Buhari’s Supporters Are Going Through Hell In Yobe - Adamu Yaro Potiskum

Alhaji Adamu Yaro Potiskum is a renowned politician in Yobe State who played a critical role in the emergence of President Muhammad Buhari during the last general elections. In this interview with MUHAMMAD ISMAIL, he enumerated a lot of challenges bedevilling the APC, including the strangulation of internal party democracy, executive highhandedness, and imposition of unpopular leadership, among other issues bedevilling the party.

Yobe branch of APC is going through some travails. What in your estimation is responsible for the skirmishes?

As it is now, APC is bedevilled by lack of good leadership translating in the complete and total asphyxiation of internal party democracy. Without the fear of contradiction and I stand to be corrected, the present state acting chairman of our party is a card carrying member of PDP and up till now, he has not

officially decamped into the fold of APC, likewise the incumbent secretary of the party. These people were brought to make our supporters embrace PDP during the presidential elections so that Buhari could lose the election. After the phenomenal victory of President Muhammadu Buhari, these forces are now fighting us the true Buhari supporters for our indefatigable and unflinching support to Buhari’s victory.



But your suspension as well as that of 10 others was ascribed to be a response to your disrespect for the governor, anti-party activities and other sundry misdeeds, what do you have to say?
Let me be very categorical here, APC is a political party which was set on the tenets of rule of law, justice and fair play. It is not a tyrannical contraption in which the tyrant does as he wishes. APC has rules and regulations governing its operations. There are laid down procedures of punishing any errant member of the party whenever he circumvents the laid down rules. All these rules and procedures were violated with impunity in the build up to our illegal suspension. When the party chairman was asked the rationale behind our suspension by concerned members, he only alluded that it was at the behest of the executive governor. But one thing the acting chairman seems to have missed in the sordid drama is that the governor has no right whatsoever to use executive fiat to suspend any member of the party because the party is an independent entity and not a personal property of the governor. So the governor has no right to order the suspension of anybody. We the executive of Potiskum local government were duly and constitutionally elected and we will never succumb to illegal suspension. We have written a petition about the impudence but they failed to respond. We therefore extended the complaint to the zonal vice chairman informing him about the ugly development. The acting chairman became jittery of our actions and they now turned back and suspended only 11 of us for 18 months and one sad issue is that all the suspended members are politically more relevant than the acting chairman.



Arguments in favour of your suspension had it that due process of law was followed, culminating in the process beginning from your various wards as a last resort to checkmate some of the issues raised against you, what is your take?

That statement is totally wrong, no disciplinary measures was ever contemplated against us. No single person from my ward ever issued any complaint against me therefore it amounts to a huge lie for anyone to say the process began from our wards. The facts are there, the whole process was clandestinely stage-managed and premeditated by those aliens in our party whose mind set is to destroy its future. I must also tell you that the reason why those people wanted to pulverise APC in Potiskum was due to the critical and exceptional role the town played in the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari, as the local government ranks among the top three local governments that gave Buhari the highest votes in the last presidential election in the country.

I must state categorically here that if loyalty to President Buhari constitutes anti-party activities, then I am going to maintain my anti-party posture. It was unfortunate for these people to ascribe the massive failure of APC in the last election in our region to anti-party activities on our part. The reasons behind the defeat of some APC candidates from the zone during the last general elections was no fault of ours the leaders of the party as their defeat was a protest by the people following the strangulation of internal party democracy that saw unpopular candidates being foisted against the people. Despite the anomaly, we as leaders tried our best to ensure the candidates emerged victorious at the elections but the people vehemently rejected them, in democracy, one can’t force anyone to do his bidding. The unpopularity of the candidates became more glaring against the backdrop of their woeful outing even in their units.

For instance, our senatorial candidate in zone B did not win his unit and also lost his local government so also the House of assembly candidate that was imposed on the people. If it is true that it was anti-party on our part that led to the defeat of some of our candidates, then the blame should be extended to other prominent party members from our local government like the wife of the governor who could not win even her polling unit, the state secretary of pilgrims board who is one of the major contractors in the state; the acting chairman of the party who is also from the area as well as the many advisers and high ranking officials of the state government from the area. Why were those people not part of those considered to have perpetrated anti-party and why were they not suspended? This goes to show you that the rationale behind our suspension was more sinister than what is being portrayed. And it became glaring that it was our recognition of the ministerial appointee from the state who was chosen by the president against the wishes of some powerful forces that earned us the sanction as all of us who attended the swearing in were said to have offended those powerful forces. Those powerful individuals should know that there is a difference between the executive and party structures and the earlier they recognise that, the better for them. It is at this point that I want to stress that our illegal suspension is null and void and we shall never comply with such impunity. We can never allow those that worked against the party to suppress us in a house we painstakingly and strenuously built.


The recent imbroglio tends to put paid to the mantra of change on whose crest your party was overwhelmingly supported, don’t you think people will be dejected and lose confidence in your party due to recent developments?

Our problems are self-inflicted, if the governor says he is for Buhari, he must do things the Buhari way. Anyone who contravenes party rules with impunity can never be a loyalist of Buhari. If he likes Buhari, he must dance to the dictates of stipulated party rules and guidelines but if he continues with his current ways, he should consider himself as an outcast.


Lastly, what message do you have for the members of your party?

I want to remind stakeholders that no one is above the party no matter how highly placed, and I want to call on all stakeholders to be law abiding. I also want a situation where the governor sticks to his executive functions and stops dabbling into affairs. Nobody will complain about who the governor appoints and those he decides to award contracts to but the party should be allowed to have breathing space. Another issue that must be addressed is that some of the unpopular decisions taken by those powerful persons, especially imposition of unpopular leaders, must be reversed, this is what in the first place led to the death of the PDP and we can only repeat the same mistake at our own peril.