Nnamdi Kanu, Sunday Igboho: HOW TO STOP SECESSIONIST AGITATIONS -Shehu Sani

Let me tell you the pros and cons of direct primaries. Direct primaries will produce a popular candidate, wipe out money politics – those are the two issues. But the negative thing about it is that it is chaotic and most political parties do not have the database to conduct such a credible election. And you also need security as you have during the general election. The indirect primary is about money bags and it is the only primary where governors and godfathers can impose candidates. But it is neater, but also dirty. So, you can see how it is. As for me, I stand for direct primary, no matter the negative side of it because that is the only election where you will not need tons and tons of money to pay delegates to vote for you. So, I am in support of those who are advocating for direct primary.                                                        

I stand for united Nigeria any day and I believe in the unity of this country. But Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho were also believers in the unity of this country called Nigeria. So, we need to ask ourselves – how did people who are patriots, nationalists and believe in the unity of Nigeria suddenly become champions of separatism? It is simply the fact that the leaders of this country have failed. They have failed to use the resources of the country to develop the country; they have failed to ensure equity and justice to all parts of the country; they have failed to deliver good governance. So, separatism agitations are products of failure of governance and leadership. So, if Nigeria functions, if the government is just and fair, there will be no Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho. Igboho and Kanu are products of the system that has failed, so they are not the cause, they are a reaction to that failure. So, I believe that the best way to extinguish and quash the causes of Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho is to address the issues which they are raising. How can you have a country whereby the son of this, the son of that are the only ones who are in charge of power and they are appropriating resources for themselves? How can you have a country where some positions are for some ethnic groups and places in Nigeria? How can you have a country where some people are impoverished and some people are enabled and empowered? How can you have a country where leaders appoint people mostly from their ethnic and regional identities and affiliations? You can’t have a nation like that. If this country belongs to all of us, then, it must be just to all of us. Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho are products that the system delivered; they should not be accused of being the problem of Nigeria.

When I went to the National Assembly, I went there not just as a politician, but with an activist constituency to which I am also accountable and I said I am going to make a disclosure. And I then moved further from disclosing what I have when I came to the Senate and also what I am earning. But I know that cost me a lot of friends and I was nearly suspended, if not for the grace of Senator Saraki, the Senate President and the Deputy Senate President Ekweremadu. I could have spent the rest of my years in suspension. And you know what suspension is – your allowances will be suspended, your office will be closed and then, you will move into serious hardship. So, I will always remain grateful because when I disclosed the allowances and the emoluments, there was a kind of pressure that actions should be taken against me, but the Senate President refused to even give it audience. So, he saved my neck at the time. So, I will always remain grateful.

When I left the APC, I joined the PRP and I contested in 2019 and lost. Now, every politician that truly wants to play politics must look at the political climate within the state and take the best possible step, the right decision that would advance the cause of his politics and also impact the lives of his people. Now, all I did was to move from a minority opposition to a majority opposition, so I am still within the circle of opposition. I realized that it is impossible for us in Kaduna State to wrest powers from the APC government without joining forces and aligning to confront a common threat and danger to our collective existence. The APC in Kaduna State has not been a party for the people and the masses – the party all begins and ends with the governor of the state. That’s how the party is structured. I was able to become a senator in 2015 because there was not a state governor. The state governor now couldn’t exercise any control because he was not a governor. In 2019, he was a governor. So, my presence in PDP is to align with the opposition in the state to wrest power from the APC. I’m ready to offer myself that service. PRP has had some issues since Balarabe Musa moved – there was factionalisation between late Professor Sule and Falalu Bello and it is not in a strong position as a party. And the people of the state have made their choice that if it is not APC, it is going to be PDP. So, if you are in politics for the people and not for yourself, part of your mathematics must take into cognizance that ingredient of what the people want.

My story with the governor and the party in the state is an open secret. I cannot belong to a political party that is owned by somebody. The way the ruling party in the state is structured is in such a way that the governor is the leader, the chairman of the party; he determines who becomes what and who doesn’t become anything in the party; he runs the exco of the party from the wards to the local governments and the state level. The governor determines what the party should do. In the APC, no executive of the party would agree to come to you or for you to go to him as long as he or she hasn’t received a directive from the governor. I understand that PDP has a very dark history from 1999 to 2015, I was not part of their past, but I have presented myself to be part of their future. In major democracies across the world, you can see the dominance of the two-party system – in the United States, it is between the Republican and the Democratic Party, in the UK, it is the Labour and the Conservative Party. So, you have to belong to a major opposition if you want to provide serious opposition. So, my resolution and that of my people is that I should belong to this party so that we can take over power from APC. And I’m confident we are going to do it in 2023.

Of recent, I have been inundated with this question – whether I am going to contest for the governorship of Kaduna State or not. Well, before I touch on that question, I will like to give you a bit of the background on the state of the state as it is now. Kaduna State is a multi-religious state – the Northern part of the state is predominantly Muslim and the South is largely Christian. In the last 30 to 40 years, we have experienced a series of religious violence, bloodshed and killings. But it has never been bad as it is today. The people of the state have been polarized; the political leadership in the state has not done enough to bridge the gap, the differences and the widening gulf, rather it has exploited and escalated it. Now, what Kaduna State needs is a leader that will serve as a bridge between the Muslim North and the Christian South;  a leader that will do justice, equity, fairness to people of all the state, irrespective of their religious identity or ethnic affiliation; a leader that will treat every citizen with justice, fairness, love and love. Kaduna State is today under siege. There is a clear case of genocide in the Southern part of Kaduna. In the central part of Kaduna, you can see the spate of daily kidnappings and killings of our people. And also in parts of Zaria, killings and kidnappings of our people are still going on. Now, before you talk of roads, hospitals, bridges – what the state needs is a leader that will give hope to our people, that will restore order and security in the state, that will energize, enable, mobilise, agitate and encourage people to see governance as part of them and also as part of their lives. Now, I am not a professional politician, my background is activism. I stand for justice and I speak for justice. And I believe that when I served as a senator from 2015 to 2019, I was able to touch the lives of so many people and I was able to provide that kind of leadership that our people need. And most importantly, the Muslims and the Christians in the state, I treated them with justice, equity and fairness. So, if I am not going to contest the election, I have no business joining a political party. So, I’m going to contest in 2023 and after consultation with my people, they have resolved that the position I should contest for is the governorship of Kaduna State because that is the position where you have the levers of executive power to positively impact the lives of the people and implement programmes and policies that will unite the state and move it forward to prosperity and peace.

I don’t know why people have problems with the word genocide as it is going on in Kaduna State. Now, the state is divided into three senatorial zones – let’s start from Southern Kaduna – it is a fact that it has a history of ethnoreligious violence from the early 80s, up to the 90s, the Sharia violence- for 40 years.  But what is going on in Kaduna South today is not a war between Muslims and Christians.  Well-armed terrorists are attacking villages, killing people, burning down buildings and forcing people to flee from their abodes and taking over their lands. So, what is that?  I don’t have any word to qualify genocide other than that. Now, in the central part of Kaduna, Birnin Gwari, Igabi, Chukun and Igabi – in all the local governments, it is only two local governments that are free of kidnapping – the Kaduna North and the Kaduna South where I come from. Every day, people are kidnapped and people are killed. It has reached a point where you cannot move a kilometre outside Kaduna without getting into the hands of bandits. From the kidnapping of the students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation on the outskirts of Kaduna to the kidnapping of students of Greenfield University to the attack on the Nigerian Defence Academy in Kaduna to daily attacks and kidnappings of the staff and quarters of the Federal Aviation Authority – you can see the gangsterism, the violence and the killings – how the state has been ruined and how life has become so difficult. Just a few months ago, the son of Senator Ibn Na’Allah was killed within the city and then, you have now, Air Vice Marshal Maisaka – so the people living outside of the city are not safe, the ones even in the city are also not safe. In the Zaria zone, nowadays, kidnappers go into homes to kill and kidnap people. Zaria, Kaduna and Southern Kaduna are experiencing something that is so monstrously evil and tragic and the leadership of the state has failed to address this issue. I can understand that it is not only in Kaduna State – you have the same situation in Zamfara, Kaduna, Sokoto. But for our state, I believe that one of the things a leader is supposed to do in such a multi-religious state – because Kaduna is unique in the Northwest – it has a large Christian population unlike the other states in the region- when you have a leader who gives the Christians and the Muslims sense of belonging and accommodation, you will solve some problems which are possible, then, you will now move to other problems which are bigger and wider in context and concept.

I believe that the Federal Government has failed the people of Nigeria in all the promises of securing the lives and the property of our people.  Banditry has assumed a dangerous, tragic and unprecedented level in the history of our country. Bandits who have been attacking motorists and extorting ransom have now moved ahead to become a state within a state, imposing levies on villagers, installing Imams, chiefs and becoming authorities in ungoverned spaces. It started from Zamfara, moved to Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, then Niger State and you can see the contagion – it is now moving to the outskirts of Abuja. And each time you bring it to their attention that there are corpses on the ground. This is a country where it is recorded that over a thousand people were killed in two months. This doesn’t happen in Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen – there is no war in the world today where 1,000 people are killed within 60 days – this is happening only in Nigeria. This is to show you how this government has completely failed and to me, there is nothing to advise this government on, other than to wait at election time and change it because they have run out of ideas. All the monies that have been pumped into security and defence in this country have been wasted. Recently, the Minister of Finance revealed that she gave N1.3 trillion to the former Service Chiefs within 28 months and that did not address the problem. So, if all the resources that have been pumped into the defence and security sector have not resulted in the protection of our people, provide the necessary confidence and assurance, secure their lives and property, I think the government has run out of ideas.

If you are saying that, then every person who voted for Buhari should also be held liable. He got 12 million votes, so, 12 million people are also part of it. I only have one vote and I know very well that there was a good intention to bring Buhari in 2015 because the government of that time – Goodluck Jonathan has failed. But he moved away from the Buhari that we know to another Buhari that we don’t know. And the most unfortunate thing is that people of the North elevated him from a democratically elected leader to a messiah with a magic wand to solve all the problems of the country. People who even attempted to advise or counsel the president were tagged as enemies, subversives, as people undermining Nigeria or unpatriotic. So, almost disloyalty to the government becomes disloyalty to the State. We have reached a point where those who called themselves supporters of Buhari today are burying their heads in shame and the sand while the North bleeds. The Northwest gave Buhari the highest votes, but today, it is reaping the highest misery in the whole land.