Mr. Dele Belgore (SAN), Action Congress of Nigeria’s governorship candidate in Kwara State during the 2011 election explains his latest controversial defection to the Peoples Democratic Party in this interview withSUCCESS NWOGU

With the Freedom Rally recently held in Ilorin, it seems you have now agreed that the PDP is a party that puts people in bondage since the party has been in the power for some years now in Kwara State?

No.  We have said repeatedly that our issue lies with the way the government of the state was then being run. It is the people at the helm of affairs and their methods that we were complaining about. Those methods have not changed since they joined the APC. That tells you that the issue in Kwara is about the people at the helm of affairs and not necessarily the party.

They call themselves progressives now.  But you do not become a progressive simply because you change your party. So it has been the same system and that is the point we have been making.

You once said you were going to free the people of Kwara from PDP’s bondage.  Now that you have gone to the PDP, how do you explain that?

We should not take statements out of context. Let us situate them properly.  Statements like that, again were meant or targeted at the way things were run and are being run. They are run essentially by the same group of people.  So it is bondage, away from the status quo, from the politics of deprivation, the politics of selfishness and the politics that perpetually keeps our people down. That is what we have complained about and that is what the issue is.

People said you joined PDP because you were promised a political appointment. Is that right?

That is not correct. I was not promised any political appointment and I did not ask for any.

If Dr. Bukola Saraki goes back to the PDP, will you remain in the PDP?

We will remain in the PDP. If Saraki comes back to the PDP, well and fine, it is good for him. For now, we have like minds in the PDP in Kwara State. We have people who support the quest for change, people who want to do away with the status quo and all the anti-people’s politics that have been pursued over the years.

Supposing he comes back and he is in control of the PDP structure in the state?

Let us not deal with hypothetical situations.  Let us deal with situations when they happen. So let us not hypothesise it.

What do you want to do right that Saraki did wrong now that you are in the PDP?

First, we want to restore pride to the people of Kwara. We want them to begin to believe in themselves and to begin to believe that they can have a government that will serve them well. Second, we want to create equal opportunities so that every person of Kwara origin or residence can rise to the limit of available opportunities and of their talents. We want infrastructural development and even development across the state and for the government to have impact on the people, from the rural areas to the urban areas. In general we want a better life for the people of Kwara.

Are you saying that there is no human capital development, infrastructural provision and that people are not getting their dues or rights in the state?

What we are saying is that relative to the resources available to the state and the amount  that has been budgeted and spent, the infrastructural facilities are extremely poor. The infrastructural development on ground is extremely weak.

But people say that Kwara State has more infrastructure than some other states in the north?

Kwara is a first generation state. I will rather compare Kwara with the best and not with the worst. Kwara is a first generation state created in 1967. It should therefore be one of the most developed states in Nigeria today. That is the standard by which we should measure Kwara State and not the standard of the states that are not doing so well. We have a first generation state where the finest Nigerians come from. You would recall that in time past, some of the best and the brightest in the Northern Nigeria came from Kwara State. But due to a system whereby anybody with talent and freewill was suppressed, their views were not heard, opportunities were denied, Kwara State began to be seen as a backward state. The first generation state cannot even compete favourably with some third generation states. A lot of us felt that this kind of situation should not continue. Also we were running a feudal system under a democratic arrangement. A feudal system where there is a lord or master sitting on top of a chair and everybody is there, beneath and he is saying, ‘you can have this. You can have that. And if you do not go through me, you cannot have anything.’ This is an anathema in a modern age. This kind of system is being kicked against everywhere.  Even in places that recognise monarchies, the people are even revolting against that kind of system.  So, a lot of people on their own thought that we had to speak up and take the destiny of our state in our hands. That is how we got into this.

Are you saying that in Kwara, PDP will win in the next elections?

I have no doubt about that.

What spurs your optimism?

The optimism comes from the support of the people.  You can see that the people have been energised. It is like the people have been let loose. You can see the expressions on their faces. You can see their enthusiasm that they can see light at the end of the tunnel. In a situation, where to some extent, people are not sure of what they stand for or what will happen, then you do not get the support that truly reflects the people’s wish.

Now what I can see is that the people now see that they can take their destinies in their hands and that is the difference.

There is an allegation that most members of the crowd were hired?

Nobody hired anybody. We have all been in this game long enough.  You can tell the difference between a rented crowd and an enthusiastic crowd who feel concerned by what is going on. As one politician once said, people who complain about rented crowd are people who do not have crowd themselves.

This rented crowd issue is not a new thing.  They say it every time. Whenever they see large crowd, they say they are rented.  Do not forget, these are the same people who said that the day we announced our defection to the PDP, that we had a crowd of about 150 people.  The video footage itself gave a lie to that.  It showed that there were far more than 150 people. And when you see the enthusiasm in that crowd, nobody should say they were rented. This is confirmed by the video footage of the rally.

So I will suggest that they should work at winning genuine support and not continue to fool themselves by saying that the teeming population against them are rented.

After the 2011 election, did you think that you won convincingly?

We believed that we won.  We knew that we won. We went to court. The records are there of the case we presented at the Supreme Court; unfortunately, the court ruled against us. But aside from the case we presented at the courts, in the hearts and minds of the people, we did win.

So after the election, did you feel that you were cheated?

We had that feeling but the attitude was ‘do not get bad, get even.’ So, rather than continue to brood over that, we decided to build on it. We decided to consolidate on those gains, reach out to the people, and propagate the cause which we all shared. This is not Dele Belgore getting up and saying that ‘I want to contest for governorship.’ Then we went through it; we ended up losing in the court and you say, “Well, I have given it a shot. I will go back to my legal practice.” This was a cause that had gone beyond me and we decided to carry on.

It appears that though you are influential, being a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, you did not connect with the grassroots during the 2011 campaign and election

Even with the manipulated election figures, we got more than 154,000 votes where the total votes cast were above 400,000. We couldn’t have got that kind of votes if we did not connect with the grassroots.

You have invested so much in the All Progressives Congress.  Why did you decide to leave the party?

APC was a vehicle for which we were to pursue our aspiration for change. It was one in which we thought we could make the system and manner of governance better, to improve the lives of the people economically and socially.  We thought we could create a state of equal opportunities and one in which we would all be proud of. We thought that APC’s progressive bent aligned with this aspiration, so APC became a natural choice platform for us. But recent events have shown that, that is not the case here in Kwara and that the force between us and the forces of regression of those who are responsible for the retarded development of our state meant that if we abandon our desire for change, our cause and campaign for it would remain a status quo. But if we are to keep our hope and desire for change alive, we have to find another means to pursue it.

You used to criticise PDP and the administration of Dr. Bukola Saraki. Were you criticising PDP because of Saraki?

I do not like to talk about individuals. I was criticising those running the PDP government. So it is all about the persons running the government. If you ask an average  person in Kwara about PDP today, they would tell you that they do not have a problem with the PDP as a party. It was the people that were running it that they had a problem with. It was the people that were running it that were insensitive to the people’s needs and aspirations and it was that system of government that was suppressing the will of the people, suppressing their natural rights and desire for growth. That was what we were fighting for and that is why we defected to the APC. But when our ideology was untenable there, we had to leave.

As a SAN, one expects that you would have remained in APC and defended your ideologies. Why then did you jump from APC to the PDP?

 A party is a voluntary association, and within a voluntary association, if you cannot change the rules to make it fair and equitable, then you have to decide whether you want to stay or leave. We had grievances with the APC and we pursued all possible internal remedies. But the powers that be were determined that they were going to execute the cause that they had set out. In that circumstance we exercised our constitutional and democratic rights to move on.

What is the ideology of the PDP that attracted you to the party?

PDP gave us the opportunity to pursue our quest for change. It is not a sole decision.  It is almost like a natural birth for our people.  They want a platform by which their lives can be made better. We believe that PDP gave us the chance to achieve that.

Is it in terms of democratically allowing people to elect their leaders instead of automatically conferring some privilege on a governor or a leader?

That is the large part of it because if people choose their leaders, they are more likely to work with them. Leadership involves taking some unpopular and uncomfortable decisions.  But it is made considerably easier if those unpopular and uncomfortable decisions are being taken by a man they themselves have voluntarily chosen; somebody that they can see and connect with.  But if they are taking uncomfortable decisions and they are now telling people to make sacrifices, the first thing they will say is ‘who are you to be telling us? If you had left matters in our hands, we would not have chosen you’. So the mere fact that the PDP allows for that form of expression in itself is a considerable attraction.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo was an opposition leader and he remained so till his death.  But you lost just an election and you jumped gun, why that?

The election was in 2011. We are now talking in 2014. Election was in April 2011 and we are now talking in February 2014, so that is good three years. And there have been a lot of activities. Let us examine this issue of jumping ship in these three years, we have been fairly consistent. We started the matter on a platform of change; change from the status quo. The people of Kwara State are tired the status quo. They want to move on. They want a better life.  They see it around. That was how we started.  We are still on that cause. We have not left and that has not changed.

Nigerians believe that politicians are selfish, and that is why they move from one party to another. Is your movement from the APC to the PDP not giving credence to that belief?

I think selfishness is not the right way to look at it.  The way to look at it is that the political parties in Nigeria are not properly well defined along ideological terms. And largely at the moment, much depends on the personality of the party. You could have people in the PDP who have more in common than people in the APC than they have within the PDP themselves, and vice versa. This is because you have different shades of opinions and personalities within a political party.  What I see is: as the parties become more ideologically defined, then moving from one to the other perhaps becomes more difficult.  But now a lot depends on the overall system that the party provides – the opportunity for people to express themselves and to compete, and mostly on the personality of the individuals.

Why was it difficult for you to work with Bukola Saraki while with the APC?

We never said it was difficult for us to work with Saraki. What we said was that the arrangement that was put in place in the APC was one which was predetermined to produce a particular result irrespective of what anybody thought or what anybody wanted conferred on the governor of a state, and in this case, they conferred it on Senator Saraki and that was unacceptable to us.

You supported the now defunct Action Congress of Nigeria at the tribunal following the 2011 election in the state. Does that mean that everything you said at that time were lies since you are now in the PDP?

Election results have not changed. Our position has not changed on that score.  The records are there.

How do you want to right what Saraki supposedly did wrong in the state?

I will rather not talk about any individual.  I will rather not talk about myself because I do not want to personalise issues in any way.  But all what the people of Kwara State, all the people present at the rally, are agitating for are these two main things – change and freedom. Change from a system that has retarded the state development, which has retarded the opportunities available to them.  Change from that system. Freedom from a system where there is an overload, who then decides and gives largesse as he wishes and decides who gets what; it is that system that we (those of us with like minds now in the PDP) want to do away with.

Could you rate the PDP at the federal level?

I think the PDP at the federal level has faced tough challenges but the party has handled them quite well. Economically, growth in the country is on the upward trend. Global events have not also helped at all. The effects of negative global economic trend are mostly felt on the performance of the Federal Government more than the states. But in all, I think that the PDP has done fairly well. There is always an opportunity to do more.  I think we can do a lot more.

Why do you think the PDP government has been unable to solve the problem of Boko Haram?

Terrorism is an intractable problem. It takes ages to resolve it. Unfortunately, when you hear of terrorists’ attack, you say the government has failed but you do not really hear of so many attacks that had been prevented because government had taken certain measures. Also, matters like terrorism are not like ordinary crimes because you are dealing with people who believe in a cause and want to die for that cause and they are ready to do anything. In any society where you have to balance the interest of the people you are trying to protect and at the same time trying to provide security, that balance is always very challenging. But I think on a long term basis, terrorism prevention is best assessed on its success or failure. But generally speaking, I would say that we are possibly on the right track.

Do you support a two-party system in Nigeria?

 I would say yes because it will strengthen our democracy. In any situation where you have many parties and  a lot of those parties are not strong, they do not have nationwide spread. What that breeds sometimes is ethnicity and regionalism because you expect that in certain parts of the country, certain parties will be prominent and other parties would probably not be.  But when you have a two-party system, then you will have truly national parties.  It is a sort of thing we are trying to achieve in the country even outside politics to have a broad national outlook.  And I think a two-party system gives us that.