, 000 people in one year. He employed over 6, 000 teachers while health workers were over 2, 000. That is a major indicator of performance for me. The second is the development of MSME in the state. Mind you, he was Director General of SMEDAN at the national level. I made a survey between 2019 and 2021, and I found out that in this small scale economy of about 20 local government areas in the state, there are about 500, 000 of these establishments with each of them employing an average of at least three persons. Now, multiply three by 500,000, that is the kind of number of people who engaged in the SMES activities in Katsina. So when he came, he further enlarged the coast for the thriving of the SMEs in the state. The number is humongous.