Adamawa: I have no godfather – Kumdisi, PDP governorship aspirant BY IHEANACHO NWOSU, ABUJA ON AUGUST 17, 2014 · HON Jerry Kumdisi is the Chief Whip of the Adamawa House of Assembly . He worked with the erstwhile governor of the state Boni Haruna as a senior aide on Legal and Constitutional Matters. In this chat , the lawmaker gives details on why the House impeached Gov.Murtaka Nyako , his governorship ambition and why All Progressives Party(APC) lawmakers in the state defected to the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) There is so much speculation about those that are contesting for the vacant Adamawa governorship, seat. Are you interested in the plum job? Yes, I am contesting. I am one of the people vying for the office. If you take a trip to Adamawa you will know that I am running because my presence is everywhere . I have been campaigning vigorously. Were you nursing the ambition be fore Nyako’s impeachment? Yes I have been nursing the ambition . I am not contesting because the impeachment came ,I had indicated interest in the position long before the impeachment. I was doing my campaigns ,albeit it was not in the open . I was doing some consultations across the state with party officials and delegates before the impeachment. Why do you think you stand a chance in view of the calibre of peo ple who have indicated interest in the office including the Acting Governor of the state as well as the challenge that is coming from APC which is arguably a party to beat in most northern states? Power is not got easily, you cannot say because you are running other people should not run. But I am certain that my chances are high. I am saying this because I have been in politics in Adamawa, I have won election three times and I have gone round the state and I know what the problem of Adamawa is . The people of Adamawa also know the kind of person I am, how I have represented them in the House of Assembly. They know my contributions to debates especially on matters that affect them. I also know that I will give Adamawa a new direction , totally away from what used to be the case. My chances are really good. What do you mean by what the situation used to be? Recently you know that we impeached our governor. You don’t impeach someone who is doing well . If you do that the people of the state would chase you out of your house. He was out of tune with the people, with realities. If he was not doing well why did the same House give him a vote of confidence some months ago? I agree that there was a vote of confidence but we all know how that confidence vote came about. It may be of no value to begin to dissociate myself from the action because if the House takes a decision, whether you voted for or against such decision, it is binding on you, you are bound to be part of it. Some of us didn’t agree with the confi dence vote but we were in the minority. We didn’t have the voice to say that this vote of confidence cannot stand. The way our democracy operates, some times when some members want to get favours from the executive, they engage in praise singing. It happens in all the states. I am not disassociating myself from the decision because it was taken on the floor of the House and it was the decision of the House. I cannot exclude myself from it. The general impression is that the House was used to do a hatchet job for some forces and members were rewarded for that. Why do you think this impression is holding sway? Reward from who? What favour or re wards were we looking for? As far as I know we didn’t do it because we wanted a favour from anybody. We impeached Nyako because he was not doing well for the state . Secondly as people who are working to gether he didn’t think that we mattered in administering the state . As our governor we had the right to ask for certain things from him. One of such things is our constituency projects. We expected that every member ought to get it so that he or she can execute some projects in his or her constituency and remain relevant. Since Nyako came to power a little more than seven years , he gave the House constituency projects only once. I was part of it. I have been in the House since 2003, I know the governors that were there . I can tell you what they did and what they didn’t do. Why did it take the House more than seven years to realise that they needed to fight their poor treatment as you claimed? Everything has its time. When things like that were going on the Governor had his own men. But gradually, those members fell out with him and joined some of us that had not been with him from the beginning. How do you disprove claims that the presidency influenced and induced the House with money to remove Nyako? I don’t know what you mean by being induced or influenced. I have given you the reason why we decided to impeach him. Nobody asked us to do so, I am not aware of any inducement from anywhere. If you talk of one, two, three person that worked with Nyako in his early years I was one of them. But we fell out because he was not doing what we thought he was coming to do . Before his ouster I have always wanted to impeach Nyako . It was not the first time the House would want to impeach him. I was part of those who wanted to impeach him when president Yar’Adua was still in power. We served him impeachment notice but because he was still in PDP and the party was one family we were called to a meeting in Abuja and told to stop the impeachment moves. We told them what the governor was doing and he was not being called to order by the party. We tried to resist the intervention but Yar’Adua asked the incumbent President who was Vice President then to sit with us because he was traveling abroad. We agreed on certain things with the governor. He was asked to implement the agreement while we were asked to drop the impeachment moves . We did as agreed. Doesn’t this give credence to claims in some quaters that if Nyako had not left PDP, the impeachment would not have succeeded? Anybody can say anything but what is important is to understand why the first impeachment move was dropped and why this one succeeded. Like I explained our relationship with him at the beginning was cordial. We fell out after we looked at what he was doing in the state, there was no development. May be If he was still in PDP , the party leaders may call us and say look, since we are members of the party don’t remove him . But this time around he is not in PDP and the party will, understandably not have the interest of saving Nyako who is in APC. The 25 members of the Adamawa State. House of Assembly are members of PDP , there is no APC member there. However,the impeachment was not a party thing, we all believed that he was not doing well and should therefore go. If PDP has 25 members how about those that moved with him to APC ? I told you that when I was coming for the third tenure, the same Nyako denied me ticket in PDP. I went to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), now defunct, and won my election . I returned to PDP after our inauguration. It was the same Nyako that begged me because he knew that if I was not there in my local government he will not win my council . He told me that he did everything he could to ensure that I was defeated in the election . He confessed to me that he spent over N200 million in my constituency to en sure that I did not win . He told me he was sorry for doing all that and pleaded with me to return to PDP for all of us to work together . Election was coming and he needed everybody around at that time to help him to win. That was how I returned to PDP. I left ACN willingly, nobody forced me. I went to ACN simply to show him that it was not only in PDP that I can win election . When he was moving to APC most of the members who followed him were PDP. They were all elected on the platform of PDP except three members who had always been in APC. Four of us were elected on ACN ticket ,i left the other three and returned to PDP. There was another member who won election on CPC ticket. Nyako met the three members in APC when he moved to the party . But even the three later abandoned APC and moved to PDP. The constitution gives them the right to move when there is a merger. That was how the whole House became all PDP. Some PDP members who fol lowed him to APC before returning to PDP probably were looking for favours from him. Possibly they returned to PDP when they did not get the favour they were looking for. Back to your governorship ambition, what level of backing are you getting from party chieftains or god fathers in the state? I won’t say I have been endorsed by any of the godfathers because I am not running on the back of any of them. My godfathers are God and the people of Adamawa state . However, that is not to say that all the godfathers are not known to me. I know them by the virtue of the fact that I have been long in the Adamawa politics. I have met almost all of them one way or the other. But it cannot be said that any of them has endorsed me as his political boy. I am seeking the endorsement of God and the people of the state. Some believe that Adamawa has not been lucky to have a good governor and that it has been so because of pressures from some powerful in dividuals and forces in the state. Do you agree with this school of thought and how are you going to escape the hand of these forces if elected? I don’t think any force will frustrate me. The reason I said that is that those forces that people talk about are not behind my governorship project. If by God’s grace I become governor there will be no force that will drag or slow me down from doing what is right in the sight of God and the masses. Those governors who were slowed down was because they were brought to the position by their godfathers. If you don’t dance the tune of your godfather you will be in trouble. Is it possible for you to go it alone? I am not going it alone but those who want to support me will do that not with any string attached. How do you want to change Ad amawa from the way it is today? Adamawa is a rural state , it is agro based . Having this in mind, we need to focus on agriculture . Improvement in agriculture will enhance the lives of the people of the state . If government improves people’s farming skills and inputs the economy of the state will be boosted immediately.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 15:13:40 +0000