Mohammed Hayatu-Deen: Under APC, Nigeria More Divided Than Ever Before

*Why I pitched tent with PDP and working against Buhari’s APC

Former chairman of FSB International Bank and investment banker Mohammed Hayatu-deen has revalidated his membership of the PDP in Maiduguri, Borno State. He spoke to select journalists after the exercise. Chuks Okocha brings Except:

What do you want to achieve with today’s work?
Today is another chapter in my life, in the sense that I have had a very long corporate career over a period of almost 40 years, and the time has now come to do something different on a national scale. So the reason I came today is to actually revalidate and register my membership of the Peoples Democratic Party. It was important for me to come here because this is the land where I was born and bred, and it is customary and the tradition to always go back home to make such a major shift in your career and life.

When your name was mentioned at the event, people shouted ‘presidency’. What are you going to aspire for?
That is absolutely false. My visit here is very narrow and limited. I came here to register and revalidate my registration of the PDP and to do that. We needed to do a formal ceremony. So that is what I came to do. I did not in my speech or verbal address anywhere say that I am aspiring to any political office.

But the crowd was urging you with the shout of ‘presidency’.
That was the crowd mentality, and the crowd is made up of a motley of people. Maybe that is their own aspiration.

But what is your aspiration?
My aspiration right now is to actually influence the platform of the party by making sure that certain issues facing this country, the issue of insecurity, is brought to the party platform. As we go towards 2023, I will like to see a lot of debate around the issue of insecurity. The second thing that I am actually interested in is that the nation is actually fractured and divided and what I would like to see is to bring the country back together so that we can celebrate our unity in diversity. A lot of issues that are going on are one, a product of extreme poverty, and when people are very poor and devastated, divisions come in.
Secondly, the way the country is governed, particularly at the level of the states, these people are very despondent, and it leaves them with bitter disappointment. So it is important therefore to actually reunite the people by doing what is right for them, by giving some services, these are the kinds of ideas that I have. I will like to build them into a policy blueprint so that throughout the campaign season. These things will be pushed, depending on the agenda. So that if the PDP wins the election in 2023, both at the national and sub-national levels. These matters are brought to the front burner as important issues of our time and must be dealt with because the country is clearly facing a great danger.

You have revalidated your membership of the PDP, meaning you have been a member of the PDP before now. What role did you play in the last years of the party in government?
My membership of the PDP has not been very long; therefore, whatever I did with the PDP had happened when they were out of office.

People know Muhammed Hayatudeen as a seasoned banker. Are you ready to join the murky waters of politics and be dirty?
These things lie in the eyes of the beholder. Number one, you will have to recognize that we run a democratic form of government. To operate a democratic form of government, we need to have a political party establish a political process under which parties and individuals contest for elections and may either win or lose. Competition can sometimes be very fierce and maybe dirty and ugly, but I think what we need to isolate is the competition for power versus governing the country after power is won.

So the process might not be very tidy, but once you win, you are there because of the popular will of the people. You must carry out the mandate that is assigned to you. I have no problem with joining politics. I have no problem going in there to use my own sets of values to influence outcomes. Also, when the government is in power, essentially, what I am trying to say is that politics may be considered dirty because it was left to a few people. What I am doing by the power of my own personal example is to actually invite as many informed people as possible to join the political terrain. After all, politics could be something that can be highly respected, and around the world, we have a number of countries that have been very successful in operating the democratic process.

Since 1999, this state has been governed by ANPP and now APC. What do you want to do differently to ensure your party wins in 2023?
Remember that I am not contesting any office. I am an ordinary member. Having joined the party, my loyalty goes to the party. Part of that loyalty is to do everything within my power, my own modest means to try to make sure that PDP gets back to power in the state. On what I am going to do, these are early days. There is a need to be determined as to why the PDP has not been winning elections in Borno state. Number two is the fact that there are things that are going on within the party here in the state that have divided the leadership into various factions.

So the first thing to do is to actually get into arbitration to bring about consensus and rally the troops around so that we can just focus on a singular objective of unifying the party. A house divided is a house that cannot function. Unity of the party is very important, that is the first thing. Number two is to bring about clarity to the body of ideas that they need to put together to show the people of Borno that they have a superior platform, a superior message and a set of messages compared to the APC.

The third thing is to go on a massive recruitment drive, to try to change the hearts and minds of people, to come on the train. These will not happen amid rancour. This can only happen if and when you have a very substantive message. You show clarity of purpose, sincerity, determination and hard work to achieve these objectives.

Assuming you have a government of choice come in, in 2023, what will you want them to do differently?
First and foremost, I would like to see the country united, which is extremely important because there is no gainsaying that we are now terribly divided. There is a lot of mutual suspicion and distrust, so certain actions need to be taken for the government to clearly show the Nigerian people that it has the interest of every Nigerian at heart. Wherever they come from, to give every citizen of this country an equal opportunity to participate in government affairs. Three, to emphasise that merit always, you require people who are meritorious in their own rights, who have performed duties and functions in certain areas, have succeeded in doing so, and they are the best you can bring on board.

There is this agitation within the PDP that the older generation should give way to the younger ones, that some people are too old to contest elections. What do you want to say about that?
I don’t want to enter uncharted waters now, people are entitled to their opinion, but all I know is that democracy is about giving people their rights. Those rights should not be restricted to any particular set of people. The Nigerian constitution and the electoral laws clearly spelt out the criteria under which people can actually contest elections. Anyone eligible and has the criteria should be allowed to give a fair shot at contesting. So I will go with the norms rather than what people are actually saying.

You were a member of the transition committee when Buhari won. Your name was forwarded to the National Assembly as an ambassadorial nominee. After some time, the name was withdrawn. What happened?
Is that not history? I was not consulted, I saw my name on the pages of newspapers, and I took action, and my name was withdrawn, as simple as that.

You rejected the offer?
I told you what happened.

APC is the ruling party. Why did you join the opposition party? What is the attraction?
So, is there anything that says you cannot join an opposition party because there is a particular party in government? To answer your question, I am a very keen observer of national affairs and have seen what has happened over the last 13 years. I have taken the view that number one, in recent months, the PDP will appear to have got its acts pretty much together. They seem to have organised their affairs in such a way that they are preparing themselves in readiness for the 2023 elections. Remember that they were in power for 16 years, so they have a very long experience in power out of the 25 years since democracy was introduced. Number two, the way and manner they went about electing the leaders of their party, I think, is commendable. No dust was raised.

Number three, I particularly have faith in Dr Iyorchia Ayu because he brings strong credentials — political, institutional and public credentials — to the party. Beyond that, he is a very quiet and strategic individual; I will throw my heart for him any time because I have known him for a long period of time. He was my classmate in the university, so I have known him for almost forty years; therefore, under his leadership, I feel that the party will organize itself and get a shot at winning elections. More importantly, I think there are profound lessons that they have learnt.

Based on your background, one of the challenges facing this country is inflation. How do you think the federal government can tackle this?
Inflation is a monster. Inflation is a function of so many variables. One is our national output has contracted considerably. Therefore when they are supply shortages, prices tend to go up, so price disruptions are introduced into the economy. We know that we had negative growth for a considerable period of time. Since about 2015, our economic growth rate has actually been declining.

It is going up now, but when you compare it to population growth, it is almost zero, that is number one. Number two, do not forget that the pandemic for almost two years now has had a very negative effect on the economy, including banditry and terrorism. Farm output has also declined considerably, which has resulted in very sharp price increases. On top of that is the notion that exchange is very important because money supply and monetary aggregates work in consonance. Because the naira had actually deteriorated from about N300 to N560 and this is an import-dependent country, we import many things.

What is the way out?
The way out is to actually is one, I think is confidence, you have to rebuild confidence in the country, when you and I are at each other’s throat because I come from Maiduguri and you come from Ogbomosho, all you do is fighting, and it does not engender confidence in the country. You need to build confidence by unifying the people.

The second thing is that because the economic management is not so good, you cannot attract investments, either domestic or foreign, into the country, and therefore you cannot expand output. Infrastructure is dilapidated, so the cost of doing business is very high. Oil companies are busy divesting from Nigeria. These things combined will exhaust the country and suck the confidence out of the system. Every business, every country functions at its optimum when business confidence is very high.

Delegates of your party will go into the nomination of its presidential candidates in a few months. What is your advice to them?
I think that they have already started on the right track, they conducted elections into party offices, and it was seamless. If that is an indicator, my information is that they want to carry the same attitude as they work through the very delicate process, by consensus and compromise. Almost everybody in the PDP and the leadership, the governors of the party and the leadership at the national level, feels that unifying the party is far more important than the ambition of any other person, that much is crystal clear, and they have announced that several times. They are sensible and mature enough to know that they have to do the right thing by handling this issue properly and responsibly.

Apart from building confidence and attracting investment, what other things can up the value of the naira?
The naira and the dollar are commodities, and several factors determine commodity prices, but most importantly, availability. First and foremost, what you see as the current value of the naira to the dollar reflects our inability actually to generate foreign exchange. If we do so, the naira will find its value, which in turn is a function of our national output because this is a huge country, sitting on very large resources. It is still a very nascent country in terms of its latent potentials in relation to resources. We are not able to exploit and harness our resources.

As a consequence, Nigeria is big, sitting on over 830,000km of space. If you drop a seed anywhere in the country, unlike other countries that live in the desert, it will sprout. It is an extremely rich country with abundant mineral resources. Our people are extremely intelligent, and our service sector can actually be expanded. Those are the things I believe need to be done to ameliorate the currency’s value and bring about stability, so we need to export. Once we export, we get a lot of dollars, but I think the naira is actually reflecting its value right now.