While it is true that former House of Representatives, Ghali Na ‘Abba is stubborn and blunt to a fault, it is also true that he does not just talk for the sake of the gallery. He must be convinced that what he has to say is necessary at that point in time. It is not surprising therefore when Vanguard sought his views on the face-off between the Federal Capital Minister, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai and the Senate over the derogatory comment he made about members of the upper legislature of the National Assembly, he obliged. In this short but revealing interview, Na’Abba says the minister should be forgiven having apologised for his actions. He also talked about his lost election in the last general elections and why his supporters voted for ANPP for the governorship seat.
The Senate has said it is not going to pass the labour bill until President Olusegun Obasanjo sacks the Minister for Federal Capital, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai for his unguarded utterances against it. Do you share this view?
I think there has been over sensationalisation of the issue. Quite honestly, his commentary on the Senate did not conform to propriety . Of course, members of the Senate reacted the way they did because of what they felt was an affront to the institution and definitely the write-ups did not help matters because I read a lot of the articles concerning the issue and they were not helpful to the case itself. I believe el-Rufai is a well meaning person. He means well for this country and particularly for Abuja.
If you go round Abuja which was conceived and begins to developed in the last 20 to 30 years, you will know that we have not achieved much. But when you go to the capital of other countries of the world, for example, Camberra in Australia which was established around 1927, it was previously Melbourne. When you see Camberra, it looks like it was only developed 5 years ago because of its beauty, serenity and arrangement. But when you come to Abuja, you begin to see things that have become an eyesore. I think one would appreciate him better when one sees other capitals and that is why I believe that he is doing his job passionately and in the process of course, he may go wrong where public relations are concerned. But again, his relationship with the Senate from the on set, he did not start very well and definitely whatever his actions and inactions are as regards the legislature, it is bound to bring about controversy because the relationship did not start well from the beginning.
However, I am very glad that both of them have reached an understanding. In divinity, it is said that to err is human, to forgive is divine and we are all bound to make mistakes and this man has admitted that he has committed a mistake and he apologised and I believe that any public officer who is humble enough to admit his mistakes and even apologised should be forgiven and in that light, I believe he should be forgiven by the Senate. The Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a very powerful institution and I don’t believe that the functions of the Senate should be misread by anybody. I am glad that they themselves had approach this issue as humanely as possible and decided to forgive el-Rufai. My hope is that this is the end of this kind of relationship between him and the Senate or the National Assembly for that matter.
Little or nothing has been heard from you since you left office, are you still in politics?
Of course I am. The media focus on me then was not on me per say, it was on me and my colleagues’ activities; it was the House and I that were on focus. I think it is only natural that I would be in public glare as the Speaker, not because I am Ghali Na’Abba but as the Speaker. So, as I leave the office, the focus will automatically change to the holder of the office now which is what is happenings at the moment. I am very much in politics.
How true is this allegation that you are now in ANPP as against PDP on whose platform you contested the last election?
That is not true. I am perfectly in PDP. I guess why they are saying that is because of the role my supporters played that saw to the victory of the ANPP governor in the state. The former governor caused the manipulation of my election in favour of ANPP and then the following week, they expected voters to come and vote for PDP after they had said they should all go out to vote for ANPP. My supporters felt that it was of no use if they had to be told to vote for ANPP during my own election, why should they now change alliance when it came to the governorship elections and that was how the PDP lost the elections in Kano State. Of course, the former governor, apart from his own believe that he must do what he did to me, he was also instructed to ensure that whatever the result of my election was, was manipulated to my dis-favour. He had this instructions from the President and the party chairman to see that the elections were manipulated to my dis-favour.
Would you say your predicament is a manifestation of your confrontational attitude towards the executive while you were leading the lower house?
Certainly, it was because I wanted all Nigerians to have democracy and I believe they must enjoy democracy. I think that is the price I had to pay for making Nigerians enjoy democracy. I think if they had thought over these things properly before now, they should not have done what they did because it further exposes them that certainly the President, even in the last one year doesn’t know what democracy is all about and it is from these kinds of intolerance about hearing other views, he only wants to listen to himself and the result of what I was doing when I was in the House of Representatives was to ensure that there was democracy which was also beneficial to the executive.
Now that they have found themselves in a situation whereby nobody says to them, don’t do this or that, they are continually committing mistakes whereas when myself and others were there, they always think twice before certain things were done.
Sometimes, they became reluctant to do them, sometimes they do certain things as a result of certain actions we took and it was helping democracy.
Now they don’t have that benefit, that is why they are daily being exposed to the extent that Nigerians don’t believe they have leadership.
I preferred the candidate of the ANPP to that of the PDP because the PDP candidate was a very unjust person. He destroyed PDP in Kano State because of his unjust tendencies; he alienated the majority members of the party and that was why there was nobody supporting him and that was why people said and made up their mind to vote for the candidate of ANPP.
It is a complex problem of intrigues, both inter and intra party. But the long and short of the case was that people were tired of the governor and they were unhappy because of his role in the manipulation of my election and they felt that because of that, they should vote him out and they did.
But I am still in PDP.
Are you still politicking?
Of course I am. I am politicking, the fact that I am not on the pages of newspapers does not mean I am not politicking.
Which office are you gunning for in the next election since you say you are still in politics?
I am not necessarily politicking because I want to contest for election.
I am a politician and for me, the definition of a politician goes beyond contesting election.
I have to organise people, I believe it is my duty as a politician.
I have to educate people, I believe it is my duty as a politician.
I have to guide people, I believe that is also my duty as a politician. Contesting for political office is entirely another matter all together. I may and may not contest for elections in future. Election is one aspect of politics. It is not everything in politics.
Would you take the same actions if you find yourself as speaker?
I will do more than what I did.
Even when it is detrimental to you like the position you find yourself now?
Yes that is what my position as speaker demands of me to do and that is one of the hazards that come with the job. It is a hazardous position. If we go back to history around the 15th and 16th centuries when there was no House of Commons in Great Britain, they only had the House of Lords and it was the House of Lords, filled with autocrats that were deciding the fate of British and all the commoners could do was to agitate, they would come round the House of Lords but they could not enter because they were not members, they could only stay outside and agitate on their problems and there came a day on a particular day they were agitating, the king became angry and said to them, oh you commoners, why don’t you choose somebody among yourselves to speak for you and they elected somebody to be their spokesman and he was called speaker.
So you can see that the speaker was a member of the commoners and he was supposed to speak for the commoners, that was how the position came into being and whenever the speaker went to see the king in matters pertaining to the commoners, sometimes, he would come back home bruised, sometimes, he would not come home because he would have been killed. These are some of the hazards of this position.
Again, the commoners didn’t even have a place they could deliberate or a chambers where they could discuss problems, they used to do their meetings on rotational basis in members’ homes, that was how they were meeting then and they demanded for a place and that was how they were given the house of commons and today whenever any speaker is elected, he only goes to seat on the speakers seat reluctantly, the members would virtually drag him to the seat, that is against the backdrop of what was happening around these centuries I mentioned earlier when the speakers were killed or bruised because they were representing the people. So if today, I am elected the speaker again I will continue to do the duty of speaker.
