Mukhtar Shehu Idris was the governor-elect of Zamfara State in the 2019 elections before the Supreme Court annulled his election five days to his inauguration and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare all the runners-up in the elections in the state as winners. In this interview he spoke on how he lost the Government House to the incumbent governor, issues behind the politics of the recent impeachment of the deputy governor, Mahdi Aliyu Gusau, performance of the present state government and other issues.
Can we say that the present political situation in Zamfara started from the annulment of your election at the Supreme Court?
- APC convention: Supporters raise N10m to buy form for Adamu
- Unending battle for APC’s soul in Rivers as Amaechi-Abe feud resurfaces
What is happening in Zamfara has not come as a surprise. Maybe I need to take you back to the primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in October 2018. I contested alongside other people, but the then national leadership of the party headed by Adams Oshiohmole, had their interest. They wanted somebody at the helm of affairs to be the flag-bearer of the party, but the stakeholders in Zamfara State wanted me. That was where the issues started. The National Executive Council asked the state chapter to come back with their resolution on the kind of primary election they wanted to conduct. Zamfara State opted for indirect primary while some opted for direct. To our surprise, it was changed to direct primary.
We contested, but that was not what we wanted. We had majority of the people and the election was going to take place, but nobody knew what was going to happen. We accepted the direct primary to be fair to all other contestants and got ourselves prepared.
A team from the national headquarters was sent to Zamfara, headed by Professor Habu Fari to conduct the primary election.
By tradition, any team that goes to any state to conduct primaries would go to the governor, who would host them. They will also meet with stakeholders and the party secretariat. But in our case, because we had a lot of people that felt the system was going to be fair to them, we accepted their case and chose a neutral ground where all of us could go and have a stakeholders meeting and agree to a format for the conduct of the primary election. Police headquarters was chosen and we all went there and had the meeting.
We agreed that primary and secondary school teachers would conduct the primary election, supervised by that committee.
Most of the local governments concluded their primaries and nine out of 14 results were declared. To our surprise, somebody called me from Abuja, saying the headquarters was going to cancel the primaries. I asked on what ground because the primaries had taken place and everything was fine as nine local governments had already declared their results. By the time we went back to the police headquarters we found out that those people who conducted the primaries had left and that they were called from Abuja.
Remember that the same format was used in Ogun and Imo states and they subsequently declared the people they wanted to be in that position. Because our win was a very tough one, they could not declare the person they wanted to be in that seat at that time.
So we all came to Abuja and there were a lot of complaints and counter complaints. They said they were going to send another team to either adopt the first primary or do another one.
That team didn’t get to Zamfara until the eve of the final day of the primary. And when they got there, we were ready to continue with the primary. They came with the materials and said they were going to cancel the first one and do a fresh one, all in October 2018.
They kept prolonging and delaying and nothing was forthcoming. We realised that they were waiting for a directive from the national headquarters to conduct the primary. I confirmed from one of them who said they were waiting for a directive from the national chairman to give us directive to conduct the primary. Up to a certain hour, we realised that the election was supposed to close. We took over the issue of the primary and finished with those places that were not conducted. So the primary was actually done.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) witnessed the primary. Their representatives were there when the results were declared.
We went to court immediately because we knew the national headquarters was not going to be fair to us. There was the judgement that the INEC should include Zamfara in their primaries. One of them went to another court with the former national welfare secretary to force the INEC to accept their candidate as the consensus candidate. But the court said they were not going to accept that candidate because of what transpired in Zamfara. So there was conflict. The court said the APC would participate in the election, but another court said it would not. Then we went for interpretation in the appeal court, which gave us a go-ahead to participate in the election. That was how we went into the election barely six hours to the general elections. I can remember that the court session ended around 9pm. The election was to start the next morning and we went ahead and participated and won our seats comfortably.
After winning the election, some of them still went to court to challenge the process of the primary. They appealed the judgement that gave us the mandate. The appeal court set that judgement aside, but there was no interpretation or consequential order on that. I am not a legal expert to interpret what the appeal court had done.
After the judgement in the appeal court and looking at the general elections in Zamfara and the results, you will not be surprised at what is happening in the state.
I got over 530,000 votes across the state while the person who came nearest to me got over 180, 00 votes, that is the PDP candidate. Look at the difference, but based on the Supreme Court judgement he was sworn in as governor; somebody that got nearly 20 per cent of the total votes cast. That is one of the issues we are getting ourselves into.
You meant the governor feels he doesn’t have legitimacy because he was voted only by a tiny minority of the people?
That is natural. This is because everything everybody does he feels threatened. He feels that God gave him the position and you are trying to take it away from him; you are challenging his power. When he came to government, the first thing they did was to remove all the party chairmen. If you can remember, the process the deputy governor was removed is the same process the party chairmen were removed. They said they were found guilty of participating in banditry. Within hours after removing them, they reinstated some of them who agreed to follow them in the PDP and impeached those that didn’t follow them.
So I was not surprised when I saw this impeachment.
When Matawalle came in 2019, majority of the chairmen of the local governments were in the APC, while he was a PDP governor; how would you describe that situation?
Before he came to government, everything was APC: state House of Assembly, chairmen of local governments, councillors and everything because we won our elections 100 per cent. But when he came to government, the state assembly was PDP because all the APC candidates were disqualified across board. He tried to woo most of them to join the PDP for him to have the comfort of governance. It is natural that any governor that came in this situation would like to get the elected people to be on his side. So he tried all he could to get them to his side. Some of them agreed to follow him and some resisted.
The matter was taken to the state assembly in the same manner the deputy governor was impeached. Those in Zamfara were not surprised with the way the deputy governor was impeached. When the governor decamped to the APC and his deputy refused to follow him, you could predict what would happen.
Was it expected that at some point he would decamp to the APC?
The matter is before a court, so I don’t want to say too much about it. But I know there is a competent court of law that says status quo should be maintained and nobody should do anything until after the determination of the case.
Are you saying the impeachment is illegal?
According to what the law says, I think so; though I am not a legal expert.
People are talking about the speed with which the impeachment was executed – after impeaching somebody you got a nomination for his replacement, as well as screened, confirmed and swore him into office that very day. What does that say about the process?
The law says there are up to 90 days to conclude the matter, but that thing didn’t last up to a week within the commission of inquiry. Immediately they submitted a report, it was read, accepted, adopted and an impeachment motion was raised and they voted for him to be impeached. And immediately, he was impeached. Within that same hour, the nomination of the deputy governor came and they screened him. So, two processes didn’t last up to three hours. People can’t explain what happened. That’s why I said the whole process was more political than any other thing.
Impeachment is generally not illegal; it is mainly a political process. One of the issues the deputy governor mentioned is that if he had agreed to join the APC with the governor, the impeachment would probably not have happened. What does that say about the impeachment? Is it a sort of witch-hunt?
Looking back at what happened to local government chairmen, you would see that those who agreed to follow him to the PDP were immediately reinstated and sworn in as sole administrators. Five of them declined to follow him and they were flushed out. That makes the argument of the deputy governor valid.
In politics, if somebody does something today, you can predict what he is going to do tomorrow. Just look at what he did yesterday and what he is doing today. You can predict what’s going to happen tomorrow. I am not surprised.
The deputy governor was removed for specific offences, including criminal enrichment, misusing public funds, not discharging his obligations; what were the offences of the local government chairmen who were removed?
They were virtually the same allegations. They were not given a fair hearing as they were not called upon to defend themselves in the state House of Assembly. The matter is still in court. I am sure that one day, somehow something will come out of it.
It is not known that the deputy governor appeared before the panel, why do you think he did not appear before them?
He has his reasons, but I am not here to defend him. It is for him to answer, but I am sure the panel must have invited him, whether he was there or not. It is not something I can say precisely. But the chairmen were not given that opportunity.
He was given the opportunity to defend himself. Maybe they used the documents before them to find guilty. There were three allegations and they found him guilty on one, which the state assembly said was enough to get him impeached. But I think the panel didn’t find him guilty on the other two.
Some people are calling on the governor to explain what he has done with the N31billion security vote, while those on his side are asking his deputy to answer for certain funds; why are they trading words over public funds?
I was a commissioner for finance for some time and I know what we got and the projects that were executed during our time. It was very transparent. Yari was able to build a lot of roads.
But Yari is facing allegations of corruption.
All former governors are facing cases of allegation of corruption. This is because anything you do in government, somewhere, somehow, somebody will find something. It is just an allegation; you would need to defend yourself. There are cases where the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) would invite you, and by the time you go there, the case would be different. In fact, we have some cases where the EFCC recommended the upward review of the contracts because they invited experts to look at the projects that were executed and what was outstanding for the contractors.
We have a lot of cases the EFCC is reviewing, not only in Zamfara, but other places; it is normal. One has to be careful because once one leaves government, sooner or later one has to answer questions about all those things you did in the state. As a former commissioner for finance, I have answered a lot of questions.
During our time, there were specific projects. That’s why we were able to give farmers fertiliser initially at N1,000. We were able to build roads. That’s why, even after we left office, all these allegations were not coming. But in this government we cannot see a single project. Physically we cannot see anything done with the money, so they start accusing each other. It is not surprising. You are a media person, so you have your own yardstick of judging all states. I am sure the situation in Zamfara State is quite alarming and disturbing.
A lot of people are saying that if security matters in Zamfara would be handled with that level of seriousness, it would be a thing of the past; what’s going on?
The issue of insecurity in Zamfara State started way back, even before we came into government. And we tried as much as possible to contain it. When Yari left government, those bandits were really cornered to a point of elimination. But everybody has his own way of doing things. So I am not blaming this government.
They gave them amnesty and that was the beginning of the escalation. That was when kidnapping started. Somebody predicted that by time rustlers finished all the cattle in the bushes, they would start kidnapping. At that point, we didn’t take it seriously because kidnapping was still only in the southern part. But look at what is happening now. Zamfara became a safe haven; even the current governor of Kaduna State said it several times. He said most of the bandits were from Zamfara.
By the time the government realised that amnesty was not working, it was too late because they were well armed. They were able to regroup with all the bandits in other states.
