‘AC ‘ll win fresh governorship poll in Adamawa’

Yakubu TsalaYakubu Tsala is a chieftain of the Action Congress (AC) in Adamawa State. In this interview with Wale Akintunde, he speaks on sundary political issues in the state.

How has the journey been since your advent in politics?
The journey has been fantastic. In 1988, I was one of the first people to start politics here in Adamawa State together with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who was then still serving in the Customs. I was attending political meetings on his behalf with the late Gardu Puldo who was once the speaker of Adamawa State House of Assembly. We started with the Peoples Front (PF) as a political association at Awalah Hotel in Bauchi State alongside the late General Shehu Yar’adua. We were criss-crossing the whole nation, holding meetings. When Atiku retired from the Customs in 1989, we started living together. From there, I withdrew from participating much at the national level and concentrated more on the state. I also criss-crossed the whole of former Gongola State. There is no ward that I have not visited, at least twice.

Having said this, how would you assess the former vice president?
Atiku is a very wonderful person. Since the time I started with him, he has been a man I have found to be very detribalised. I have never heard him say somebody is bad or that he couldn’t relate with him. He finds it difficult to talk harsh of people. I have never heard him scold even his children. If you come to Atiku’s house, you eat together with him in the same plate, he doesn’t discriminate. When I went to his house in Kaduna and it was time for Muslim prayers, all the people would get up to go and pray and I would be the only one left sitting down in one corner. He allows you to be yourself. He is such a nice person, very accommodating.

Let us take look at the political situation in Adamawa State, most of you in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) defected to the Action Congress (AC). What informed this decision?
We were forced to go into the AC when Olusegun Obasanjo said we should do re-registration of members of the PDP. Mind you, it was not a revalidation exercise, but a total re-registration and he gave specific instructions that those who were close to Atiku Abubakar should not be registered. If you could recall, Atiku came back all the way from Abuja, went to his ward to be registered and he met nobody. You can also recall that the party’s national chairman then, Ahmadu Ali, had to register Atiku Abubakar in Abuja. This is not done anywhere; you have to register in your ward. We were not registered and we are politicians and so, we had to form the AC.

What are the chances of your party in the forthcoming fresh governorship election?
The victory is ours. We had the victory that time and we won the election. Only 12 hours before time, we heard the rumours that our candidate had been disqualified and despite that, we still went out to vote. All the local governments in which the votes were counted showed that the AC was leading. When they saw that the AC was leading at about 12 noon, they said our agents should walk out of the collation centres; that our candidate had been disqualified. So, we won that election and we are going to win this one.

There have been criticisms of the immediate past government of Boni Haruna. How do you react to this?
I believe Haruna’s government was more focused. I am so disappointed because I expected Murtala Nyako, with his experience and the positions he has held in this country, to have transformed this state within six months. When Haruna was first in government, he was receiving about N700 million from the federation account. The highest fund he got was N2 billion and that was towards the end of his tenure. He wanted to do a lot of things, but there were lots of programmes; he renovated most of the secondary schools.

What have you to say on youths being used to perpetrate violence in politics?
This is a very bad innovation in our politics. In 1976, when I was a student in the university, when we saw people very senior to us, we hardly go near them. But now, it is a different situation entirely. You see youths taking alcohol, drugs and abusing elders. We, the leaders, are at fault too because most of us encourage them. You hear some leaders say they have their ‘boys’ to protect them. I even learnt that there are some places in this country that the law enforcement agents dare not go because of the youths in those areas because they are fully armed with sophisticated weapons. This is very bad.