Sani: Reconciliation is last hope for APC

Senator Sheu Sani, who is representing Kaduna Central District in the Senate, spoke with Tony Akowe in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on the challenge of reconciliation in the All Progressives Congress (APC). Excerpts:

What is your view on the committee recently set up by the President to reconcile members of the party?

First, let me say that I am here at the national secretariat of the APC for two reasons. First is to personally express my support and solidarity to the effort of the president in setting up a reconciliation committee headed by Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu. We are confident that his intervention could most likely address the fundamental issues that are facing the party at both the national and at the state level. It is no more news that the APC is faced with crisis in some states where it holds sway as a party and this crisis has defiled solutions for over two years and efforts that were made in the past has not been able to address the problems. Nobody could have solved this problem other than President Muhammadu Buhari himself through Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The governors cannot solve the problems of the APC because they are party to the crisis; APC Senators and members of the House of Representatives cannot solve the problem because they are party to the problem. The party at the national level cannot solve the problem because there is disrespect and disregard for the leadership of the party in the last two years. The very fact that the party itself has been inhibited with lack of funds and other challenges made it impossible for the party to bring to order what is happening. What we need to understand very clearly is that crisis within a ruling party is not new and not strange. Each time you have a group of people who organise themselves and take over political power, you are bound to have internal crisis within the party. It is so in the National Liberation Front in Algeria, it is so with the African National Congress, it is so in any political party you can think of in history that has taken over power. The APC crisis started earlier and hopefully, it will be healed in other to prevent it from inflicting some damages that could affect the fortunes of the party.

Are you worried that the party that came into power with so much goodwill is today engulfed in a crisis that is threatening its very foundation?

It is of concern that a party that came to power with so much good will and hope has found itself in a civil war with itself. Right now, the APC is both the government and the opposition because most of the criticism and opposition that is going on in the country is within the APC itself. So, one tragedy that usually become the symptom that extinguishes a political party is absence of internal democracy. You can see the supremacy of the party in South Africa and in Ethiopia. But in Nigeria, there is no supremacy of the party because people holding position of executive power think that the party should be under them and not them being below the party. That is where the crisis starts. If the state chairman of a political party can go and kneel down before a state governor for money to pay the rent of his office and feed his family, political parties in the Nigeria setting seems to be parastatals of the state government and that is totally unacceptable. There is also the syndrome of the party is our own. If a clique of people believe that they founded the party and other people are strangers, then the recipe for crisis has been set. What we need to understand is the very fact that PDP was not destroyed from the outside, but from the inside. It is the elements within the PDP that were marginalized and oppressed that became the final nail on the coffin of her party. If the APC must learn anything, it must learn from the history and I believe that some of the people who left the PDP to join in this merger should not come with that bug and bacteria because those fundamental issues need to be addressed. If all party members are not treated equally and fairly, certainly there will be problem.

Few days after the President set up the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led committee to reconcile members, a parallel secretariat was set up in Kaduna. Can you explain why this is so?

You are right that in Kaduna State today, we are having a problem and there are two APC secretariats. There is the one which the governor set up for himself and serves as his personal convenience where he can do whatever he wants to do and we also have our own APC secretariat, so, we have twins APC in Kaduna. Our own is the genuine one because the chairman of the party that was duly certified and elected and recognised by INEC was not the one the governor is dealing with. So, as far as we are concerned, we are here to tell the national secretariat that Senator Shehu Sani, Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi and other party stalwarts in Kaduna will not accept, tolerate, endorse any form of tyranny by the governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai. He has pocketed the party and wants to impose his will and is exploiting his proximity to the President to unleash a rain of terror on the party. Right now, the party is already divided in Kaduna and it is for the national secretariat to note this and we have said it in clear terms. The problem has defiled solution for two years, but we believe that we believe that Asiwaju can do a lot of reconciliation and we hope that he will be able to achieve a lot because if Asiwaju fails, it is going to be doom for the party. When you see people fighting within the party, it is because they want to remain in the party. If they don’t want to remain within the party, the will simply walk away from the party. So, we are saying in the 21st century Nigeria, there are those of us in the APC that will not accept any governor going into a room to write the list of his concubines, friends, his errand boys and guides and send them as executive of the party. We are going to remain in the APC and pursue this agenda and my presence here at the APC is to send a clear message appreciating Tinubu’s appointment and so to tell them that it is in the best interest of the party that they don’t take sides or the most they can do is to give us equal treatment as far as Kaduna is concerned.

Is it possible to see the parallel executive in Kaduna State happening at the national level?

I don’t know anything about national level, but I can tell you that as far as Kaduna is concerned, we have parallel APC and it is left for Asiwaju to build the bridges. Lagos is known for bridges. So, we hope that there will be seventh mainland bridge to connect the divide. But we are not sure of that.

What is your take on Buhari contesting the 2019 presidential election?

One thing which Nigerians have refused to recognize is that people have the right to say they want the President to contest or not and he a³so has the right to accept what they are saying or reject it. As far as I am concerned, any opinion on whether he should contest or not is simply an exercise of freedom of speech and it is left for him to decide. However, in every sense of the word, he is constitutionally empowered to decide on whether he wants to contest or not. But I think it is in the interest of the country and in the interest of the party that President Buhari makes his position known because right now, it has been his Aides that are speaking on his behalf. Whether they are doing it with his consent or not, no Nigerian for now knows whether President Buhari will contest or not.

We have seen a lot of Shehu Sani for governor posters in Kaduna. Are you contesting for governor in 2019?

Well, in politics, there are things you want and there could be decision later of what may be or may not be. In the process where reconciliation is taking place now, I think it is in our interest to put our ambitions in our pockets for now in accordance with the plea of Mr. President and wait for Asiwaju to address the problems. It is going to be a tragedy, if he fails. This is what I know and I can speak in parables. The pronouncement of the appointment of Asiwaju to reconcile members has been able to avert the tragedy of people decamping from the APC to the other parties. It has been able to do so at least for now.

Few months to election, the National Assembly wants to reorder elections and this is generating a lot of heat in the polity. What was really wrong in INEC deciding that the presidential election holds first.

You see, there is an impression in the National Assembly which people have from outside and that is the presence of pro Buhari senators and anti Buhari senators. I don’t think that is true. Nobody was elected to be there and be pro or anti. We are all senators and in issues, we vote and decide on what our positions should be or can be. Having said that, let me say that the reordering of the sequence of election was informed by a number of factors. One is that the hitherto position as it is right now where you start with the President and end up with the states is one in which you have the bandwagon effect. The smaller parties felt that each time you have a presidential election and the president wins, nobody other party will win any seat again because it have bandwagon effect. What we are saying now is that let us have the Presidential election last so that Nigerians have the opportunity to vote for Senators and members of the House of Representatives on their own merit. They should be able to reelect those they want and vote out those they don’t want. The reason is very simple. We are trying to avoid mass trial, mass conviction and mass burial of Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. By that, we will allow each member go to his grave or be acquitted before justice electorates.

You were at the JAMB office with anti-snake venom and some people have said that you went there as a sign of mockery for your party. How true is that?

My presence in the JAMB office was on a rescue mission to avoid more snakes eating more money. If you have a story where snakes have consumed N36 million, that is very shocking and in order to prevent more money being eaten by snakes, I brought two things to them. Anti snake repellants and snake charmers from my constituency. It is my own personal contribution to the fight against animal based kind of corruption. Again, if this is a drama, it need to be finished and what I did was to finish the last aspect of the drama.

You said the Kaduna State governor is using his closeness to the President to do what he does in Kaduna. Do you see that affecting the President in 2019?

He has been constantly bombarding us by dropping the name of the President in every thing he does. He keep telling us the President said I should do this, the President said I should do that and the President has come to Kaduna over 12 times and has never said anything to us. We are only hearing it from him and we are saying that we have been with the President from the onset and not him that is a convertee to being a supporter of the President. We cannot in any way be treated like outcast because you have access to the President. So, we said that we are equal stakeholders in this party and the President has any message for us about Nasir El-Rufai, he should talk to us and not to hear it through el-Rufai because I knew the President before el-Rufai knew him. I have been respecting the President before him and even when he was saying the President was too old to contest, I never believed it. So, if this party will continue to be one and succeed in the next election, we must have a level playing ground. Senators and Governors must live in peace with each other’s. We must address the problems of the state and whatever resolution that is reached by this committee must be endorsed by all interested parties. For now, in Kaduna, I can tell you clearly that we are having two parallel executive of the party and any attempt by anybody to recognize the faction of the governor is going to spell a lot of trouble because we will not agree. I am here to say that clearly and I have told the people at the secretariat. Any attempt to tint toward the governor, we will oppose it to the last.

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