Alhaji Dahiru Yabo, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Commissioner in Sokoto State, spoke with Managing Editor, Northern Operations, Yusuf Alli and Sanni Onogu in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) about the post-primary crisis in the chapter and why the governorship candidate, Ambassador Abdallah Wali, may lose the election.
What is the strength of the Sokoto State PDP, since Governor Aliyu Wamakko has left the party?
You will only appreciate the strength of the PDP in the state, if you have the background of what has happened in the state politically.
So ,what is the background?
The background is that Wamakko as a person cannot claim to have any popularity in the state right from 2007 when he claimed to have won the election…
Claimed to have won?
Yes. He claimed to have won the election. I can tell you that Wamakko did not win the election, even in 2007, because at the time he joined the PDP, if the PDP did not have the capacity to win the election, he wouldn’t have joined it. He would have remained in his own party. But, because it was the PDP that had the capacity to win the elections, he accepted to join the party and even after joining the party he did not win the election. I was the Chief Returning Officer of the DPP at that time. Even, when they were doing the collation at the INEC, I was the person who protested after observing a lot of irregularities and rigging and the collation had to be suspended for it to be announced two-three hours later around 9.33pm, when there was nobody there, except his followers and journalists, and he was declared the winner. But, we thank God that a court of competent jurisdiction in Kaduna nullified that election because of irregularities and blatant procedural defects.Then, coupled with the antecedents of his stewardship, which is not in conformity with our moral grounds, Wamakko cannot claim to be popular in Sokoto. But, the problem is that he requires somebody who can give him the needed fight politically.
Has the PDP gotten that person now?
I don’t think so because the Sokoto State PDP has not gotten the right candidate to withstand the candidate of the All Progressives Congress. The PDP is now fielding the wrong candidate, in the person of Senator Abdallah Wali.
Why are you saying that Senator Abdallah Wali is a wrong candidate?
Certainly, he is a wrong candidate because, if you remember, he was a candidate in 2003 and he lost the election woefully. He lost the election because he was not a good candidate. From that time till now, I don’t see any value he has added to his political career. He was a senator, Senate Leader under the Obasanjo Administration, yet, he could not win the election against Bafarawa. Yes, with the support of Muktari Shagari, as very powerful minister that time.
How did Wali pick the ticket, instead of the Deputy Governor, Alhaji Muktar Shagari?
There was a repeat of technical mistake politically by the PDP. What happened in 2007 was the same scenario that is repeating itself today. The PDP had a very good candidate, but due to bad advice, they decided to shift, remove their candidate and put somebody, who is not their own, to become the candidate. But, thank God, those people who did that and who caused the problem have now come back to confess what they did and they did the confession individually and collectively. Recently, when Chief Tony Anenih, the Chairman of the PDP BOT chaired a reconciliation meeting in Sokoto with about seven or eight members of his committee, people stood up there to apologise for what they did that time and the person who came second in that election in the person of Ahmed Gusau was among the people who worked against Muktari that time. In fact, he was given the mandate to coordinate the substitution of Muktari with Aliyu Wamakko. Today, he is one of the front runners to make sure that Muktari becomes the candidate. But unfortunately for the second time, the PDP drifted by allowing somebody who intruded into the party to take a bonus of 50 per cent of the structure of the party.
Who is this intruder you are referring to…
That is Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa, the former governor of Sokoto State, who was an ardent opponent of the PDP from the beginning and who wouldn’t have joined the PDP, if not because he was being pursued by Governor Aliyu Wamakko. He was pursued out of the APC to the PDP because he had lost grip of the party and that is a party he had dominated for over a year, only for it to be taken away from him within the first one week or two. So, if he has capacity, if he is influential, if he is a professor of politics as he calls himself, why didn’t he do it in the APC? Why couldn’t he do it in the ANPP? Why couldn’t he do it in the ACN? Can anybody tell me, if he had ever won election in his ward, which is Bafarawa village, since 2007 till date. So, this is same person that came into the party and was given 50 per cent of the structure and that already gave him ans undue advantage over any other person on the promise that he is just going to midwife among these candidates and that he is not going to have any preferred and that he is hoping to treat them equally. And all the aspirants were loyal to him. They all paid allegiance to him and on the premise that he is going to be fair to everybody. Thank God that when the Anenih Reconciliation Committee came to Sokoto, in the presence of everybody, I pointed it out, because I was privileged to speak for 15 minutes, and I was able to tell the committee the problems and the reasons why we are having a sort of misunderstanding in the party. One of the reasons I gave them was that Bafarawa, being a leader in the party, somebody who has been given the structure of the party and somebody who had promised to help in coordinating the party had already taken sides by sporting Abdallah Wali. I said this in the presence of Bafarawa, Abdallah Wali and other people present at the meeting. I told them that the indicators were that the person that was made the chairman of the party, that is, Ibrahim Maigoma, had already started playing the posters of Wali in from of his house showing that this is where Bafarawa is and nobody could dispute that. So, if that has happened, then, whatever was the outcome of the primaries should not surprise anybody. Personally I am not surprised.
Do you see the PDP putting up a good fight and winning the elections?
Of course, they will win, but not with the wrong candidate. Definitely, we cannot get anywhere with Wali. Wali cannot win his local government under the present dispensation because, don’t forget that Aminu Waziri Tambuwal is now the governorship candidate of the APC. Aminu is an in-law to Wali. He is married to his younger sister. Aminu is from Tambuwal town, the headquarters of the local government. Wali is from Seyina. Even, the PDP congress we had ,his candidate could not win even within the PDP. So, when it comes to the general election, nobody in Sokoto can tell you that Wali can win against Aminu Waziri, even in Tambuwal Local Government. So, somebody as a gubernatorial candidate who cannot win an opposing candidate in your own local government then what is the guarantee that he can win anywhere. The reason is that Wali has no structure himself. He is relying on Bafarawa’s structure and Bafarawa, on his own merit, cannot win election in Sokoto. Bafarawa has already been intimidated by Wamakko. Wamakko seized the ANPP from him when he was a governor. For the second time, he has taken over the APC from him where he even put his own structure. So, what is that magic that he thinks he can perform now to win against Wamakko!
Will the Sokoto PDP take the advantage of the extension of time granted by INEC for the submission of governorship candidates by political parties to make a change?
One, after Wali was declared, there was a protest in Sokoto. The second ting is that Muktari Shagari was in Sokoto after the primaries because he came to Abuja and went back to Sokoto and the kind of reception he was given showed the direction of the people and their interest. The APC is happy that Wali was made the governorship candidate by the PDP and the simple reason is because they know he has no structure of his own. He relies on Bafarawa’s structure and, as far as as they are concerned, Bafarawa’s doesn’t have a structure of his own because, as a former governor of Sokoto State for eight years, among all the people that worked with him, both in terms of political appointments and party structure, he cannot count five prominent politicians. Let’s start with his deputy governor. He is not with him. His party chairman is not with him. Out of 14 of us that were his commissioners, only two are with him. Every other person has left him and the records are there. What was his performance in the ACN? What was his performance in the ANPP in the 2011 election? Why is it that he could not remain in APC? Even the person he nominated as a member of the national caretaker committee and that guy was his classmate, he was his very close friend and he was his political associate, Danmadami Isa has left and joined Wamakko. The three gubernatorial candidates that he anointed the one he anointed as a sitting governor under DPP who is Alhaji Maigari Dingiadi, who was his former SSG has joined Wamakko and this is the person who contested against Wamakko and who has been fighting Wamakko for seven years, but he has joined him.
