Senator Bukola Saraki is the chairman, Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology and a former governor of Kwara State. He speaks on the ongoing crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Kwara politics one year after the death of his father, among other issues. DAPO FALADE brings excerpts:

Given the latest situation in your party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), where four key members have been placed on suspension by the party’s leadership, would you say that the development signifies the end of the on-going peace deal between the two factions?
I think PDP, as the ruling party, after 14 years of democracy, I believe the development is unfortunate; it does not reflect what a party like ours stands for and even as a country after so many years of democracy. And it will be difficult to really convince a lot of us that it was not done to clear and circumvent the ruling of the Appeal Court which directed that Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola should resume as National Secretary of PDP.

These are the issues that some of us have been talking about. In an institution like the PDP, we should be there long after individuals, long after Oyinlola, long after myself, long after others and in doing that, we must protect the institution. God knows, it is the process of just to stop the secretary from resuming but in the process of doing that, what damage have you done? By doing this now, how will it help the reconciliation? Surely, it will not help the reconciliation because some of us thought it (the court ruling) was a golden opportunity to really reconcile and help the party.

  More importantly, apart from the issue of reconciliation, like the initial point I made, what the party stands for, this action does not support that. These are the kind of actions we expected when we started democracy 14 years back; this is the kind of action we expected maybe at the local government level. The party is an institution that we are all holding in trust; the executive members are only going to be there for a certain period of time.

So, they must protect that institution and they must not allow emotion or sentiment to bend the process. The process, sometimes, may work in your favour, sometimes it will not work in your favour. As you rightly said whether this situation would help the situation, of course, it will not help reconciliation. And it is very bad because some of us have been trying to see how we can bring peace to the party; efforts are being made by others behind the scene and that is why, to me, I will say this has set everything back.

What do you foresee in a situation where the suspension of these key members of your party is not reversed?
Well, the chance offered by the court ruling for Oyinlola to go back as the secretary was a very great opportunity to bring reconciliation to the party. That is my personal opinion and some of the feelers we heard were that even the leadership of the party had directed that the decision of the Appeal Court should not be challenged at the Supreme Court. This, we thought, was a step in the right direction to bring back reconciliation. So, to just go ahead and suspend somebody, I will say, it does not help.

And what that leads to depends on what happens in the next few days and weeks ahead. Because as you know, the meeting between the G-7 governors and the president had been postponed over and over in the past, because of the Hajj and the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the letter has gone to the president, from the governor of Niger State, Dr Babangida Aliyu, that they are now back and that the meeting should hold now. But with this kind of event, really, you begin to doubt whether that scenario will hold. Where it will lead to, I don’t know, it depends again on the steps being taken.

  I think that definitely, in the interest of reconciliation and peace, this action does not help at all. I think that he just played into the hands of the hawks who believe that look, there is no sincerity in this reconciliation and why are we wasting our time and that is not going to help PDP. There is no way it can help the party with this division. In politics, you need people; you don’t gain from loosing people. That is the key thing about politics; where seven states, out of 23 are threatening to pull out of a political party, that they are not happy. We are not talking about one, two or three states; you are talking about one third of what you have. That is significant and any effort to reconcile is not too much and that should be the spirit of everybody. If you wanted to suspend the secretary of the party, this situation (crisis) started since the convention, why was the suspension carried out on the day he was about to resume? It is done in bad faith and that does not help us; it does not help reconciliation.

It is being said that the G-7 governors are no longer together because there are efforts being made by the top leadership of the party to treat you people individually, based on political structure and that is sending dangerous signal to those who are not very strong in terms of political structure in their states…
(cuts in) If the party had not suspended Oyinlola and allowed him assume his position, maybe, this might have divided the house and maybe, this was an opportunity for reconciliation. We would have said, ‘let us give reconciliation a chance if truly Oyinlola is resuming as secretary’. We would have said, ‘please, don’t rush to do anything’. So, to answer your question, maybe 24 hours ago, there might have been reconciliation, but this action has done the opposite. We all have groups; everybody has different local faction but you don’t carry out an action that will divide you but to unite you. I think with this latest action, there is nothing that will unite the G-7 governors more than before.

The G-7 group had said the PDP, led by Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, is a dead party and if truly it is a dead party, why was Oyinlola going back to such a party; what was there that he wanted to go and take?
It was the court that said he should go back to the place. So, that question should be to the court because it was the court that asked him to go back.

You led a faction of the New PDP in Kwara State to hold local government election recently. The feeling being expressed by some people from the state is that the election may not stand the test of time, given that the outcome did not reflect the will of the people. How do you think these issues could be resolved?
The answer to the question is that I didn’t conduct the election; the election was conducted by the electoral commission and it was not the fault of the PDP that, at least, one of the major parties did not comply with the conditions needed to participate in the election. It was not only in Kwara, you know that by virtue of the provisions of the Independent National Electoral Commission, you know how many months the All Progressives Congress (APC) should have been registered before it can participate in elections. They could participate in elections in most of the states; so, there is nothing peculiar in Kwara. The other parties like Labour Party and others participated.

Secondly, the processes of how candidates emerge in the primary were done in conjunction with the PDP national leadership. The national leadership sent people to oversee the primary, to screen and also sent the panel for appeal. So, it was not a case of where candidates emerged just based on state chapters alone. 

National signed most of the delegate list signed the appeal list and did some other things. There is a report showing that they came to supervise the primary, so other due process took place. 
The fact that some parties, because of their inaction, unfortunately, did not comply with laws of local government election, it is not our fault and we should not be held responsible for that. Yes, somebody can go to court but what are they challenging? 

Are they challenging that election should not have held because one party out of over 26 political parties? 
You should know that, that cannot hold water and there is evidence to show that the PDP national leadership participated in the primary; it was not that the state on its own just sat down and conducted the primary. There are documents to show that they were part of that process. So, on those two counts, I think the state chapter acted appropriately.

There appears to be sharp division among your major party members in Kwara State. An example is the problem between you and your friend, Professor Abdulraheem Oba, who is aggrieved that you did not support his re-nomination as chairman of the Federal Character Commission (FCC). The deepening crisis has made some of them to threaten that they would not allow you have your way in the Kwara politics anymore. What is your take on this?
I don’t want to comment on some of the questions that some of you are asking but I learnt something in politics from my old man, the late Dr Olusola Saraki. He used to say let us meet at the poll. Politics is about people and like I said, we have a big family; sometimes, people will stay with you, sometimes, due to one or two reasons, some people will go but posterity will judge us. It is a pity that you are here in Abuja, if you were a correspondent in Kwara State, you will not ask me that question because you will know the reality on ground.

There are insinuations that your relationship with your state governor is sour and that you are likely not to support him for another term in office. How true is this?
Like I said earlier, I will not want to comment on some of these issues, time will come where we will comment. But I can tell you that I have a very good relationship in the state with my governor, because I believe that if we are successful in Kwara State in showing that somebody can take over after you, then you can have a cordial relationship for the development of the state. As I said, it is only in Kwara State, Senator Shaaba Lafiagi is a former governor, I am a former governor, Honourable Fatai is a governor; we attend functions together. There is no acrimony and I see no reason there should be. Again, I think we are showing a model and I pray it works for me and for him and I think this will go a long way in helping development.

It will soon be a year that your father, the grandmaster of Kwara politics, passed on to the great beyond; will you attribute some of the noticeable acrimony between you and some of your loyalists to the absence of your father?
I have said it that there is no problem in the politics of the state.

But you acknowledged earlier that there are some divisions?
I said one or two. Look at those that supported us, we still have 99 per cent of the support in the state; we are still one big family. We just conducted local government election, the state House of Assembly members are intact, the council chairmen and 196 councillors are intact. The traditional rulers’ support is there.

There was a transition, even in the lifetime of my father, there was a process and it prepared us for this day to continue what he used to do; it is difficult for me to talk.

 I would have preferred this kind of meeting to be held in Ilorin, where you can spend an evening with us and those of you that know what it used to be during his time and begin to see that the institution is being sustained. That is when you can know what I am talking about here. So what you are seeing from some of the elders are for selfish reasons and they are local issues. I don’t what to respond to them; those that will respond to them will do that. But I can tell you that majority of the people are still with us, those that followed Baba and we are still together and that is why we keep telling people that anyway, anytime, we will deliver in Kwara State.

Would you say your father’s shoe is too big for you?
Yes, his shoe is too big to step into because he has a large heart. You cannot train somebody to get a large heart; it is either you have it or you don’t have it. Truly, he had the ability to give; he could give you anything and I think that is rare. And to give is not just to give money but giving your time to somebody who you do not even know. I wish I can have even half of what he had but people like that are once in a life time.

Oil spill is one issue generating concern in Nigeria, particularly in the Niger Delta region. What are you doing to address this issue, as the Senate Committee Chairman on Environment and Ecology?
Many of you know that I have a bill on NESREA that have passed second reading in the Senate and we are hoping to bring it to the floor soon. With all sense of humility, some of you know that from the first day I became chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology, I spent some time to study what is happening in the oil spill issues and have become one of the few senators that have gone to Ogoniland to look at some of the abuse there. It is clear that the only answer to it is to strengthen the laws and strengthen some of the regulatory agencies to also challenge the oil companies. In an environment where there is no clear guideline on environment on compensation, where the oil community can decide, you spill and you tell the community that you are bringing blanket, rice. What are you going to do looking at it that you have deprived the community of their livelihood? Is that the guideline?

In other countries, it is very clear; compensation goes into billions and billions of payment. But in our society, unfortunately, we do not have the law to do that and you know, these oil companies are very powerful and until we strengthen those laws that will ensure that we have proper guidelines, like the amendment in NESREA Bill, to amend the process of compensation. It is stated there clearly that if you spill, you must compensate.

You don’t abuse the process because you know that the people there cannot afford to go to court; that they can’t get a lawyer to go to court and stay for maybe five or 10 years and then you just give them maybe, some amount. That is why these companies are doing what they are doing. In other countries, the moment you spill, they slam you, they say to them this is the compensation to the people, that the people can’t farm, their fishing in the area is dead and what they should have earned, they have lost it. Then they will say if you can’t pay, let’s go whether you are right or not. That doesn’t happen here.

On remediation, again, you heard my comment a few days ago where UNESCO came out and said a certain process of remediation must be stopped, because it is not effective. But till today, some of the oil companies are still using that old process of remediation that does not work and nobody is saying anything or holding these companies accountable. So, to me, unless the laws are changed, it is still going to be a recurrent decimal. And that is why I am seeking the support of my brothers and sisters in the Senate in saying let us pass the law. It is not about whether the environment is going to have more power over petroleum. As far as we are still arguing that, our people will continue to suffer. We have to go back to the bottom-line because there is no penalty in Nigeria today; the highest penalty is maybe, something like one million naira. My principle is that as long as it is more economical to spill than to protect the environment, there will continue to be oil spill but the moment it become more of an economic burden to spill, the oil companies will take action.