Hon. Felix Hassan Hyatt, achieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Minister for State (Aviation), is the Director, Campaign Organisation for the return of Governor Ramalan Yero of Kaduna State. In this interview with VICTOR JIBRIN, Hyatt says Kaduna is and will remain a PDP state. According to him, the governor has performed and the people wish him to continue, hence, no vacancy in Government House, Kaduna. EXCERPTS:
You have been in the field for the 2015 general elections, what is your assessment?
Well, we have been in the field moving from one part of the state to the other. I have even gone round the state earlier than now heading the campaign team to assess the situation. From experience, I can say: so far, so good. I do not have any doubt in my mind that we are expecting positive outcome of the elections in Kaduna State. I have the confidence that things will work out as we expect. You must realise that even though there seems to be a strong opposition now compare to the earlier time, the truth remains that whoever is to be reckoned with politically in the opposition camp, is a product of PDP. We have worked together and so we know the strength and weakness of each and every one of them. We are not afraid of anybody?s antics, more so when PDP is already on ground. Others are only struggling to be like PDP but they cannot be like PDP. You go to some wards and ask for the officials of APC, they are all new entrants. It is only at the top you have some prominent politician whom I said are products of PDP. When you go to the grassroots, the prominent politicians are in PDP.
APC makes a lot of noise and their noise is accompanied by violence at all the programmes they have so far undertaken. When they go to PDP environment, nobody molests them, yet they will not leave that environment without destruction. When PDP goes to their own environment they will let the world know that they are opposition with the destruction and threat to life by beating people and inflicting injuries. In a democracy, if you don?t like the government in power, you wait for the day of election to vote it out. You don?t just unleash havoc on people to demonstrate your hatred for a particular party.
I feel it is very unfortunate that APC does not even know what it means to be an opposition party. An opposition party plans its own programme and manifesto as an alternative government and sell it out for people to buy but APC had perfected the means of causing havoc. That tends to make people believe that anything about the presidential candidate of APC is negative. During the military, when he was head of state, you and I know that many civilians were locked up, properties were confiscated, shops were forced open and looted by soldiers and nobody could do nothing because the decrees outlawed the courts. Never in the history of Nigeria did we have such a situation by any head of state. He didn?t stop there, in 2011, Buhari defeated Jonathan in Kaduna State in the presidential election and even with that victory, we expected celebration from them but the supporters went round setting houses of PDP people ablaze, killing and maiming people. Is that how to reward people for voting for you? Then he was in CPC, now he is in the APC and the same scenario is being played itself out. If one may ask, is that the kind of leadership we want in Nigeria? Is that what we are bargaining for? Is that all what democracy is all about? I think Nigerians should be wiser than they are now. There is no reason why Nigerians should be intimidated or fears created in the minds of people, such that people are beginning to relocate because of the ugly situation since 2011.
What is the way out?
Nigerians should never accept to be intimidated. Everybody in this country has a right and that right must be respected. If I sell my property to you, I am not forcing you to buy it. Even if it is a bad product, if I market it well, you will buy it. If I have a good product and I don?t know how to market it, you will shun it. APC have started destroying people?s property now, wounding and killing people, is that the change that Nigerians are looking for? The most important thing that Nigerians are interested in today, particularly the people of Kaduna State, is peace because the ugly situation of 2011 weighed heavily in the state than any part of this country. Nobody wants to see a repeat of that. PDP in Kaduna State is in government but it has not taken the advantage of its being in government to molest anybody, to molest the opposition, no. But the opposition is causing all the crisis. So, I am confident to say that there is no vacancy for APC in Government House, Kaduna in the 2015 governorship election.
Your governorship candidate and that of APC are from the same senatorial zone – Zaria. Their struggle is who will capture the Southern Kaduna which has always been the deciding factor for who comes tops in Kaduna State. Before now, we were told that APC is highly rooted down there but its like its different from what you are saying?
There has been no party that is rooted in Southern Kaduna apart from the PDP. APC is only making effort for recognition and acceptance. And you cannot get this thing overnight, more so with the candidate that they have – a candidate that is unknown to the people, a candidate that does not know the people. The APC candidate confessed that he has never been to Southern Kaduna. So, how will somebody who claimed to be from Kaduna State, schooled in the state and rose to become a minister on account of the state tell you that he does not know a part of the state like Southern Kaduna and he wants the people to give him their votes. How can they give him their votes when they don?t know him? And even the same people of Southern Kaduna were victims of what he did in Abuja ? demolition of their sons? properties and what is he coming back to tell them now? Certainly, the people of Southern Kaduna are not fools to be carried away by the noise and empty promises for one appointment or the other to them as a means of catching them. The people of Southern Kaduna cannot be taken for a ride. I can assure you that. The performance of CPC in 2011 will even be better than that of APC in 2015. I can assure you of that. So I can confidently tell you that Southern Kaduna is a no go area for APC. The people of Southern Kaduna have a culture of decency and respect for people that makes their visitors to feel at home but that does not mean that we take our home and give it out to the visitor. It is only a dream for APC to entertain the thinking that they can penetrate Southern Kaduna. It will not happen.
How has the governor benefitted the people since been in office and what should they expect from him if he is returned?
In his two years in office, he has created jobs for not less than 13,000 youths. His entire poverty alleviation programme is geared towards youths and women development. We tried in the area of manpower in various sectors of the state civil service, especially in education and health. As a result of this effort, you can see that in the last WAEC result, Kaduna came third in the country and first in the north. In the health sector, ministry of health has just finished interview for the recruitment of 700 staff. If this is going on with an administration that is just two years in office, then you can predict what will happen in four years. Certainly it will be massive development for the state. If somebody is coming in, he is coming to think of what to do because he has never worked nor been in Kaduna and so he doesn?t know anything about the state. In that case, from where will he start? He will only be asking people of what to do because he has no mind set, no programme. It is only when he comes in that he will start thinking of what to do. Certainly, we don?t run government like that. And if that happens, it will be a great mistake and calamity for the people of Kaduna State. You talked of his coming Zaria, he only grew up in Zaria. He has said it himself. He is from Dadawa in Kastina State. He has not denied that. He has not said he is not from Kastina. So, he is only resident in Zaria. That in itself speaks volume as far as politics is concerned. You know it very well that if he is talking of Kaduna as his home and Southern Kaduna as part of his constituencies, we dare to ask, let him name those from Southern Kaduna that he patronized when he was minister of the prestigious FCT. Even when prominent people from Southern Kaduna lost their lives, we have never seen him and that is why he confesses that he does not know Southern Kaduna, he has never been there. So, he doesn?t know people like late Senator Isaiah Balat, late Ali Madaki? He is talking of Yakowa today and going to Fadan Kagoma but Yakowa was buried in Kagoma? In this case, I don?t think this is a leader for the whole society. May be he is known in Zaria where he resides, I don?t know. He told the people of Zaria to their faces that he is not from Zaria. He has already disclaimed Zaria and he doesn?t know Southern Kaduna.
