Hon. Ben Adaji, a journalist and an aspirant for the House of Representatives, Ankpa Federal Constituency in the 2019 general election is the spokesperson for Kogi All Progressives Congress, APC, Aspirants Forum, a group made up of all aspirants for Senatorial and House of Representatives positions. He spoke to Akanni Alaka on the decision of the National Working Committee of APC to use indirect primary to select the party’s candidate for the impending gubernatorial elections, the administration of Governor Yahaya Bello and other issues.
What is your group, the Kogi APC Aspirants Forum all about?
The APC Aspirants Forum is a combination of all aspirants that aspired for Senatorial and House of Representatives positions in the 2019 election. We felt that we were shortchanged–most of us won our primaries, but the governor and his group overturned the results. I am also affected by the same issue. I aspired for the House of Representatives under Ankpa Federal Constituency. We were there for the primaries, but the Chief of Staff to the Governor came and told us that the governor has already selected his candidate and that there was no need for the primary and later, they brought some mercenaries and policemen to chase all the delegates away from where we were to have the primary. We founded this Forum to fight a common goal and to ensure that Yahaya Bello does not come back as the candidate of APC in Kogi State. Yahaya Bello will spell doom for APC in Kogi because ab-initio, he was not elected.
This is a governor that has stayed in office for four years and he cannot say this is what I have done to warrant people re-electing him. Now, when he talked about APC stakeholders, who are the stakeholders in Kogi State? It is all the aspirants who purchased forms for House of Representatives, House of Assembly and the Senate. But we are not recognised by the governor as stakeholders. So, how can somebody now tell us that the APC stakeholders met in Kogi State and endorsed indirect primary. That’s a fallacy.
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But the governor boasted that he will be re-elected, that the real Kogi people are with him and that his government is inclusive when he picked up his nomination form for the governorship election. You don’t agree with him?
He cannot win any election in Kogi State. If the party made the mistake of giving Yahaya Bello the ticket, that will spell doom for APC in Kogi because all the other governorship aspirants of the party, numbering about 24, including members of the Aspirants Forum, numbering about 150, and all their supporters will move out of APC in protest. This will be the first time that we will witness that kind of revolution in Kogi State. The APC National Secretariat should know that we are in a democratic, not military era.
Where will you and your supporters move to, because I am sure the people now in PDP and other parties may not allow you to hijack their platforms?
We are not going to hijack any platform. It is going to be an agreement. What we will do is ‘PDP, we’ve been shortchanged in our party, we are moving out, we want a consensus candidate, what will be our stake?’ We will sit down and go into proper agreement that we are going to form a unity government between APC supporters and PDP. If that can be done, why not? And that is what we are looking for instead of having Yahaya Bello again as the next governor of Kogi State. We will prefer to have anybody from any other party to be the governor of Kogi State.
But why is your group opposed to the use of indirect primary to select the APC candidate for the November governorship election?
The National Secretariat of APC has the right to make decisions in their office in Abuja. But their decisions cannot override the interests of all APC supporters in Kogi State. We are speaking for APC supporters in Kogi State and we are saying that we did not sit down to endorse indirect primary. If the governor has done very well and he feels that he has the support of the people, why is he afraid of any form of primary? We are calling for direct primary because that’s when a level playing ground will be given to every party member to elect the governorship candidate of their choice. It is not a selective or Kangaroo kind of primary. And if you are talking of the present executive of APC in Kogi State, they are under suspension and they have a case in court. They were handpicked by Yahaya Bello. On the day of their inauguration, they were placed on oath. The Muslims among them swore with the Quran, the Christians among them swore with the Bible that during the governorship primary, they must vote for Yahaya Bello. And if the National Working Committee of APC is not aware of this, I am telling them now that the moment they allowed indirect primary in Kogi State, we will not waste our time to even go for the election. We will move out of the party en-masse. Winning the ticket of the party, even as the incumbent governor or the ruling party does not translate to victory-the APC should learn from what happened in Zamfara, Bauchi and other states. So, we are cautioning the NWC of APC. We were told that their palms have been greased, but we have no evidence of that. But we will work with the last blood in our body to ensure that Yahaya Bello will not return as the governor of Kogi State.
You talked about the crisis in the executive of APC in Kogi. But when the governor went to pick his nomination form, the so called factional chairman of the party, Alhaji Hadi Ameto was with him and he said there was no longer division in the party. Is that not a contradiction of the position of your group?
We were not surprised to hear that. Hadi Ameto is playing an Igbira agenda; he cannot represent the population of all the members of APC in Kogi State. When we started this cause of fighting to ensure justice in APC in Kogi State, Hadi Ameto was nowhere to be found. We filed a case in court that those claiming to be members of APC executive in Kogi now were not elected according to due process; there was no election before they were put in place. They were handpicked by Yahaya Bello. Hadi Ameto was one of the complainants before we went to court and for him to make a U-turn now, something is fishy. When we have a reconciliation meeting in Abuja about two weeks ago, there was no decision to withdraw the case in court. The former executive of the party put in place by the late Prince Abubakar Audu, put down a lot of demands, like their salaries and allowances which have not been paid and all that, for reconciliation to take place. But nothing like that has been done. We were only told that the governor gave chunks of money to Ameto, and then, Ameto who was the interim chairman then, now came up to say there was no problem. But there are still problems. The person that we still know as the State Secretary of APC, Salam Adejo, addressed a press conference immediately after the meeting to say that nothing has been resolved with Yahaya Bello. He is the scribe of the party and the only one we can work with, not that of Hadi Ameto. As far as we are concerned, the present executive put in place by the governor are not even our party members. We don’t know them.
But there are a lot of problems also associated with the direct primary that your group is clamouring for in terms of cost and organization. It is like conducting the real election, because you have to go to all the wards and most times, it also resulted in a lot of controversies…
What are we practicing? Is it not democracy? Whatever it will take us to have democratically elected people is what we should go for. We don’t have to cut corners because of financing. What is worth doing is worth doing well. If we are really out to practice democracy, we should let the voices, the votes of the people count. Are we saying that because direct primary is capital intensive, we should go and do what is not right? In the last election, so many states adopted direct primary. Lagos adopted direct primary and it was hitch-free, the people elect leaders of their choice.
But you know there were so many controversies about the conduct of the primaries in Ogun, Zamfara and even, in the one conducted in Lagos?
It was because there was no sincerity of purpose. People were not just sincere. Was Buhari not brought by direct primary?
But in Kogi, even the issue of who are the real members of APC executive at the ward, local government and even at the state level is still a problem and as such, the party’s register to be used for such direct primary may also be contentious. Will that not pose an additional problem for the party?
That’s a case that has not been determined yet in court. In fact, if we want to go by the real practice of democracy, the last election in Kogi should be cancelled. For one, members of the House of Assembly are not supposed to be there because the people that elected them during the primaries are not the true executive-the same thing for the House of Representatives members and the Senators, because there was no primary in Kogi State. We are still in court. So, why did the other faction went to conduct the primary? That’s an aberration.
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Some people have expressed fears that with the ongoing controversies, the primary election in Kogi may be marred by violence, especially if the direct method is adopted. Are you not concerned about this?
I don’t believe so, except the Federal Government and the security agencies are not sincere. Kogi State is just one out of the 36 states. About 250,000 policemen went to Ekiti and Osun to conduct election, why not deploy the same number to monitor the conduct of the primary in Kogi? Or is an individual bigger than the Federal Government? If the Federal Government is sincere, let them deploy policemen all over Kogi and then, we will have a free and fair primary election.
But the governor said he was able to ensure that all the 25 members of Kogi House of Assembly emerged from the APC, as such, he is on ground. Or you don’t believe that the feat was enough indication that he is on ground in every corner of the state?
It is unfortunate that the governor is trying to take the credit for that alone. Let me tell you what happened. We, the aggrieved aspirants, before the election, we met with President Buhari and after discussing, we also met with the committee in charge of the North-Central headed by former Governor Jibrilla Bindow of Adamawa State in Abuja and the committee pleaded with us that we should go back and deliver all the positions to APC in Kogi. They promised that they are going to compensate us with appointments and even refund the money we spent to purchase nomination forms. So, it was on the basis of that that we all went back home to work for the success of the party. We were the ones that delivered our various areas for President Buhari during the presidential election. Members of the Forum of Aspirants were the ones that worked for the victory of APC senators, members of the House of Representatives and then, the members of the House of Assembly. In fact, during the campaign, people were saying they will not vote for President Buhari because of fears that he may endorse Yahaya Bello for second term. But we assured them that that will not happen. If you are in doubt, you can call people in Kogi West to confirm. But if the governor is now solely claiming glory over the election, let’s dissolve the Forum of Aspirants and let’s see if he will be able to win re-election.
But the governor is also saying groups like yours are just meddlesome interlopers who usually become interested in the affairs of APC in Kogi State when elections are approaching
Yes, it is unfortunate. I have heard him call us Diaspora or Abuja politicians. But if I may ask, before Bello came to aspire for the APC ticket in 2015, where was he? Was he living in Kogi State? Was he part of the people who set up structures for the party from the wards, local governments and the state level? He just came to contest. We, the Forum of Aspirants, were the ones that went round to convince people to join APC from PDP and other political parties. I used my money to fund the party from the ward to the local government level. If you look at the party card of Yahaya Bello, it was an emergency card that we gave him when he wanted to contest. He was not an original member of APC. Let me even tell you that when he lost the APC ticket to late Audu in 2015, APC lost in every other election that was conducted in his ward. So, he cannot call us Abuja politicians. We are the real stakeholders of APC in Kogi. And if he is in doubt, let the NWC of APC gives him the gubernatorial ticket and they will see the revolution that will take place in the party.
But is your Forum backing any aspirant for the ticketFor now, we have three of our members who contested for the senatorial tickets in the last election who have indicated interest in the gubernatorial ticket. But to be factual, the Forum has unanimously endorsed Prince Yahaya Audu, the younger brother to late former Governor Abubakar Audu for the gubernatorial ticket. Also, the National Forum of APC Aspirants spread across the 36 states and Abuja also endorsed Prince Audu as their candidate. But now that we have other people who are also members of the Forum coming up, we will sit down again and then see how we can have consensus candidate. Let me even tell you that we are resolute that among the APC aspirants that we have now, including Yahaya Bello, we are ready to go back to endorse one person that will confront Bello.
