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“Some of us are old enough to have Amaechi as son” – Gov. Jang

Gov. Jonah Jang of Plateau recently granted an interview to the National Mirror, in which he talked about the controversy in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) in which he plays a vital role being the losing candidate in the election who has nonetheless refused to concede.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Since the May 24 election of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, of which you claimed to be the chairman, the Forum has been polarised along Governors Rotimi Amaechi and Jang. What are your plans to reunite the NGF?

I thought we should be getting over the NGF palaver by now. We are trying to put all this misunderstanding to rest but let me say this: I did not know that the NGF is taken so importantly in this country until this problem of its chairmanship came up.

It is just a casual meeting of friends, even though we are from different political parties, but if you see us meeting either at NGF or Council of States or Economic Council or anywhere else, we do relate with each other, irrespective of our parties, because once you are elected as a governor, you really don’t have a party, you are a leader of the people. I have not build any road and say only members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, should use it.

I know areas that did not vote for me but they seem to be getting more development here on the Plateau. Like you all know, I did not really wanted to be chairman of the NGF, because I never put forward my name to be considered, please watch my word, I said considered and not elected, because the NGF was based on the United States of America, USA’s constitution, some of us travel to the US to interact with the American Governors Forum to see what that Forum does and what we should learn from them and we learnt that they have a constitution and the constitution allows two years tenure after which the Deputy takes over as Chairman and then Vice Chairman is selected by consensus, there is nothing like election.

I recalled when my very good friend, Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State was selected by us in Ilorin when Bukola Sariki called us for a meeting when he was going to leave and he mentioned Amaechi, because I was there, Saraki mentioned Ameachi’s name and we said by the American Governors’ Forum Constitution, we are supposed to hand over to the Deputy and the Deputy was not a PDP and when we asked the South-East governors to give us a name of who will take over from Saraki, they wrote a letter, signed by four governors, who are all PDP governors, because they are five states, nominating Peter Obi, the governor of Anambra State but you know Anambra is not PDP but the PDP governors said we have to amend the constitution to suit our own local environment, we rather have the chairman coming from the majority party that has more governors, that was why we could not accept Governor Obi and this argument was raised at the meeting and we said, ‘PDP is now in the majority and by the grace of God we will continue to be the majority’, that was how Amaechi emerged.

We then agreed that since the Chairman was coming from the South, the Deputy would have to emerge from the North, but we said we don’t want to create problem with our colleagues from the South East, let Obi continue as Vice Chairman but after two years the chairmanship will move to the North, that was clearly agreed upon and a committee was set up to give us a draft constitution which was headed by the present Vice President Namadi Sambo when he was governor of Kaduna State.

So, NGF really has constitution?

The draft was made but it has never been brought to the NGF for ratification, but we know because some of them who were in the committee had told us that they just copied the American Governors’ Forum constitution with very little amendment, that the chairmanship should rotate between the North and South and that after two years the chairmanship will move again, it maintained that the vice will always emerge through consensus, there was nothing like election in the draft constitution.

There was a time the then chairman of the Forum, Amaechi tried to introduce the matter of election that he was interested in re-contesting and we said no, that wasn’t the agreement, somebody stood up and say he had the copy of the constitution, it did not say the chairman can go for reelection, but he said he has already put in re-election for the chairman and already registered the constitution with the Corporate Affairs Commission and we said ‘who send you’? We did not agree on that.

It is good for Nigerians to know this thing, what we have found out was that politics has entered into the NGF, which should not be and it is that constitution that he said he has registered that he kept saying he was going to re-contest and we said ‘no, you cannot re-contest’.

We found out that in reality, those from the opposition parties are now trying to use the chairmanship thing to try to break the PDP, not all of them of course, because my Vice Chairman is from Labour Party but some of them want to use it to break the PDP; then we realised it and they started accusing us that we are taking directives from the President and I said ‘well, we know what happens even that day we had that so-called election, we know from the opposition side those that were in Abuja meeting with those governors, fortunately or unfortunately, Mr. President was not in the country, I don’t want to keep repeating this.

How did you emerge as consensus candidate of the Northern governors and PDP governors?

We went for the Northern States Governors’ Forum, since it was zoned to the North, it was Isa Yuguda and Ibrahim Shema who were the contestants, but we couldn’t forward two names and since none of them was willing to step down for the other, we asked them to go and discuss and they came back but nothing changed. We said both of them will step down for the forum to send a neutral name.

I left home that morning, not even dreaming of becoming NGF chairman, my prayer that day was ‘God you know what we are going for, let your perfect will be done, so that there will be no rancour.’ My name was mentioned and 18 of us were there including me and every one of the 17 agreed that Governor Jang should be the consensus candidate.

Now, the agreement was that it is PDP that should produce the chairman and I am PDP, so the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum took me to the PDP Governors Forum which was held in the afternoon before the evening meeting of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and the Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum said the North had reached a consensus that the governor of Plateau State is our consensus candidate which we will just go and formalise in the NGF and they stood up and applauded him for resolving the Northern problem, that now one candidate has been brought forward and the PDP Governors’ Forum adopted me.

Now we went to the NGF and Amaechi became like a dictator there, he wanted election and he will not vacate the seat, even if you want election, is it not fair that in every normal situation that you will now dissolve yourself and your deputy and let any governor who is not contesting election take over and chair the election process?

Amaechi insisted on chairing his re-election; Amaechi produced the ballot papers, we never saw that ballot papers or whatever you want to call them but he called them ballot papers, no serial number and since we didn’t want to create a situation where Nigerians will see the elected governors as irresponsible, but that meeting was rowdy and was held for good four hours, we saw somebody try to do something with his camera and he was asked to stop it because throughout the meeting, I did not utter a word, today we are been shown.

Counting or announcing result of election, we had challenged Amaechi and his team of supporters in the Forum, let them show for four hours.

If they actually recorded it, let Nigerians see what took place in the whole four hours of our sitting, you cannot be the contestant and you are the one that produced the ballot papers, the ballot box.

We are not under Amaechi, Plateau State is not under Rivers State, we are equal, if it is a matter of age, some of us are all enough to even have Amaechi as a son, we are voted for by our own people to lead them in their various states so, in reality we are supporters of the President to run this nation irrespective of our political parties, but I want to make it clear here that when I was nominated by the Northern Governors’ Forum, Mr. President was in Ethiopia, I did not call him and he didn’t call me; nobody told me that Mr. President had called to say you are the one we are pushing forward, the decision was taken sitting down as Northern governors, no consultation outside the room, so why is this accusation about Mr. President’s interference? Of course, whoever is the NGF chairman must work with the Presidency, there is no question about it that is the way it works in the United States of America.

If you look at the result they brought up 19 to 16, but the following day within less than 24 hours I called the meeting of the forum as chairman and 18 governors attended, we know some that took excuse because it was Saturday, because they have to leave, so are we 37 states?

If Amaechi got 19 and 18 governors attend the meeting I called by 8 o’clock the following day, these governors wrote their names and signature, attending the meeting; so if 18 were with me and 19 voted for him which means they should not have honoured my meeting, how many states do we have?

Abuja doesn’t attend meeting with governors, so where did we get an extra state coming from. I want this matter put to rest, we have been talking to each other and I have spoken to quite a number of governors and we have agreed that we should come together and let this forum move forward.

As far as we are concerned, we gave Amaechi every support and love during his tenure and he worked for us and I intend to do the same. I am not one of the people who were contesting with him, the people who contested with him were Yuguda and Shema. I don’t know what quarrel Ameachi has with me; he should just come back so that we can work for the next two years and I will move this nation forward and therefore let’s not start creating something and people will look at it and said that this is what 2015 is going to be. The president has promised and we are behind him, that 2011 election was adjudged a very fair election and we want to improve on 2015 election so that Nigeria can stand as a democracy in the world.