Senator Mahmud Kanti Bello represented Katsina North Senatorial Zone from 2003 to 2011. Known for his bluntness, he had caused a stir in the senate during the ministerial screening when he accused former Information Minister Dora Akunyili of cooking for ex-First Lady Hajia Turai Yar’Adua. Recently, he had sensationally debunked the claims of the Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu of a purported pact President Goodluck Jonathan signed with the governors of the PDP over 2015 presidency.
In this interview with Assistant Editor, LINUS OBOGO, Kanti Bello spoke on what he described as Jonathan’s leadership ineptitude, why Nigerians should rally round the emerging All Progressive Congress to get the country out of the woods.
Excerpts:
You left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). What informed your movement at this time, especially when your political acumen would have been most needed by the party?
I came to realise the situation in which Nigeria has found herself and which is that there is no focus in the management of the affairs of the country. As a politician, I play my politics based on principles. From the perspective of the part of the country where I come from, I had gotten tired of having to look at the papers everyday and all I find is that this much has been stolen and that much has been looted from the national treasury and no action is being taken to put a stop to it by the leadership provided by the PDP.
I have also discovered that corruption at the national level is on the highest scale under the PDP. As a patriotic Nigerian, I feel I must not allow myself or the name of my family to be associated with this kind of mess. That was my first consideration. Secondly, I earnestly want to contribute my quota to the development of my country and it is a disaster that under the PDP government, all the industries in the North are no more. All the textile industries that were based in Kano, Kaduna, Kaukuri are all gone today and our people have become poorer with the coming of the PDP government in 1999.
Much more disturbing also, is the security challenge in the country. No country can prosper without security. The security situation in the North is so terrible that nobody feels safe any longer. Not even during the civil war did we witness what we are today experiencing. It is sad that we cannot boast of security of lives and property, not only in the North, but all across the country. It is against this backdrop that I felt that to make a positive contribution to change Nigeria I needed to leave the PDP. That is one of the reasons I had to leave the PDP to join the CPC with the hope of helping General Muhammadu Buhari so that we can, at least do something to salvage the situation in the interest of the future of our children and grandchildren.
Any right thinking Nigerian should think of the future of this country and leave PDP to join the CPC and the emerging APC to rescue it, otherwise, it will sink irretrievably.
You said you left the PDP as a result of the inability of the party to tackle what you described as security challenge and sundry conundrums confronting the country. Are these challenges caused by the party or the political leadership?
It is about the party which is in control of the government at the centre. And as a party in government, it is a complete failure. The crisis in the country, occasioned by the PDP government is not one in which you can fight as member by staying put in the party. The party is corrupt, inept and completely directionless.
Those ruling on the platform of the party do not even know what they are doing. For instance, the governor of my state, Katsina, has turned himself into a little emperor. How do you explain a situation in which the governor of a state would take public funds and build a house for a woman in Niger Republic? It is inexplicable that this happened in a state rated as the second poorest in the country. It is even sadder that the governor does not listen to anybody in the state.
Senator, can you substantiate your claim that he actually used public funds to build a house for a woman in Niger Republic?
It is on record. The story was carried in The Leadership as an advertorial. I am not speculating about Governor Shema of Katsina State building a house for a woman in Niger Republic. I am too old, too gentle and so well known to speculate and tell lies about somebody. Why should I? Whatever I say to the media, I must have read or heard it from an authentic source. I am not daft and I am not the kind of politician that just wants to create sensation.
So, with this kind of leadership at the federal and state level, my dear friend, we just have to change the system. It is that bad that Nigerians are being held by the jugular and what is required is for all right thinking Nigerians to rescue the country from their clutches. That is the situation we are at the moment.
You were part of the system between 2003 and 2011 as a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where even the legislative arm was also alleged to be neck deep in endemic corruption. What did you do and how come you did not leave the PDP at the time?
I want to first of all make it clear that I was not in the PDP as a senator in 2003. Rather, I was in the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Let me say this with all sense of modesty that it was while I was in the ANPP that I went out of my way to beg General Buhari to come into politics because Nigeria needs a radical leader like him to undergo a radical transformation. So, some of us felt that the only person that could bring about that change was Buhari. The endemic corruption has got to stop. This requires someone who is untainted to achieve that and Buhari remains that person.
But incidentally, my friend, brother and political associate, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had approached me and told me to come and join him in the PDP because he was running for the Presidency. He said he needed a senator with experience to assist him move this country forward. I saw that he had good intentions for the country, so I obliged him. He was a good man and he had good intentions, but unfortunately, his health challenge took a better of him. However, he was great leader. He was one of the best presidents this country has ever produced.
So, it was the late president that actually brought me into the PDP, and as a nationalist and realist, I heeded his invitation. That was how I joined the PDP. But as a man who believes in the rule of law, I felt that something had gone wrong when the PDP constitution prescribed zoning in the party, and it had to be abandoned. I came out and told Goodluck Jonathan that he could not contest because the ticket was still zoned to the North, not minding that the bearer of the ticket was dead.
As far as I was concerned, the PDP constitution was very clear on zoning. So it was the turn of the North. Even though I was the Chief Whip of the Senate and a member of the national caucus at the time, I was not deceived that it was still the turn of the North and that was why I yielded myself as the national deputy campaign coordinator for General Ibrahim Babangida (rtd). I believe fervently in the principle of rotation.
Unfortunately, those who were not patriotic like the governors turned round and rooted for Jonathan, even though they knew he was not supposed to stand for the presidency on the platform of the PDP. Going by the party’s constitution, they knew that it was constitutionally wrong to have allowed him to contest. Rather than tell him ‘Mr. President, you could run in 2015 after the North must have completed its turn at the presidency’.
If they had taken this stance, their action would have made the party credible. But they chose, rather, to play the ostrich. I tried as much as I could to convince the governors during one of the meetings that it was not right to allow Jonathan to run, but instead, they all queued up behind him.
Now that it is affecting them, they are trying to tell Nigerians that President Jonathan signed a pact with them not to contest in 2015. But as far as I can remember, there was no such pact. The question I am asking them is why didn’t they challenge him when he was contesting in 2011?
It was on the basis of this inconsistency that I decide to leave PDP for the CPC. I felt it was time I left the party, something I had done six months ago.
Considering the sheer size of the PDP in our party politics today, would you say you made the best and an informed decision leaving the party?
I am an old man and at my age, there is no decision I make today that I will ever live to regret tomorrow. I graduated from the university 41 years ago as an engineer and so, I am enlightened enough to know the implications of every decision I make in life. At my age also, if I take a decision, it should not necessarily be in my best interest, but in the best interest of my nation. I have been in the public service for the past 41 years. I believe in every decision and action I may have taken to be in the best interest of this country.
How would you assess governance under President Jonathan from when he became President of Nigeria after Yar’Adua’s death till date?
I cannot point to anything he has achieved as President. There is absolutely nothing to place a finger on. The only achievement that can be credited to him is that we have progressed from bad to worse. Look at the insecurity in the country, each time the President says he is on top of the situation, we will witness attacks of fatal proportion. The North was not known to be a region of kidnappers, but now we are deep in it. If a whole Emir could come close to being butchered on the street, what does that say about the state of security in the country? We are in a terrible mess.
On the issue of corruption, how on earth can we justify the level it has assumed? Take the case of the pension fund, for instance, when the Senate cried itself hoarse that Abdulrasheed Maina should be produced, the IG of police played games with the issue until the man escaped outside the country right under the nose of the IG. There was a time the Presidency was quoted to have said that it had no power to dismiss him. They said it was only the Head of Service that could dismiss him. This game continued for about six months until they paved the way for him to escape. Is that a good leadership scorecard? No.
If the Senate can be courageous enough, it should insist on the President producing the Chairman of the Pension Fund, Maina, failing which an impeachment process be commenced against him. From the drama that played out, leading to his eventual disappearance from the country, amounts to an impeachable offence. The amount involved is too colossal to be waved aside. Besides, it is billions of naira of people’s life’s savings that was mismanaged by just a few people in government. It is a national shame and embarrassment. In any case, I do not expect much from the scandal. After all, that is what the PDP is all about.
Virtually everyone seems to be heaping the problems of Nigeria on President Jonathan, so much so that today, if a man cannot get his wife pregnant, it is blamed on Jonathan. Did the problems he is being pilloried predate him as President? Or did the problems emanate during his time in office?
Look, if the problems of Nigeria started with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in 1999 because of lack of progress under his watch, Jonathan has done nothing to improve the situation. Rather, he has escalated them. If Nigerians were not the kind of peace loving people that they are, what Jonathan has been doing would have long created a religious violence in the country.
How do you reconcile yourself with a President whose every policy statement is usually announced in the church? Is that how to run a country in a pluralistic society? It is even being alleged that he is concentrating his energy on helping only people from his Bayelsa State. Is that how governance is run? I have read this in the papers.
Nobody should mistake my position as hatred for President Jonathan. I do not have anything personal against him. But the fact remains that I love Nigeria. I just do not like the way he running the country and I think I am old enough not to say it.
What do you think is the way out? Should he vacate the presidency so that Nigeria can make progress?
Change the PDP and change the government. That is all. The PDP has become a system of government today in Nigeria. The party has become something of a cult. Governors are being muscled and they can no longer talk. Some of the governors have become sycophants in government.
The PDP has become Nigerians’ headache and the only cure is to attack it with APC. That is what is known to cure headache. I want to urge Nigerians to be discernible enough to swallow APC in order to get relief. We must come together to kick out the PDP which has lost it identity as a party and become a system of government. It is a system of government of the crooks, run by the crooks and benefited only by the crooks. We have to kick them out. That is why we are calling on all patriotic Nigerians including you the journalists to come on board to kick the PDP out.
It is being alleged that President Jonathan signed a pact with the PDP governors in 2011 that he will not run in 2015 and you were quoted to have punctured their claim. You were not a governor, so how could you claim to be privy to whether or not such a deal was ever struck by a group of governors? Besides, should Jonathan not run in 2015?
I really do not care whether Jonathan runs in 2015 or not run. But all I know is that from the meeting I attended when the governors met with him, there was nothing like that. And if there was anything like that, then they should prove it to Nigerians that Jonathan signed a pact with them. But as far as I know, there is no fact in their claim.
The issue now is not whether Jonathan runs or not but that whoever runs on the platform of the PDP and wins, he should not be allowed to form a government. That is all. Does it not make sense to you that we just must stop PDP at all costs? The truth of the matter is that we must kick out whoever that will rule this country on the PDP platform. Is that understood?
But how do you intend to kick out a party believed to be the largest on the continent and more national in outlook?
My friend, they are the largest crooks today, yes I agree. Nigeria being ruled by the largest party is the largest most corrupt country in the world today. But is this what Nigerians want? Nigerians are tired and no longer care about size. What we care now is the morality, how to make the country great so that Nigerians can live in peace.
Is it because it is the largest party that I should not have security? Is it because they constitute the so called largest party that I should be afraid to travel from my village to Abuja? I am not even sure that sleeping in my own house now is safe. Is that what being the largest party is all about? Is that why US$2.6 billion of oil subsidy money should be missing? My friend, let Nigerians get serious for once and come together to fix this country and the only way to achieve this is to chase the largest party of crooks out of Aso Rock.
The menace of the Boko Haram sect has continued to threaten the existence of the country and much worse, crippled the economy of the North. What is it that the leadership has not done right to tackle the menace?
The crisis of Boko Haram is simple only if we had a serious government. If a group of people is bombing and butchering their fellow human beings on the street, they must have an agenda for doing that. What is it that they want? I do not think that any sensible human being will just wake up and for no reason, go on a killing spree. There must be a motive. It is the responsibility of a responsible government in power to try and find out what is it they want. At the beginning of the crisis of the Boko Haram, I remember advising that the government should try and find out what was it they wanted and what were their grudges?
Having found out what they want, the government should know what is in the best interest of our nation and do what is right for the country. If a whole Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria cannot travel to Maiduguri or anywhere in the North, because he is afraid, what type of commander-in-chief is that? He has refused to visit any part of the North because he is afraid. With that type man as our Commander-in-Chief, who will save Nigeria? As Commander-in-Chief, he has the entire security apparatus at his disposal.
On the ongoing merger talks with your party, the CPC and others, some Nigerians have expressed cynicism that since merger has never worked in the past, this one might not be different. What is your reaction to this?
Nigerians are a very funny people. They are talking about the people in the merger talks having different or no ideology. What ideology are they talking about anyway? We already have an ideology given to us by President Jonathan. One of the ideologies is that we have to stop people from stealing public fund. There is also the ideology that corruption must be stopped. We have to provide security to Nigerians. Is this also not an ideology? We must ensure that our industries are resuscitated and our energy boosted to generate electricity. So, what ideology are they talking about? The failure of President Jonathan and his PDP government has provided us an ideology to chart a course for good governance for the country.
When a country of about 160 million people cannot even clothe its citizens until we import cloths from India and China, then something is fundamentally wrong somewhere. This is an ideology. There is need to overhaul our educational system and make sure that our children get the best of education in Nigeria. Is that not an ideology? The ineptitude of President Jonathan has offered us an ideology. Nigerians are craving for a change. They are not asking for communism, socialism or capitalism. Rather, they are asking for quality life, quality education, healthcare, shelter, electricity, good roads and security. I believe that this has nothing to do with the system of government being operated.
Those talking about APC having no ideology do not know what they are talking about. What they do not seem to know is that Jonathan has already given us an ideology. Nigerians want economic prosperity and that is an ideology.
How optimistic are you about the merger?
The optimism is not something you promise or offer people. But if you are living in Nigeria, you will be able to see the optimism in virtually everyone who has gotten weary of the listlessness of the Jonathan-led PDP government. The optimism is very much palpable in every right thinking Nigerian living in Nigeria. Maybe because you live in Lagos, you may not know what is happening in this country. Who is that Nigerian that does not desire a change? Is it a good thing to hear that PhD holders are queuing up to drive Dangote trucks? My friend, Nigerians are suffering. Is that what our graduates have been reduced to? As a fine journalist that you are, I want to personally appeal to you that you also have a role to play by joining forces to help change this country.
While you were in the senate, you accused former Information Minister, during the ministerial screening of cooking for the wife of late President Yar’Adua, Hajia Turai. Did you merely say that to humiliate her or you said what you knew her to be doing then?
(Cuts in amidst prolong laughter) well, I really would have wished not to go into that again. It is all in the past now. But having said that, I wish to also state that I did not say it to humiliate her. What I said was about three or four years ago. Those who know me know that whenever I talk, I talk based on fact and not on hear say. What I tried to do with Professor Dora Akunyili then was to let her know that what she was doing was bad. She was pact of the system and as such, it was not right for her to have come out to label some people as cabal or kitchen cabinet who held the late president hostage.
She was always with the first family and as such, she was among those that could be regarded as first among equal. She was part of the kitchen cabinet where things were being cooked by virtue of her closeness to the first family.
I wanted to let Nigerians know that people like Akunyili are not to be trusted. She did not tell Nigerians what was going on when Yar’Adua was alive and when things were not going right. So, she should have remained reticent when Yar’Adua was away. It was not right to discuss the team when she was part of the team.
What role are we expecting to see Senator Bello to play in the next dispensation?
I will play the role the Katsina people want me to play. And I will continue to play the role of rebuilding my country, Nigeria. I will do my best to ensure that this country is united so that we can kick out the PDP.
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