By HENRY UMORU

Chief Gordon Bozimo is from Bayelsa State. A member, Board of Trustees (BoT) of the PeoplesDemocratic Party (PDP) since 2000, he was the Chairman, Board of Nigerian Agricultural Bank and now Chairman of the Governing Board of the National Youth Service Corps  (NYSC). In this interview, he speaks on the PDP crisis in Rivers State, President Goodluck Jonathan for 2015, the proposed National Dialogue and the opposition All Progressive Congress (APC), among other issues affecting the country.

How do you view the crisis which has been rocking  your party in recent times especially since the emergence of Bamanga Tukur as the National Chairman and the walkout by seven aggrieved governors during the special national convention of the party at the Eagle Square?

The PDP crisis is not unusual considering the size and the interest in the polity. It is expected that at one point or the other, there must be divergence and what is happening in PDP has happened before in some other parties. Even in the First Republic, it happened; in the Second Republic it happened. So it is not strange. My take is that, at a point, those who are saying they want certain things corrected within the party would realize that they don’t correct by destroying the party; you correct things by discussions, exchange of ideas and I believe that before long, they will come back so that issues will be ironed out at the round table.

Many in the opposition camp in the PDP do believe that the President’s ambition for re-election for 2015 is at the root of the crisis in PDP.  Do you share this view?

That is the worst excuse: for somebody to say a Nigerian should not run for office and that is the reason they are fighting, so to say. It is a constitutional matter. If it is within his constitutional right to contest, so be it. Where to stop him is the primaries; we are in the same party; if you believe that the candidature is not acceptable to you, you stop him at the primaries.

*Bozimo…Where is the pact barring Jonathan in 2015?

But to say the president should not contest, it sounds odd because there is no reason whatsoever; and, if we believe in party politics, you must remove sectional interest and look at it as a party issue.  If in PDP you have ten candidates running for position, you are free to support who you want to, but you cannot disenfranchise one because you think you don’t like him or because you feel his continuation as president may not benefit you; therefore, you must not allow him to contest. Other reasons-like saying the party is high-handed and so on-those are the issues we can sit down and discuss.

What about the issue of an agreement by President Jonathan that he would serve for a single term?

Where is the agreement? The president has told you that whoever has the agreement should bring it. Governor Aliyu, who said he has the agreement, the president has challenged him; if you have the agreement bring it. We have not seen any agreement. Those of us from the South-south, we feel angered when we read such things.

Still on the crisis bedeviling the PDP, some of the PDP governors have accused the National Chairman, Bamanga Tukur , of high-handedness.  Do you really think Bamanga is running the party well the way it ought to be?

Well, it is an issue of style. No two individuals are the Same. Bamanga’s style may be different from other chairmen’s styles; it is a party, we have a constitution. If you don’t want Bamanga to be chairman, you go to the convention and remove him. You cannot say you must remove Bamanga as chairman before there would be peace. How do you remove him? Was he appointed by the president? He became chairman through a convention and it is either a special convention convened for  that purpose or you wait for the annual convention where you can remove a chairman.

So, asking Bamanga to be removed, who will remove him?

If you don’t like somebody the way he works in a party, you use the organs that are recognised to effect a change. You cannot do it any other way because if you try it, you will create more problems.  Don’t forget Bamanga is a much older person. He has been a minister, governor; now he is chairman of the party. You must be fair to him that he has experience, but his style, when you look at the governors, these are young people who are about his children’s age. Perhaps, it is the style that they may be complaining about, but the substance, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Are you satisfied with what the BoT under the chair of Chief Tony Anenih, is doing to resolve this crisis?

The BoT  is an advisory body. On the crisis, you can see the role the Chairman of the BoT has been playing from day one. He represents the BoT in all the meetings that have been going on and other members are co-opted from time to time to assist. So, the BoT is doing what it is set up to do.

We go to executive committee meetings and all that, but we don’t vote because we are there as the conscience of the party and so, we should not be seen as supporting A or B and it is that same role that the BoT has been playing in the party: helping to stabilize and Chief Anenih is doing all that; despite his age, he is doing it very effectively.

As a member of  the BoT, are you worried that there is a merger of political parties to form APC  to wrest power from the PDP?

We don’t see that as a threat. When you have a common fold, it is very easy to come together. Now they fuse, when they start sharing offices, when they start going to nominations; that is when you will test the strength of the APC. We like a credible opposition; any genuine politician should welcome credible opposition not as a threat, but it will make you work harder and I believe that no amount of aggregation of oppositions parties in Nigeria today can defeat the PDP; the reason being that you have strange bedfellows coming together and that marriage has to be tested first before you know the strength of that union. We are watching them.

The APC elements are saying your president is weak and not performing. How do you defend Mr. President?

That again has to do with style. The president has told Nigerians that he is not a General or Pharaoh. So, give him time and you will see results. It is that time they don’t want to give him. You

and I know that to transform this country is not a one-day affair.

There are some presidents that will start with propaganda from day one. But if you want to do the real thing, it will take time. The president told you he will give you credible elections; so far, nobody will deny the fact that the elections supervised by this present administration are much better, not perfect, but much better than previous elections and God’s willing as time goes, it will get better.

We are talking about power; we know that previous administrations spent billions of naira and we did not move one inch until he took over and made it his number one preoccupation and we can see we are moving somewhere. He has said that by 2014, you will see a marked difference and we see that he is moving in that direction. This country is large and every aspect atrophied for now: is it education, health?

Just name it!  A president is coming in, even if you take one of the sectors as your cardinal concern, it will take you time, and don’t forget Nigerians resist change. To me, to say that the president is not performing, it is their opinion. But from what we see on ground, we see a situation where the president is taking his time but unfortunately we distract him from day one as he came him: the election violence (in some parts of the country); after that, Boko Haram came.

The distractions are many, but despite that, we have seen some measures of improvement in most of the sectors, but I think we are also impatient as a nation; we believe that in one year, he should be able to solve the problems. It is not that easy; even to collect data for you to implement something, it takes more than a year. So, I believe that the assertion that the president has not performed is not correct.

Is there any worry at all that the perception of the opposition will affect him come 2015?

I don’t think so because it is politics. APC people say they will bring a candidate from the North; we are likely to have a candidate from the South; so, we slug it out. Not everybody in the North will support that. So, I think it will be a fair contest. We are not worried at all.

How do you relate with the allege conspiratorial alliance that one of your own,  Rivers  Governor Rotimi Amaechi, has gone into with some elements from the North with a view to short-circuiting Jonathan in his re- election bid?

Like I said, these are internal party problems and I think the PDP has the capacity to absorb them. Amaechi is our brother, son and no matter what happens, at the end of the day, we must reconcile. I am very positive about that. It is all politics. It is a game of interest; so  at the end of the day, we shall find a solution and PDP will come out stronger and people will be surprised. So, when we say it is a family affair, people laugh at us that everything we say is a family affair because there is no way the Rivers  State governor and the president who is from Bayelsa will fight for too long. We must find a way to resolve it and it will happen and I am very confident about that.

But the stand-off it has lasted for over five months and there has not been any sign of reconciliation in sight. We have next year, and you are saying that there is no worry about it…

In politics, nothing is too long for something to happen. Everything can change in one day. Don’t underestimate that. We are talking of hours, you can change what you have been doing for the past three years; a one-day meeting can resolve everything. I don’t think it has taken long for the issues to be resolved. It is interest. As you get along, what you thought is your interest may not be realizable; you adjust and the other person will do the same thing.

At a point, we all know the tipping points and that is the way politics goes. When you have not realized that what you are doing is possible, you keep on fighting for it. But as a realist because we are not gamblers, it comes to a point where you also know that at this point, it may not be possible. So the act of the possible which is politics now comes in. I believe strongly that we will find an accommodation.

Still on Rivers, you will agree that the polity there is being overheated with governance almost grounded. What is the way forward?

The way forward is still dialogue. All parties should sheathe their sword, sit  down and discuss where they can meet one another and I think the party at the national level is of that view. It is one PDP; we don’t have two PDPs. So, under that PDP, whatever interests that are there, we can sit down and sort them out. So, whatever has transpired before, it doesn’t matter; but to go forward, we have to sit down as one PDP.

So, in this case, what should your governor, Seriake Dickson, who is chairing the reconciliation committee of the party do?

The reconciliation is an on-going process. The issues are many and it is all over the country; so, if that is also assigned to him by the National Working Committee, of course, he will go into it.

But what I am saying is that the way forward is for all of them to sit down one on one, iron out their differences; then, we can find a common ground to continue.

What is your take on the proposed National Dialogue?

What we mean by unity is not negotiable, let us recognize the problem and find a solution within the context of the Nigerian nation.

The problems are there; we want to bring them out but nobody should say because of the problems we want to opt out of Nigeria because that is a different dimension all together. So, this conference is meant for us to x-ray the things that are creating problems in the polity and find a solution as a nation.

The APC leaders are opposed to taking the outcome of it to the National Assembly because the National Assembly has not been able to fashion out a new Constitution for the country and that taking it back to the National Assembly is like killing the outcome.  How do you react to this?

It is not for National Assembly to debate, we are not going to send what we have done for them to go and discuss it; they will enact it into law. It is also more or less like a new Constitution or major constitutional amendment if you want to call it that way and it is the National Assembly that can do that because, after you have met and agreed, it has to go to the National Assembly either as an Executive Bill containing all the decisions and the National Assembly will enact  it into law.

Looking at the procedure, no bill will come to theNational  Assembly without being debated…

Let us be fair. You have a conference of ethnic nationalities in this country; now this goes to a referendum; the result of the referendum is received; it will now go to the National Assembly for them to enact it. The National Assembly is not expected to debate it clause by clause, then send to committee. That is not what is expected. If you remove them, how do you make them into your Constitution after you finish the conference?

What do you do with the papers? If it has to be a law, it will be passed through the National Assembly. Let us not be carried away by these things. You have a government in place, a legislature in place and they have a role to play which is to legitimize whatever we have agreed because the power to make laws resides with the legislature.

So, whatever you have agreed, if you want to legitimize it, it must go to the National Assembly as a new Constitution. That is what the president is saying. The president is not saying whatever you decide is subjected to debate in the National Assembly, but you know it is politics; they quote you out of context, they own all the papers and they start shouting all over Nigeria and confusing Nigerians.

If not, there is nothing strange about that unless if, for instance, there is scenario where it is a Sovereign National Conference, in that case, both legislature and everybody is off.  You have to dissolve the legislature to assume the sovereignty; when you finish either by proclamation of some leaders, it becomes law. But it is convenient for them to quote it out of context and leave it for the president to come and explain again what he meant. In fact, some have said the statement alone has destroyed the credibility of the conference but it is not true.

You said the unity of the country is not negotiable. What would be your proposition along that line so that the federating units can be carried along?

That is why I said there are a lot of issues hanging that if not addressed now, we will have serious problems. We have to readdress the issue of fiscal federalism; there are certain minimum requirements in the federation. Are we practising them now? The answer is no.

What we are practising is a unitary system, but we call it federal system and once we agree now to operate a truly federal system, a number of issues that are creating problems will just vanish because that automati cally will revisit the exclusive list in such a way that what is federal is only what will be federal. It will also now ensure that states will look within to raise money to run their states; that will give more autonomy to the states to go outside and look for money; for instance, somebody was telling me the other day that Ondo State has bitumen but up till now they have not been able to export because the Federal Government has not given approval.

Ondo State should be able to bring investors to explore their bitumen, sell it and pay taxes to the Federal Government.  Fiscal federalism will change the whole thing and the question of everybody wants a university, this and that will vanish. You will now do only what you know you can carry. Then the Federal Government interfering in every little thing will stop because where will the money come from?

It will reverse virtually the way we run this country and I think that will solve most of the problems. The unity we are talking about, when people feel cheated, then the unity is threatened. Today in this country, every section feels cheated. The majority, they have their own long list of grievances; minority have their own long list of grievances.

Is it the Yorubas, the Northerners, the South-East or the South-South, they will tell you the way they have been badly treated. So, this conference will be an opportunity for us to look at these things eyeball to eyeball and if we agree to retain the federal system, it will even affect the type of legislature we are running. Do we still retain the presidential system? If the answer is no, what is the alternative?

There are many alternatives because even in parliamentary, you can talk of part-time legislators to cut down the cost of governance.

The ASUU strike is lingering. What is the real problem and can the ice be thawed?

I think it is the issue of confidence. From ASUU perspective, they believe that the Federal Government has been promising without keeping their promises. From the perspective of government, yes, previous government came into agreement with you to pay X,Y,Z amount but as it stands today the government cannot afford that amount, you cannot give what you cannot afford and for now, this is what we can afford and I think it is only fair for ASUU: one, they can try and get confirmation whether actually the government can afford those trillions of naira they are asking for.

If truly we are in problem economically, it is only fair for ASUU to take what the government has proposed and go further to extract other commitments from government over what is still outstanding but to say everything or nothing; then, it is a problem because you cannot give what you don’t have. We all know the Minister of Finance has been shouting how the economy is going down in terms of availability of fund. States governments are crying that their allocations are coming late and those are signs. So, my own take on that is that ASUU should take what government has offered now and extract other commitments over the balance so that the children can go back to school.

What are you bringing to the Board of the NYSC?

What I am bringing in is my experience. I have been around for sometime. I have served in a number of places and I think that the NYSC needs retooling but again it has to do with funding. The original concept stands; it helps the integration of the youths but the number, on the average, is about 300,000 corps members for the three batches but when the scheme started, I think they were dealing with some 5,000 to 6,000.

Now you have 300,000; so the logistics problems are monumental.  When you have corps members in camps, when they finish, they know that is when the problem starts; so, some of them will prefer to continue in youth service for another one year if that will give them a chance of getting a job. So, the issue of unemployment is a big problem. The incentives for the corps members to put in their best are not there.

At the board level, we have tried to look at what we can do in terms of entrepreneurship, in terms of employers of labour retaining some of these corps members at the end of their service years. And hopefully, the government will begin to create employment opportunities in other sectors to absorb this excess manpower. Also the surroundings in the camps, we feel, should be upgraded and that is the responsibility of State Governments because they own the camps.

So, we are engaging the state governments where they don’t have permanent orientation to try and put up one so that the place can be well secured and basic facilities like water and light are provided to make life a little bit easier for the corps members. So, we go on oversight function any time they are on camp to see what is on ground and engagethe governors on such issues. For now that is where we are.

You are from Bayelsa State, oil producing State, you were chairing Nigeria Agricultural Bank… Would you say we are really getting it right especially at the State level in terms of focus on revenue generation vis-à-vis focus on agriculture through diversification of interests?

If we talk of agriculture generally, if you listen to Minister of Agriculture when he presented his open performance effort, you will notice that a lot is going on. And hopefully in the next one or two years, you will begin to see results. From the bank up till when I left the bank, we were still expecting the bank to be recapitalized.

The bank owned by CBN, Ministry of Finance incorporation these two bodies owned the bank and we were still expecting the bank to be recapitalized after the World Bank report on the bank, recommendation was made that it should recapitalize and that for the head office should move to Abuja instead of Kaduna. We did all that but recapitalization did not come but as at today, I am informed that the first charge of recapitalization will be released. The Agricultural Bank, because it is designed from low income farmers, you cannot charge economic interest; the interest is pegged by government.

You will find out that what you are getting may be even less than what you are giving out at the end of the day. So, it was a very difficult thing; before I left, we tried to make a case to government to increase the interest rate. I think it was 7 percent and we wanted to increase it to 8 or 9 percent. It was not easy to get that approval. I think with the recapitalization, they can now revitalize their branches because we had to close a number of branches from 200 and something to about a 100 and I think with the fund released, they should be able to something better.