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…says Sunday meeting best step ever

… constitution of strategy meeting well balanced

…beware of Zamfara debacle

Hon Teejay Yusuf, a three-term HoR Member, an economist, real estate magnate, vibrant lawmaker in three assemblies and national executive of NANS in his student days spoke extensively on the knotty issues weighing down the major opposition party in Nigeria, the PDP and proferred the way forward to bring it back to national reckoning, hear him.

This is where we are again, they said they’re trying to smoothen everything, tap from experience and make sure that they have a very good NEC meeting come the 27th of May. What should the PDP be nervous about with the upcoming NEC?

I think a lot. However the meeting of yesterday(Sunday )to me, for a long time look like one of the best step ever taken to resolve this matter.

If they are going to have a NEC meeting without resolving the matters, if not what they want Saraki to do now, it would have been disastrous.

First of all, there was the Supreme Court ruling on secretaryship, the governors met in Ibadan and said they recognize the deputy secretary. However the court recognize Anyanwu, apart from that, Anyanwu has a High Court ruling that cannot be removed; so if you had gone ahead to have a NEC meeting without resolving this matter, by implication whatever you do there, somebody will just wake up one day, go to court and quash it.

It’s a very complicated situation you know that ruling of the Supreme Court has also been known to say that all this internal party affair, all this disputes around positions are internal party affairs. But I do know that the controversy was whether it was the NWC or the NEC that said that rather than the Governor’s Forum because they felt that that decision should have come from either the NEC or the NWC not the Governor’s Forum.

The NWC has no such power. He was elected at the Convention, there’s a process of removal. So why going into that kind of crisis when you have convention coming that you can remove secretary legally, you can rezone so that’s the path they’re taking now.

We must understand, a friend of mine we were talking this morning, the current governors must understand something that a court ruling is not a buffet, you cherry pick, it’s alakat, you take what is served. You might not like it.
If I’m in their shoe all I will do just allow Anyanwu then we prepare, do this kind of meeting we are doing now, do our NEC meeting, prepare for Convention, Convention is in August, he’s out. So why are you putting booby traps?

The Zamfara experience on how APC lost the whole state is still fresh, we applauded it then, we love what happened and we are walking to that kind of trap.

So I see what happened on Sunday, I don’t know the detail but when I saw the committee, Saraki, I think there is a balance of all interests in that committee and so I assume for the first time there is a genuine intention to reconcile and if they can get that done we’ll fly.

I don’t even know if journalists had the time to ask such a question as to whether they were walking back on that earlier decision of theirs to say that they were recognizing a deputy secretary?

If they don’t it is a recipe for disaster.

Is it automatically taken for granted that with the resolution that they have now reached through this reconciliation committee, that is also a part of what…?

Definitely, I assume that it will be give and take. First of all you have a divided National Working Committee. Have you heard the legal adviser talking on this matter? Most time you hear the publicity secretary talking, interpreting legal issues, by implication there a lot of divisions, so Saraki’s first responsibility to bring them together.

You guys your tenures will be ending very soon, it’s even good for you to work together and exit with some honour. So I don’t have details of what happened but the pictures and the things the committee I saw, the setup, to me it is what they should have done from day one to get this thing sorted out.

We are in our position and we are consciously laying bobby trap for ourselves. Look at the FCT local government election that is coming up, a lot of the chairmen who were in PDP have crossed to APC because who sign, okay let’s assume you have such power to say deputy secretary should act and you now sign the candidature of these people and somebody just wake up and go to court and quash it; why taking such risk?

So I do not know why we invest so much energy on ego. If you don’t like Wike, he has his own shortcoming and what have you, you can’t dispute the fact that between 2015 – 2019 he gave PDP a voice and he wasn’t the one that was going to run for president then. It was those who left us and came back that took that privilege.
So who among the governors is doing such thing right now? Who is taking responsibility? Look at the Natasha issue, who is talking from the PDP top echelon? Who is saying anything?
If you are not even supporting, are we making effort to say oh, this lady, this take it or leave it today, she’s one of the most popular brand of PDP Natasha, so what have we done in that light?
So the governors must understand that they are a product of constitutionality, the truth of the matter is that if you do not have a constitution and been obeyed, 10 people will come out that they are governors in the state. But because there is a pronouncement of court and people obey it, so just drop your ego let’s work.

BoT unfortunately, I’m so disappointed because it ought to be the conscience of the party, we shouldn’t have, what the governors are doing now should have been done by BoT.

But they went into the crisis with partisan motive, they had an opinion of what should happen, what should not happen; a lot of them look at somebody in the party as the hope of their generation, so if it’s not the candidate of the party they will not be relevant again.

I’m looking at the papers this morning and I was hearing that the PDP is set to install a new BoT today, I don’t know, did you get that memo as a member of the PDP.

No I’m not a member of the BoT.

Okay well it’s right there on the front page of the Punch. I mean that should not be something that is done in secret, it should be something that members are aware of.

And it should not be something you should be doing now.

Honourable the one question that’s on my mind right now is I mean you just talked about this whole idea of another reconciliation headed by a Former President of the Senate Bukola Saraki. The question on my mind right now is with this mediation efforts that is being tinkered with, some may already see it as being already biased serving particular interests; so with the fact that prior reconciliation attempts failed what if members doubt the sincerity of this new initiative?

There’s nothing cast in stone, you cannot have a 100% opinion about any matter. Human beings naturally have a diverse opinion on any issue.
However I assume that the list I saw is a composition of different segments and cleavages agitating for, I mean control of the party and Saraki to me is a very seasoned politician who understands the power of negotiation. I think that committee will if they genuinely want to do it, they can do a good work.
So I can’t sit here and say because other reconciliation failed, what about the ones they succeeded in. They’ve gone around and did some reconciliation before, it is this particular item that linger this long and this is the first time the governors are coming out with a committee to see how they bridge those gaps. So I want to give them the benefit of doubt.

The last time we spoke about this honourable, remember you dated the issues back more than 10 years and consequently one can imagine that there have been quite a number of other issues that have come up over the last 10 years and not just one. You said then that it was a cumulation of the issues over the years; do you see this committee being able to tackle those issues, those historical internal discrepancies or rather disagreements within the party?

The committee might not go into those details but the committee will attempt to reconcile the actors now so as to have a smooth convention. What will determine if we will heal those wounds will be when we begin to zone positions.

I listened to somebody in another platform a few days ago who was misrepresennting facts and was talking about the PDP will zone to South East, it is some people that, I said no. I mean I don’t want to mention name, it is not like that in PDP dynamics.
I was in the committee meetings I was at the NEC meeting where the decisions were taken.

The major mistake we made, we didn’t zone party presidential ticket to the South, for the first time we didn’t zone. We don’t zone to geopolitical zone, we zone chairman, secretary to either North or South, different geopolitical zone within those enclaves will now jostle for it. If you zone entry to North, North West, North East and North Central will jostle for it.
Ayu emerged as chairman of PDP not because it was zoned to North Central, it was zoned to the North but the North Central were able to come together and make sure other aspirants from the zone step down for Ayu.
Going to the larger Northern caucus then everybody realized that North Central coming as a bloc will defeat them, Shekari, Makarfi was running, Shema was also running a lot of them. So Ayu became more formidable because about seven states in North Central were coming for him.
So for anybody to say that we should have zones to South East that’s why, we did not zone, we left it open.

So if we are able to have a successful NEC meeting, a successful Convention and those who are saddled with this responsibility will now realize that let’s retrace our step because in 2014 people complain that Jonathan should not run because it should go to the North.

2019 we rescind our decision and zone to the North so nobody from the South contested. We should do the same thing now, zone to the South so that nobody from North will contest.

You’ve already expressed optimism that this reconciliation committee could work; how confident are you that it could stop members from defecting?

First of all, the confidence is that it might not stop but it will reduce it and don’t be surprised about people moving to the ruling party. Around 2007, 2009, 2011 PDP has almost 30 states in this country, so it is in the nature of our politicians in Nigeria to always gravitate towards who is in power.

If tomorrow PDP is in power, some people will gravitate back to PDP but some of us will stay, so some people stayed with ACN and what have you, today the APC is in power, so I don’t begrudge them. Put more ingredients in the soup and make it sweeter.