Ilyasu Gadu is the Taraba South Senatorial candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party. He has the incumbent state governor, Darius Ishaku, of the People’s Democratic Party, who is from the same district to contend with, to claim the seat. In this interview with MAYOWA SAMUEL, the veteran journalist and media expert explains why he is confident of defeating the governor, while also touching on other national issues. Excerpts:
You are the Taraba South Senatorial candidate for the People’s Redemption Party. How are your preparations for this journey to the Upper Chamber going?
We are waiting for the Independent National Electoral Commission to clear all issues out, so that by the 18th of this month, when we are sure that all issues regarding pre-election matters have been cleared, and INEC gives the go-ahead for us to get into the field, then things will start moving from there.
Do you or the PRP have any issues with INEC?
We don’t have issues. INEC has given room now for parties to get their acts together like those that have been substituted and all kinds of things like that. They’ve given parties up to the 18th of this month. I’m good to go but some of the major parties have issues, so they are trying to sort out those issues.
Parties that have issues, especially the APC in your state…
The APC in my state, if you ask me, I don’t think they’ll be able to make it because the whole thing they did was very messy. I can tell you that if the electoral law is applied very well, none of those guys can stand for an election because the way and manner their primary was done was very fraudulent. But it could stand if it was the former electoral act, where there were no provisions for INEC to be involved in those matters. Now, the electoral law gives INEC the leverage to do that, so it’s a serious matter for them. They are trying to see how they can resolve it but even the national executives of the party are wary about supporting them because it might just result in a blowback for them, that’s the problem. We’ll see what will happen but even a small lawyer can get them thrown out.
What makes you confident that you can defeat the incumbent governor, Darius Ishaku of the PDP for the seat at the upper house?
The incumbent governor has clearly not performed. He’s been the worst-performing governor in the country. He has not done what is needed of him, even within his party, he’s not liked.
Even members of his team that are very close to him just use eye service, they don’t like him. Many people too also say he has had his time, let him just go and rest. He was a minister for two years, Minister of Power, and Minister of State for Niger-Delta Affairs for two years. He’s now governor for almost eight years with that kind of abysmal performance.
We don’t need that, we need somebody who is proactive, who will meet the people, open his doors to the people, go across to them and hear them out. This man has not been to the constituency for a couple of years. Go to his area, it’s terrible, and nothing of substance has been done. Well, he has the power of incumbency and money but let me tell you, my brother, this new electoral law is going to change all that nonsense that they’ve been doing and I’m going to make sure that I change my counter strategies too to make sure that I’m not cheated or rigged because for real, the people of Southern Taraba want him out, they don’t want him there.
“He has been a governor now for almost eight years with that kind of abysmal performance. We don’t need that, we need somebody who is proactive, who will meet the people, open his doors to the people, go across to them and hear them out”
You are in an unpopular PRP, so why the PRP, considering the dominance of the PDP and APC across the country?
If I had been in APC or PDP, where would I have been now? The APC is virtually on the outside looking in and it may not even have any candidate. The APC has been divided into two factions, the faction of Senator Bwacha and the others. At the end of the day, what you are likely to have is when you get into that party, you either belong here or there, and I don’t want to do that. In any case, where is the party now? It’s struggling for survival because the interest of the few dominant among them is tearing the party apart and there is every likelihood that the party may not be allowed to field candidates for the election. So, if I were at that party, where would I be now? I would have been gnashing my teeth. If I were in PDP, PDP is owned by General Danjuma. It’s a military garrison. TY Danjuma will come and give instructions saying this is the person I want and that’s it and you want me to be in that kind of setup? Why? I’m one of those people that fought for this democracy. I was incarcerated by Abacha for one month for daring to speak against his tenure elongation. Where were all these guys? So, how can I fight for democracy and then come and belong to a party that has no internal democracy where one general will just wake up and decide to plant somebody and then that’s it? I’m not part of that charade. I cannot be in the PDP. The people now in PDP Taraba are regretting because all they’ve laboured for in the past can just be undone in one second by a general who thinks he’s god. Is that what we fought for? We fought to throw the military guys out but the military guys are coming behind to dictate terms to us. We can’t even choose our own leaders in primaries without a general who had his time coming to do that for us here. So, if I belong to APC and PDP, where would I have been now? I cannot struggle just to be able to see how I can participate in politics and somebody will just come and say look my friend get out and then put somebody there. Nigerians are getting tired. PDP had the chance for 16 years and it failed to deepen the democracy experience in this country. APC we thought was going to do that but it has also become riddled with those things. You can see what happened during their convention, how the party chairman tried to bulldoze somebody who did not even comply with the electoral act into a senatorial position and things like that all over. Ever since APC came into power, it’s been one faction or the other. They even lost a whole state because of a lack of internal democracy. So, how can I be part of that charade?
Two weeks ago, 30 Christians were killed in Taraba State. Bandits also killed seven soldiers in Taraba. A bomb expert was also nabbed in the state. Furthermore, about 200 youths disengaged from the Taraba Green House Project over insecurity fears. All these happened in one week. How would you describe the security situation in your state?
What we have to understand is that lots of things are wrong. The governor himself is very lazy in terms of governance. He’s been micro-managing things in the state and to himself.
He’s not given to delegating responsibilities. I mean he likes sycophancy a lot, people who tell him stories he likes to hear. His attitude toward micromanagement doesn’t give room for consultation and inclusiveness. Don’t forget, in our state borders Cameroon, we have a major crisis there and it’s terrible. In the English-speaking part, some of the issues we have in Taraba State are coming from that area. The governor’s local government in Takum, borders Cameroon. A few months back, there was an attack by some Ambazonian warlords who infiltrated some villages around there. The border between our state and Cameroon is just free, so anything could happen between them but if you have a proactive governor who delegates authority, and who takes his job seriously, some of these things will be identified and will be nipped in the bud. I’m not saying these things cannot happen, they can happen but they will be minimised. Also, because of poor administration and governance, a lot of civil servants are being owed salaries, local government workers don’t get paid, and pensioners or retirees don’t get their gratuities, these are ingredients for insecurity. Insecurity is not just about people taking guns, it’s about conditions making them take guns, and if a governor is not proactive in this matter, this is what happens invariably. At the end of the day, yes, I know insecurity can happen anywhere anytime, and you can never completely wipe out insecurity, but what he was voted for was to ensure that what gives rise to this insecurity is minimised, so that we can then begin to manage what we see from what we have done. But if you have not done anything, you spend most of your time in Abuja or you stay in the government house and do not engage people, you are not going out to meet people in their villages, or local governments or talking to them, hearing what problems they have and what issues they are battling with, then you are setting the grounds for all these things to happen, unfortunately. How many times has he gone over to the local governments to discuss with the community leaders and find out what their problems are? How many times has he engaged stakeholders? He has not done that, he does that very rarely. These are the kinds of forums where we get to know the pulse of the people and to be able to proactively apply solutions to them by working with the people, but he doesn’t do that. How can we have that kind of person in a state like Taraba that needs effective governance and inclusiveness?
Your party’s presidential candidate is Kola Abiola, the son of late business magnate, Chief MKO Abiola. Are you worried about his chances against formidable names like Bola Tinubu of the APC, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and even Peter Obi of the Labour Party?
Actually, I must confess that we don’t have as much visibility as these other personalities you mentioned. You can also agree that these three personalities are credible in terms of political experience, governance and all that but then, that does not affect the fact that Kola Abiola himself is capable. I mean, he’s a young man, quiet, unassuming, and he’s the son of the acclaimed winner of June 12, 1993 election. This is to tell you that in their family, they have a tradition of fighting for the common man, that’s why he chooses the PRP because PRP is the voice of the common man. We are in this country now talking about a new paradigm shift to be able to give Nigerians a new lease of life. If you are looking for a real paradigm shift in this country, you give power to new up-and-coming guys, you have to consider people like Kola Abiola, who are without blemish, he has not served one day in government. You cannot link anything malicious to him. These are the people we can entrust, not people who have had their time, they’ve messed themselves up, they’ve messed their country up and then we are idolising them just because we like them, so other people too must like them, but we cannot ask questions about them because other people are trying to force then down our throats. It’s not possible, we have rights to question anybody who wants to rule us, it’s our rights because I cannot go and stand in the sun to vote for somebody and then I won’t ask for who he is and his pedigree. For Atiku and Tinubu, we know who they are, we know what they are about and we know their pedigree. It’s up to Nigerians who have been groaning under this situation to continue with them if they want it but they shouldn’t complain when things don’t turn out well because these are people who don’t care about anything. You’ve seen it in Lagos. The same thing with Atiku, his party receives funds from marine-based businesses. But you see people like Kola Abiola whose father is the foundation of all the political systems we are operating today. We should be able to say look, let’s try this young man and see if we can get this paradigm shift that we want. But everybody is talking about old cargoes that have messed this country up, Peter Obi inclusive.
“I like a situation whereby anybody who wants to rule this country must go through a slug, must be a nation builder, not somebody who will say it’s my turn or the turn of my local government”
Your party’s presidential candidate is a Southerner. Are you among those who believe that power should shift to the South since this present Northerner would have completed two terms of eight years by next year? Would you even say it should be the turn of the South East?
We are all Nigerians; we’ve come through a lot over the past years. We should come to a situation where we should think of a Nigerian who will lead us out of this quagmire that we have found ourselves in. But the political conditions, because they’ve not been able to devise ways by which we can face the challenges of nationhood, they keep looking for cheap things, they keep looking for arrangements that will not take us anywhere. We need to task our political leaders and say we need you to give us a leader that will take us out of where we are, somebody who can think outside the box, wherever he comes from. But let him say I want to put things together, protect Nigeria and push Nigeria forward; I don’t care where he comes from. But we have been sold the idea that unless this is done, we cannot have peace but then, where has it taken us? It hasn’t taken us anywhere. In our own party, we didn’t lay emphasis on that. Kola Abiola emerged from the contest of everybody from the North, and South, even a woman was there. It was a free-flowing situation, and he emerged. If you say PRP is a Northern party, then Dr. Bugaje should have been the flag bearer of our party. But Kola Abiola contested on an open field like the rest of them, there was no recourse to any arm twisting or whatsoever, and he emerged. He was the choice of the party, freely chosen and freely accepted by all. So, I will recommend that kind of political attitude to the other parties but of course, they are doing that because they don’t have ideas, they are not running on ideas, they don’t have ideas that we can take up to the tenets of nationhood. What will a Southern president or Northern president do to the cost of bread? We’ll still have the same lack of fuel, we’ll still have the same issues of no good roads, we don’t have light, even insecurity. So, what really has that done to us now? It’s been with us since. It’s all cosmetic and the sooner we realise that, the better. Countries of the world that develop, try to allow situations where individuals with great ideas and vision rise and take the country to higher heights. You could go and bring an idiot from the South or from the North, just because the party has zoned, and the idiot will sit down there and do nothing. I like a situation whereby anybody who wants to rule this country must go through a slug, must be a nation builder, not somebody who will say it’s my turn or the turn of my local government. I don’t want to hear that, it’s true.
Would you say the same about the Muslim-Muslim ticket and the Christian-Christian ticket controversy?
The last time I checked, Nigeria wasn’t the Vatican or Saudi Arabia. So, it’s a free state, it’s a secular state. Whatever they want to do is their business. By the way, these guys are not even religious in any way you can think of. They are just using the Quran or the Bible for cosmetics, unfortunately. So, in their minds, activities and pedigrees, they are the vilest kinds of people you can think of, and then they are coming to waste our time on that. Are we the Vatican or Saudi Arabia?
