News Editor
Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal has said that he finds it difficult to discuss zoning with regards to the 2023 presidential election.
Speaking during an interaction with political editors and senior journalists in Sokoto at the weekend, Tambuwal said he is still consulting on whether to contest for the position of president in the 2023 election. The governor also promised to make his position known by February 2022.
When asked about his presidential ambition and the recent position of the Southern governors on the need to zone the presidency to the South, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, said that his political history puts him in a difficult position to discus zoning.
Let me tell you this when you look at my history, I find it difficult to talk about zoning, first, when I got to the House of Representatives in 2003, the ANPP caucus was not comfortable with the leadership style of the then leader of the caucus, minority leader of the House, somewhere in 2005 there was a change in leadership and as at that time he ANPP had zoned the forum principal officer positions to leader-Kano/Kaduna/Jigawa; Whip-Sokoto/Kebbi/Zamfara; deputy leader-Borno/Yobe because that was where we had ANPP and deputy whip to the South-south. Based on these, leaders of the ANPP emerged in 2003, when members felt they were no longer comfortable with Ahmed Salik and there was a change, they altered the zoning, and Don Etiebet, the chairman of the party issued a statement disagreeing with the members of the house that they must go back to zoning, meanwhile the rules of the House provided that leadership should emerge amongst members, so relying on that members carried out the change of guards and I came in even though from the bloc where is supposed to be the whip of the House in the minority caucus of the ANPP, I became the leader against the zoning of the party. In 2011, the PDP zoned speakership to the southwest, members of the House of Representatives came together to say look we are looking for a speaker with certain qualities, they approach me, all that went on and I emerged as a speaker, not from the southwest. Clearly, from the two scenarios, based on the assessment of members and their criteria of the type of leader they are looking for I have enjoyed these two privileges in the past, that is why I said I find it difficult to talk about zoning. But when you talk about what my friends the governors of the South said, they are entitled to their opinion, when the Northern governors met in Kaduna they said their own, so it is not for political parties to sit down and look at the issues and plan how to win elections, that is the Bottom line.
Gov. Tambuwal
When asked if the PDP and APC can be compared, Tambuwal said the two parties are incomparable, saying that the name PDP has remained the same since creation while the APC has metamorphosed over the years.
It is on record that the PDP, even the name has remained PDP right from 1998, the APC was formed as recently as 2014 and it is the amalgamation and coming together of about four to five political parties the CPC, the ACN, ANPP N-PDP, and APGA with the sole objective mainly of taking out Jonathan, with so many strange beg fellows working together for that objective. Almost immediately after the 2015 elections, problems began to manifest because the relationship was not cemented. I can tell you that virtually all groups were still seeing themselves as what they were within the APC and even possible until now, we don’t have that in the PDP, it has remained as one political party, whether you go in or out of it. It has not merged with any political party, which should b noted. and in terms of building political culture, we can at least say that the PDP has been there since 1998 with its positives and negatives, ups and downs, highs and lows you cannot say so of the APC.
Gov. Tambuwal
Governor Tambuwal also spoke on the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FACC), saying that no state is in the country is happy with her current position on the FAAC table.
No state is happy with where it is, not even Rivers and Lagos, so what do you want Sokoto, Nasarwa, and Gombe to say, we are all looking for resources, not even the federal government is happy with where it is, so it is not about Sokoto, it is about what people have been talking about restructuring and devolution of power, we must review the structure, I have said it at the PDP retreat recently, it is our pathway to stability. The federal government must shed weight and devolve more powers and resources to sub-national where the people are, states and local governments and that will give less attraction to the center and we will have more stability, the federal government be dealing with issues of immigration and normal issues that the federal system should be concerned about, what is the business of the federal government with a primary health center or primary schools, not talk of building roads we must look at all of those issues and that is why in our attempt at the constitution amendment in 2014, we proposed as a House of Representatives certain amendments that could have addressed the challenges of either devolution or restructuring, that would have settled a long time ago. In that amendment, we said that the offices of the Accountant-general of the federal government should be separated from that of the federation, which would have engendered transparency and more fiscal responsibility and openness but the system now is opaque, fraudulent and people at the center are taking advantage of it. We said the office of the Attorney-general of the federation should be separated from that of the minister of justice because the minister of justice is a card-carrying member of a political party and an attorney-general of the federation is supposed not to be a partisan individual, it is not rocket science, we said certain items should be shifted from the exclusive legislative list including power, railway and prisons to concurrent, so that if the states of the South-south, for example, want to have a rail system within the south-south, they can, in Sokoto for example, we have not less than four to five sources of energy, Solar, Wind, Gas, Hydro if you get 20 megawatts energy mixed of each that is 80 megawatts, we don’t need up to that, if we generate why must you transmit to the national grid, why? If a village can come up with their electricity system based on solar and service themselves why not? so we have not sufficiently unbundled the power sector and it is part of the restructuring, so all of these, unless we can do that we can hardly really unleash the potentials of this country. With the number of ale bodies young men we have, when we talk about security even recruit is a problem, as I have said before must we wait for America to recruit are we waiting for UK or Russia to recruit and raise the capacity and strength of your armed forces when we have millions of unemployed youths that are ready and willing to join the service and they are prepared, unless we can recall look at this and do the right thing, we can hardly get it, so it is not about Sokoto getting lower FACC, if we do what is rights, states in Nigeria can generate revenue to run their states, that is our target win Sokoto with the reforms we are introducing in governance.
Speaking on the security situation in Sokoto state, Tambuwal attributed the challenges to the proximity of the state to other troubled states in the Northwest and also shortage of manpower of the security agencies.
Let me give you a background of how we get to where we are, unfortunately, Zamfara has been the epicenter of banditry and kidnapping in the Northwest, most of the states including Niger are getting the heat from Zamfara, what is the distance between Sokoto and Zamfara?
Substantial part of almost about 14 local governments are either neighboring Zamfara or Niger Republic, and with what is happening in the Sahel region which includes Mali, Niger, Central Africa Republic is permeating and creeping into Nigeria, talking about banditry, ISWAP and all of that, agents of instability that carrying out their acts around the Sahel region they have a way of coming into Nigeria through our porous borders, so by geography, being neighbors with Niger Republic sharing common borers is part of it, secondly being neighbors with Zamfara State the epicenter of banditry and kidnapping in the Northwest is part of it and to a large extent, especially recently and the inability of the security agencies to coordinate their operations in Zamfara against our own advice as governors of about 8 states that have met the president several times in the last three to four years, advised him and even advised the service chiefs that whenever they are going to undertake this large scale operation it should be simultaneous, they should have a blocking force in parts of Kaduna, Niger, Kebbi, Katsina and Sokoto simultaneously and carry out the the operation simultaneously, they didn’t do that. Secondly, the timing of the operation at the peak of the raining season one, the forest is thick, two the military and security agencies do not have the equipment that can move into those difficult terrains, that also did not help matters, so whenever they carry out operations on the bandits in their camps they pander towards our states that are opened and porous so instead of getting them and get done with them in Zamfara State, they disperse them into our states and most of those that came in to attack our people, most of them are as a result of those operations recently.
Another factor is also the fact that as I have said, they do not have enough to carry out the operations, I mean the security services, not enough manpower, not enough equipment, firepower.
So it is not as if it is about the people of Sokoto State, it more has to do with the situation with our neighbors. And talking about what we have done, there has been a lot of synergy with the government and the security agencies in Sokoto State from the beginning and I must commend them, they have been working together and we have been working together with them in terms of addressing the challenge, we do the much that we could and we are still doing because there was never a time any of those security agencies approach us for support without getting it or having it. In the last four to five years, we have given out not less than 500 vehicles to security services in Sokoto State, not less than 500 vehicles, it is on record, how many states have done that? As I said we pay them their allowances from our coffers and we are up to date in the payment of those allowances. You can check what I am going to tell you, we have refurbished for the police virtually all their divisional police headquarters in Sokoto State, we are building about 12 new ones for them, we have given them every support, coming up with a framework of engagement with His Eminence, the traditional institutions and other leaders, community support and all of that is being galvanized by the government and Sultan-in-council.
So we are not sleeping, we have a standing committee headed by the Sultan, you know he is a retired general, that is also working on the issue of security in the state, we hold regular stakeholders meeting, even three days ago, we held one when we introduced yet another measure of outlawing a self-styled vigilante that was coming up because they were part of the problem in Zamfara State, a few individuals without any cooperating from any authority will just form themselves into self-help vigilante, they will start going from hamlet to hamlet identifying Fulani’s and just killing them and attacking them, so we outlawed them, it is part of the measures we are taking. And when the government of Zamfara decided to go into that operation in collaboration with the military, I went on my own volition to Zamfara a few days to the commencement of the operation, and that was what they told me. I was there to condole with the family of Ambassador Adamu Umar my boss under whose tutelage I passed in his law chambers, he died and I went to see his family so I went to see the governor in the Government House, that was when the governor informed me for the first time that such an operation was in the offing and there was a need for us to also pass an executive order and certain measures to contain issues of movement of fuel, movement of motorcycles in certain areas and shutting down communication networks, so it was not like it we had discussed it with him before and yet we came here I conveyed the security council meeting and we agreed on the same to adopt the same measure they adopted in Zamfara State through an executive order and we are doing quite a lot in terms of talking to the people, in terms of sensitizing the people, in terms of supporting the security forces, so it is not as if we are sleeping. But certain times, these things happen because also we have problems with informants, members of communities who are now compromised and bought over by the bandits and criminals and they are collaborating with them no they give the information on the movement of security personnel and before you know it a security detachment that is going to carry out an operation is ambushed, so it is a whole lot of complex situation that we have been managing, but you know the limitations of every governor in Nigeria, they are very clear, they are very manifest so for anybody to begin to see it as if a governor is not doing what he ought to do, no governor can do more than what I have told you, I have not seen any governor who has taken a cutlass or a machete not to talk of a gun and pursued a bandit or a book-haram in the bush, at best what we do is to support the security agencies and give support to IDPs, that is what we have been doing.
Gov. Tambuwal
Speaking further on security, the governor confirmed that himself alongside governors of the northwest and Niger have been working together to tackle insecurity in the region.
Over the years, we’ve had sub-regional governors meeting in the Northwest including Niger, at a point in time, each of us contributed N100 million as initial contributions for operations to be carried out by the military, this was almost five years back and for those who have the neighboring Niger Republic, we have been having meetings with our colleagues from the Niger Republic, we go there and they come here. So it is not as if that we have not been having regional cooperation. But we have not discussed forming a regional outfit because of the perception associated with that, but we have done and we are working with the security is that we strengthen our vigilante at every state level and aligned them to work with the security services and the Amotekun and the Ebube Agu are not better than the vigilante, they are just a similar version of vigilante so what we are doing is to put them under some training by the police and supporting the security services.
Gov. Tambuwal
