A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Na’Abba, in this interview with JOHN ALECHENU, speaks about his trials, regrets, triumphs and joining the All Progressives Congress
What have you been doing ever since you left the forefront of Nigerian politics?
I have been facing my private business since I left the House of Representatives and I am also involved in politics. Politics is something that I cannot really bid farewell. Therefore, I am still in politics.
Have you met President Goodluck Jonathan before and what is your relationship with him?
Yes, I have met President Jonathan. When he started his campaign to contest the Presidency in 2011, he invited me to join his campaign and after discussing with him and agreeing on certain things, I joined the campaign and I played a very active role in it. Eventually, he won, and of course, he was sworn in as the President and we have been interacting.
What is your impression of his government?
My impression of him is someone who doesn’t carry people along. There is so much disconnect between him and the people of Nigeria. First of all, this is somebody who has never for once worked at the centre; he has been a provincial person all his life. He didn’t really know people around the country when he became the president. And what is worse is that he did not try to know people. He was cocooned in the Villa. He hasn’t got reach and this has been his failure. He has been caged and put under the impression that he is performing well; and that he is the best thing to happen to Nigeria since its creation. Today, he is seeing the result of all of these things. Nigerians have turned their backs on him because he cannot perform; he simply lacks the capacity to perform.
Was there a time he made overtures to you that you should return to the PDP?
I don’t think he and the party have the courage to ask me to come back; they know that they don’t like people like me. They like people who are “loyal”, who would submit to them. They like people who will see many wrongs and keep quiet; these are the kind of people they prefer.
Would you have returned if he had invited you?
It’s not likely.
Why?
They have not shown any sign that they are prepared to change for the better.
With your PDP background, don’t you see your romance with the APC as that of strange bedfellows?
I don’t. In politics, people from different backgrounds come together for the good of the society. It is not about self.
Why are you not into competitive politics again? Is it a case of once bitten, twice shy?
It is very sad that things have come to this situation. I have spoken about this repeatedly that our parties have become captives and most of us in the National Assembly of 1999 to 2003 have not been in competitive politics because while we were struggling to have democracy, certain people were struggling to capture our political parties, which they did; and because there has been no internal democracy, most of those who took charge of these parties have never allowed any election to take place within the parties. What they do is, year after year, during congresses, they just write names of ward executives, local government executives and state executives that will serve them and their purposes. Anytime anybody wants to stand for election, he has to pay these godfathers, who own the parties and I take exception to that because when I started in 1999, my experience was that the delegates and the ward executives came to me to tell me that they decided that I was going to be their candidate and that I should get somewhere and hide them. They wanted to hide themselves because people were going to them with money so that they could elect other people other than me. But because they didn’t want to do that, they thought they should go into hiding and I gave them a facility, where they stayed for five days until the primary took place. After the primary election, which I won because it was free and fair, they went back home. That was my first experience in politics. I never bargained with anybody to give me his vote and my second primary election in 2002 for the 2003 election was almost similar. The delegates came to me and told me that the state government wanted to take them away somewhere and they were promised money, motorcycles and plots of land, so that on the day of the election, they would vote for somebody, who the state government asked to contest against me. The delegates came and told me that just like we did in 1999, we should hide them somewhere so that agents of the state government would not locate them. We had to take them to Katsina. They spent a night in Katsina and came back the following day for the primary elections. And because of the state government’s attitude towards that primary election, it could not take place until midnight the following day because the chairman of the electoral committee, who was sent from Abuja, was detained in the Government House until an Assistant Director in the State Security Service discovered and took the man away. That was how the elections took place and of the 132 delegates, 131 voted for me. Left for the state government, they would announce that all the delegates voted against me. This was my experience. Since 2003, there was never a time that the party had any free and fair congress. That was why a lot of us found it difficult to be in competitive politics. It is not because the generality of the people do not support us, but the party has been tailored to serve a particular interest.
Your tenure as Speaker marked one of the most turbulent relationships between the executive and the legislature in the history of the country. Why?
This was so because we had philosophical differences. While in the legislature, we believed that politics should be developmental; the executive believed that politics should be about power. Because we had these differences, the stage was set for a clash between the legislature, particularly the House of Representatives, and the executive arm. That was what took place during the four years that I was Speaker. I thought that the key to the sustenance of democracy was the legislature and that the legislature must be defended in anyway and that was why I ensured that nobody messed around with the legislature and in the process, we almost impeached the President.
What were the basic reasons the House of Representatives, under your leadership, moved to impeach the then President Obasanjo in 2002?
Our reasons were cogent and verifiable, there were several constitutional breaches. The budget was not being implemented as well as a lot of other things, which are in public domain.
Why didn’t the impeachment move sail through?
We backed down because some elders were asked to come and exhort us to accepting to water down the impeachment. Eventually, we were persuaded not to continue, not because we were not right or because we were not sure we were going to succeed, but because these elders told us many things about the unity and stability of this country. Eventually, we heeded and I must admit that I regret listening to them because it as a result of us listening to them that Nigeria is in this mess today.
Chief Audu Ogbeh was said to be one of the elders who were on the delegation and he was said to have told you the possible implication of truncating the tenure of another person from the South-West barely a few years after the June 12 crisis. Is this true?
These were some of the reasons they advanced but I also knew that as of that time, the South-West wasn’t really supportive of Obasanjo but because of the interest of the establishment, such reasons were advanced.
How true is the claim that your action then was precipitated by monetary inducement than principle?
As far as I am concerned, I have never received money from anybody to sabotage the efforts of the House of Representatives that I led. I set a precedence and I made sure that the House was vibrant, robust and had focus. There was no way I could do anything that could undermine my own efforts, therefore whatever you hear in that direction is false.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission later went after you for various alleged offences. Did you see the hand of the former President in the 50-page petition filed against you?
Definitely, it was President Obasanjo who orchestrated the attempt by the ICPC to have my office and the House probed. The person who went to swear the affidavit was a known acolyte of Obasanjo and it was not the first time. He did the same to Anyim Pius Anyim. That was primarily Obasanjo’s intention when he was setting up the ICPC; his sole aim was to harass anybody who opposed him.
Do you think you would have escaped the hammer if the Senate and the House did not modify the Anti-corruption Act, which gave you immunity from prosecution?
The amendment of the ICPC Act did not stop the ICPC investigation. When they realised that the cases initiated against Anyim and I were politically motivated, they had to drop them. They were no longer interested in the cases because the ICPC knew that the cases were purely political.
How did you feel after you were ‘sacrificed’ by your party in order to prevent you from returning to the House of Representatives?
There are characters within the party that did not like the activities of some of us. Like I told you, we have philosophical differences with some of these characters. Politics, as far as they are concerned, is about power, which will enable them to steal the resources of the people as they like. And ours was to try and see a country on the path of development through good governance and decent political practice. That set the stage for us to go into conflict and, up till now, these people have not forgiven me. That is why I had these travails within my former party, the PDP.
