Emmanuel Aziken and Inalegwu Shuaibu
1 September 2008
interview
ALHAJI Abubakar Bawa Bwari etched his name as a political survivor and maybe a master on account of his record as the only individual that served eight straight years as a principal officer in the National Assembly between 1999 and 2007, having been the chief whip of the House of Representatives in that period.
Trained as a town planning officer at the Ahmadu Bello University, Abubakar is a son of Alhaji Bawa Bwari who was in his lifetime an acquaintance of some of the nation's past rulers including, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Generals, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar.
In the course of his duties as Chief Whip, Abubakar popularly regarded as the Chief Bulalala of the House was at the centre of the several intrigues that arose in the House and sometimes having to square up to his father's associate, President Obasanjo who regarded him as a son.
In this interview he covers some of the most intriguing events that occurred in the House of Representatives in his time, the formation of the G-21 in the PDP and how his gubernatorial aspiration in Niger State was swallowed up by the intrigues of politicians. Excerpts:
What was your experience like in the legislature?
It was quite a pleasant experience. Experience that you can never get except you are lucky to be in the House. There are a lot of things that you have to be in the House for you to understand. When we went in in 1999 most of us never knew anything about legislative business and we had to start from scratch. As you know literature dealing with legislative business is really poor if one considers the number of years we have been allowed to practice democracy in our country.
So, we had this experience of trying to learn what we were really doing and to define an agenda for our own set of legislators. You are aware of the problems we had that time, there was conflict between the legislature and the executive what we called at that time as learning process.
We really had ups and downs, bitter experiences and so on and one very important thing I know that happened was the issue of the executive, especially the presidency trying to remove the leadership of the House especially the Speaker and how we resisted that and fought that.
The other (major) issue was the issue of the impeachment of the president.
We sat down and decided that the president has done a lot of impeachable offences and deserved to go. We tried but as a result of intervention by some of our former leaders in the country that impeachment process was aborted.
There were a lot of other experiences that really helped me. One was that Nigeria has a lot of potentials. Human potentials, because my interaction with the first set of members of the National Assembly between 1999 and 2003 taught me a lot about our country and I appreciated our country more.
One, it opened me up to knowing a lot of people, the behaviour and some of our people and some of the things that influences their behavour. I realized that environment is very important, your culture and your background is very important and so on.
I also realized that some of these problems we see and do not appreciate from our various local governments, (and through) my meeting with some of these members I got insight into some of these and it educated me.
We could now share experiences from Sokoto, Maiduguri, Bayelsa, Lagos, Kogi and so on. When you are at the National Assembly, you are discussing Nigeria and the way we acted gave me hope about this country and the issue of dividing this country, I realized was very difficult because when you interact, you begin to like yourselves and appreciate the various problems we have, north, south and east there are no areas without problems.
Those were the things that really helped me in trying to know this vast country Nigeria. And one very important thing too is that I made friends that today as a former member of the National Assembly, there is no local government I will go without someone receiving me.
I have friends all over the states and indeed the local government areas and as you know, members represent Local Governments. One very important thing that happened was when I went to Ibadan.
In 1999 to 2003 the House (Southwest caucus) was dominated by AD members (but) the kind of reception I received, I will for long remember it with very fond memories. I was received warmly right from the airport when I represented the Speaker at a seminar at the University of Ibadan.
You said you and your colleagues sat down and decided to impeach the president, does that mean that the impeachment motion moved by Honourable Kumaila, the ANPP leader was your idea?
We never made Nigerians believe that it was an initiative from Kumaila, but the strategy was to allow the opposition to move the motion. It was a collective responsibility. It was neither the PDP nor ANPP. We were discussing Nigeria and we looked at the state of affairs at that time. You remember there was a meeting.
We did not just go in for impeachment like that. We gave some early warnings. We tried to see if we could reconcile our differences with the president and we could not and we found that Nigeria was drifting, and we needed to do something urgently and what we needed to do was to remove the president at that time. That was what we believed and still believe that it was the right decision.
Why did you back down from the right decision?
The pressure on us at that time was too much and some of our members were already sabotaging the efforts we were making. Some of these members were co-movers of the motion but we never realized that they were using it to feather their positions, to seek favour from the government and for some economic gains.
Can you explain?
The explanation is simple. Some we realized were doing it because they wanted money. They were called and money was given to them and they started backing down. We had a lot of people that were offered money and they refused to take. So we realized that those who were co-movers of the impeachment were trading the process.
There was the case of a member who was said to have drafted the motion?
I do not want to mention names. There was a member that drafted seven impeachable offences in his hand writing but later left us and was giving information about what was going on. We were not bothered about people leaking information because these impeachable offences were not hidden and we were too open and were transparent. The only thing is that there were approaches and strategies and they were leaking our strategies to them and how to counter the impeachment.
Can I mention some names for you to confirm?
Please don't.
You said money was offered, were you offered money?
No, I was not offered money but severally I was approached and we sat down on how to go about it.
How to go about what?
Resolving the issue of the impeachment.
With the President?
Not only with the president, but some so to say, well meaning Nigerians. There was this group led by Ambassador Zakari and Ibrahim Damccida. Ambassador Zakari and Alhaji Damccida they came and met with us. There was the group from the party, the Shagari group, the Ooni and the Emir of Kano group and a lot of them.
People that it was very difficult to say no to. And these are people that are experienced and they told us that what we are doing, we are doing our job, we are doing the right thing but in the environment that people take advantage of good intentions to create havoc that it was not good for our democracy at that time and that they wouldn't want it to derail and that our action would cause that.
We believe then that it was the best thing to do but these people are more experienced, they fought for the independence of the country and there was the need to listen to them. I remember in one of the meetings, I told Anthony Enaharo how I felt deeply honoured and privileged to have come close to him and discuss Nigeria and I was touched that today somebody I read so much about and admired was now pleading with me.
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