One of the leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kaduna State and a former member of the House of Representatives, Mr Godfrey Gaya, speaks on insecurity in Southern Kaduna, his failed kidnap attempt, and political developments, among other issues, in this interview with BEN OGBEMUDIA

Since you left the House of Representatives, you have been silent. What is behind our silence?

Sometimes it is good to just sit back and look at the scenario from a safe distance. It is not being silent as it were, but it is deliberately allowing those who are the actors, those who think it is best for the constituency, for the state, and the country. If they think they can do much better than you have done, of course, the space will allow them to try. Now if they have not been able to do more than we did, the judges are the people, the electorates, those that voted us out and voted them in.

So, sometimes you don’t interfere in the process, you allow those that brought you out or brought you in to assess. If they think that during the days you were in office, you performed better than whoever is there now, they must tell you to come back for another tenure.

If they are comfortable with the new man and they want to give him a second mandate, no problem but for us that have been there, we cannot criticize because whoever that took over from me is also a PDP person so you cannot tell him open to the world that this is wrong or this is not how to do it. We have areas where we call them privately and tell them what to do. Whether they listen or not is up to them, there is no compelling force.

The late Bola Ige once said, “it is time for Sidon look.” Now we are looking not as if we have surrendered or given up or as if we are no longer interested in the body politics but when they leave those on the seat to do what they can, then we can sit down and look.

You are from Kaduna South and you are a Christian. The situation in Kaduna is serious but your people are the worst hit, are you able to sleep amid these turbulences?

We can’t afford to sleep no matter what nylons would say. It will be difficult to tolerate the present elimination of our people. No matter how cold you are, everything has a saturation point where no matter how gentle you think you are, you will have no choice but to react. Our people have been pushed to that level.

As Christians, we have always believed that when you are slapped on the left cheek, turn the right cheek, but again this can no longer work. It is now an eye for an eye, but unfortunately, we are disadvantaged that we are not in government and everybody knows that Southern Kaduna is PDP, the government in power is APC.

They came with a vendetta, with hatred and every cause to make Southern Kaduna pay for their loyalty to the PDP. A government that took over, drew a battle to humiliate the people to make them regret their allegiance to PDP and he has denied us everything from security, protection, facilities, infrastructures, employment, bastardizing our area, removing our Kings at will, and every other thing you can think of as negative.

Now, the politics in Kaduna has transcended to a situation where the APC sees anything in Southern Kaduna as an enemy and they will do everything to make you feel bad about your life. Southern Kaduna has become a zone where the government of the day believes before they leave, they must destabilise, dismember, dishonour, they must be ridiculed so that their psyche and confidence as a people are rattled but like I said, to every situation, there must be a turning point, to every difficulty, there must be a solution and so after all these years, we have now decided that we should protect ourselves because there is no law that denies you self-defence. Unfortunately, the moment that happens, you will see all manner of security agents coming in to mop up whatever they think are defensive weapons, even cutlasses, if they see it in your house, they take it away.

Any knife that is stronger than the one used for cutting beef will be taken and when that is done, the following day, our attackers will secure weapons and come and you will be left with nothing to do but to run for your life. If you are not able to run, they will slaughter you, if you are not able to protect yourself, you will be killed. That has not ended there, the kidnappings are there and obviously, the target is those from the Southern part of the state.

Ninety per cent of kidnappers in Kaduna are those from Chuku down to Sanga. They kidnap daily, kids are kidnapped for months and years not just in tens but in hundreds. We are still in Kaduna and nobody can say this is where they are taken to, so this is the situation we are facing. It is a very clear-cut agenda to destroy the people. You know what used to be our industry, education but it is no longer attractive because if you cannot have a boarding school, of course, education standards will fall.

So, these are the difficulties we are facing. Southern Kaduna is in trouble and has no one to protect them both in the centre and the state, we are vulnerable, we have nothing and we have nobody. Unfortunately, we will do what we can because it is difficult to just take away a whole people, it is not possible. You like our land, we are willing to accommodate you for cohabitation.

You want land for your economic investment, you should be willing to pay costs you to have your investment but you want to have the land and drive me away? Do you want to make me a stranger somewhere when this is my ancestral home? So, these are the issues that clearly, we need intervention from God because men that are in power don’t seem to care and that’s why we are resolute that come 2023 if the change of government will make it better for our people, we will do that which will make us better and comfortable.

You have painted a pathetic picture of your people, will you then say that Governor El Rufai has failed in Kaduna State?

Woefully! There is no better word because your Governor is supposed to be governor for everybody. Once you have won the election, you are no longer governor for APC. You are the governor of Kaduna and every citizen, indigene, and resident of Kaduna State should be your problem and priority. What happens to anyone should concern you, after all as governor, your number one duty is to provide security of lives first before protection of property but if that has not happened like I just said, there is insecurity everywhere, there is no day in Kaduna that you do not hear of kidnap stories, attacks on villages and that has been going on for almost eight years under El Rufai.

So, if this is happening under a governor who should be in charge, who should be in a position to protect us and that is not happening, the only word for it is that he has failed. He has failed woefully. If today you say you want to build skyscrapers and want to turn Kaduna into Dubai and when there are no citizens to use your facilities, it is a failure because after all whatever you think you are doing, it should benefit the people you are representing but if they are eliminated and they don’t live to see the day, then, of course, I don’t know what to think you are doing to make Kaduna greater than you met it because before he came, Kaduna lives were secured, Kaduna-Abuja road was good, we had no issue with people on the road.

Before he came, we wouldn’t say there were zero attacks but it was minimal then and there were always interventions from Governors whenever there were issues but today there is no government to intervene. I was a victim on the first of January 2022 between Kafanchan and my village and my car was riddled with bullets but unfortunately, I wasn’t in, I sent my Assistant and my driver and they were kidnapped. They were taken, my car was abandoned on the road with the doors opened.

The only good thing was that I normally carry my data and it was in the vehicle that I heard the news that I was taken or killed. So, you see that is not even supposed to be a situation, that we cannot go back to our villages to celebrate with our people?

Every traditional institution that you know in Southern Kaduna-Kajuru Day, Kam Day, Gbajura Day, and all those days we used to bring our people together and celebrate our culture and our origin, that can no longer take place, so it’s a tactical way of making sure that the people do not unite under freedom, under culture or tradition. So, if a sitting governor cannot guarantee that there should be fun-fair, tourism attraction and the place you put people, that governor has failed, the government has failed.

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Whenever you are crossing the refinery, your heart skips a beat, you are not sure whether you will get home. When you are crossing the tollgate from Kaduna towards Abuja, you are not sure you will get home, it wasn’t like that before. Now that has become the norm, whoever is in charge of protecting us is not up to the responsibility and has put Kaduna at stake. So he has failed to protect us, he has failed first and foremost to play the number one role in his constitutional responsibility.

Now that 2023 is around the corner, what is the plan for your party?

Honestly, you know there are problems, that is why the PDP is committed to taking overpower, and thank God, there is a desire, need belief, and the commitment by members that we need to work harder, do more than we can to take overpower. What we are doing right now is to reposition the party to where we will be up and doing, we will take our responsibility seriously so that we can look at the party in power and tell them this is where they have failed and use that to convince the electorate.

Kaduna is going through severe stress and I am happy that the hardware of PDP in repositioning itself has begun to manifest. In the bye-election in el-Rufai’s local government, House of Assembly member we won even with him spending 48 hours in the constituency, PDP won despite the money he pumped in making sure that constituency was delivered.

That was the constituency of the former speaker, so, for PDP to go there and win the seat, it tells you the level of hard work that PDP is putting in to bounce back and you can also see from all the local government elections despite the gimmicks of the ruling party, PDP made a very strong showing. I tell you now if you come to Southern Kaduna, despite all that they tried to do, we have more than 50 councillors out of 87.

Even El Rufai’s local government in Kaduna North, we got eight councillors out of twelve. Kaduna south, we got seven out of eleven. In either two areas like Igabe, Makalfi and Kudan, we got more councillors than the APC. It is a different matter if we won the chairmanship because we knew what happened but the test is stronger from the grassroots and that is manifested by who is your councillor.

Even El Rufai’s ward was won by PDP, a lady defeated El Rufai’s candidate in its ward from the PDP. So, we think we are doing the right thing and we are building up to what 2023 will look like. If we don’t relax, if the system is fair, if the election is clean, if the votes count, nothing will stop PDP from taking over Kaduna in 2023 because the party is up and doing, the citizens have seen it all that the party in power has failed and we are not even relaxing believing that the party in power has failed therefore it is automatic.

No, we are still working, we are still talking to our people, and we are talking less and doing more hard work. We don’t want the whole world to know what we are doing because they are so good at propaganda. We don’t believe in it because the percentage of those who rely on propaganda are the elites. You see them around Kaduna and that’s it. They have the power to use the T.V, radio, and phones to do so many things.

The man at home who cannot even eat does not need it when it is particularly propaganda, so we are concentrating on the grassroots, believing that they are the worst hit, believing too that the only saviour now is changing the party in power and bringing a substitute. They’ve never had it this bad, I’m telling you during the time of Makarfi, no village in Kaduna State did not witness, touch, or partake the dividends of democracy from roads, electricity, water supply, schools, health care centres, and all that the PDP did.

Nobody can tell me when this man came, he has told the whole world that he is transforming Kaduna, the entirety of all the roads he has done in Kaduna and Kaduna State, the total distance is less than 25kilometres. The money he has borrowed to do those roads is times ten of what that project can be done in any other country where there is transparency and honesty.

Our fear is when we take over, we are going to have it tough because the man has messed up the system, we have to put back the system. He has messed up the public service, we have to put back the public service. There is no bureaucracy in Kaduna, the number of roads, you cannot even know how much we can budget from our income and resources but we still want to come in because it is better to have a good government that can sanitize the bad system than to allow bad government and bad system to flood us.

What’s your view on the PDP and its presidential ticket?

Yes, they are not silent about it but our party has a constitution and a guideline. We are also guided by the leaders who since 1999 spells it out clearly that the presidency of this country shall come between the North and the South.

The North comprises three geo-political zones and it’s the same with the South the understanding is that when the South has had a shot, the North will be given an opportunity and in the next eight years, it goes back this way. So, along the line when Obasanjo wanted to come in for a second term, some Northerners namely Abubakar Rimi decided to throw in their hats in the ring to contest and the party, being a fair body, there was nowhere in the constitution that says the party shouldn’t allow Mr A to contest even though we were guided by where the positions can go.

But how does it work?
From this point, there was a crack, and an understanding so well obeyed by all was explored and since there was no sanction, anyone from the South or North can then contest since the first man that attempted it was not sanctioned. This opened the doors for those who showed interest in contesting. This is why in Port Harcourt we had candidates from everywhere, Of course, Mark was there from the middle belt, in North, Jang was there, Saraki was there- Atiku, Tambuwal and all. Now you could see from the number of candidates at that convention that 90 per cent was dominated by the Northerners because they felt the last president was Goodluck Jonathan from the South.

The same thing, even when they said it is open but we know from the body language that it is going to be somebody from the North, Jonathan being the last immediate president on the PDP’s platform but when somebody comes from the South, such a person will not be stopped but the body language is clear that like it happened in Port Harcourt, so shall it happen again in the next convention.

So, I don’t t see any fear at all because once our flag bearer emerges, the entire structure of the party will queue behind whoever God has given us as a winner, so now, there is no fear or confusion but as I said, we are in the opposition and there’s no armoury that we have at our disposal that we can now flaunt it to the entire world because the most important thing is that we must produce the next president.

Whatever sacrifice the PDP needs to make, it should be sure it happens in 2023, we will do so because Nigerians are tired, they are looking up to our party PDP to take over and hopefully win the election and reduce this untold hardship that Nigerians have to go through in the last seven years.

You seem not to be comfortable with the Buhari government, can you tell us why?
Just go outside now, I’m sure it took you long hours to get here. Nothing is working. We can start from insecurity to even basic things like electricity, nothing is working. You’ve been here in the house, no electricity, we should have privacy by the offices we have held at least I am not insensitive to other Nigerians but my brother, everything under Buhari has failed. There is no security anywhere. The day I went to Kaduna, when I came by train, the GOC in Kaduna was inside the train, the Emir of Zaria was inside the train from Abuja to Kaduna. It was when we all came down that we saw a convoy of cars coming to pick Military-Generals, the convoy of cars coming to pick an Emir. If Buhari had done well, would that have been necessary when we are supposed to have a smooth ride between Zaria, Kaduna, and Abuja?

So the security is zero, all the promises he made to tackle within a few months, you know it has not happened. You know the issue of electricity that Enugu has not seen in six months, it’s a failure. It’s been years and it has not been fixed. They cannot even maintain what they inherited. Look at the fuel situation, look at the industry itself, just tell me one achievement of this government.

I have not seen any because even the road that you are seeing going on, was the road paid for by the past government. Abuja to Kaduna, it was 96 per cent completed. So I cannot count one good thing that this government has done. Nigerians are suffering, people are finding it difficult to live, people cannot eat all promises that have not been fulfilled.

I don’t know how to score this kind of regime. Honestly, Nigeria has gone back many years in underdevelopment. Nigerians have gone back many years to being laughed at by the international community that should have been our peers. Those that even started behind us have overtaken us, so if we are ranking Nigeria as it is now, it is not even where they get it, it has gone many steps behind compared to when they get it. How can I be happy? How can I be proud that this is it? So as far as I’m concerned, it is not being partisan. I am not being partisan, I am being realistic in admitting our situation the way it is now that there is nothing good coming from them.