Ibrahim Isah Bio, a former minister of transport used to be an ardent follower of late Olusola Saraki and was one time speaker, Kwara State House of Assembly.  He explains here why he cannot be on the same page politically with Bukola Saraki and why the PDP should not waste time trying to reconcile with the G-7 governors. Excerpts:

Senator Bukola Saraki is now a leader of the new PDP, are you with him?

With all intent and purposes I am not with him and I am not going to be with the new PDP. I belong to the PDP and I don't believe in the struggle or the ideals of the new PDP. I'm an ardent follower of Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki, the great Waziri of Ilorin and for the last 20 years, I have been very close to Baba Saraki (may his soul rest in peace). I believe in his leadership because it is genuine and transparent. You could see the zeal in what he was doing, being a good philanthropist, kind and focused. As a result, I became very close to him over the years and I was one of the people he trusted and who were very close to him.  

By 1998, I was one of the people liaising for Kwara State for those people who are going to be in the PDP. But shortly after, I was almost neck deep in the PDP when we realized that Baba Saraki was going to join All Peoples Party (APP). So, most of us left PDP and followed him to APP. Unfortunately, in 1999, they denied him the presidential ticket in Kaduna and gave it to Ogbonnaya Onu, if you can recall and it metamorphosed to Chief Olu Falae/ Shinkafi ticket. But Baba Saraki did not revolt in Kaduna. He pleaded with us to stay calm rather than being violent. He left in the night to avoid violence. These are good qualities of a leader. In politics, you don't win all the time. You lose some time and at other times you gain. That is the kind of philosophy I believe and agree with. 

 But the present leadership of Bukola Saraki that we have is the politics of elimination, politics of coercion and politics of me first before others. It's no more politics of carrying people along. Leadership entails not just being or calling yourself a leader. You have to have the love of the people and the people must also love you in return. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Kwara State at the moment and some of us in the last two or three years just stayed aloof to watch the events that are unfolding in Kwara State. 

Again, those people that are complaining or aggrieved most of them have presidential ambitions. I know the governor of Niger State, Babangida Aliyu has a presidential ambition. It is not a secret that Sule Lamido has presidential ambition. It is not a secret that Dr. Bukola Saraki has presidential ambition; neither is it a secret that Rabiu Kwankwaso has presidential ambition and they believe the best way to go about this is to first of all get rid of President Goodluck Jonathan who is the current President and the coast will be clear for them. 

  Did Saraki not take you into confidence before the new PDP was formed?

 Regrettably, I don't think Bukola Saraki trusts me as much as Baba Saraki did. For instance, way back in 2003, I was in the House of Reps when Baba Saraki said I should leave the House of Reps. He initially promised that I was going to the Senate. But later, he came back and said please can you come back to serve the people because I don't want the kind of political infringement I had with late Lawal. That is why people unanimously agreed that Dr. Saraki should bring Bukola on board to be the next governor so that he wouldn't have crisis with any other governor and he said he wanted somebody with experience and whom he trusts to come and handle the House of Assembly and I accepted. I left the House of Reps and became the Speaker of Kwara Assembly for six years. But the same Baba who told me that if by the grace of God governorship comes to my area, he was grooming me up later said he needed to give me national exposure. That was why he asked me to be minister. Before the 2011 election, I sat down together with Bukola and I said, can I put in if it is the wish of God to succeed you. He said go ahead. I bought the form. But later, Bukola denied that he ever asked me to buy the form.

Then I went to meet President Jonathan because I was serving as minister of sports under him at that time. I said Mr. President, I have discussed with Bukola and he endorsed that I should buy the governorship form. So, I'm going to flag off my campaign. 

 I left, flagged off my campaign and I asked all Kwarans to elect me as governor. It was the mother of all campaigns, only for Bukola Saraki to call me around 2.00 am on the night of the primaries and said he had decided to zone it to Kwara South and give it to Abdufattah Ahmed. I took it with faith. After all, it's not everything that one wishes that one would get. But while I expected Bukola to have called me and said okay, it's not everything you look for that you get, and sooth the balm of all the injuries he has caused me, he continued to treat me like a cancerous part of the body. 

If Bukola and the G-7 governors defect to the APC, what will be the implication on the PDP?  

Let me confess to you that the loyalty Baba Saraki commanded for 42 years, I don't think Bukola Saraki has the capacity and wherewithal to command that kind of loyalty and support of the people. Look at the local government election that took place in Offa. Everybody saw it and it is still in the internet. APC had about 11,000 votes and PDP had about 4,000 votes. Then, they went and changed it overnight and announced PDP with 25,000 and made the APC 20,000 votes. That's not the quality of good leadership and that is not a democratic culture in the state. People are aggrieved and people are not happy with that kind of thing. The last local government election that took place sometimes on the 26th of October is Kangaroo election where they bought SDP and one party called Labour Party and no other party had a candidate in the whole    of the 15 local governments in the state, either as a councilor or a chairman

I believe PDP is the party that everybody wants to follow. Let them go to APC or any other party and you will be surprised that Kwara people will remain in the PDP. PDP will be the party that will win in Kwara. All the political gladiators that are well known people, good political gladiators that are Baba's right hand men, I cannot count two or three that are in Bukola's camp for now. 

 The major grievance of the G-7 governors is that there was a certain agreement with President Jonathan not to re-contest. Are you are aware of such agreement?

The way the seven governors are going, if there was actually a written agreement, they would have published it by now.

Come to think of it, an agreement is a moral issue. But a constitutional right is a legal issue. Which one supersedes the other? Is it the agreement they claimed to have signed in a room or what the Constitution says. The constitution says anybody, either a governor or a president has the right to seek for two terms of four years and if Jonathan has just finished his first term, he has the constitutional right to go in for a second term. Is it the constitution that we are going to follow or the so called agreement signed in a room? If they have it, let them produce it. 

 There have been several efforts to reconcile these aggrieved governors but each time they come together, something else would happen. How you think reconciliation can be achieved?

 What is very clear is that for the governors to have planned to walk out on the national convention, an internationally organized occasion where we had foreign journalists and these things were beamed live; for the seven governors to walk out on a stage where the President is seated, they have already gone beyond reconciliation. That is my own assessment. This is not a day's plan. It would have been on for several months because they had already arranged a venue for live press coverage. That is not an accidental thing. They have already decided what to do. 

I want to pay great respect to Baba Tony Anenih and other party members who have deemed it necessary to convince the governors to reconcile and also working on the President to reconcile. That is job of elder statesmen and I wish them well if they can succeed. But my opinion as a young politician and as a tactical strategist, it is apparent that they believe their grievances cannot be solved. Therefore, let us destroy the party and move to another party. That is the strategy I have seen. 

 Again, the court has ruled that nobody should bear new PDP. But they went to appeal. They are still meeting. They are issuing communiqués and statements. Some of them are not reconciliation prone. I believe they are working very hard and I appreciate their efforts and that of the President. But I don't see the other people making the approach that is required to make reconciliation.