Mallam Shehu Musa Gabam, the National Secretary of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, one the political parties that formed the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, ahead of the 2019 general elections speaks with JACOB SEGUN OLATUNJI, on series of national issues.
What is the position of your party on the demand by the Progressives Party (APC) that Senator Bukola Saraki should vacate his seat as the President of the Senate having defected to the People Democratic Party (PDP)?
In fact, it is the political party that owns the seat not the individual because the platform that brought them there, they didn’t bring themselves there, but because of the lawlessness of the system and because of lack of courage by political parties themselves to become firm. You know this have been a subject of controversy and that is why some of us have advised strongly for parties to go to court and clear these issues once and for all otherwise it will continue to persist, people would be undermining the political parties that they used to get that positions and perhaps undermine the government. For me, I believe there is a need for court to make a clear pronouncement on this, even though I understand that there is Supreme Court judgment before related to this that the individual doesn’t own the seat, it is the party that owns the seat so they have the right to reclaim their seat, once an individual left their platform to another platform then the party have the moral right to claim the seat back. There was a Supreme Court judgment to that effect.
Now, you were talking about the gale of defections here and there. I have a different perception to that. As a Nigerian who is witnessing what is going on around the country, what we have expected the National Assembly to do is first, to even think of shutting down the National Assembly because millions of Nigerians are being killed, being kidnapped, being murdered, and being maimed on a daily basis, there is no sign of remorse or concern from the National Assembly; there was none that I have seen unless potable Nigerians is killed, they will invite the Service Chiefs, the Inspector General of Police and what have you to come and brief the National Assembly on what is going on. If you are travelling from Abuja here to Kaduna; just about one and a half hours, you are under tremendous internal pressure, your family, and virtually everybody; because you cannot predict what will happen. You either get killed or get kidnapped. Abuja-Kaduna road is one of the highly policed hold in Nigeria, yet nobody is safe. If you go to most of our states, people are being killed on a daily basis; there is loss of lives and properties on a daily basis. The lawlessness is extremely very high. There is the need for the National Assembly to live up to expectations, up to their responsibility. If we look at the pattern of defection, it is an individual interest and not national interest. Virtually all of them who defected conspired to retain their positions or seats in the National Assembly, not the national interest that is ravaging the country, not about the insecurity that is going on, not about the economic problem, not about the suffering of the Nigerian people. This is absent in their thinking, in their calculation. So their defection is primarily about individual and collective interest of their groups, which is not in our own national interest. Two, you find out that the reaction from both the APC and the PDP also is not about national interest. It is about party interest. If a security agency will deploy its personnel, you know how to block the entire National Assembly, what stops them from deploying them to crisis ridden areas to fish out the kidnappers, crime and criminality that are going on? Why are they deploying them into soft areas, that they know nobody is going to carry arms to confront them? Now, this is a great disservice dehumanising our own citizens by ourselves. If the way and the manner our security agencies are dehumanizing Nigerians, what will Nigerian government do when fellow Nigerians are being dehumanised, manhandled in other countries? Will you have the moral right to talk about other countries dehumanise your citizens? We have to allow the sense of nationalism, the sense of togetherness and the prosperity, the unity of the country to prevail above any other political consideration. He has sworn an oath to protect all Nigerians and not APC members; all Nigerians. So for me the defection in the National Assembly is not the reflection of national interest, it is the reflection of sectional and individual interest.
Having said that, what about your coalition with other political parties?
Coalition is a coalition. The coalition has not been defined yet, what the CUPP is trying to do is to define the functionality of the coalition along different segment, the blueprint, the contact and mobilisation committees and others to sort out things but it hasn’t been developed yet it is about having a discussion, how do we do and how do we go about it. It might work and it might not work because what we seeing now, a particular political party wants to dominate the coalition it doesn’t want other parties to have a say and equal participation like a level playing field in the coalition so far certain individuals have taken all the positions they want the leadership of all the positions. I hope and pray that it would not lead to other things because no party will sit down and be made a rubber stamp no party will do that, so there is a need to refocus on the essence of that MOU that was signed, the importance of assembling people to rescue this country anything short of that or any attempt to dominate that coalition by a particular political party who believes that everybody must serve under them, is not going to work.
Are you saying that the coalition is under threat now?
No, I am only telling you what we are seeing, what other parties are seeing, the dominance of a particular political party that they must determine what happens and we are not puppets, we are not slaves to anybody, we are independent and have constitution as a party which cannot be compromised, an inch of the SDP has not been compromised and we cannot be compromised. It is a thing of collective interest and if the thing is being violated, everybody have the right to go to their original political parties.
The Osun election is approaching, how prepared is the SDP?
Well, we are preparing more and more and more as the election is getting closer. Number two, the candidate of the SDP, Senator Iyiola Omisore, is not a push over, he is one of the major forces and stakeholder in Osun State, but that is not enough we need to do more given the fact that what we saw in Ekiti election, in Bauchi, in Katsina, Kogi and Cross River states, it means that credibility cannot bring you into office, what it means is that by hook or by crook you should look for money to complement your credibility otherwise those who have no credibility and have money will defeat you that is the lesson we have leant from Ekiti, that is the lesson we have learnt from the primaries in Osun State, the by-election in Bauchi and Kogi infact that of Kogi there were killings and also we saw in Cross River, in Bauchi and Katisna states, in fact the videos of Bauchi and Katsina are everywhere on the social media, where people were distributing money, this is a national embarrassment. As a young person, I felt very sad that the country is going through this and the international community is watching with keen interest, European Union and other Western countries are watching with keen interest because they have invested so much on democracy in Nigeria and I will appeal to them to do all what they could humanly possible to save the democracy in Nigeria which is in danger, we are under siege by moneybags, by people who believe that money will give you an election and not credibility nor morality. We have seen that corruption is prevailing over before, we have seen people excelling if they have questions, they cross over to the APC, they are being protected by the government that came under the guide of change, transparency, under the guise of fighting corruption. We need the international community to refocus their eyes, their thought, and their participation in ensuring that democracy is protected in Nigeria. So far, I have not seen the hope, I have seen that the system has been compromised; you can see Independent National Electoral Comission (INEC) is crying that the funding of the election is being consumed by the crisis in the National Assembly and the Executive of course, the economy must suffer for it, the electorate must suffer for it, the masses must suffer for it because of a fight of two giants, the fight of the two arms of government simply means the consequences of this is that we will pay for it and we will surely pay for it.
The post NASS needs to live up to expectations —Gabam appeared first on Tribune.
Source Tribune
We appreciate you for reading our post, but we think it will be better you like our facebook fanpage and also follow us on twitter below.