FORMER acting National Chairman of the Peoples' Democratic Party, (PDP), Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, last Monday handed over to the new National Working Committee of the party, led by Alhaji Bamanga Tukur in Abuja. Baraje, who was the National Secretary of the PDP before becoming acting Chairman, shared his experience in office with journalists after performing his last duty.

Now that a new leadership has taken over the running of the affairs of the party, how would you describe your experience in office?

The experience has been very rewarding, very fulfilling. I am coming from a background that is systematic, that is why I always refer to myself as a systems man. I spent 35years in the civil service before I voluntarily retired in 2006 and in 2008, I became the national secretary of the PDP. When I retired as a permanent secretary in Kwara State, I went straight into politics and because of my track record, my state found it proper to expose me for the very first time to national politics when in 2005 I became a member of the  National Political Reform Conference. I was the secretary of my committee and ever since that time, it has been a journey without rest in the political life of Nigeria.

I went into the administration of PDP with a vision that we must put things in order. When we assumed office, one major problem that was facing the party was the lack of internal democracy which was created by lack of discipline.  If you look at the constitution of the PDP, it is a constitution that is well laid out to achieve set objectives but by the time we came, it was almost abandoned. When we came we operated by the constitution and other rules and regulations guiding the party. Our first achievement was to return the party to the grassroots. And we became actually the Peoples Democratic Party.  And the moment that was achieved, other issues began to fall in line because people now had a sense of belonging, commitment and participation. Members no longer jump the gun. When they have issues to discuss at the ward level, they no longer leave the ward to jump to the local government or state or national office to lay their complaints.

The checks and balances in the constitution state that if you have issues within your ward, the next higher authority is the local government; you go there and if they cannot solve it you go to your state, or else you go to the zone. You can see that with this hierarchy before any issue comes to the National Secretariat, it ought to have gone through a very thorough administrative system. By doing that, internal democracy began to take root.

When you became the party's Acting National Chairman, there were some things you set out to achieve. Will you say you've been able to achieve them within a short time?

Yes, to a great extent and with the cooperation of my colleagues in the NWC. When I came in as the chairman, it was history in the sense that previously, we had secretaries of the party who after serving their terms went away for 2-5 years before coming back as National Chairman, but I was the first to transit from the office of National Secretary to that of National Chairman of PDP and ordinarily you would expect that the change of job should create some elements of confusion or jeopardy but not at all.
This is because I was working very closely with my former chairman and because the NWC had a lot of confidence in me, I was practically doing the job of the chairman plus that of the National Secretary. Maybe those are the worthy things the members of the PDP found in me and they thought it fit that I should serve as the Acting National Chairman of the party.

One of the major things I took from my predecessor, Dr. Bello Haliru Mohammed, who is the present Minister of Defence, was that we had set out some vision to keep the party together. One was to ensure free, fair and credible elections and we had this together in the primary elections that brought President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan into power and with that, it led to the free and fair election of April 2011. So when I came in, I also insisted and carried on with the tradition and one major thing I did was to ensure transparency and a level playing field for all elections. I ensured that elections were not done under any "hush-hush" arrangement but under the visible eyes of the camera.

That is one major thing I was able to achieve and it went a long way to minimize rancour in our primary elections, promoting peace and tranquillity. Members now realized that when they feel cheated, they have a place to come and complain; people now realized that when they are defeated, it is for good instead of running away from the fact.
That leads me to the second point; that is the idea or tradition of accepting defeat as a democrat. When we came, we inherited about 109 court orders in 2008. By the time I was finishing my tenure as National Secretary, with the collaboration of our legal adviser and other members of NWC, we had drastically reduced these court orders to about 50.
  As at today, I think we have only seven court orders that are genuine ones. So in the light of these, my experience as the National Chairman with the collaboration and support of members of PDP has been very fulfilling and I can describe my tenure as very peaceful.
Another tradition that has endured is that of adherence to the party's constitution on term limit. A few pundits were thinking when the time comes, I was not going to leave or would be asked to carry on but I said that I'm not in that class.
The constitution must be followed and Section 7.2 of our constitution emphasizes zoning and since I'm not from the zone which the chairman is to be selected, so why should I struggle for that? And I think that it's a very good example for other members of PDP to follow. What we are trying to do is to ensure that we lead by example.

What have you put in place that your successor may build on in terms of enforcing party discipline and helping the government to succeed in line with its political promises?

We have tried to ensure that as much as possible the people, our members express and exercise their opinions and rights even at the risk of going against the law of the party. When they do that they feel satisfied and then we call them back home to say look, we have this law and you have not obeyed it. I told you that when we came we met a lot of court orders. What we did was to call such members back home, make them feel a sense of belonging and we now open their eyes to see the laid down mechanism to address complaints and because they didn't know before, and now that they understand, they are more inclined to follow party directives. We know this is a democratic party, they have the right to go to court but we also have a right to ensure that they follow the rules and regulations in order to bring out the democratic nature of the party and that is why we went as far as bringing the party to the people.
On policy formulation and delivery on promises, the PDP, as the ruling party has a manifesto. The President came up with programmes derived from that manifesto and he calls it "Transformation Agenda" and this agenda, if you study it viz-a-viz our manifesto, you can't spot any difference. The only thing that has changed is the tag. How he now approaches the execution of policies derived from the manifesto is a question of methodology. So if you see that we say we are going to build schools or make education very affordable as much as possible, are you telling me this is not happening? Even at the federal level where schools are been built, equipments are been supplied to schools and where universities are being created? How many universities have been created? How many will take off soon? And do you see the miracles we are performing in the states?

When you were the National Secretary, the biggest challenge of your executives was the issue of zoning. What magic wand did you use in addressing it?

The magic wand is the umbrella. The belief which the people have in the umbrella, that once under the umbrella you are secured.
When PDP begins any activity, if you don't talk about it, what party will you talk about? Since the return of democracy to Nigeria, PDP has been at the top because of the calibre of the people who make up the party. Besides, which party has structures that can be compared with PDP? Someone made a statement in a newspaper, The Nation, that PDP to him is the most democratic party in Nigeria; that other parties are second to military administrations. I clapped and said, yes!

Before the last presidential election, the party had lost some states. The south-west region appears to have been taken over by ACN and the South-East by APGA. Don't you feel disappointed?

Far from it. I think it is part of the process of maturing into democracy and I always say that yes, there appears to be a marginal divide between APGA, ACN and PDP. When democracy is maturing, that is what you see first. It's like a foundation getting stronger. If we go back to some of these geo-political zones now and you say lets run another election, there is a possibility that PDP might take them all. There is an adage by our elders that says "If a woman has not tasted two husbands, she won't know which is better". Particularly in the south-west, we have lost about two states in the recent past and I've visited our party chapters in some of those states and I can assure you that if the election were to be re-run, PDP will win at least two states for a start because they have seen that there is democracy in PDP, there is structure and integrity in PDP, so what you have seen is the gradual maturity of our democracy.

For the incoming NWC, what areas of reforms will you propose?

First, am going to charge the incoming executives to consolidate on all the achievements we have been able to attain so far in deepening internal democracy at all levels of the party.
Secondly, I'm going to charge them to continue from where we stopped on the issue of independent funding of this very large party; independent in the sense that our constitution has set guidelines on how the party should be funded. We have statutory members as our bona fide members. Elected and non-elected officers of our party are supposed to make certain sacrifice of certain percentage of their earnings. Members are required to pay their dues. If this is done regularly, the PDP will be as independent as the ANC in South Africa even more independent and probably richer. The moment we are able to do that, this party will be free from the shackles of any individual or group of persons.
Thirdly, there is need for courage on the part of new leaders to take decisions on members in enforcing party discipline. In this area, we have been able to achieve a lot and I expect the in-coming executive members to be firm in maintaining discipline.