Each time he speaks, he sounds sufficiently commanding, his insight into post-colonial Nigeria ever so refreshing, although sometime provocative to some. Elder statesman and passionate Northerner, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, is not new to political debates, and often has very strong views. His position on the raging and controversial issue of zoning of the presidential slot in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is characteristically not any different, as he has consistently argued that power should be returned to the North regardless of the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua. He speaks on this and other issues. Excerpts…

Suddenly, it appears another group is outshining yours in the struggle for the retention of power in the North in 2011
The proper name of our group is Northern Elders Assembly. We are elders. Although we have younger people among us, our chairman is the oldest politician in the North today; that is Alhaji Inuwa Wada, a former Minister of Defence and a former Acting Prime Minister. Virtually, every important politician in northern Nigeria is younger than him; I think in the whole country. There is only one person who is his colleague - that is Dr Majekodunmi, who once served as Administrator of Western Nigeria. He (Wada) is our chairman and the vice chairman is Alhaji Bello Kirfi.

So, we are called Northern Elders Assembly. The new group you are referring to is the Northern Political Leaders Forum. You see the difference; we are elders, they are leaders. Their own is forum, ours is assembly. So, our opinion is that the more the merrier.
Our initiation of this campaign is intended to sanitize the polity and highlight the moral aspect of the zoning arrangement at this point in time, because it is the height of dishonesty for anybody to use the power of incumbency to promote his interest at the expense of other people’s interest, whether we talk of the President himself or his ethnic group. We think it is wrong and it is inappropriate.

The Peoples Democratic Party decided to adopt the zoning system from its inception. It is in the constitution of the party. Article 7 Section 2(c) of the party’s constitution provides for zoning and rotation. That section also decided that the executive committees at all levels must implement zoning and rotation. It is on the basis of this that the position of Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, the National Chairman of the party, National Secretary and all the principal officers in the National Assembly are divided.
Chief Tony Anenih claimed that after 1999, the late Abubakar Rimi and some other politicians from the North breached the zoning principle in PDP. What is your response to this?

Well, the question you should ask is, did they contest in any of the elections he cited in his claim?
But they bought forms to contest
They can buy form, but did anybody vote for them? That is the question. If you buy form and you signify your intention to run for an election by buying forms, it is only an indication of your interest. But when you present yourself and the people voted for you, then you have contested the election, otherwise you are not a candidate.
In fact, you journalists make a distinction between a candidate and an aspirant.

My good friend Tony Anineh was a police officer and rose from the scratch to the rank of, I think, deputy or an assistant commissioner. And throughout this time, I am sure he cannot count the number of traffic offenders he arrested in his capacity as police officer and had charged to court for breaking traffic regulations. Traffic regulations are still being broken till today but have the rules been abandoned or stopped? The mere fact that somebody has violated or committed an offence does not invalidate the law that made it an offence.

The second argument is that as far back as 2006, the current constitution of the PDP retained the same provision of zoning and rotation. So, Anenih could have moved a motion for the amendment of the constitution to remove the provision that adopted zoning and rotation in the party because of his complaints that some party members, in 2003, three years earlier, had violated or offended the party by expressing interest in the race.

The last point I want to make is that there is record of a resolution by the national caucus of the PDP in 2002, whereby a resolution was adopted. Ghali Na’Abba, then Speaker of the House (of Representatives), moved a motion, which was seconded by a member from Kano, and then opposed by Lawal Kaita and seconded by somebody else. There was a heated debate, which lasted for hours. At the end of the debate, Audu Ogbeh, the then national chairman (of the party) put the question to vote.

Forty-seven members present voted in favour of Kaita’s motion that zoning should be retained while two persons, the mover of the motion and the person who seconded it, voted in favour of the motion to abandon zoning. Two other persons abstained. Till today, even the caucus that passed that resolution has not changed its position. That resolution is still in force in the PDP. And if you go through its constitution, caucus is one of the recognized bodies in the PDP.

But why did the elders and the politicians speaking in favor of zoning now fail to speak out with the same passion when it was technically being breached by the late Rimi and others?
People like me - I am not a member of the PDP - and other Northerners persuaded Rimi and (Barnabas) Gemade to give up the race in the spirit of zoning.

On the day of the PDP convention in 2002, Rimi campaigned up to Jos, you remember?
It doesn’t matter. Rimi and Gemade were not voted for. So, it cannot be counted as violation. Nobody voted for them in the end and northerners were responsible for dissuading them to drop their interest.
The PDP National Chairman, Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo, recently spoke against zoning on the same note of an existing breach…

The new PDP chairman has been away from the party for so long such that he has totally forgotten some of the events that happened in the party or he is totally ignorant about them. The three consecutive amended constitutions of the party, including the current one, contains Article 7 and 2c, which state clearly that the party shall maintain zoning and rotation formula in pursuance of the principle of equity and fairness; that the party shall adhere to the policy of rotation and zoning of party and public elective offices and it shall be enforced by the appropriate executive committee at all levels. He (Nwodo) is a product of zoning. Otherwise why did the party limit the replacement of the former chairman to the South East?

The President and the Vice President as well as the Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives and all the principal officers of the National Assembly were elected on the basis of the zoning policy of the party. Ditto all the national officers of the party. Rotation and zoning in the PDP cannot be dropped until the party amends its constitution at the national convention. Nobody else can drop it.

Former Vice President Alex Ekwueme recently said zoning should be a one-tenure five-year rule for each zone. Do you share his views?
Dr Ekwueme was speaking the mind of all the delegates that went to the 1994/1995 Constitutional Conference. We recommended a single tenure. We recommended that zoning should rotate among the six geo-political zones for once. And Sani Abacha accepted our recommendation and he went on to add an additional Vice President for the zone that is producing the President. So that in case of death or anything that makes it impossible for the President to continue, the Vice President from his zone will take over. It was when General Abdulsalam (Abubakar) took over as Head of State that he abrogated that Constitution and jettisoned zoning and rotation, which brought us to this unfortunate situation. So, everybody who attended that conference shares Ekwueme’s view.

It is the PDP which now came back to say zoning should be for two terms. And I think they did that because they taught four years was not enough for somebody to make impact, and I agree with them. So, it was that shortness in period of tenure that probably made them to adopt the option of two terms instead of one. But zoning of five years for just one term is a good proposition. The only thing is that there is no amendment presently in the National Assembly to change the tenure from four to five years and I doubt if it is possible to go back to the National Assembly to change the situation. But Dr Ekwueme probably knows how it will be implemented now. The point is that a Southerner, (Olusegun) Obasanjo, has benefited from rotation for eight years on the premise and commitment that it will go to the North for eight years.

Do you mean that the zoning recommended by the late General Abacha, which was partly adopted by the PDP, would have been a better way to address the distribution of leadership in Nigeria?
Honestly, because there was unanimity at the constitutional conference on that. We were unanimous that zoning should be rotational – and this is the reason we had the six geopolitical zones. So that the Igbo will have it; the Yoruba will have it, the Southern minorities will have it and then we come to the North: North West, North Central and North East. We have no problem like the South.

How would you react to claims by a section of the North that you people do not speak for the whole region?
You see, we are in a democracy where the minority will have their say but the majority will have their way. So, let them talk; it is a democracy. Fundamental human right is in our Constitution for everybody to express whatever opinion he has. So, it is their business. But whether they like or not, they are minorities. Once you are created a minority, you will remain a minority forever and forever, and you are entitled to your expression.

But these so-called minorities are scattered in different smaller units and if they pull themselves together they become a voice. Don’t you feel threatened that the North no longer talks the way it used to talk?
Let me tell you the truth. In this group, there are minorities who are with us. Simon Shango from Benue State attended our last meeting. In the meeting of the Northern Political Forum, Iyorchia Ayu, a Tiv - I don’t always like the word minority - from Benue attended the meeting. So they too cannot speak with one voice. It is natural.
Another elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clark, has severally challenged the North to stop President Goodluck Jonathan if it can. What is your take on such comments coming from the South?

Edwin Clark has been my friend for 42 years. So I know him very well. That is his nature. Even at his Ijaw National Congress meeting, that is the way Clark speaks. You cannot change him overnight. He just celebrated 83 years and the way he speaks is exactly the way he spoke the first time I met him sometime in 1967. But in the South South, we have the Isoko, the Ibibio, Ijaw, Annang and other ethnic groups. Some leaders from these areas do not speak the way Clark speaks. So, this is his nature.

But Clark is only responding with the same passion some Northern leaders are speaking on this subject?
The line of argument is different. Our line of argument is based on patriotism; it is not based on ethnicity. Our argument is based on principle. A political party adopted a policy and put it as part of its election manifesto. A political party that goes to an election with a manifesto and programme is duty bound to implement that programme. PDP won election in 1999 with the zoning and rotation as part of its election manifesto. And for that reason, Northerners supported it as other Nigerians.

Now, the zoning has come to the North and after it has run its course for three years, calamity happened. The President died and the Vice President from the South took over. Naturally it is a constitutional issue and there is no problem there. But to scuttle the rotation arrangement midway is like changing the rule of the game midway, like the English people say. This is the issue. They are arguing on the basis of ethnicity and threat, but we are arguing on the basis of principle. Anybody issuing a threat has no point. If you can convince people, you will not issue threat. People who run out of ideas are the once who make use of threats. I don’t listen to them.

What makes Clark’s argument a threat and that of Northern leaders a matter of principle?
I will tell you the difference. Clark is the prominent leader of the Ijaw people. I am not a Hausa leader; I am not a Fulani leader. I am a Northern leader. There is a big difference. That is why we have Arewa Consultative Forum and other related organizations. But our own is the Northern Elders Assembly. The issue here is community. We always think in terms of the community. The same applies for the Northern Political Forum. In the South, they have the Ijaw National Congress, Ohanaeze Ndigbo and Afenifere.

They go on the basis of ethnicity. The reason is because in the South, they had no contact with one another before and 100 years is not enough to inculcate this culture of oneness among them. It will take time. We would wait for them. If we were lucky to have one pan-Southern organization, it would have made the unity of the country much easier. Because all you need to do to amalgamate the two groups, take the northern groups together, take the southern groups together and form a national understanding.

It appears the core protagonist, the ACF, is reaching out to the South East to help retain the principle of zoning. What progress has been made?
Well, there is no deliberate effort to talk to the East alone. There are efforts to talk to the South. But if there is any group of people here in the North and in the East who are thinking of talking to one another, that is no problem. In 1959, in spite of the antagonism that existed between the NPC (Northern Peoples Congress) and NCNC (National Council of Nigerian Citizens), which were seen as parties representing the North and East in the contemporary situation then, they still came together to form a coalition government that got the independence of Nigeria from the British.

So, it is not the first time that the people of the East will relate with the people of the North. The irony of it is that there was no formal contact between the Northerners and the Easterners before the British came while there was contact between Northerners and the Westerners long before the British came. The irony of it is that in spite of the similarity of culture and tradition between the North and West, the North and the East relate more with one another than the North and the West.
Regardless of this supposed relationship, it was said that at the last hour the North betrayed the South East in 1999 when the former dumped Ekwueme when he was almost emerging as the PDP presidential candidate
No, no, that is not true.

So what happened to Ekwueme, the supposed choice of the defunct National Party of Nigeria faction?
(Cuts in) No, that is not true. Dr Ekwueme was dumped by the combined strength of anti-Ekwueme elements from the North and the anti-Igbo elements from the South, particularly from the South South.
But the NPN, of which you were a member, fielded Ekwueme in 1999. So, what exactly happened?
I’m not a PDP member. The old NPN, if you want to be fair, did not join PDP as a group. It split. A majority of the old NPN were outside the PDP. That is why the APP (All Peoples Party) won nine states out of 19 in the North. So, if you look carefully, you will find that the nine states were areas the NPN was more dominant.
Still on the Ekwueme matter, you are aware of the opposition from mostly retired northern Generals that it was ill-advised to give power so soon after the civil war to an Igbo man. The argument was said to have been canvassed at a meting which took place in one of the core northern states

You are falling into the same trap like Clark. You see, Clark regards Goodluck Jonathan as the representative of the Ijaw people and the South South. But the South South and Ijaw people is one thing and Jonathan is an individual. Ekwueme is also an individual while the Igbo are a group of people. Today, the Igbo man in Maiduguri, Sokoto, Bida, Jos, Yola is free. His previous property were kept for him. He came back and took over them. He is more accommodated in the North than he is in Port Harcourt or Calabar, Yenagoa or Warri where there are Igbo that are also indigenous to the state.

So, this is human nature as you can quarrel with your wife or your brothers. When you quarrel, ultimately you have to reconcile. When you reconcile, if everybody forgets the past, then you forget the past. If a few Generals sat down to talk like that, these are narrow-minded people. You cannot deny the fact that in every society you have narrow-minded people, and you have to allow them to exist.
What is your reaction to the fact that at present some northern governors are rooting for Jonathan? For instance, the Bauchi State governor was reported to have said that whoever challenges him is challenging God
I talked to the governor of Bauchi and I asked him: “If Jonathan comes out tomorrow and Ibrahim Babangida declares that he is going to contest, so he (Babangida) is contesting against God?”

He replied that he was misunderstood and explained that it was God that made it possible for Jonathan to become President at this time. He was not talking of what will happen in the future, which he does not know. If God had not taken Yar’Adua away, Jonathan will never have been the President. Nobody is fighting Jonathan today as President of this country. I have never spoken against him as President when he succeeded the late Yar’Adua. I only spoke against him when the National Assembly passed a resolution to empower him to be the Acting President, which is in contravention of the Constitution of the country. But nobody; I too share the view that it was God’s intervention that brought about the emergence of Jonathan as substantive President, and we should not quarrel with that.

The President has earned the admiration of some Northerners as result of some of his pro-North policies like his refusal to sack the service chiefs, which would have affected Northerners in the military, his appointment of Prof Jega to head INEC and his seemingly good relationship with the Yar’Adua family. How will you rate his performance so far?
There are two sides to every coin. Jonathan himself said he was asked, maybe by Clark and company, to sack the service chiefs. But he said that he refused to do that in the interest of national security. That is his own word. On the appointment of Jega, you have your own view and other people will have theirs too. There are people who think it is an attempt to precipitate the outcome of the next election. That is, put a Northerner there, then Jonathan will manoeuvre and eventually when emerges as the president, they will say after all the election was presided over by a respected Northerner. There are people who believe in this. So, there are two sides in any story.
Also, when he appointed the son of the elder brother of the late President as a minister, there were people and there are people who believe that he did that to break the ranks of the family of late President. But it is only God who knows his intention.

But he also did not interfere, even when he had the power to know the state of late President
He had no power. He had no such powers.
Even as the Commander-in-Chief he cannot get to ascertain the state of health of his boss?
He had no power under the Constitution. Walahi, if he had the power, he would have used it.
Do you still hold the view that he has been unfriendly to the late President’s family?

No. I didn’t say he was unfriendly. I never said that. I said that he manoeuvred people to give the impression that the country was grounded to the halt, because he was not performing the function. But he performed the most critical functions of the President like deploying the military, and they obeyed him. But he did not come out for once to say he was discharging the functions of the President. Which is more delicate, which is weightier between swearing in Permanent Secretaries and deploying military to perform combat duties? But he refused to swear in Permanent Secretaries on the excuse that he had no power to do so. But he deployed the military to Plateau. He received letters of credence of foreign envoys.

He went to perform the laying of wreath during the Armed Forces Remembrance Day. So, he selected what to do and what not to do. When the governors were itching for the Petroleum Excess Fund, he held on and pushed them to go and ask the Senate President and the Speaker of the House to confer power on him. He held them to ransom. So, they went, the whole 36 of them went. Later on, they said that they did that to save the nation. Why did they not go to him to plead with him to do the normal duties he was doing, even before the President left?
Some people see Jonathan as a schemer. Do you agree with this view?

The newspapers said he had never won an election. The newspapers said he had always schemed his way to the top. He was said to be vice chairman of the students union and manoeuvred to become the chairman. When he was deputy governor of Bayelsa, he collaborated or schemed with Obasanjo to remove the governor for him to take over. He became the Vice President to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Eventually Yar’Adua died and he took over. So he is an unintended opportunist.

In all this, where do we place Obasanjo, the former President you people love so much?
Obasanjo? (Laughs) Obasanjo is a schemer of the first order. He is vindictive. He is pugnacious. He is unforgiving and a sadist.
But he was your friend when he was in power?
In politics, there are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent interest.


http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2010/july/25/national-25-07-2010-002.htm

Let me print out and read. . . .brb