Former Niger State governor, Muazu Babangida Aliyu, has expressed disappointment that major political opposition to the Uche Secondus-led National Working Committee (NWC) emanated from Rivers State.
He cautioned that Rivers State politics, which he claimed had presented Secondus in bad light, could produce crisis of confidence for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Aliyu, who spoke with journalists in Abuja at the weekend, alleged that the crisis is being fuelled by the ambition of a particular politician to be a dictator.
The former governor also lamented that the PDP national leadership failed to sanction the politician, who alleged that NWC members were tax collectors.
Aliyu, however, refused to mention the name of the politician in question.
He said: “… I think we must look at the politics of the matter. The problems are not coming from other regions. They are coming from his (Secondus) home state. Why? Because somebody wants to be a godfather, a dictator. I don’t think he wants to be president or vice president. I don’t think Nigerians will accept such a thing. But probably he wants to be a godfather, to dictate who becomes what.”
Aliyu in an interview with Vanguard throw more light on the defection rocking the opposition party said “
If I remember the state that we lost, if I remember the way and manner the governors that defected came, I will still say, we will regain them very nicely.
I recall Ebonyi, the former governor Sam Egwu, the former secretary to the governor Anyim Pius Anyim, I recall because I followed vividly how a deputy governor was being frustrated, how he ended up being our gubernatorial candidate and how he won that election. And Ebonyi is one of those states that will always hold stability strongly and I believe these people and their support, friends and colleagues will do so much for us.
Cross River is a PDP state, we may have lost it but we are going to win that state back. I will love in the future to see either a constitutional provision or in our electoral law to say if a party elect you to a particular office, giving you a mandate as president, governor, national and state assembly member, councillor, chairman of a local government or whatever, that if for any reason you don’t want to go with that party again, then you should resign but not to defect with the mandate, for example, this one that you are referring to, they have defected with the mandate of PDP to APC. That is morally wrong and politically incorrect because the political culture that we are building, we are already putting the holes of political correction in them.
So a law must be enacted that if you are elected on the platform of PDP, resign your job if you are no longer comfortable with the party. Don’t take the mandate elsewhere.
Look, corruption is not just about stealing money. I remember Jonathan said so and people misunderstood him at that time about corruption. Corruption is not about stealing money but corruption is even in the behaviour that you display in the presence of your subordinates. Anything that will spoil the procedure and the process of doing things is corruption.
If you don’t want to be in politics, nobody is saying you should be; when I was drafted I had an option as a permanent secretary at that time. I had an option to say please allow me to continue with my civil service but I chose to go. So whatever came with it I must bear it.
The former governor expressed confident that PDP will win Niger state comes 2023
“Don’t forget Niger state is a PDP state, no matter what happened. This time around we will make it.”