Ango Abdullahi does not speak for the North - Ex-Senate President
Written by Taiwo Adisa
Monday, 19 August 2013 00:00


A former president of the Senate in the aborted Thrid Republic, Senator Ameh Ebute, convened the Senate to validate the June 12 mandate of late Chief MKO Abiola but got arrested instead. In this interview with a newsmen, Ebute expressed surprise that his colleague in the then Senate, Senator Bola Tinubu leda section of the Yoruba into political alliance with the people whom he said truncated a Abiola’s mandate. He also insisted that the North should wait till 2019 for the Presidency. Group Politics Editor, Taiwo Adisa, brings excerpts:

You have been silent in the polity for a while, but a lot of people expect to hear from you as a statesman. What has been happening?
I am part of an organisation called the Congress for Equality and Change and I was participating in the argument about zoning before the 2011 elections. I don’t know whether some of you read me at that time. But on the fact that I have been quiet for a while, you know I am a legal practitioner by profession. So, I have devoted time to legal practice. In 2010, I was on the pages of newspapers. So it is not true that I have been quiet all along.

In the 2011 elections, you supported President Goodluck Jonathan. Are you disappointed with his performance?
Not at all,

But a number of people appear enchanted with his administration?
Well, since I am a lawyer, I need evidence from you that a lot of people are disgruntled with the administration because as a lawyer, you can’t act without evidence. It is normal that members of the opposition would not say anything good in another person’s work, so they are bound to criticise him. But in spite of the criticisms, there are certain things that one can point at as being the achievements of the government. So, I do not agree with you that so many people are disgruntled. And you will agree with me that the government has been in office for just two years. If, at the end of the third year nothing happens, then you can say that the government has failed. But as far as I am concerned, if you should allow me to enumerate the achievements, the government has achieved a lot.

Can you give us some of such examples that confirm the government had performed?
Well, let me argue that President Jonathan has introduced a new era of democracy in Nigerian politics, the era of unlimited tolerance which we have never witnessed before. You can insult him, you can say whatever you want to say and I think that is democracy and that is why we have not gotten so many people, especially members of your profession in detention. You can insult him and I think that is one of the principles of democracy- tolerance and from tolerance, it leads to the observance of the rule of law. Because if you are not tolerant, you will begin to arrest people on the streets because they insult Mr. President, then there will be no respect for the rule of law.

Second, most of the projects that the administration has embarked upon are still at the infancy stage and I will take them one after the other. You go to electricity supply. Just like the way former President Olusegun Obasanjo, succeeded in the communication industry, Jonathan is succeeding in the electricity supply industry. He is bent on privatising the electricity industry, so that in a year or two, although the improvement is being noticed now, we will discover that our electricity supply industry has gone completely private and it will become as efficient as any industry in the developed countries of the world.

Third, the physical infrastructure; you must have noticed the facelift at most of our airports. Go to Abuja, Lagos and other airports in the country. You will see that there is a great change. Fourth, the road construction that are going on is fantastic. For example, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway contract has been given out; move to the South-East, the road between Enugu and Port Harcourt is almost completed; then the East-West Road, from Port Harcourt to Warri is almost completed and then there are quite a number of other road contracts; the Minister for Works pointed them out the other time. So, these are few of the achievements of the administration that I can remember for now; but they are there for everybody to see.

You raised the issue of unlimited tolerance as one of the things President Jonathan has achieved. How do you compare that with the face- off between him and the Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi?
You will agree with me that the Presidency has denied over and over again that the President is not a party to the crisis in Rivers State. Some people say he is behind what is happening in Rivers but even then, he has tolerated enough because if he is not a tolerant person, Ameachi will not be doing what he is doing today. He will not have the audacity to confront the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria if President Jonathan is not the person that tolerates everything. If I were another president, Amaechi cannot go to the far that he has gone.

What would you say to fellow stakeholders from the North who are saying that it is the turn of the North to produce president in 2015?
My advice to them is that they should wait until President Jonathan completes his second term since, by divine providence, the zoning has automatically fallen on the South-South. God zoned the presidency to the South- South. It is as a result of the unfortunate death of Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua that Jonathan became the president. He contested again and won the presidency.

So, the North, whose definition I am not too sure includes the Middle Belt, should wait until the person whom God has given the presidency, completes his tenure and as soon as he completes his second term, one can now argue that the turn should now come to the North and that the North should include all the zones in the North, not only the North-West. We have other zones in the North, but some people are now arguing or defining the North as if it means only the North-West.

Are you now saying that Professor Ango Abdullahi, is speaking for the North?
I am not a member of the Arewa Consultative Forum or the Northern Elders Forum. Whether he is speaking for the members of the Arewa Consultative Forum or the Arewa Elders Forum is left for Ango Abdullahi. I don’t know anything that is happening in those organisations, but I can assure you that apart from the members of the Arewa Consultative Forum and the Northern Elder Forum, there are millions of other Northerners that believe in the administration of Jonathan. So when one person representing a few people being funded by governors and holding press conferences virtually every day is putting up his own ideas, you cannot say that the ideas are the thoughts of everybody within the North. So, I don’t know whether Abdullahi is speaking on behalf of the people he has been speaking for. I am not in the position to say that. I must agree that he is speaking for some people, but they are not the majority in that zone.

So, you don’t agree that the North is disenchanted?
But why should the North be disenchanted? We started the federation system in 1979 when President Shehu Shagari, was the president for four years. He was running his second term of office when the military took over from him. The head of the military that took over from him was from the North- General Muhammadu Buhari. Then, almost one year into the office another Northerner took over from him, that is General Ibrahim Babangida and he was in office for eight years. That is, about 10 years with Buhari’s tenure and then Sani Abacha came…

What of Chief Ernest Shonekan?
Shonekan was just an interim ‘something’ for a few months, but the person, who took over from us, was Abacha and he was in office for five years, and five plus 10 is 15 (years). Then Abacha died and the person, who came to office as president was (Gen) Abdulsalami Abubakar. He was in office for one year and nobody complained. Although that was a military system of government, nevertheless, the people that were the heads of the different administrations were all from the North. Then, there was no Boko Haram, nobody organised anything to destabilise the country. So, should the North be bitter now for the eight years President Jonathan is trying to do? The North should be patient enough; Nigerians were patient when these officials I mentioned to you were in office then. Why shouldn’t they (the North) be patient when other persons are in office for only just a term of four years now. Does that mean that the presidency belongs to them?

You mentioned that there was no Boko Haram. Are you saying it is part of the agitation for power shift?
You want to hear that from my mouth? Were you not in Nigeria when some people said they would make the country ungovernable for President Jonathan? Were you not in the country when some people uttered that if President Jonathan won the election, they would make the country ungovernable ? Are you saying that Boko Haram is not an off-shoot of the election that took place in 2011?

But the main argument in the North is that President Jonathan obstructed the zoning arrangement of PDP by contesting in 2011?
In 2010, when some people were trying to frighten Mr. President not to contest the 2011 election, my organisation, the Congress for Equality and Change, argued in favour of the zoning policy of the party (PDP) and that the presidency could go to any zone. You will agree with me that, apart from the clear definition of the word zoning that we have in the party between the South and North, we have six geo-political zones in this country.
And as far as I am concerned, once the presidency goes to any of these zones, it is zoning and it is in complete compliance with the zoning policy of the PDP as contained in the PDP constitution. It doesn’t have to necessarily be between the South and the North. So, the South-South is a geo-political zone and once the presidency goes there and the zone has not produced the president before, I think it is only fair and just we agree that it has complied with the zoning policy of PDP. Therefore, I still believe with the zoning policy of PDP and since I am a member of the PDP, I cannot disagree with the zoning policy. The only disagreement is that zoning must have a human face so that any zone that has not had it before should be allowed to produce the president.

What do you have to say about the emerging coalition, the All Progressives Congress (APC)?
If I go into the history of Nigerian politics, you will agree with me that the merger will not work. I was in detention with Bola Tinubu in 1994 when I reconvened the Senate in Lagos after Abacha had taken over and urged Abacha to hand over to Abiola. We were arrested and I was in detention with Tinubu in Alagbon close for 50 days. He knew what happened then and I still know what happened and I am surprised that Bola (Tinubu) can go into marriage with these people.

We were there in Alagbon when Abiola was arrested and there was hue and cry and the whole of Alagbon was full of people and we thought that Abiola was going to join us in detention when he declared himself the president. One hour later, people started wailing that Abiola was being taken to Abuja and that was what led to the end of his life and I don’t think that the Yoruba people have forgotten that incident to hobnob or have a marriage with the people who will likely treat them the same way again. I don’t know.”

Which people are you referring to?
You know them. You know the people that constituted the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) that is Buhari’s party. Buhari was the Chief Adviser to Abacha when He [Abacha] was the head of state. As the chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), Buhari (and others) were very hard on us. I am not saying that because of that they (the North) shouldn’t become president again, but I am warning Tinubu that what happened to us in 1994 could happen to him again, that he should be careful because he is my colleague.

Do you see Buhari as a leader of the North?
From the way the 2011 election votes were cast, I now agree that Buhari is a leader of his zone, that is, the North-West zone. He is in full control of his North-West zone politically.

What of your own area, North-Central?
No, no, he is not in control of the North-Central

You don’t see him championing the cause of your people?
Some of us in the North-Central are now saying we do not fall, within that definition of the North.

Your party, the PDP, has been jumping from one crisis to the other. Don’t you see the agitation of the G5 governors breaking up the party?
I read recently that they have made 10 demands and one of them was that the PDP national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur should be removed. Their demands go contrary to the law, the Nigerian Constitution, the Electoral Act and the party’s constitution. The national chairman was elected for four years under PDP and you cannot remove him. If you remove him, he can go to court before the end of four years and he will be restored, thereby embarrassing the Presidency. So, I cannot imagine the five governors calling on the president to remove the national chairman. The president does not have the power to remove Tukur. He can only be removed before the end of his fourth year in office if he is guilty of any gross misconduct and he can only be removed by the national convention of the party like the one that is coming up now. Anybody can raise a motion of vote of no confidence on the chairman and if it sails through, the chairman becomes automatically removed. But to say that the president should remove Tukur, who was elected for a four-year tenure according to the constitution of the party, is wrong. The constitution is enforceable in the court of law. Their call on the President beats my imagination. I believe they are just calling on the president to give him a bad name. What I am saying is that how can the president remove a chairman that was legally elected for a fixed period?

On the demand that they want to be the leaders of the party at the state level, they are already leaders at the level. They call the shots, but there is nowhere in the constitution of the party that the governor should be the leader of the party at the state level. It is the state chairman that should be the leader of the party at the level. They are calling for this leadership so that they can continue to commit the atrocities that they have been committing, dividing local government money into two, making sure that everybody that gets elected into the National Assembly and state assembly is their nominee. So, I think that the problem we have in this country is mostly being caused by the governors ganging up together to reduce the powers of the President. That is their intention.

Do you see President Jonathan winning the next general election?
If he has done well, and the party nominates him, I see no reason why the majority of Nigerians shouldn’t vote for him because of the crisis that the governors are bringing up. If he does well, the crisis within the party does not matter.

How do you then see some persons who are calling for war if their candidate fails to win the election in 2015?
Those are not serious talks. How can there be war? Once the ballot papers are counted and any person that wins automatically becomes the President of the country, nothing will happen. We have the police; we have the military to maintain our democracy, to maintain the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and anybody who makes that sort of statement I do not take him as a serious person.


http://www.tribune.com.ng/news2013/index.php/en/component/k2/item/19417-ango-abdullahi-does-not-speak-for-the-north-ex-senate-president.html?fb_action_ids=389287087897021&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B234912526657686%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.likes%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

Let him who has ears hear.

Written by Taiwo Adisa
Monday, 19 August 2013 00:00

We don hear your old and stale story. oya vamoose

loopman:


We don hear your old and stale story. oya vamoose

The op na even thief sef. Trying to deceive ignorant nairalanders. The man is from thesame constituency as David Mark and the op wants to make it look as though he's from Buhari's backyard and their houses share a common fence (even though there are northerners who oppose APC)!!

Ameh Ebute "from the north" indeed.
See yeye desperation.

omenka:
The op na even thief sef. Trying to deceive ignorant nairalanders. The man is from thesame constituency as David Mark and the op want to make it look as though he's from Buhari's backyard and their houses share a common fence (even though there are northerners who oppose APC)!!

Ameh Ebute "from the north" indeed.
See yeye desperation.

All these saTANoids are devoid of any shred of intelligence.

Lmaoooo. Op busted. Shame, i mean big shame.

omenka:
The op na even thief sef. Trying to deceive ignorant nairalanders. The man is from thesame constituency as David Mark and the op wants to make it look as though he's from Buhari's backyard and their houses share a common fence (even though there are northerners who oppose APC)!!

Ameh Ebute "from the north" indeed.
See yeye desperation.

So Benue is no longer North? It is now in Igboland. See how you APC urchins pick and choose? I dey laff oh!!!