In this interview with Tordue Salem, Dr. Cletus Akwaya, the Special Adviser on Media to Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State speaks on Benue politics.?
What is your overview of the 2011 elections which brought in Governor Gabriel Suswam to office for the second time?
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The prevailing political situation in Benue State before the election and after the election is that the PDP which is the ruling party in Benue State has made tremendous impact in Benue State, and the people of Benue State in appreciation of the good work which has been done by Governor Suswam, decided to renew his mandate during the last general elections. The people voted overwhelmingly for PDP and this explains why the party triumphed in all the elections in the State. For instance, PDP won two of the three senatorial seats in the State. The party won 6 out of 11 House of Representatives seats in the state, and also the party won 21 out of 30 House of Assembly seats in the state. The party won the Presidential elections overwhelmingly and the party won the only governorship seat in the state. These results should have sent solid signals to even the doubting Thomases that the PDP is solidly on the ground in Benue state.?
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However, we have a kind of opposition in Benue State, the arrow head of which is the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), who are simply bad losers. They wear the toga of democrats, but have refused to accept the bitter pill of democracy, which necessarily dictates that the majority will have their way, where the minority will have their say, and therefore, it is this refusal of ACN to accept the will of the people freely expressed in the last general elections, that has tended to raise the tension in the state, and has also introduced some situations of lawlessness orchestrated by the ACN.
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After the election, the governor should have embraced the opposition and given them roles in government??
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Governor Gabriel Suswam is a statesman to the core. He has made it clear and repeatedly so, that he is not a governor of the PDP, but he is the governor of Benue State and beginning from his inauguration, he extended a hand of fellowship to all those who contested the elections with him or against him and all those who represented the various political parties in the contest. He has invited all the governorship candidates of the other political parties to join hands with him and one wants to believe that their intention to seek to control the government of the state with their various political platforms, was to be able to have an opportunity to make a contribution to the development of the state and therefore, the invitation of Governor Suswam to join him, should be an opportunity to make their own contributions towards the development of the State, but unfortunately, while the other political parties have accepted and are working in tandem with Suswam to move the state to the next level, the ACN has remained, and has taken a position that has been highly antagonistic and contemptuous of the government in place in the state. It is rather unfortunate that the ACN is still conducting itself as if it was in an electioneering campaign.?
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The reality, however is that electioneering campaigns are over, the government chosen by the people of Benue State is in place and it is carrying out the ask of developing the state. I think it will help the state and it will help the cause of democracy if the ACN will realize and accept the fact that they lost these elections and that there is a government in place which needs to be given a chance to deliver on its promises to the good people of Benue State.?
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If that is the case why are the other parties not represented in the governor’s cabinet? ? ? ? ? ??
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The governor has asked members of the other political parties to make their nominations, and of course, nominations are being made and various positions of government will be made available for these candidates to occupy. Once the nominations are made, the governor in his wisdom will decide on how best these nominees can be accommodated within the realm of his administration.
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We heard that after the Court of Appeal delivered judgment in favour of your boss in Makurdi, there was a violent reaction. Doesn’t this show that Suswam is unpopular??
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My boss is the most popular governor of the state. He earned by dint of his vision and purposeful leadership which has culminated in the massive infrastructural development of Benue and its people. The violence was the handiwork of A CN. For a long period of time, even before the elections, the party has been responsible for a lot of violence in the State. During the electioneering campaigns, the ACN thugs blocked the governor’s convoy on three occasions. After the governor was sworn in, they even made an attempt on the life of the governor when some ACN thugs drove a rickety vehicle and ran into the convoy of the governor with the intention to cause commotion or crash of the convoy and in the process, perhaps get at the governor, and that move was averted by the security agents attached to the governor and his convoy.
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The ACN has continued the perpetration of violence and any slightest opportunity they would mount roadblocks and attack innocent citizens, dispossess people of their valuable properties. When the Court of Appeal delivered judgment and struck out the petition of the ACN, which was brought before the election tribunal, the ACN supporters walked again into the streets and continued with the orgy of violence which has become their trademark in the state. We condemn the resort to violence without any provocation by members of the ACN. Governor Suswam has made it very clear that he will not condone rascality, will not under any circumstance, allow any individual no matter how powerful he is, to take laws into his hands and traumatize people of Benue State. The security agencies have been empowered to deal with any insurgence.
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Benue State is one of the most peaceful states in the Country, and this has come about, because of the commitment to peace and security by Governor Suswam; it is therefore unfortunate that the ACN will like to tarnish the image of the administration and destroy the excellent records that the Suswam administration has established in the state.
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We know as a matter of fact, that ACN kingpins are behind the violent protest. Sen. Akume and Prof. Ugbah and others who are in the party, will be held responsible by the people of the state, if there is breakdown of order. In many of their public utterances, they have not spoken as the leaders that they want to be or claim to be. They have spoken rather as people who are desperate to come to power by all means, including by way of violence. This is brigandage and rascality and cannot be condoned. They should be held responsible and accountable. The police have arrested some of the criminals!?
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We also heard that there was another round of protest, where people went naked in Makurdi. Are you aware?
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I was not aware of people going naked on the streets of Makurdi. I am however aware that on the 29th of September, 2011, as early as 6:30 am, some ACN members trooped out of Senator Akume’s house, besieged some streets in Makurdi metropolis and harassed motorists, smashed vehicles of others and they carried with them a copy on which the portrait of His Excellency Governor Suswam was inscribed and they wrote: PDP, RIP (Rest In Peace), and these thugs went around chanting war songs on a few streets.
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This was an action that was not anticipated, but as soon as it was noticed, the police acted swiftly to contain what could have been a violent protest and of course, some arrests were made. The placards that some of them carried, showed that they were protesting the outcome of the Appeal Court proceedings which led to the dismissal of the ACN petition at the Benue Election Petitions Tribunal. This is the most undemocratic way of handling a situation, because the ACN, had told the whole world that they were going to appeal against the ruling of the Appeal Court at the Supreme Court, but rather than wait for the Supreme Court to adjudicate on this matter, they have resorted to criminality by carrying arms and taking laws into their hands. This can not be accepted, and the ACN has to be told that this mischief will not be tolerated because it is a move that is anti-people, it is a move that is against the laws of the land as provided in our Constitution and other laws of our land. ? ? ? ? ??
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The protest led to a large scale of destruction of property and many people were injured as the irate youths took to the streets, that is why I say that this kind of action as encouraged by the leaders of the ACN, is a futile mission and cannot or does not say the election tribunal did a favour to the PDP. This does not in any way translate to an ACN administration in Benue State nor does it confer any advantage on the party, rather it exposes the emptiness and diabolism of the leaders of ACN. These people are not prepared; these people have no idea to govern Benue. It is for these reasons, that the people of Benue State totally rejected them at the last general elections.?
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We also heard the tribunal also upheld the petition by Prof. Saror, asking that the governor to present his certificates at the tribunal. Why is the governor refusing to present his certificate? ? ? ?
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Sen. Saror is about to mark his 70th birthday. At that great age, he should be an elder statesman, but his brand of politicking, robs him of that title of an elder statesman. He has continued to conduct himself in a manner that is very banal and petty. Professor Saror approached the election tribunal after he contested the governorship election and ?lost even in his own polling unit. His party, All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) did not win a polling unit, not to talk of a council ward in the entire Benue State. He lost his Ukum Local Government Area.
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Having been totally rejected by the people of Benue State at the polls in that democratic process which was adjudged freest and fairest elections by both local and international observers, he resorted to the futility of challenging the qualification of Governor Suswam to contest elections with a very baseless allegation that Suswam tendered a forged WAEC certificate to INEC. It is all well known that Governor Suswam graduated from Government College, Makurdi in 1982 and his WAEC, which he sat for at the May/June examinations, he scored 6 credits. ? ?
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The records of the school are there for everyone who cares to verify. He went to the School of Basic Studies, Makurdi and passed the IJMB and proceeded to the University of Lagos, did a law Degree and was thereafter called to the Bar.
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Today he holds two Masters Degrees and he holds a Doctorate Degree to the bargain, all in law from the University of Jos. This is somebody who holds a track record of academic excellence. He therefore cannot in any way be involved in the forgery of certificates, not to talk of WAEC certificates, and Prof. Saror was a Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University and should know better than any other person that it is not possible and could not have been possible at the time Suswam went to the University of Lagos for anybody or any student whatsoever to forge his WAEC certificate and get away with it through out the time he studied in Lagos?
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The whole concept for which Saror went to the election tribunal is diversionary. I see his action as being mischievous and borne out of envy, because Governor Suswam is young enough to be the child of Prof. Saror, and I believe, he knew ab initio that the steps he was taking were not supported, and were not even agreeable with the laws of the land and that is why the election tribunal struck out his case, because it was a pre-election matter and cannot come before the purview of elections tribunal.
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The Appeal Court in its wisdom has ruled that the case be heard on its own merit. Governor Suswam has accepted the ruling of this Appeal Court, even though he does not agree with it, but he as a democrat, a lawyer who believes in the Rule of Law, would take steps to challenge the decision of the Appeal Court to the Supreme Court, where he believes justice will come his way. This is the way democrats should conduct themselves. The situation with the opposition parties in Benue State is that any ruling in the election tribunal which does not favour the opposition, they call judges names. They rain curses and abuses on the Court and say that the judiciary has been compromised in giving judgments, but when it favours them, of course they do not see anything wrong with that. ? ? ?So the ACN should rise above this brigandage and embrace the Rule of Law and accept decisions of competent courts the way Suswam does!
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I think by now, the Government of Suswam should be able to tell us where Benue will be in the next 4 years ??
Governor Suswam has placed Benue State on the map of development in this Country. The Benue Water Works have been completed; the Otukpo Water Works have been completed, 100s of kilometers of roads have been tarred across the state in virtually all the 23 local governments of the state. In his term, Suswam concentrated his energy and resources on the provision of infrastructure, with a view to addressing the acute infrastructure deficit that became the lot of the state. Today, we can say that the foundation for development has been solidly laid in Benue State. What he wants to do in his second tenure is to create wealth by leveraging upon infrstructure to create jobs for the jobless youth and put food on the table, make sure that the people of the state have incomes and to be able to attend to their family problems.?
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He is going to do this, through the transformation of the Agriculture sector. We are moving from subsistence farming to mechanized farming.?
We will employ modern techniques in agricultural production by way of widening the Agriculture activity itself from farming to Animal Husbandry and to agro processing. This will be done with the active partnership with the private sector and as I speak with you, Governor Suswam has already secured a loan of N50billion, which will be given out to farmers to among other things improve on agricultural productivity, believing that the end result of this will be the creation of job opportunities. The ultimate target is to drastically reduce poverty in Benue State. It is our firm belief that with infrastructural improvement, the massive rural electrification project will be completed in about 100 communities across the state. Health infrastructure has been provided, the rehabilitation and renovation of existing general hospitals, and looking at the massive improvement of education infrastructure, Benue will witness tremendous transformation in next four years.
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Do you think there is much to celebrate about Nigeria at 51?
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I do not share the point that Nigeria is still crawling as nation at 51 years. Nigeria may not have achieved all the goals we set for ourselves at 51, but we have made progress in a wide variety of ways. Africa cannot continue without the input of Nigeria.
The people of Nigeria today are some of the most confident people you find across the world. Nigeria today is showing the way in a variety of sectors.
I believe that we have made progress, but in every situation, there is room for improvement and since Nigeria is a country occupied by humans, and since we are humans, we are bound to have our own mistakes.
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