Barrister Abdulraman Hassan Gimba was the former Minister of Sports and gubernatorial aspirant in Niger State under the platform of the People Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview with Abubakar Akote, he calls for reform of the delegate system to allow credible candidates the opportunity to participate in the governance of Nigeria.
PDP in Nigeria seems to have lost its years of scheming prowess to win the 2023 elections. Do you think the party has hope in Niger State?
I think PDP in Niger has hope provided we can act together. Let’s go to the basics on how to win in an election. But you are not in politics simply to win an election. And think, that’s the message. When people think they join parties purely for the purposes of election, purely to win, I think that’s a wrong idea.
The correct idea in my mind is you want to participate in democracy, to deepen the democratic practice. Now, to deepen the democratic practice, that’s not necessarily mean you want to win an election because it is a process. In order to do that, you must have capable hands to participate in the process.
Unfortunately, the position today is that quite a number of people that should participate in this process are not in the process. It is clear that if Nigeria must move forward, we must look carefully into the political recruitment to ensure that captains of industry, to ensure that those who have achieved some level of standing in their various fields of endeavour join in the political parties. Otherwise, no progress can be made. The lacuna we found now is that you have a lot of people who are outside but who are capable; we have a lot of people who are inside who are incapable because they least understand the process itself.
And it’s key that if the country must move forward, those who have what it takes to move the country forward, and who have succeeded on their own should join these political parties. This is not the case now for the vast majority who are inside.
Let me correct one impression. When I said captains of industries and those who have achieved some levels of professionalism on their own and those who have achieved whatever in their field. Dr. Okadigbo has it that contrary to the impression that the problems of the country is caused by illiteracy, he said it is not illiteracy who caused the problem. As you can notice today, if you compare the practice in the 1960s and today, you will discover that the practice in the 60s was even better than what we have today. Yet, you have all the PhD holders and people who can lecture in Oxford, Harvard and all the universities of the world are in the process now, yet we have these problems. So, it’s about orientation – national orientation.
My submission here is that, not that you must be bookish before you participate in the process. When you compare the political participants of the 60s and today, vis-à-vis those today, the point of Dr. Okadigbo and the point I am making resonate, in the sense that you have a lot of these people today with PhD, they are literates, they have Masters Degree – in the 60s, those who did it didn’t have degrees, most of them don’t have degrees, but they were quite conscious of their environment; they were conscientious; they weren’t selfish and they were accountable to their communities even though in terms of literalism they were less. So you cannot separate actors of this process between literalism, non-literalism, accountability, non-accountability and the achievement of the process itself.
The second issue that needed to be tackled is the issue of the delegate system. INEC must do something about the delegate system. When you hold a vote, who does this vote belong to? We must begin to ask this question. Who does it serve and what is it used for? The question becomes relevant because is it a means to trade or is it a means of expression of democracy itself? The card that’s held by the delegate, who owns that card? Does that single delegate own that card? Or that card is owned on behalf of a group. What happens today is that, that card, irrespective of party – APC, PDP – seems to be a meal ticket with the result that in Nigeria democracy, political parties have become more of a stock exchange. What happens at the floor of a stock exchange rather than a desire to move the country forward. That delegate card is a joint ownership with whatever interest that is represented. So, the card holder should only be expressing the interest of a group rather than his own meal ticket. For example, in an athletic competition, you go from a Hit to qualification proper. If you don’t pass the hit, you fail. And where the ticket holder, the delegate, misuses this card, it is akin to failing the hit. You will not have a good product, from the system that we are practicing now. Unless we reform this system of delegate system, we would not witness democracy in the years to come. today, a delegate sells his card and gets away irrespective of the consequences. What you are having today is that, the issues of development in the state, interest of the state is no longer an issue. The issue is that, anytime the delegates are meeting, or anytime you call a meeting in the party, what you have is non-issue because non-issues are discussed.
I took a tour of the state in Zone A and Zone B. Wherever I go, we make a speech. This week, we travelled from Bida to Lemu, Wushishi and Kontagora. Let me tell you, if you have lower back pain, don’t think of travelling between Lemu and Wushishi because what you find there on that road are not just potholes, they are craters like you find in the moon or Mars.
So, in Kontagora, we made a speech of about 30minutes, and at the close of my deliberations, one young man got up and asked a question that I was not doing it the way it was supposed to be done. Tell us how much you are giving us. Others have come and just announced how much they would give and they left. Thank God the moderator of the programme came to our rescue and said the purpose of our coming there was not to distribute money. And immediately you can see the embarrassment on the young man’s face. So, this is the kind of thing that is happening. So, unless you generate issues that the candidates need to tackle, the party needs to tackle. Today, where are the manifestoes? What are the issues? yet, we are under one week to the primaries. So, what kind of democracy is this? People gather and all they do is to share money. you must make a clear difference between gift, donation philanthropy. I know what philanthropy is.
Then, the party structure itself, as I have said, more people who have something to give should be recruited to run the party. Today, that is not the case.
Niger State is one of the states that has not felt the considerable impact of democracy since 1999. What do you think is responsible for this?
It is a chain reaction because it is only in Nigeria and comes to the specific of Niger, but it is a general issue. It is all about recruitment into the political process. If we want to jump, we say leadership. How do you get appropriate leadership that can drive the process? When the state was created in 1976, and you look at other states that were created about the same time, Niger is lacking behind. It is so because of leadership. And sometimes, people would talk about luck – that we’ve not been lucky with leadership. But that is the beginning of the problem. leadership should not arise by luck; leadership should arise as a result of conscious decision from critical stakeholders to select an appropriate person who has what it takes to move the state forward. And not to make a false assumption that anybody propelled into a government house is capable of doing the job. It is not so.
In all the states, in the developed world, leadership arises as a result of conscious choice of candidates with certain attributes, not luck. What happens here is that, you know of people with questionable characters; they know; or people whose character they don’t even know; they then mortgage the state, after which they head to the mosque or to the church to pray that God should help the state, after knowingly electing a wrong person or an incompetent chap into the office. If states are run by God, then Nigeria is one of the most religious countries in the world. Nigeria should be first or second, not third. But God does not run states; human beings run states.
So, where people deliberately subvert the historical analysis of the character of the person they put into the office. They shouldn’t complain of non-development. And they have no business going to pray either in the Church or in the mosque because they have chosen an incompetent person to lead them.
You are in the gubernatorial race with money politics leading in the game. What hope do you have?
Well, I am in it. I have hope. I have hope that it will not continue. We are trying to attract millions of AH Gimba in and most of them are coming in and they will continue to come in and hopefully, they will change because if we don’t get by democratic process, how else can we get it? What is happening in the Sahel Region where there is a re-enactment or process or democracy is being reversed by the military now coming in, and incidentally by the civilians asking the military to intervene because it is the civilians now asking the military to come in, not the other way round. We hope and it is our prayers that we avoid a situation like that. So, I have hope that the situation will improve but what we are witnessing today as far as money politics is concerned, PDP has not learnt any lesson.
PDP has not learnt any lesson; they have only not learnt any lesson; they appear to not willing to learn any lesson from our recent past. I am emphasizing PDP because I don’t even consider APC as part of the process because if you take out Buhari, the Vice-President and Tinubu, what is APC? They are all PDP. The damage they have caused in PDP migrated to the APC; now they are causing a lot of cater milking effects in APC today. And APC on a proper analysis is just a protest group, not really a party. And you can see what is happening. In Niger State today, for example, there is tension. Now, rather than the opposition causing tension to the ruling party, it is the ruling party that has caused tension to the people of the state. And how they proceed from there, good luck to them.
Many people see you as an extremely principled person who may not fit into the political space. How do you negotiate that personal attribute in the murky waters of politics?
I see it as my strength. I am a firm person but I am not stiff. I have an independent mind but I am also willing to learn. You see, what do people mean by stiff? We cannot have a governance system where the leaders have no principle. Nigeria is a country of 218 million people as of today. Three quarters of the market in West Africa is already Nigeria. why will Nigerians, 218 million people not respect the law but 30 minutes when they are in Benin Republic, they respect the law. Is that stiff? Why will a Nigerian in Ghana be respectful to the laws of Ghana but not respecting law in Nigeria?
The people who want to work on their heads in Abuja, let them learn in Hytrol, they all obey the law. Now if I succeed, God’s willing, I have no personal law to apply. It’s the existing law. So, what is stiffness there? Do we apply the existing law or do we just allow things to flow so that everybody does what he wishes. What I represent is applying the existing law, not something from anybody’s head. And those laws must be applied. If you are complaining of those laws, obey the law so that you don’t come within the ambit of the law. But I cannot be a governor or a president or anybody in charge of authority, and then you are breaking that law and you say I am stiff in applying existing law in dealing with situations. We will apply the existing law; it is not anything new.
Many of the aspirants in the ruling APC were your colleagues in the PDP. Why do you choose to remain in the PDP?
Because I am a product of the PDP. I was a minister in the PDP; I am grateful that the PDP gave me that position as a minister. I never abused it when I was a minister. So, why will I abandon that party now? The party that I served. Though there are a lot of things there to be corrected, corrections can only be made when you are in it. I never ran away from problems. I criticize the PDP yet I am not going to leave the party because the correction should come internally.
There are impressions that there are factions in your party at the state level which observers think will give the ruling party a soft landing as far as the gubernatorial race in Niger State is concerned. What do you think makes them have such a belief?
Observers have this belief because they are witnesses to the event. And everyone would have his own story to tell. But we are hopeful that we would be able to solve this problem before the primaries even though it is less than a week. I think what is giving them the impression is the failure of the party to reach a consensus because for an opposition party in Africa to win an election, it must come with an acceptable candidate. Where you have only one person trying to bankroll the party, it doesn’t work and that leads us to another great principle at play – political funding or donations to parties. We have found out that, in advanced democracies, donations to parties are not only pegged, individuals are not allowed to contribute more than certain percent and nothing must be under – the funding must be very transparent, otherwise, you allow one individual or a few individuals to hijack the party. And that is what is happening today. The factionalisation that you were referring to in Niger State – the Dr. Mu’azu Babangida faction or the Barrister Tanko Beji faction – has been resolved. And I believe both of these groups will work in the interest of the party otherwise, your proposition as you put it, may come to pass if they don’t come together, the party may fail.
You talked about Nigeria in need of a third force. Are saying that the existing opposition parties are not playing the role they are supposed to play in the governance of Nigeria?
We need a third force because even though I am in the PDP, we have a lot of problems. and if the situation continues like this, Nigeria, then needs a third force. Clearly, the situation as we have it in the two leading political parties, we cannot continue like this.
What is your piece of advice to delegates in the coming primaries?
As a delegate, the vote you are holding should be exercised with caution because contrary to what you think, you do not own that vote. That vote only allows you to exercise it on behalf of a certain interest. Therefore, represent that interest very well not collecting money because if you collect money and the wrong person goes there, your suffering is four years or eight years; the money that candidate will give you will not last you one week.
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