The Court of Appeal, Abuja Division, recently sacked Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State, five members of the National Assembly and all members of the state House of Assembly elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the premise of disobedience to court order and a lack of political structure. In this interview by ISAAC SHOBAYO, the state Commissioner for Information and Communications, Musa Ashoms, speaks on the controversial issues.
How did the PDP find itself in this situation?
If you recall, we had congresses where some local governments had litigation issues and political power tussles. And just like they do in the National Assembly, once you form a quorum, you can take decisions on behalf of the National Assembly. Once you get a particular number, you can impeach a principal officer or make decisions on behalf of the National Assembly. So, in the case of Plateau State, we had our congresses with some local governments having local issues, and they couldn’t participate. So, people who were aggrieved approached the courts. And the court said we didn’t have a congress and that we should repeat a congress. Justice Kunda did that.
Then Justice Gang of the Plateau State High Court ordered us to go back as a party to conduct congresses. And you will recall that we had layers of caretaker committees on the Plateau when Chris Hassan was voted for the first time. The court said the congresses were marred with irregularities and the number of delegates that should have voted was not complete. So, the party went back and even made the former organising secretary, Yakubu Chocho, the acting chairman so that the chairmanship did not leave Plateau’s Northern senatorial zone where it was zoned.
Then again, we brought in the National Vice Chairman of the party, Theophilus Dakachan, who at some point became the caretaker chairman of the PDP on the Plateau. It got to a point again that because of the disagreements, Sulieman Adokwe, a senator from Nassarawa State, was asked to come to Plateau State to take charge of the party in a caretaker capacity. That was done. Still, the different interests that we had—the Senator Jeremiah Useni team and that of Senator Jonah David Jang—had to collapse after several visits to the national headquarters. The exco of the PDP on the Plateau visited the national headquarters 28 times on this issue.
In one of the reconciliation meetings, it was agreed that both parties should bring four representatives each, with three from the national, to make up the 11-man caretaker committee, and General Tunde Ogbeha (rtd) from Kogi State was the chief CTC and chairman of that committee. Mr Mohammed Ndayako, SAN, was the legal adviser for that team. Chief Patrick Ogbu from Benue State was the secretary of that group. And you had four people from the Useni side and four people from the Jang side, making up 11.
It was the CTC caretaker committee transition committee that conducted the congresses on the Plateau. The PDP national headquarters wrote to INEC, wrote to the SSS, and wrote also to the police so that they give the congress security. On September 25, 2021, in Langfield, Rayfield and Jos South local governments in Plateau State, the congresses were held. And all the people who either staged a walkout in the other congress because they felt they had been marginalised participated.
So, if you aggregate the number of votes we have gotten from these people, including invalid ones, you will know that 17 local government areas of Plateau State participated in that congress in particular. So, when people come to say there were no congresses on the Plateau, it is shocking to some of us.
So, it is appalling and disheartening that you hear people say some local governments didn’t participate or have no representative. Again, there is never an injunction from anywhere for us not to do our primary elections.
And again, the Musa Agah matter was determined by the 2010 Electoral Act. After the matter was determined in January 2021, in February 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Electoral Act into law, which is now the 2022 Electoral Law. So, the 2022 Electoral Law does not give a party’s exco five principal officers the opportunity of becoming ad hoc delegates; it is ad hoc delegates that are voted for, selected, or whichever way they emerge from the wards that vote for people. So, the voting of all PDP candidates that became winners in their various constituencies and, of course, the governorship was done by these ad hoc delegates that came from all the wards in Plateau State.
So, people are just misled by people whose stock in trade is to lie. To mislead people is to tell lies. The situation on the Plateau is quite dicey because people voted for the PDP and the APC squandered its opportunity. And after that, they were looking for ways to take over power at all costs. So, when people say there is no structure, you begin to wonder: what structure are you talking about?
This issue of no structure has been on the front burner for quite some time. It was used in 2021 to exclude the PDP from participating in the local government election and also against the party in two by-elections in the state. Why is it difficult for the party to re-examine the issue instead of allowing it to continue to hunt the party up to this point?
If my young memory serves me right, the election of Musa Agha was done by the party exco, if you remember, around Tudun Wada GRA. It was done by party exco. And as of that time, like I said, it was the 2010 Electoral Act that was in existence before the amendments that were made to the Electoral Act, and we now have a new law, which is the 2022 law. At the time, the local government elections were being conducted by PLASEC. It was the issue raised by Hon. Bitrus Kaze that PLASEC took advantage of. If it were INEC that was going to hold that election, there wouldn’t have been many issues, but because it was predetermined by negative thinking, they allowed it to go that way. And you will remember that at that time, we said okay, let’s not go forward and continue to have these kinds of issues and we had congresses afterwards. But at that time, Musa Agah was voted by the exco. That was the old Electoral Act. The new one does not give the exco the opportunity to become delegates; they only manage the party. They supervise the activities of the party.
So, when people say they denied us the opportunity to participate in the election, they use the old act to handle all of that. When they give examples with Alkali versus Aghah, it is the 2010 Electoral Act that was in use, like I told you. The matter was determined in January and by February, President Muhammadu Buhari had signed into law the Electoral Act. Now, 2022 Electoral Law agrees that every pre-election matter should be handled 14 days after the primary election, and it is only those who participated in the primary election that can take them to court.
So, it is quite disheartening that meddlesome interlopers will now be speaking with venom because they want to just snatch our mandates at all costs. So, it is disheartening that they are misinforming the general public. The reality on the ground is that the PDP has a solid structure on the Plateau, and His Excellency from Osun State was the chairman of the congresses that brought Chris Hassan into power.
With all these scenarios, what is your perception of the judiciary in this context?
I wouldn’t want to malign the judiciary. You know, 20 friends cannot be friends for 20 years. Different courts look at matters from different angles and perspectives. We have gotten judgment from the tribunal in Jos, which said that we have a solid structure, and INEC has come to the court to testify that indeed, we have a structure. And I know that the apex court, which is the Supreme Court of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, will resolve this matter once and for all, but it is quite unfortunate that we are going to lose refined legislators, refined parliamentarians, people who have garnered experience over the years, as well as representatives. Neophytes are going to take over from them; they have been taken over by the judgment of the Court of Appeal.
It is quite unfortunate that there is no further appeal in their matter. But because our own has a remedy, there can be steps that can be taken, which have already been taken, where we are going to the Supreme Court to make sure that the mandate that the Plateau people gave us freely is gotten back.
Going by the judgment of the Appeal Court so far, it is clear that the PDP has lost all its state and national assembly members to the APC and the LP, respectively. In the event that Governor Mutfwang survives the judgment at the Supreme Court, how will he cope with the state Assembly with the opposition party members?
There have been classical examples where people didn’t have plenty of Assembly members, but they did well. If you check the case of CPC’s Tanko Almakura in Nassarawa, he didn’t have plenty of Assembly members. The CPC came, I think, with only three or four members. If these people are lovers of Plateau State, they will allow good governance to flourish. It is not a political thing. Political parties are just a platform for you to achieve your political ambitions. So, they will not deter us from giving the Plateau people purposeful leadership and dividends of democracy.
It is like governance in the state is on hold and attention is shifted to political survival based ongoing legal turbulence.
Naturally, when you get the kind of overwhelming votes that we got from Plateau people, His Excellency, Governor Caleb Mutfwang, has enjoyed the goodwill of Plateau people. You will notice the cult following he enjoys. When people see him in his white attire and green cap, they go crazy; they go haywire. If you read his statement, he said it was a temporary setback. We need to inspire our people so that they know that whatever the opposition does, it is not going to stop him from providing them with dividends of democracy. So, governance is not on hold; governance continues. We are not deterred by the judgment. It is a setback, a temporary one, because very soon, the Supreme Court is going to determine the true winner of this election. You know, Caleb Mutfwang got the mandate of the people freely and he is not going to be distracted by these political shenanigans.
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