From Samuel Bello, Abuja
Chairman Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sen. Ahmed Makarfi in this interview spoke on happenings in the party and state of affairs in the country.
What does the Supreme Court judgment portend for democracy in Nigeria?
It is one of the most important judgments delivered among the political cases that we have had since 1999. For a number of reasons, it was not just about the PDP, it is about supremacy of party convention, so that has gone a long way in laying the foundation where no individual or group of individuals can hijack any political party for whatever purpose or reason. We thank God; we give credit to the judiciary for rising up to the occasion and doing what they did.
Do you see PDP as more acceptable now than in 2015 when you lost?
Absolutely because you never know that you lost a good wife until you marry another one and have the experience of living with another woman. We are not perfect; we have had our missteps, minuses as a party and as a government when we were in power. But it is no where comparable to what we have today. When we were in power, with all the indiscipline within the PDP, there was still a central authority; organs of our party were meeting frequently, now we have a party in power that is afraid to call meetings not to talk of convention.
When we were in power, of course there were conflicts between executive and legislature but they were quickly resolved democratically through dialoguing through give and take but right from day one, what we have now is a conflict between executive and legislature and it does not seem that it will stop until the end of the current administration. Different arms of government contradicting each other, which is not healthy.
What are the immediate plans in announcing that PDP is back?
Between 17th and 18th of this month July, we had expanded caucus, it was why all key members of the party whether they belong to organs of the party or not, were invited, we did not go in with any fear of anything happening because we have nothing to hide, we are one family, we will disagree here and there but at the end of the day we come to a form of agreement.
On 18th we had the caucus meeting, we had the board of trustees meeting and we had the NEC meeting, all ended successfully without any incident. We came out with certain key decisions and the NEC at the glorious meeting with some organs of the party distributed the proposed constitution amendment that is a product of the Ekweremadu and the Jerry Gana committees combined together, which are aimed at organising our party to make it more acceptable to people to institutionalize internal party democracy and to do away with some of the provisions that we have found that party men and women may use to hold the party to ransom just as we came out of this particular kind of problem.
Immediately the court judgement was made, when I came out I said no victor, no vanquished. Of course some people may understand, then why did we set up a disciplinary committee, we agreed to setup two, one the reconciliation committee, the other disciplinary committee.
We said the issue of disciplinary committee is to deal with matters that will arise after the Supreme Court judgement. It is not to dig about the past, we have drawn the line, we are not digging about the past but we must instill discipline in PDP, we must not allow some of the happenings of the past to continue to bedevil our battle, otherwise we would have learnt no lesson and besides that, the reconciliation committee knowing that we have to integrate, we have to make the party all inclusive before we head to the next convention.
Has the party decided to jettison Governor Seriake Dickson’s report?
That report was never accepted by any organ of the party and that report was that Sheriff should conduct convention. The first convention was valid; the caretaker is valid so there is absolutely no pending matter called Dickson report to consider. The Dickson report was about Sheriff and that matter has been actually dealt with.
Are you physically reaching out to aggrieved members that have left the party or setting up a reconciliation process?
A number of people that were on the other side have visited me, both in my residence and our office, we have talked on phone through various means, not just me, they have met a number of our party leaders, so we are not enemies, we had different opinions about certain things.
As chairman of the caretaker committee, I should not be the one occupied with this process, we should be receiving report of the process of this reconciliation and that is why the best way to do it is to setup this reconciliation committee, that was the Dickson reconciliation committee, they have indicated to the entire committee, their desires in other to pave way for a more genuine and transparent reconciliation for all of them to resign. This is so because people may have a different view about them because of activities of the past and they would not want anything to affect the new reconciliation which is highly commendable, if it were another person, he would want to sit tight there and want to continue from where I stopped but they offered to resign to pave way for reconstituting a more all inclusive new committee that people can have far more confidence in, in order to facilitate the issue of reconciliation.
Some people may also mistake the decision by NEC that illegal caretaker committees and state executives setup by Sheriff are enough and those elected through the congresses Sheriff himself conducted to return to office. Let me clarify here that it is not vindictive, after the Court of Appeal judgement which gave Sheriff victory, what he did was that he went to some states that do not agree with him and said that he dissolved the elected state executives and he setup caretakers. We never frown at any state executive or any member of party that was not with us even when we had judgement in our favour and when we got to Supreme Court we said no victor no vanquish, which means if you are elected whether you supported us or not, we are all PDP.
Those actions Sheriff took were illegal; they were punitive, vindictive and as such we had to have them reversed. Those elected under his leadership when congresses were conducted before the first convention are the legitimate leaders of the party in those states and they should return to office. I am making this clarification so that people will know that we only reverse an illegality which cannot stand, as a matter of fact like in Jigawa State, the Federal High Court has ruled that illegal caretaker was null and void, they were not at all elected, so we are only reaffirming that those elected under his leadership when he was there, whose tenure still exists, should go back to their offices.
Some want some members back, some do not, is it not a problem for the party?
Well, the honest truth is that this problem is a lot more in the South-West, we all know. As a matter of fact that is the genesis of this PDP crisis and we plead with them to close ranks, as power comes from God. Luckily, some states are less problematic, like in Oyo State, I understand even this weekend that we are meeting to harmonize, luckily there has never been any congress at all, so if they come together, we will go and conduct congress they will say it will be an all inclusive one.
In Osun State, it is because they came together that was why we won one of the major contests from Osun-West. We are encouraging them to go beyond the issue of electing the senator, to harmonizing the position. There are steps being taken to resolve all the issues, but like I said, there are states with peculiar problems that we have looked in and actually resolved and we will continue to meet on this.