From Desmond Mgboh, Kano
Senator Musa’ud El-Jilbrin Doguwa was the Senator that represented Kano South between 1999 to 2003.
He was also a former Kano State chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), among several positions he has occupied. He defected to the APC in 2019, just after the presidential elections. Recently, he ended his marriage to the APC and returned back to the PDP.
In this interview, he gave reasons he returned back to the PDP and offerred insights into his relationship with Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the leader of the NNPP and Vice President Atiku Abubakar. He also commented on the crisis surrounding Nyesom Wike in the PDP.
But most importantly, he outlined steps on how Atiku and the PDP can reclaim the Presidency of Nigeria come in 2027. Excerpts:
You have just renounced your membership of the All Progressives Congress, decamping to your original party, the Peoples Democratic Party. What are the political issues that informed this move?
My journey to the APC started after the party dissolved our leadership of the PDP in the state. I was the state chairman of the party as at then. In fact, I was the one who went to Kwankwaso’s house, out of respect, to re-register him back to the PDP . But immediately we registered him back to the PDP, the national secretariat of our party took a decision to appoint a caretaker committee and the majority of the caretaker committee were members of Kwankwaso’s faction of the party. What made matters worse was that during that time, nobody cared to call us – myself, my executive and a large population of my followers to explain to us the reason behind the decision to nullify our leadership of the party at that time. To us, it was obvious that the leadership of the PDP as at that time was less interested in us and just interested in receiving Kwankwaso at all costs. And so, we decided that the only option left was to move to the APC. When we decamped to the APC, we worked assiduously to make sure that the party wins the elections in 2019. With the boost of our coming to the APC, they had the confidence that they would win the elections that year and God’s willing that happened. Ganduje was returned to office for the second tenure. However, as time went by, we were confronted with a lot of challenges in APC. You see somebody like me with a lot of political experience and followership should be carried along by his own party. If you failed to manage him, if you refused to give him what is due to him, if you failed to assign him with political and party duties and responsibilities that can make him relevant, then there is no way he can be fulfilled in your party. That is what happened. That is why at some point in time; we said to ourselves, let us go back to where we belong, especially as Kwankwaso and his faction, who are responsible for our exit from the PDP have also parted ways with the PDP. In brief, that was what happened.
From what you have recalled, can we agree that your stay in APC was wasted political years, without any fulfillment for you and your followers?
Even if you had stayed in your house all those years and did nothing, you cannot say they were wasted years. They would not have been wasted. So, our stay in APC cannot be rightly termed as wasted years. They respected us to a certain level, but what I am saying is that they undervalued our political worth and contributions to the growth and success of the party. You see, like myself I was a Senator of the Federal Republic for Kano South, the first Senator of my area in this Republic and I have a lot followership in my Senatorial district up till date. But they did not accord me the political respect. I have a huge network of friendship and associates that cut across the country. For you to relegate me to a local political player, who plays at the state level, you are not being fair to me. The APC simply denied me the political visibility and recognition that was due to a former senator of my calibre. The sad truth is that we were in APC as a party by mere name, we were not there by action or activity.
Let us honestly look at the PDP that you joined and its chances of fulfilling your political expectations today. The PDP in Kano State has been gravely devalued, almost to a zero level especially by the Kwankwaso-inspired Shagagi’s faction, which painted the party with several litigations, only to pull out to the NNPP at the last minute. Do you see PDP as a party that can make any impact in the politics of the state anymore?
Yes! Absolutely yes!! Don’t forget, and I encourage you to go and take statistics of the membership of both the NNPP and APC in this state. Anybody that you can count to be worth in the Kano APC today was a member of the PDP. Anybody that you can count to be of worth in the NNPP today was a former member of PDP. They were all previous members of the PDP. It was the PDP that gave them the leverage to become what they are today in politics. So, I feel that all what the PDP needs in Kano State and in the nation in general is simply confidence building. The PDP simply have to build back confidence in the minds of the people and the people would return back home to their old party. People don’t throw away their roots. They actually leave because the roots is unable to cater for their momentary aspirations. But can easily comeback if the root is ready to accommodate their dreams. At the moment, do I need to tell you that APC has a lot of challenges with the Nigerian people? Saying this is stating the obvious. Even the blind can see that APC has already ruined their contract with Nigerians. You also know that NNPP administration in the state has a lot of challenges with the people of Kano already and …
(Cuts in) Like what and what challenges, let’s be specific?
What can APC tell you as a Nigerian today and you will believe? What is their scorecard in power? Have they addressed the issue of insecurity that they promised during their campaign and yet Nigerians are being killed and kidnapped daily? Have they addressed the devaluation of the Naira? Have they addressed the issue of inflation in the country? Have they addressed the issue of poverty and youth unemployment? The answers to these questions are big no and no! When you also turn to Kano State, you know that the NNPP government in the power in the state has clearly lost focus. Fights and fights everywhere. The government has been behaving like a government that has no blueprint. So, all what the PDP needs to do is to come back and reposition itself. Build confidence in the people that they would deliver. That is all. The situation of the PDP that you talked about is not only in Kano. There are a number of states across the country where PDP needs to recharge and revamp itself and reclaim its past glory. The PDP must reposition itself even at the national level. It must build new hopes, new vistas and raise the aspirations of Nigerians, telling them that it has clear answers to their problems and hardships. And I tell you something, the PDP is now better positioned to talk to Nigerians about national leadership. The reason is that they can now make comparism between their days in power and the locust days of the APC. There was the Obasanjo years and there was the Jonathan years. Can you compare these years with the years of Buhari and Tinubu? Nigerians can have a graphic picture of what it was and what it is today. During the Jonathan years you were buying a bag of rice at N7,000 to N14,000. How much is it selling now? During Jonathan how much was dollar? N143! And how much can you get it today in Nigeria? What about other basic items that make life go on? I will tell you that with all these facts of bad governance everywhere, what the PDP needs to reclaim the Presidency is good publicity. Simply good publicity. Recruit expert publicists to push these facts to the imaginations of Nigerians. They need to resell themselves to Nigerians. The statistics they need for the publicity are everywhere, easy to pick. Nigerians are well educated now about governance and about hunger issues. Once you present these facts to Nigerians early enough, they know the direction to go.
But there remains this challenge in Kano PDP. We still have this silent lack-of-agreement between the two leaders of the party, namely Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau and Amb. Aminu Wali. The party is a replica of two different parties in one political umbrella. How do you intend to address this?
I am telling you that we are trying to address that issue and I don’t want to believe that is the issue or is as bad as you had presented it. I will agree that there are rumours in that regard. And where there is a rumour, you have to go to the root of the matter, find out the real situation and then address it. If you had come an hour earlier, you would have met the son of Aminu Wali in this office. We are talking, we are working together and we will get the answers. My target is to reach out to the key stakeholders of the party at the state level – stakeholders such as Mallam Shekarau, Amb Wali, Ibrahim al-Amin (Little) and Senator Gwarzo and many others, so that we work out how we can reunite ourselves and our party. Without doing that, and if we are not ready to do that, then let us stop wasting the time of our followers. I say so because if PDP would fly again in the state, all of us would have to redouble our strength and reunify ourselves for the daunting task ahead. And I am optimistic that we would be able to come back stronger.
Historically, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso was of your political generation. People wonder as how come he was able to have progressed so fast ahead of most of you politicians of his time. What do you have to say?
We in the region believe that power is destined by Allah. Anybody who achieves power has been destined by Allah to reach that height. But apart from that, there are certain qualities that you can associate with Kwankwaso, which had accounted for his political success. When Kwankwaso came to the PDP years ago, we were in his team and we were more of team players. I will say that while he was playing number nine, I was playing number seven. We started together in this Fourth Republic and we were his directors. One major thing that favoured his politics then was that he was calm. The majority of those that rivaled him politically weren’t as calm as he was. There were many big, big political names that were against him also. But Kwankwaso ignored their pressure and went down to the grassroots and created a number of political cells that made him what he is today. When he was the governor, we realized that the majority of the leaders then, were trying to push him out, what we did then was to create the political cells which we called “Yan biyai” . When we did that, we realized that the majority of the people in the committee were more respected at the local level than those who were politicians or were holding political offices in the party at the local level. We discovered that the best way out to reach to the people is through small, small committees, small cells. This concept was fine-tuned to the extent that it accommodated members that were of the opposition parties who are well respected. They were getting something from a government that was not their government. You know the way we are, anybody that is making you get a N1,000, N2,000, you will declare your loyalty for him. That is how Kwankwaso started earning the initial loyalty from the ordinary people of the state. Secondly, he initiated a number of leadership innovations. If I am wrong, he started this idea of school feeding right from when he was a civil servant. And when he became the governor, he continued with that same innovation which a majority of his political rivals could not do or did not have the opportunity to do. That is the reason he became what he is at the state level today.
You have spoken well of Kwankwaso’s political strategies. Now that you are against Kwankwaso politically, how do you intend to dislodge him and his party from the control of the state?
Ask Kwankwaso, he knows me well enough, he knows my fighting power. And I tell you one thing, he knows that it would not be business as usual. Secondly, I am part of the earliest strategists that gave birth to his popularity in Kano. I was an insider. That means that I know the strategy. I am not saying that we will be able to curb his popularity 100 percent, but we know the steps to adopt to reduce his hold on the state.
You have always been an Atiku man. In your rating what are the chances of Atiku Abubakar emerging as the President of Nigeria especially as he had tried severally and failed?
Like you have rightly said I was an Atiku man, and I am still an Atiku man and I will continue to be an Atiku man. One, let me say that we rely on Allah. Allah is the giver of power. And if He decides to give Atiku, we are very sure that it is only a matter of time. The issue is that Atiku is the leading opposition in this country and he has not rested for a single day. He is consistent, unyielding and that is a signal that one day, he might be there. Don’t forget that even Tinubu was an opposition element for so long and today he made it. In fact, Tinubu was an opposition element right from the days of Sani Abacha. He went to exile as an opposition man. He won the governor of Lagos as an opposition man. Buhari too spent years contesting the polls as an opposition and one day, he made it. So, it is possible that some of these politicians in the opposition today might eventually emerge as Nigeria’s president tomorrow and if at all there is anyone of them with a promise of this, I think it is Atitu Abubakar. In addition, I want you to please see the figures of the last elections. The margin of difference between APC and PDP in the last election is not much different. The simple truth is that once there is a merger of the opposition elements in Nigeria, the APC is history. Once there can be a merger, the ruling party is gone. And that is not impossible. When you look at the members of the Labour Party, they were the members of the PDP before. Peter Obi is a break away from the PDP. When you look at Kwankwaso’s NNPP, he is a break away from the PDP too. Even many people within the APC family are dejected, unhappy and they are grumbling. They are not satisfied with the situation of things or the performance of the party and are likely to renounce the party because they know that they cannot win back their seats under the banner of the party in their various constituencies. I honestly think that the future of the APC in the Presidency is no longer in their own hands. Their future is solely dependent on the ability of the opposition to reconcile or not.
There is one big rope around the neck of PDP. It is called Nyesom Wike, the FCT minister. His body is probably with the PDP, but we can’t say same of his soul. What are the party’s options in addressing his challenge?
Nyesom Wike, with all due respect, has become a menace to the PDP, no doubt. I believe that if not for the role of Wike, the story would have been different from what turned out to be in the last presidential election. If he had been with his party, certainly, there is no way the APC would have run away with the victory. Certainly, he contributed to the failure of the PDP in the last elections giving the role he played against the party. However, I want you to understand one thing about politics. In politics, one man is important to your victory. What it means is that no political party in this country will like to lose one of its members, talkless of somebody like Wike. Our prayer is that someday he will come to realize that he has a political party that is ready to truly reconcile with him. But if he refuses, PDP will move ahead. Whatever you are is just a matter of time. Whatever you are is just a matter of time. Whatever he is today is also a matter of time.
Wike had his own grievances… especially the way he was treated by Atiku after Atiku became the Presidential candidate and also, the way he was betrayed by many of his close allies in the PDP in the North. What will you say to the way he was he treated by the PDP, a while ago you were talking about the way you were treated?
If you think people betrayed you, there are a lot of better ways to go about it without attempting to destroy the entire party. Let me remind you there is really no key politician in Nigeria that has not been betrayed. Atiku, if I could remember, was instrumental to the positioning of all the governors in the PDP by 1999 to 2003. Go back and find out, a majority of all of them betrayed him eventually. So, it is not matter of who is betraying who. Let us appreciate the fact that the PDP is the platform that brought Wike to power. And we expected that no matter what, he would have treated the party differently. When Obasanjo left, Yar’Adua came and after, there was Jonathan. So, sometimes, it is matter of patience. It might still get to you. Wike needs to have exercised patience in the face of his loss, maybe next time, it might be his turn.
Wike was really not alone in the opposition to the PDP as at the last elections. There were some governors that worked with Wike at that time and many of them are out there probably still hurt by the drama of that era. What do you think should be done?
I don’t have all the information regarding what they have done or not to get them back. But the national secretariat of the PDP needs to rise up and raise a committee that can reach such members and make real peace. They can enlist people Senator David Mark and Sule Lamido who have a lot of respect from party men, people like Senator Saraki who are widely acceptable, Ahmed Makarfi and other of such party heavyweights to arbitrate and swing into action. They should not wait until the elections are a few months away before they would inaugurate such committee to go and pacify them and encourage them to disregard the past and return fully back home to the PDP.
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