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Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has expressed surprise at the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed’s verbal attacks on the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike.
According to Dogara, Mohammed’s attack on Wike is surprising because Wike financed Mohammed’s campaign to become governor.
In a long statement on Tuesday, Dogara said he and others supporting Mohammed to become governor were shocked that despite being a former minister he had no money to fund his governorship bid.
Dogara said apart from Wike taking control of the PDP primary to ensure Mohammed’s emergence as the PDP flag-bearer, he went on to provide Mohammed with money and logistics, which enabled him to win the election and become a governor.
In the last couple of weeks, Wike and Mohammed have been locked in a media war, with Mohammed describing Wike as a transactional politician who is propelled by personal gains.
Mohammed, who is the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum, also described Wike as a serial betrayer and a threat to the PDP, urging him to resign from the PDP and join the ruling All Progressives Congress, which appointed him the FCT minister.
However, wading in on Tuesday in his statement titled, “Let the truth be told,” Dogara said that given how Wike helped Mohammed in the past, the Bauchi governor’s attack on Wike smacked of ingratitude and betrayal.
Dogara wrote, “As someone who knows so much because I was the provocateur of the events between the two that I will speak to, I consider my silence not just cowardice but complicity. Therefore, I am not afraid to stand alone or risk conflict. I should not be misunderstood to be defending Wike but simply stating the raw truth that I know, and I don’t give a damn if the truth makes Wike look good. I have learnt to tell the truth as I enjoy my freedom from being a slave to human opinion.
“For starters, need I remind Governor Bala Mohammed that in the 2018 PDP gubernatorial primaries when we were not too sure he would win because his then major opponent, Senator Abdul Ningi, was the one who constituted the state party structure and had a bosom friend as party chairman, it was Wike we turned to for help.
“I had called Wike to plead with him to help us in Bauchi without necessarily disclosing to him that it was Bala Mohammed that we wanted to be delivered. His response to me, was that ‘Are you sure you are in control of the process 100 per cent?’ I said, I wasn’t too sure and he said to me, ‘Leave it to me, I will help you sort it out.’
“To do it, Wike, first of all, made his bosom friend and close ally, Chief Dan Orbih, the chairman of the panel for the primaries and said I should discuss whatever I wanted with Chief Dan. We got talking, and on the eve of the primaries, Chief Dan was in Benin City, and we needed to get him to Bauchi for the assignment.
“It was Wike that I turned to again, and his response to me was, ‘My brother, I have told you not to bother about this. Tell Chief Dan to come to meet me in Port Harcourt’. I did just that, and amazingly, Wike provided the private jet that flew Chief Dan to Bauchi and out of Bauchi for the assignment. I can say without fear of any contradiction that Wike bore all expenses for the exercise. It’s, therefore, shocking that this so-called transactional character called Wike did not place any condition whatsoever for his support.”
The former Speaker said Wike did not stop there, stressing that the former Rivers State governor assisted Mohammed during the main election as the latter had no money of his own to fund his campaign.
“After the emergence of Bala Mohammed as the party flag-bearer and having promised to sponsor all the party candidates if he gets the ticket, we were rudely awoken to the reality that Bala Mohammed had no money for his campaigns, let alone for other candidates of the party.
“Initially, I thought it was some kind of a funny joke but as time went, I realised to my utter bewilderment that it was true. It turned out Bala Mohammed had lied to us about his financial capacity. So we had a meeting at my then residence at Wuse II Abuja to help raise money and we thought since Bala Mohammed was a one-time minister for nearly six years, he must have built enough goodwill we could harness if we organised a fundraiser for him.
“A committee was put in place and we spent N20m to organize the fundraiser at the then Lady Kwai Hall, Sheraton Hotels, Abuja. Before then, I had asked Bala Mohammed to give me a list of some of the people he had helped while he held sway as Minister for FCT. He obliged me with the list, and after calling just four people on the list that I know so well, what they said to me jolted me and I reserve that for some other day. But suffice to say that I knew the fundraiser would be a flop, so I was already thinking of alternatives.
“As predicted, we had the fundraiser, and to cut the long story short, all we raised from the fundraiser was a paltry N48m and If you deduct the N20m invested in organising it, that leaves you with a net of N28m. I have the records and our stakeholders are there to bear witness to this.
“When it was obvious the masquerade would soon turn to a human being, I told our then two serving senators who are alive and can testify that the only option we had was to go to a friend and brother, then Governor Wike for assistance. We got tickets and flew to Port Harcourt with Bala Mohammed without informing Wike that we were coming with him.
“On arrival, we were ushered into the Government House and asked to take our seats and wait for the governor, who was still upstairs, to join us shortly. As soon as Wike walked down the stairs to join us and saw Bala Mohammed, his visage changed and I noticed he was cold to me for the very first time. He asked us to join him at the dining room for breakfast but excused me while those on my delegation waited. What happened next was nerve-racking and humbling, I must say!
“He was like, ‘Speaker, why did you bring Bala to my house without even caring to find out what our mission was?’ I said to him, ‘I thought he was your friend since both of you served in the same cabinet under President Jonathan’. He said, ‘Let me tell you what you don’t know. When we were ministers, Bala Mohammed allocated plots of land to all ministers except me’. He also recalled how he humiliated him when he went to see him in his office as a colleague minister just to get approval to increase the number of floors on a building he had in Abuja, not to beg for the plot, which he refused to allocate to him.
“He said Bala Mohammed kept him in his waiting room for hours and later sneaked out of the office. From that day, he (Wike) made up his mind never to have anything to do with him again. He added, ‘I wish you had told me it’s Bala you were rooting for but whatever you want, I will assist you guys because I don’t say no to a brother, but I assure you, you will regret your decision if Bala Mohammed becomes governor’. The rest is history,” Dogara recalled.
The former Speaker also added that Wike confronted Bal,a who admitted to his wrongdoing and pleaded for forgiveness.
“He said to me ‘Let’s join them at the dining so that I can confront him with these issues for you to know that I am not making things up. We joined them at the dining and Wike confronted Bala with these issues in the open and in our very presence, Bala admitted and pleaded for forgiveness, assuring that he was now a changed man. The two senators with me that day can confirm this to anyone who wants to establish the veracity of these narratives.’
“We spent the night at the Government House and the next morning, Wike called and directed that his cash assistance be handed over to me to pass to Bala. I said, ‘Your Excellency, it’s better I call him so that he can collect the assistance himself lest he thinks you are still angry with him’. I sent for Bala and when he came, Wike’s aide handed over the package to him and he collected it while almost kissing the ground. Wike, therefore, gave us the lifeline we needed to kick-start Bala’s campaigns.
“If Bala has forgotten how much we left with that day, I will remind him. Wike didn’t stop there, he gave us a private jet to ferry us back to Abuja. And I must add that was not the only time Wike helped Bala with resources and logistics. What is baffling is that the so-called transactional Wike did not demand anything in return nor place any condition for all that he did.”
Concluding, Dogara stressed that “When Wike was his benefactor, he (Bala) said he knew Wike had done better than him and referred to him as ‘someone courageous, focused and determined, a person qualified and competent to help salvage Nigeria’. ”
Dogara said the Bauchi governor’s record of betrayal is common knowledge.
“Time will not permit me to list those Bala has betrayed, which includes his known godfather and our father, Baba Waziri, Alhaji Bello Kirfi, elder statesman and former Minister under President Shehu Shagari in the Second Republic.”
