In this interview, a former chairman of the Labour Party, Dan Nwanyanwu, alleges that the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, will contest the 2027 presidential election. He also urges President Bola Tinubu to be careful with the political crises in Rivers State. He speaks on other major national issues. Excerpts:
How do you see the conflict in the Rivers State government and the House of Assembly?
First of all, let me correct some things, we don’t have two factions of the House of Assembly in Rivers State, there is only one legitimate state House of Assembly in Rivers State. Secondly, yes I’m not from Rivers State, but I have the right to speak on issues in that state.
Now, let me tell you the reason why we’re interested. We want elections to be conducted in 27 local government areas. Don’t refer to me as a former LP chairman; I have a political party now, Zenith Labor Party. I was in Labour for 10 years. So we want to contest the election and take some seats from Rivers. That is our locus. That is why we are concerned. That’s why we are saying they have lost their position or status of assembly and it will never change forever until there is another election.
The law has made it clear, section 109 1G prescribes that a member of the State House of assembly can lose his seat. When you leave the party whose vehicle you got into the state assembly to another party, you shall lose your seat, it doesn’t mean court process and all these are distractions.
His Excellency would say so too. It’s one of the 26 states I talked about. You cannot win a seat in the state assembly on the platform of a party, you leave it to go to another party. You can’t go with the mandate; Nyesom Wike said so, so why are we being pretentious. Nigerians should stop being pretentious.
The law has provided for it and that is why some of us are out to ensure that the right things are done. It doesn’t need a court process but once you have gone to court, with real fixations or frivolous things, you obey the Court, but they are only postponing the evil days. Those members of the State House of Assembly can never come back unless through another election to another political party, or maybe their party would readmit them to contest, but they have lost the seats, those particular seats are lost.
Go to the Supreme Court. We cannot change the goalposts, the train has since left the station, why are we doing this? Are we not aware that it is provided for? The Supreme Court has really taken a position on it. There was no crack or division, which was a provision given in that same provision of the constitution if there is division in the party.
And division here means division at the national level because one political party is one in Abuja, others are organs of the party. The National Executive Committee of the party or the national convention can dissolve any state organ.
“The crisis in Rivers may snowball into a heavy crisis in Nigeria and I know what the people there would do”
As a lawyer, do you know that people have the right to go to court?
I agree with you, if you take anything to the court, the court would determine but don’t forget, they swore an affidavit in court on oath that they have left the party, PDP, they’re now in APC. It does not matter whether their names have been included in the register as members or not. It does not matter if they have changed to another party or tried joining the APC. They may diverge from that. It does not matter if they didn’t go anywhere at all.
The fact that you have left, you signed it on television on radio and you backed it up with affidavit in a court of competent jurisdiction, if they want to destroy our democracy, let them come back to PDP through the back door, I can tell you the effects would be terrible in this country and people are keeping quiet watching what is in it? You have left, get from the other side and re-contest. That’s all. Why are we behaving as if we have forgotten the rudiments of this game?
They are not the first, it has happened before, this case has got to the Supreme Court, in fact the first case was Adenede in Ondo who took us to court when I was the National Chairman of the Labour Party in Ondo State. And at the end of the day, the Supreme Court said, ‘you have lost your seat. There was no division in the Labour Party. You shouldn’t have gone. That’s the locus classical in this. So there is no division, you should stop saying there was division.
You have maintained that Wike is planning to run against the President in 2027, what evidence is there?
Without sounding immodest, I understand this game.
I’ve been at the top level of leadership since 2005. I know the barometer, and I can never be wrong. I gave examples there, here’s a man who has said so many things as commitments: ‘Anybody who emerges from this convention, I will support him wholly, I have nothing to do with APC, I have malaria and you say I should go to cancer, God forbid’, I can go on and on. Look, character is everything. Character is all. I have been a strong believer that there must be a moral content in politics. Look (when you hurt a little child, you can easily forget it, but the little child will not forget) because he bore the pains; maybe many years later, he will remind you, uncle, you did this to me, you’ll be shocked, you may not remember.
The fact is that he did him bad, and you heard him say it.
We need evidence to support your assertion that he is going to run against the President in 2027, under which structure?
He has the structure of PDP and Rivers, he has the structure of PDP at the national level, and he’s always talking about my structure, my structure, what are the structures for? Somebody had them before you came, you see if you’re looking for evidence that something is written or that something is said, you won’t find it, if you’re in that game, and you know how these things work, the evidence is everywhere.
If I made a comment that he would run, and he doesn’t want to run, let him leave the leadership of the party which is in his pocket, the caretaker committee in Rivers PDP he is holding up. I’ve never seen this happen in politics before.
Almost everybody in the PDP had let it go. We had our quarterly meeting with INEC last month or so, this matter came up, so INEC please go and conduct elections in the vacant 27 seats. INEC of course would adjourn in so many cases. Everybody became very serious in the middle, then everything calmed down.
The INEC chairman said, ok PDP representative, what do you have to say, he said ‘I have nothing to say’, this is a party that lost 27 members. He doesn’t want to say anything about it, or those who want to condemn it at once speaking about it. Others who want to contest are the ones speaking about it. I don’t know the kind of evidence you want. I have said so, if he’s not going, let us wait, you will bring me back to your studio and tell…
If Wike would run under PDP, what is he doing in APC?
He is serving the President. If you check somebody’s trajectory and see how he operates, it’s difficult for you to arrive at a point where you expect him to be because you’re followed all the time. If he has so many things including serious issues, that “Let me not have peace if I work against this party, let this happen to me, these are oaths he took, administered by yourself to yourself. Yet he went contrary to all. He’s in the APC government.
We have had people who are not even party members serving a different government in power, he answers President Tinubu, I was one of those who praised his work here, but that doesn’t mean that the trouble you are causing somewhere, in fact what he is doing is an embarrassment to the President and an embarrassment to this government. But if they’re not seeing it, that’s their problem.
Are you surprised that President Tinubu has allowed Minister Wike to continue to do what he’s doing in Rivers State?
I don’t want to anticipate the President. The president is a highly experienced politician. And there are things old men don’t react to quickly. He is not a young man. When an old man wants to make a decision he wants to watch and see things himself. The president knew what was happening in Rivers. We’re talking about the constitution of Nigeria. Everything we are doing as politicians was supposed to be predicated on the Constitution of Nigeria. So, if the president has decided to watch, that is the choice of the President, everyone has his title.
The President must be aware of certain things which he cannot tell you or speak about. The last time I was in your sister station, I was talking about all these things, and they are political.
Somebody called from London and asked why do you think it’s political? I said they are looking at the president’s seat. These are some of the banana peels. I think the president should understand this. The crisis in Rivers may snowball into a heavy crisis in Nigeria and I know what the people there would do.
Everybody is now with the governor apart from the people in Abuja. Weekends they move in, everywhere would be on fire. Sundays when they would be going, there would be peace, everybody would go about their normal businesses. The point I’m making is, who in Rivers State has not gone to pay solidarity with the governor? You see, soldiers come, soldiers go. Somebody was there before.
Do you think the River State in these circumstances does not have a stable government at the moment, because there’s no State of Assembly?
I disagree with you. No, no, no, no, no, I disagree with you. If out of 31 or 32, 27 is gone, what is left is the state assembly. Until you conduct an election. People have been arguing how three people can pass laws, those are the legitimate members of the state House of Assembly and they can do all things guaranteed to the state assembly to do so under the Constitution.
That is another issue for judicial interpretation
No, I am a lawyer
Yes you are a lawyer but you are not a judge, you are not the one who is going to make the decision.
Yes, that is why I’m telling you that there is no faction in the state House of Assembly. This State Assembly is one, and the noise, look at the impunity, thank God the Court of Appeal dealt with the local governments tenure some days ago that their tenure has expired.
These are some of the imperious actions taken by the so called state House of Assembly before they left. Why did they go? If they had decided to fight Fubara, they should have remained. They had the numbers.
“90 percent of our money comes from there, president Tinubu should not play with it, and the man that can guarantee that is Fubara, not Wike; his time has passed as governor of Rivers State”
But the same Appeal Court gave an interpretation…
That is what I’m saying, they make interpretations that would suit them, if the Court of Appeal had the intention to ask them to go back, they would have said so, the court is never afraid to give orders. Status quo as referred to by the court was that these people have lost their seats. What was the position before they went to court? The position was that they lost their seats.
Is there a need for discussion and negotiation or would you just leave it to the courts to make the final. Do you think that either side will be willing for a compromise?
What do you mean by negotiation? I told you here that other political parties are waiting to participate in that election. The seats have become vacant. There is nothing to negotiate. The solution is allow the governor to perform his job as a governor, you don’t sell your goat and still hold on to the rope, the man who bought the goat had to use the rope to take the goat home. You cannot be here and there. You have done eight years, what did you forget there? This is the problem with Nigerians, when they get to position they don’t want to leave. Some would remember that their time has come to an end at the dying minute. Allow the governor to do his job. He has a timetable for local government elections, my party, other parties are already taking the forms to run. Allow the process to be. This problem is being hashed and executed in Abuja.
If Minister Wike after listening to you decides to step away from muddying the political waters in Rivers State, would the governor come hard on him and his supporters because that might be a worry, which is why a lot of people are continuing to fight on?
I’m not Fubara, I’m not a spokesman. I’m talking to you as one that concerns me as a political leader of a political party. We want to go and contest. We’re interested in those 27 seats. We have not gone to court. We’re waiting for somebody to intervene unconstitutionally. The only thing is if Wike withdraws as you are saying, there would be peace, but he’s not going to withdraw because of his ambition of 2027. He has to hold those structures. If not, let them go through the process, let them have proper leadership, it was frustrated in the last NEC, allow the structure in Rivers to operate. Look at the PDP, I have not seen any sympathy, cooperation or solidarity with the governor in Rivers. Have you heard that they visited them? Have you seen it? So the handwriting is clear on the wall.
What do you think is going to happen next?
What will happen next is that water would find its own level, and for those calling for a state of emergency, I pity them. If you have a state of emergency in Rivers, wait for it, if you want the President to declare it, wait for it, you will see it, I know what I’m saying. That’s why I do that, I understand these things without sounding immodest. I understand this game and I know the reaction of people in Rivers State. Rivers State is not like any other state. There was something President Ya’adua saw before he entered into agreement to resolve the issues in Rivers. 90 percent of our money comes from there, president Tinubu should not play with it, and the man that can guarantee that is Fubara, not Wike; his time has passed as governor of Rivers State.
