Thursday, November 4, 2010

Yar’Adua’s death has not killed zoning, says Ciroma

THIS IS TRULY NIGERIAN..GOOD PEOPLE, GREAT NATION

A former Finance Minister and co-convener of the Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF) Mallam Adamu Ciroma has been in the news since the zoning controversy broke. In this interview with reporters in Abuja he spoke on the progress the committee has made in getting a consensus candidate for the North ahead of the 2011 presidential election and how the leaders of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are responsible for the current tension in the country. Sanni Ologun was there:

There are media reports that your committee had met a brick wall in its search for a consensus candidate. What is the situation now?
The truth is that we who are involved in this process have not seen any brick wall. Everything is going according to plan and I believe that in the end of our exercise we will produce a consensus candidate that will be acceptable to the aspirants and to Nigerians.

A Northern group led by Chief Solomon Lar is rooting for President Goodluck Jonathan to continue in office in 2011. Are you worried by their activities?
You know there are people in the North who are in support of President Goodluck Jonathan. But you know that there are people in the South who also do not support President Jonathan. There is nothing abnormal about it. It is an indication of how integrated Nigeria has become. So, we have no fears about the people in the Northcentral geo-political zone who don’t believe in the North.

It is not like that. In the Northcentral, there are people who support Jonathan and in the Northcentral there are people who don’t. So when you talk as if there are water-tight groups in any part of the country that are solid and indivisible you are saying something which is not true. For you to attract Nigerians from everywhere you have to convince them about the veracity of your case and I have no fear about convincing people about the veracity of our case.

So far we have four Northerners being considered for this consensus ticket, is there any assurance that they will respect the consensus agreement?
We have a document signed by all the four agreeing that one of them should emerge and they set up a committee to select one of them. That is the job we are doing.

Is the search for a consensus candidate limited to the quartet of Babangida, Abubakar, Gusau and Saraki. Is your committee not considering other aspirants who are also from the North?
There are four presidential aspirants in PDP and they are the ones we are considering. In this business of aspiration you can not bring in somebody who has not declared himself a presidential aspirant. There is a lot of work involved in this declaration. It costs you a lot of money and there is a lot of leg work to do. There are a lot of resources to spend. So, it’s only somebody who declares and knows the consequences of his action that you can consider. That is why we have to limit ourselves to them. If you bring in anybody else, he may not be able to cope with the demands of candidacy. We have to deal with people who are not afraid.

Many have asked which takes precedence zoning or the Constitution of the country. What is your group’s position on this ?
Zoning is a party policy. The party in several instances sat down and said it is in the interest of the party to have zoning and it was used in 1999, it succeeded. It was used in 2003, it succeeded. It was used in 2007, it succeeded. The PDP has a record of knowing that zoning and rotation work. It’s not against the constitution of Nigeria. If it was against the constitution, somebody would have taken the party and everybody to court for acting against the constitution. So, zoning and rotation are part of the party’s policy.

The constitution of Nigeria allows a person to contest for any election, provided he has a party. The PDP says these are the conditions for the party to produce a candidate. And people say two things which are rubbish: One is to say allow somebody who is competent to do it. You only allow people who declare to do it. Two, the competent are available every where. That is why you can justify zoning and rotation every where. Every part of this country, you can find somebody who is capable of running this country.

So, zoning and rotation and competence are not exclusive of each other. They can go together. And we hope it will go together as far as the North is concerned. Our basic problem is that the party has zoning and rotation as its policy. All the people involved in this political situation they know it. But today they want to go against this zoning that we have all along implemented.

The party chairman is a product of zoning and rotation. The president is as a result of zoning and rotation. So, we are just surprised when we hear them saying that there is no zoning and rotation. We are no just a few Northerners, we are defenders of truth, fairness and justice, and we are never afraid of being…

President Jonathan said the other day that PDP has never zoned offices.
I am one of the people who started PDP and I have been in PDP all the time and I have been in PDP before President Jonathan became a member of PDP. So, I know about PDP more than him.

If the party leadership insist that there is no zoning, what would be the position of the North?
If they pretend that there is no zoning then they may pay a price of pretending. The cost of setting aside zoning will be shown by the results of the election.

So, when are we getting the consensus candidate?
Well we are right now working on it because we finished going around. We came back on Sunday night. This week I want to start meeting to consider the report which we are putting together for the members of the committee. We will begin to discuss this week.

Is it true that you have ruled out North Central producing the consensus candidate from your committee?
We have not ruled out anybody. We are just dealing with people who have declared.
IBB and Saraki from North Central?
IBB and Saraki they are from North Central they are being considered.

What is the position of the Northern Political Leaders Forum on the current political situation ahead of the 2011 general elections?
The position is that we are promoting zoning and rotation. We want the implementation of zoning and rotation and the second is that the candidates who have declared, they have also agreed we produce one of them as consensus candidate and they have put in writing and so we decided to go round all the north. We have been all round asking for views and advice of traditional rulers, political stakeholders, consulting to find out what their views are and to inform them about what we are doing because if you are going to act on behalf f people we have to inform them.

Some people have argued that it would be unfair to deny the Southsouth that has never produced the president this opportunity. How would react to this?
The Southsouth may not have produced the President but this argument does not affect the issue before us. The issue before us in PDP is that there is a zoning and rotation policy and that policy is actually being implemented.

It was implemented to elect President Obasanjo twice. When he tried to get prolongation of his regime we all refused in order to maintain the zoning and rotation policy and he too had to obey zoning and rotation by bringing a candidate from Katsina. He is from the North so we agreed. The time allocated to the North, eight years which is equivalent to the time allocated to the South for which Obasanjo served eight years. Yar’Adua died unfortunately. This death has not killed the policy of zoning and rotation.

We helped so that this president would be sworn in so that he would become the president for the constitutional period until the next election. If in the next election Dr Jonathan is chosen as the president of this country, it would mean in fact that the South would have eight years of Obasanjo and the four more years that was allocated to the North. This is the thing we are pointing out that this period is still part of the period for the Northern presidency. What we are actually pressing are two things. One is that when people reach an agreement, they should carry it out. If they don’t carry it out, trust will go out of the window. Now if we don’t ensure trust it means the North would have been cheated in this agreement.

Instead of doing eight years, it is allowed to do four and the South would do 12 for the four which Yar’Adua did. So for this reason we are saying that Nigerians must respect agreements which they reached and which they are executing. You cannot change the rules in the middle of the game. We are not arguing for zoning and rotation just because we are narrow minded Northerners.

Everybody knows that this time we stand on the truth and fairness and justice. Actually this zoning agreement was in order to ensure that minorities and other people will be in a position to produce a Nigerian president. Now it is being used against the North so that the North will be the loser in the process which it and supported to ensure that people who are minorities would be able to produce a president.

Don’t you think all these problems were caused by the PDP of which you are a leader?
Yes, I agree with you that the people who did that are the people who caused this confusion. Otherwise, they should have come out and said ‘we have zoning and rotation policy and that in this party we still respect zoning and rotation, therefore this job is still in the North. You may be interested to know that Samuel Ogbemudia told the meeting of the expanded caucus of the PDP, he told them that this thing is in the North. That they cannot say that zoning and rotation are dead. It is still in the constitution of the PDP, if you don’t want it, you have to erase it from there and if you have to erase it you have to discuss.

And actually at a meeting of the national caucus of the party, I told them that if people don’t like zoning and rotation, they should call us to a meeting to discuss so they can tell us their reasons and if they convince us then we may agree for zoning and rotation to be set aside. But we must know that every decision we take has consequences and so you are right. The leaders of the PDP caused confusion and that is why we are drawing attention to this confusion.

You have just said that there would be consequences if PDP should dump zoning and rotation, what are the likely consequences?
Well it would shake the foundation of the PDP that is based on agreement. If I reach an agreement with you and you depart from it unilaterally, how can I trust you again? So, the issue of basing a political party between individuals on the assumption that we agreed to do something, that assumption will not be there. So there will be no party.

Part of the argument of the other side is that it is between North and South, they did not say that it is two terms. Why are you insisting on two terms?
It is two terms because in 2002, when President Obasanjo wanted a second term, he called a meeting of the expanded caucus of the PDP. About 84 people attended. All except two people agreed. And those people agreed that President Obasanjo should get a second term and that the zoning and the rotation should be based on two terms. So there is no doubt about this. They are on paper. And it was then under the leadership of President Obasanjo. And this President was in attendance representing his governor. He was in attendance in that meeting which agreed to zoning and to rotation.

Now you are trying to get a consensus candidate from the four presidential aspirants of the PDP from the North, If the PDP continues on the path it seems to be going, is the North likely going to turn to another political party?
When the PDP calls its party primaries, it will show whether the majority in the party respects fairness and justice or it can turn around any day and just to do what it pleases. If the majority cannot respect the truth, fairness and justice, then many people will decide whether it is worth their while to continue in that party. But this decision will not be taken until we reach the bridge.

We have been on this issue of selecting a consensus candidate and the elections are drawing very close and the Northern leaders are yet to come up with that consensus candidate. A lot of people are wondering why the delay?
I have just told you that we have been going round the North. We have been to every state except two, Niger and Nasarawa, to seek their advice on how to produce a consensus candidate. And we have now got a report of what the people’s view are all over the North. Now the committee will sit down to consider the report as one of the input into the process of choosing a consensus candidate.

We have not been hurrying because we don’ t want to cut corners and we think it is better to do it thoroughly than to do it quickly. We are aware of the time constraints because it affects the aspirants too .

The aspirants now cannot stop campaigning, because they don’t know who among them is going to be the consensus candidate. So, If they pretend that there is no zoning then they may pay a price for pretending. The cost of setting aside zoning will be shown by the results of the election. So we ourselves want to do it as quickly as possible, but still we have to follow a process that will be acceptable to them and to anybody who examines what we are doing.

Very recently, you issued a one week ultimatum, to Dr Jonathan to resign or you would start impeachment process. Nothing of sort is happening. What is the situation?
Since then we have been in this work of going round to consult our people in the North. We have regarded this assignment as being more important than the issue of impeachment. So in fact we didn’t have time to do that.

The alleged state intimidation of members of the opposition. The last time it was the Chairman of DAAR Communications Plc; I don’t know whose turn it would be next. Are you people not perturbed?
The situation of intimidation is for Nigerians to see and take note and the truth is that many people are beginning to doubt if there is going to be a fair and truthful election. But myself personally, I believe that there is going to be fair and respectable elections as long as INEC is allowed to do its job.

So far I have no evidence to show that INEC is being stopped from doing its job and a lot of Nigerians have expressed confidence in INEC and I hope and believe that this confidence will be justified.

Even so there may still be acts of intimidation, like the arrest of Dokpesi, like what happened in the Southeast when distinguished people wanted to meet and they were scattered and refused a place of meeting. We ourselves have been denied places to meet from time to time and you know yourself that they were telling MEND to withdraw their sponsorship of the bombing so that a crime will be put at our door. All this are matters of intimidation but I can assure you that we don’t feel intimidated and no body can intimidate us.

Has anybody stopped your meetings or deny you venues and how many times?
I can’t remember sometime in Kaduna when they denied us a place to meet and for some time now the security people, who didn’t know about us before , now come and say “oh I am so and so I have just come to see you or something like that.” They have been doing that.
They come to your house?
Yes. This is all in itself some forms of intimidation but we be intimidated.

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