Malam Tajudeen Mustapha Asunnara is a former stalwart of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara state and an Abuja-based property consultant who recently defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview with BODE OLAGOKE, he spoke about how Dele Belgore, a PDP chieftain in the state, Minister of National Planning, Dr. Sulaiman Abubakar, among others, betrayed him while in PDP; why Jonathan won’t get re-elected and the chances of the Kwara state Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, retaining his seat in the coming gubernatorial election.
I learnt that you left PDP where you were a founding member to the APC. What informed your volte-face?
What happened was that the PDP leaders refused to reckon with some of us despite being founding members of the party. For 16 years they kept on truncating our ambitions and giving us fringe appointments (as board members) and we were the ones carrying the people along, sponsoring people to go to school, empowering the market women, psyching them up about the importance of education and making life meaningful for them.
Despite all these, we discovered that anytime they wanted to give appointments, what they did was to give us board appointments. I was a member of the governing council of College of Education, Ilorin and later Kwara Hotels, Ilorin at various times between 2003 and 2009.
I worked assiduously to help build a formidable structure for the party in the state. But it seemed the political class we were fellowshipping with did not really appreciate our efforts. And the people kept asking, “Won’t you leave this party and go to another party? But because it was the strongest party we decided to hang in there until another party of substance emerged.
In 2010, Dele Belgore along with Alhaji Lai Mohammed brought Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to Kwara through Sen. Ahmed Bola Tinubu.
We all knew the performances of the ACN governors in their states, and because of that, a lot of people were so much interested in the party and anything that would make life easy for the impoverished people of Kwara state. I come from a humble background. You know, when you come from a very poor background, you know why you want an improvement; you want your people to really move forward. So that is just my aim in politics.
Since you joined the major opposition party in Nigeria, how will you describe your experiences so far?
Are you talking about APC now? Well, I joined APC just last month. Before my crossover, I contested under PDP in the 2003 House of Assembly poll. I am from the Balogun Fulani Ward One in Ilorin South but I was schemed out. In 2011, when the ACN penetrated the state, I moved over to the party. Again, I contested and again I was rigged out. I went to the tribunal. My petition was thrown out on the grounds that I filed my case outside the stipulated time.
I went on appeal and the Appeal Court ordered a retrial but the forces against me were legion. Early last year, the party along with other opposition parties like the CPC fused to form the APC. In the last primaries held on November 29, 2014, I contested again for the ticket to the State Assembly. But unknown to me, some forces had connived to work against my ambition. All along, some Abuja-based politicians who pretended to be my friends had, unknown to me, perfected their strategy and allocated the tickets to their cronies, watching me as I expended my resources, time and energy. I should have been told that the tickets had been allocated before the exercise.
Of course, I was curious to know what actually went behind the scene. So, an associate of mine went to confront the kingmakers and I was shocked by his revelation. He told me that Dele Belgore, a governorship aspirant, the Minister of National Planning, Dr. Sulaiman Abubakar, Alhaja Bola Shagaya, the party chairman, Hon. B. F. Ishola among others had a caucus meeting where my candidature was tabled. But Dele Belgore kicked against my ambition on the whimsical excuse that I am too independent minded and would not be pliable.
And that if a character like me is allowed to get into the House, they would not be able to control me. What an excuse! My source said that when Bola Shagaya sought to intervene in my favour, she was asked to back off because the issue on the table had to do with Ilorin South whereas she is from Ilorin West. I also gathered later that Dele Belgore was particularly angry with me that I erected a billboard close to the Ilorin Airport on which I referred to Bola Shagaya as the new leader of the party in the state. Belgore said that I should go to Alhaja Shagaya and collect my ticket from her. I felt betrayed.
You see, I’m not a rich man but to some extent, Allahamdulillahi. I don’t beg for money from them; whatever I want to do, I don’t go to anybody; the form we collected, we paid over N1.4million; I didn’t collect anything from them during the primaries; I spent very heavily on the project; I didn’t collect a dime from anybody, but a group of people just ganged up and said no, they would not allow me to get there; and I must confess to you, this is my third time. I started this struggle since 2003 and you can see we are now in 2015. Imagine if you had a new born baby in 2003, you will know where he or she is by now. So when I discovered that these people are hypocrites, I was left with no choice than to abandon them. My supporters wept uncontrollably because their leading light had been frustrated.
The most painful part of the whole saga was that the ticket for my constituency was given to someone who joined the party barely three weeks before the primaries! You know when you rely on somebody, when you work for somebody and you have so much relied on him… but he betrayed me; he betrayed me to the extent that when I lost election, none of my party members, none of my friends, even called to console me; they didn’t even talk to me up till date because they knew about the plot all along. So, I thought that something was wrong somewhere. My people were crying; they felt for me, my brothers, my supporters, because they could not just imagine what might have caused this, and they now said oga, the best thing to do is to leave this party.
I said no, let us know the cause of this problem because the new party we are going to, we don’t know what is going to happen there. If we are able to ascertain what really happened, then we know the way forward. So along the line, I was able to trace the problem to the caucus I mentioned earlier.
Small wonder, at the end of the day, nobody talked about it; as I am talking to you, nobody even called me to say sorry o, this is the issue; so you can now imagine that if someone could be in that kind of party, even if they win election, they will not consider it to be anything; so I now looked at it and I said the best thing for me is to leave the party. I called my people, we talked and I said look, I know you people are behind me, but these are my problems. What do we do? They said we should leave the party, and we left.
So, how do you see your chances under the new party, APC?
I didn’t just join the APC, I was invited, because they know the kind of person I am. Senator Bukola Saraki invited me through a friend called Barrister Lateef Jida; they were the ones that called me; they were the ones that invited me and I went there, we discussed for close to an hour.
They said they knew my worth in my local government and my support base is very important to them and they equally promised that if I work for them and they win the election, they will do something reasonable. I am not talking about monetary terms; I am talking about appointment and I said okay, no problem. I told them I would feed them back after discussing with my people.
It was actually what my people wanted. I went back and I said okay, we will be with you. So, on January 22, this year, we decamped to APC en masse with my people. On the day of my formal declaration, my supporters, who turned out in large number, did the unexpected: they shredded their PDP membership cards and threw them up like confetti. We have collapsed all the structures of PDP in the entire Ilorin South Local Government Area of Kwara state into the APC.
So, I am telling you now, I’m not boasting, if elections are held today in that place, I know there is no way PDP will rake even 10% of the votes. I am telling you because I am on ground there and I know what I am talking about.
Comparing your experience in PDP with what is happening now, how would you describe the chances of PDP in the forthcoming general elections?
Honestly, I don’t think PDP will make it; it is very obvious and let me tell you, what happened to me also happened to majority of PDP members across the states, because there is no sincerity in PDP and everybody knows that. You know what happened in Rivers state, we know of how other governorship aspirants were robbed.
Go to Sokoto state, you will see how they robbed Mukhtar Shagari. Just go round and you will discover many cases like that and that is the problem they are having now. Look at their presidential candidate. You will know that there is no sincerity in the party.
This is the first time in the history of Nigeria that a party will tell you they have a sole candidate and nobody should contest against him. They were afraid of competition because they knew the man is under-performing and everybody knows this. If their candidate had honoured the 2011 agreement to do only one term and the party presented another candidate who is credible, perhaps the party would not be in the mess that it has found itself today.
It is the first time that in the history of democracy in Nigeria, a ruling party is so scared of being thrown out of power because its credentials are very horrible. I must confess to you, PDP is a dead party.
And the people who are keeping faith with the party can be described as the proverbial stubborn fly that follows the corpse to the grave. I am comfortable with APC simply because I believe that APC is not just a party, it is a group of parties coming together whose ultimate mission is to rescue Nigerians from years of bad governance.
Specifically, let us talk about your state. How would you rate Governor Ahmed’s administration?
Honestly, he has tried. I can’t give somebody 100 per cent, but honestly if I should rate him, I will give him 95 per cent. His former boss, Senator Bukola Saraki, has been supportive of him. It took me a long time to know the kind of person that Senator Bukola is.
You know when people criticise and you are not close to the person they are criticising, you will never know the truth about him and I am not saying this because I just joined the party or because I want an appointment. From a close range, the man is simple and accommodating. In the course of our discussion, I came to realise that he has good intentions for the state contrary to the picture being painted of him.
And I believe that along with the governor, the duo will take the state to higher heights. However, if there is something I know that is not well in the administration, I will let people know. I criticise people and I want people to criticise me too; I met with him one-on-one; I asked him questions, why is this like that? And he was able to give me convincing answers.
As for the governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, you see, I must confess to you, he is trying his best. The monthly allocations coming to Kwara can’t be compared to what Bayelsa, Rivers, and all these oil-rich states like Edo and others get. So, you can’t expect much development in such a place. Kwara is a civil service state. You can count the industries on the tips of your fingers. Its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) is nothing to write home about. So, most of their allocations go for salaries and wages. I will rate him as a good governor, and I believe if Kwara gives him another chance, he will perform better than he has done before.
Do you see him winning the coming governorship election, and if yes, what gives you the assurance?
Yes. In my local government to start with, I am telling you without any iota of doubt that he is going to win the election. We trust God for that and with what he has done, he has touched people’s lives there and when you touch people’s lives, people are bound to reciprocate. One good turn deserves another; the man deserves a second term, because he is a gentleman and he has a listening ear.
With few weeks to the general elections, what advice do you have for your new party, APC? What will you tell them to do to ensure total victory?
We need to sensitise the electorate to make sure they collect their PVCs because without that, they cannot vote. That should be the starting point. The goodwill is there and everybody is yearning for a change. The party should not leave anything to chance, nevertheless. I believe APC will not disappoint Nigeria, because I have been in PDP for almost 16 years and I must confess to you that apart from Baba Obasanjo and Umaru Yar’ Adua that intended to continue with Baba’s legacy, the party under President Goodluck Jonathan has failed Nigerians. I am not saying that PDP is not a good party but right now, the president is not performing and the success or failure of any party is hinged on its leader. No thanks to the systemic corruption which the administration has institutionalised.