The senator who represented the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) between 1999 and 2003, Senator Khairat Abdulrazaq-Gwadabe, has disclosed how the administration of then President Olusegun Obasanjo frustrated her effort to return to the Senate for asking him not to contest for a second term in 2003.
Abdulrazaq-Gwadabe, who is seeking a return to the senate in 2019, made the disclosure in an interview published by Vanguard on Sunday.
The senator, while explaining her motivation for seeking a senate return 15 years after leaving, said, “I asked myself the same question (Why am I returning?). But honestly speaking, it’s different. We have watched quietly the system changing in the direction that I never envisaged. I came into politics with a lot of vibrancy. I wanted Nigeria to be better. Once you have a strong institution, it doesn’t matter who is sitting on top of the institution, the system will work. But as you know, I did not technically lose the primary in 2003.
“There was a lot of agitation from the National Assembly for the impeachment of President Olusegun Obasanjo at the time and we were the people pushing for it because we felt that he was unconstitutional in some of his actions. Every law, particularly the Appropriation Act, was always flouted. We worked hard to put things in place and he messed it up.
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“Anytime he came to do his budget presentation or the state of the nation address, you will find that whatever he said never tallied with the budgeting. For instance, you can’t say your thrust is agriculture and then you are giving less than N100 billion to agriculture. You can’t tell me that your thrust is health and you are giving more money to defence. So, whatever you are saying in the state of the nation address must tally with what you have presented to us. So, largely, we now look at your address and say ‘this is where he wants to go and we will help him get there’. We tinker with the budget in a manner that will reflect the direction that he wants to go. But when it comes to implementation, he will now become selective as to which ministry he is going to give funds. If you don’t get money, you can’t do anything. We said, ‘no, if we continue the process this way, we are going to get to a point where some of us that want to see Nigeria do well will not achieve our aim. This second term he is seeking, let us ask him not to go’.
“So, we were called to a conference – all the appointees, ambassadors and legislators of the PDP – at the Yar’Adua Centre. Audu Ogbeh was Chairman of the party at the time, and they selected people to speak and people spoke. I came up and summarised what every speaker had said. I said we were all going round in circles. ‘Mr. Chairman, please let us beg Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo not to run for second term in the interest of the country and in the interest of the party’.
“There was a big round of applause. They forgot that he was seated there. I think somebody reminded me that he’s Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. I responded and said ‘I appreciate that you would rather call him chief. But for a man to say he is going to give up his life and serve his nation, I think he needs to be honoured and he served his nation and rose to the highest level you can give a man in the military, General. I think we should honour him by addressing him as General Olusegun Obasanjo. He is a chief in just a small community in Nigeria. But he has risen to the highest level as a General and Commander-in-Chief of the army. So, I repeat, I am talking about our President, General Olusegun Obasanjo’. Everybody clapped for me and then the Chairman asked me to go and sit down. I sat and that was the nail.
“So, when it came to the time for primaries, I said I won’t give them that pleasure of not seeking re-election, that I will go and that if people asked me in future why didn’t I go for a second term, I could tell them why. I’m a fighter, they will hit me but I won’t go out of the way. That is what happened. They just didn’t want me to return.
Abdulrazaq-Gwadabe is seeking the senatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to replace Sen. Philip Aduda Tanimu, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senator currently representing the FCT, in 2019.