Rep Zakari Mohammed, a frontline Sports broadcaster and a former Sports Commissioner in Kwara State is a man of many parts. Beside managing sports, Mohammed was also the supervisory commissioner for Energy before he contested to become a Federal lawmaker. In this interview, he exhibited all the traits a frontline journalist is expected to showcase. Excerpts.

By EMMAN OVUAKPORIE

Do you envisage that one day you could become a lawmaker in Nigeria?

For me I believe in the American dream, that America dream is based on achievement. The America dream is that anybody can be anything, you can be a son of a fisherman, you can be the son of a farmer and get up there. I was privileged that my parents, my father was educated and he had a Master Degree before he died, he was a middle level family man. My father never had money but what he gave me was exposure and education. I knew that he was preparing me for the greater challenges of life.

You know the Nigerian dream is about ascription. If you are the son of a drum beater they will say, ‘how can the son of a drum beater be this?’ You have to be the son of the blue-blooded to get to the top. That is the Nigerian dream and we must de_emphasis that. Our antecedence should be on achievements rather than ascription.

We have more green horns in the House, how do you hope to shape the House?
The advice we are  giving to the leadership of the House now is that let membership of committees basically be on professional calling more or less. For instance, I will call myself an expert in the Media, I will  call myself an expert in Communication, I will call myself an expert in Energy and Youth development and sports, so if there are questions of policies that have to do with these areas of my calling I bet you, you need to be a Professor to beat me at it.

In Sports, there is nothing you can tell me about sport development in Nigeria because I reported Sports, I managed Sports at the topmost level and I implemented policies on Sports. I manage the state football team for three years, I know so much about sports development. That is one area. I was the commissioner for Energy and I attended a lot of courses on energy and power. Apart from that, we experimented and did first phase of rural electrification in Kwara, second phase and third phase, massive electrification, buying of transformers to improve power situation in Kwara State because there is no sound economy that runs on diesel.

To shape the House, people’s calling should be looked at in the composition of membership of the committees so that they can excel, so that if they go on oversight function to any ministry, department and agency they will be able to perform to expectations.

How will you assess the new leadership headed by Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, particularly now that the ruling party, PDP is shouting foul over his emergence as Speaker?

This is democracy at play because majority of us  want departure from the past. We don’t want a situation where we will be having problem of leadership in the House. If you look at the antecedents of the House from 1999 till date, leadership that had been imposed on the members failed and leadership chosen independently by the House enjoyed the support of the House. Look at former Speaker Aminu Masari, the lawmakers then voted for him on their own and he succeeded same for Ghali Na’Abba, and after then, Dimeji Bankole too.

It will be good, if they have their own leader they will always defend him. We have our own leader in person of Hon Aminu Tambuwal, we believe in him, we believe he will deliver because we are representatives of our people and if we don’t represent them well, four years is around the corner they will throw us out. That is one. Two, we are accountable to our God and a lot of us are coming from certain background that we can’t be pocketed.

Specifically, why Tambuwal?
This is democracy at work. Yes, the party zoned the position of the speaker to the South-West and the South-West have just five members; that means you’re limiting our choices. If the leadership of the House was zoned to a place where you have about 90 members, you have given us ample opportunity to begin to choose from the wide range of members in that zone. I am not against the South-West but we choose Tambuwal because he has what we are looking for in the Seventh Assembly in terms of leadership.

To be my leader, I must give out something to you and you must have all that it takes to lead me to the promised land as a leader.

So, the zoning is the party affair, the party decided but of course we are here on behalf of 150 million Nigerians and we have to act right so that posterity will judge us. We don’t have anything against our party. It is our party and of course don’t forget that simple majority we cannot make in the House now, we need other parties. We have Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) with about 60, Congress Progressive for Change (CPC) has about 40 members. We have pockets of All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, Labour Party, LP and other parties.

In the past, PDP used to have two-third majority. But now, for us to make any meaningful head way in terms of voting we need other parties because we can’t vote along party lines. Besides, our parties are vehicles for us to get to the House but as we are in the House we have to put Nigeria first.