Former speaker of Kwara State House of Assembly from 1999 to 2003, Ezekiel Yissa Benjamin, was one of the chieftains of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP that returned to the party about two weeks ago. During an interactive session with newsmen after the rally where they announced their return to PDP, he said the party will flush out the All Progressives Congress, APC government in 2015 because Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed and his leader, Bukola Saraki have both failed the people of the state. MIKE ODIAKOSE was there for the Nigerian Pilot Saturday.
Excerpts:
Recently there have been defections by governors and lawmakers from one party to the other. What are the implications of this on the polity?
The implications are …in Nigeria, we do a lot of things that we do not really put into consideration our own integrity. If not how would somebody elected on the platform of a political party now decides to abandon that party and move on to another one and want to carry on with that office without being questioned. It is very unfortunate. Ideally, what it is supposed to have been is that if you have a problem in a party you would have probably waited so that you would have been able to live out the tenure that you were voted to spend in the assembly. However, Nigerians being who we are we decide to do whatever we feel that pleases us without actually thinking of what will be the outcome. Our constitution too has given a loophole where they decided to insert a provision that the moment there is crisis within a political party you are at liberty to move on to the party of your choice. People have taken advantage of this to even create confusion, create crisis so that they will be to move and to be able to meet up with their own desires. This is exactly what I have seen in the movement of members of the national assembly and state assemblies moving from the party on whose platform they were elected to another party without actually thinking of what the effect will be on those that elected them.
You talk about a loophole in the constitution. What do you think should be done about that?
The only solution is to look into that provision and amend it. So that the moment you are elected on the platform of a political party even if you want to defect you should spend that term out and by the time you are going for the next election you may chose to abandon the party in which you were elected initially and go into another political party.
As a member of PDP, do you think PDP is threatened in Kwara State by the defection of those elected on the platform of the party to the APC?
PDP is never threatened. You witnessed what happened just now from the enlarged meeting of the PDP family in Kwara State. It will show to you and you will agree with me that we are never threatened because there are more people that are now coming back to the PDP. If you listened to one of the speakers at the meeting, he said they were they were the founding members of PDP in Kwara State but they decided to leave because they did not want to have anything to do with those that came into the party in 2003. Now that those that came to snatch the house from them are gone, they are back to their own house. That is how you will see so many people coming back. In fact, the population you see here is small. Yesterday I was in my local government, Pati local government and we had to reduce the number of those who were to come for this meeting because virtually people are coming out from all the wards, which they want to be part of this occasion. Therefore, we are never threatened by at all and by the grace of God, you will see what will happen in 2015 that PDP will retain Kwara State.
You said you are not threatened, but Bukola Saraki has boasted that the APC’s chances of winning in Kwara is very high since they control the chairmen of the 16 local governments in addition to having the governor, two senators and majority of the lawmakers on their side.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. Ask them about the process that produced them, was it a democratic process? Was it democratic enough? If they are claiming, they have majority of the lawmakers and local government chairmen what is the process that produced these people? Let us flash back our mind to what happened recently concerning the local government election. I watched Senator Bukola Saraki on Channels television and he was claiming that primaries were held and that people were sent from the national secretariat to come and watch the conduct of the primaries but I want to put it him straight and direct that it was a lie. The instruction given was that every local government should go back and produce three names, not through primaries and kangaroo screening committees that were put in place. How the committees arrived at the three names is still a big question. Like in my local government, I asked them, what is the yardstick that you used in scoring the candidates that came out top in the screening committee? Where you have a masters degree holder and somebody who barely finished National Teachers Institute, NTI, certificate will now top the list of the candidates as against somebody with masters degree in business administration, you know what it means. Moreover, that was my grouse with that process. We came here and I made it known to him that it is never done. When the three names were produced we were all called here then because we were still in PDP, and he as the leader now decide to tick any of the names that pleases him. If the three names submitted did not meet his own desire he to picks outside the three names. If you look at that process it was not democratic enough and therefore for him to say that they have all the people in positions of authority and therefore APC is going to produce the next government let us wait and see what will happen in Kwara in 2015.
APC is targeting 28 million members, how do you react to this?
Well, it is good to set targets. PDP will also set target and we may set a bigger target.
What we have in Kwara PDP now is what somebody may term a new PDP because the party is now made up of incumbent members, those that were aggrieved and left before, those that are also from other political parties. A time will come for you to harmonise. How will you handle this?
Let me correct this impression, it is not the coming together of the aggrieved members. In recent times I didn’t contest any election but I am acting on my on convictions that I will remain in PDP. Now we will follow the due process of democracy and what do I mean by this? When the time comes if we have 20 people contesting for a position the simple thing to settle the score between these people is to go into the primaries. At the primaries, the choice of the people will emerge and if the choice of the people emerge the best is to pacify. Whoever that refuses to be pacified does not agree with what God has chosen to do. We are not going to influence any process of picking a candidate as it has been done over the years in Kwara State. No, we are not going to do that. We will allow the people to make their choice. Let me flash back. When Baba (Olusola Saraki) was alive the process that produced me as an individual is not the process that came from 2003 till now. I was the choice of the people. Therefore, the election was so simple. By the time you pick the choice of the people you don’t stress over elections. I want to tell you in 1997 that was the first time I contested election, because I was the choice of the people, my campaign was stress-free. In fact, on the day of the election I did not even go to the collation centre. It was my cousin I sent to the collation centre to go and collect the result and I was declared the winner. So, that is to show you that when people are given the power to pick their own choice the election becomes easier. Meaning in a good company the journey is short.
Are you saying that under Bukola Saraki, PDP has always had its primaries manipulated and candidates imposed?
Candidates were imposed, that is what I am telling you. I do not think we had any meaningful primaries.
Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed and Bukola Saraki have been saying they are performing wonderfully and delivering dividends of democracy to Kwarans. How do you assess the performance of the administrations?
I think your physical assessment will convince you that if their government is performing very well you will see it in the lives of the people. I had opportunity of speaking to Bukola Saraki in 2007 when he invited me to come into PDP because for four years some of us who were in All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, kept away from the government until when ANPP divided and PDP came up and some of us decided that since it is divided we had better pulse. What we told Bukola Saraki then was that if only your government has done very well there would not have been any need for opposition as at that point in time. But all throughout his tenure the opposition was waxing stronger in Kwara state. Ordinarily, if a government is doing very well by the time you in the opposition probably go back to your people and want to either slander the government or you want to pull down the government, it is the people that will tell you that ‘look your noise is too much, look at what they have done. But because this is not in place you can see for yourself what happened today. If actually the government is doing well it will be difficult for PDP to gather this kind of crowd that we gathered. So, I want to tell you categorically that that is their own opinion and they are entitled to it but we the outsiders are telling them that they are not doing very well. Look at the Zimbabwean white farmers, what has it become? We have never seen the maize, we have never seen the milk, and it is unfortunate. A lot of money has gone into that place. That was what I said in 2011 what I was given an opportunity to represent Her Excellency (Gbemi Saraki) in a phone-in programme. I said they should come and tell us where they are selling the yoghurt of the Zimbabwe farm, they should come and show us the maize from that farm and that was almost the eight year of the establishment of that farm. In the MoU that brought about that farm the white farmers that came were given $250,000, guaranteed loan by the Kwara State government and additional $250,000, meaning $500,000 was given to each farmer. Why not the government try some local farmers with money instead of going to bring people that are alien to our land. This was our point of argument.