Media Trust editors had a rare encounter with former Head of State
and leader of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) at his Kaduna
office. He bares his mind on several issues such as the recent attack in
his home town, Daura; Asari Dokubo’s threats; Boko Haram; his calls for
President Jonathan’s resignation; his secret deal with Asiwaju Bola
Ahmed Tinubu and why he hasn’t groomed a successor, among others.
Excerpts:
Some gunmen recently attacked your home town, Daura. Did the attack affect you personally?Well,
it affected me personally because the way I see it as a former military
man, the attack was very efficiently planned and executed. It was the
phase one of the agenda to destroy Nigeria. They attacked the security;
the police stations in the town were destroyed, and I suspected they
must have used incendiary bombs because you cannot repair the police
stations. You have to demolish, bulldoze them and rebuild them.
They
stationed what in the military we call cut off group; they stationed
their men on all roads leading to Daura. People approaching Daura were
attacked and the soldiers that were coming from Katsina town to give a
helping hand to the police were ambushed and shot. I visited the
soldiers that survived the ambush at the Federal Medical Centre,
Katsina.
The group of the gunmen who broke into the banks, certainly
they were very well trained and they brought enough explosives to blow
the banks and remove whatever they wanted. There was another group of
them that went around terrorising the people by just throwing bombs all
over the place. They did not alienate themselves to the people they came
into contact with in the course of their operation; their objectives
were to attack the police, rob the banks and scare the people away. They
were extremely successful in their operation.
About the same
time as the Daura incident, there was an attack on security personnel
Nasarawa State where over 60 security personnel lost their lives. The
Director General of the SSS recently said they have forgiven the killers
but a former director of NSO General Abdullahi Mohammed gave a contrary
position.
What do you make of this?Firstly, we
have to see the difference between Daura and the Nasarawa attack. The
Daura attack has to do with security and economy because right now you
cannot send money to Daura. The people there cannot send to you too
because the entire senatorial district comprising about 11 local
government areas has been financially paralysed.
Workers that
normally take their money from these banks have to travel out of the
area to get their salaries. However, the Nasarawa attack is a cult that
infiltrated the police itself. The latest I learnt from you the press is
that the number of security personnel killed is 56. The cult group
slaughtered 56 security men. The SSS boss or whoever that said he has
left everything to God has no right to do that.
Constitutionally,
Nigerians can practice any religion they want or they can be atheists or
anything they want to be, that is constitutional. But nobody should
hurt a citizen of Nigeria and then get away with it, not to talk of
slaughtering 56 law enforcement agents and then somebody coming out from
the system to say such a thing. It is either that person doesn’t know
what he was talking about or he shouldn’t even be there.
Maybe he is being cautious because of what happened at Baga, because the way security agencies were blamed...This
one is different from Baga and Daura. Nasarawa case is a cult case;
they are part of the community that have got their religion. I’m even
against the people that are suggesting that the cult’s ritual places
should be destroyed. According to the constitution, you must allow them
to go about with their activities as long as they don’t go against the
constitution. But those that killed the 56 security men must be hunted
and prosecuted no matter how long it will take because this is the
bottom line about law and order and security in the country. They can’t
be forgiven; they can’t override the constitution; Nigerians are being
hurt and killed in their duties and those that killed them must be
brought before the law.
Not long after
you came back from Daura, you said President Goodluck Jonathan should
resign. Why should he resign just because of an isolated insecurity
episode?No, I think I explained myself as briefly as I
could. For the last 14 years there have been extreme security challenges
in the country but in the last two years it was even worse. There are
two fundamental things that make a nation state viable--- its security
and its economy. The two years under this person, the security and the
economy of the country have been compromised and this was why I said he
should resign.
Unless you are telling me that you don’t know the
things that went wrong in the last two years from bombing of 1st
October, 2010 to now. MEND said they were the ones that did it and he
came out as President and said that MEND members were not the ones.
Subsequent investigation and prosecution of those who did it in South
Africa proved that they did it. How can a president do that? Then look
at Baga, Bama and other cases that are happening daily from Kano to
Maiduguri. So what is he still doing there?
This
insecurity problem, the President has tried the stick approach and he
has also tried the carrot approach. If you are to be in charge, what
else will you do differently? Well, I will really go by
what happened which you and I know. Firstly, how did the militancy
start? How did Boko Haram start? What actions did the respective
administrations at state level where those things started took? The
militants, based on reports in the newspapers, were trained and armed by
some party heavyweights to get rid of their opponents.
When they
succeeded and won the elections, they asked those boys to return the
weapons, the boys said no way. The politicians withheld their
allowances, and then kidnapping started. So you will get a secondary
school dropout with an AK-47 getting about 50,000 dollars per day. If
the same person goes to school, he can only earn N100,000 monthly after
putting 20 years in his education, so how do you expect him to forget
it? It doesn’t make sense to him. This was how militancy started.
And
when late Umaru Musa Yar’adua was very generous, he pardoned them, he
discussed with them, he gave them money and he arranged training and
re-absorption programme for them, the thing went slightly down.
Abduction has been institutionalised in the South-South and the South
-East and it is coming up all over the country.
How did the Boko
Haram crisis start? The military arrested their leader, Mohammed Yusuf
and handed him over to the police. The police killed him and his in-law
and levelled their houses. They became mad and the situation
deteriorated from then up to now.
You see how the challenges started
and how they were initially handled but now look at what happened in
Baga and Bama. I tried to draw a parallel with what happened with
Margret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister and insisted on having her
convention at Brighton. The British security tried to stop her from
holding it there, but she insisted. The hotel she put up in was blown up
and some people died. Did the British law enforcement agents cordon off
the area and shoot everything that moved? So there is a big question
mark about the competence of our law enforcement agents.
You
cited a foreign example but we can also cite a local example. Early in
your tenure as military head of state, there was a major Maitatsine
uprising in Yola and you applied a purely military solution. Or did you
think of negotiating with Maitatsine’s men at that time?You
have to frame the question properly, I’m sorry to say. The Maitatsine
started from Kano, then it went to Maiduguri and Bulunkutu and then to
Yola. Since you limited yourself to Yola, I’m going to limit myself to
it too. My number two man, Tunde was not in the country so as the Head
of State I flew to Yola and I went to the area where the operation was
being carried out by the military. And that was the end of Maitatsine.
But go and find out, before the President [Jonathan] was persuaded to go
to Maiduguri and when he went, the whole life of Borno State was tensed
he couldn’t feel secure until when he left there. I went there of
course bearing in mind that I was in the military and it was a military
operation, but he is a civilian and the military were conducting the
operation. So this is the difference.
When we knew who was
Maitatsine, wasn’t he arrested, killed and his corpse shown to
everybody? But this Boko Haram, if you could recall somebody
recommended me to represent Boko Haram. I told them the honest truth
that I didn’t know who their leadership was and I still don’t know who
their leaders are. I don’t know their philosophy because no religion
advocates hurting the innocent. So all those people giving it a
religious meaning are wrong. You can’t kill a person and say Allahu
Akbar (God is great). It is either you don’t know what you are saying or
you don’t believe in it. It is one of the two.
It appears that
many people around the president seem to think that is because you
politicians in the opposition want to spoil the president’s show, that’s
why there is this problem of Boko Haram.
You can effectively check
this yourself. People are still being abducted and killed in the
South-South and South-East. Are they doing it to spite their son of the
soil whom they say if he is not voted in 2015, there will be no Nigeria?
Looking at that statement by former militant leader Asari Dokubo, what will happen in 2015?When
was he born? Did he know how many Nigerians died to keep Nigeria one?
Maybe he was born after those events. But those who saw the 15th January
1966 murder of political and military leadership of some parts of the
country and saw the counter coup of 29th July 1966 and those who
participated in the 30 months civil war wouldn’t talk like that. He is
just a spoilt child. He didn’t know what he was talking about. We wish
God will bring us to 2015 and we wish to defeat Jonathan and we’ll see
who can divide this country.
Talking of 2015, is it clear in your mind whether you will contest or not?I’ve
always been a very clear person. I’ve never been a confused man. I made
a statement in tears when I saw how insensitive Nigerians are and they
didn’t realise it until when my tears were dry. It is now their turn to
cry now when there is no security and the economy is comatose. Is now
their time to cry.
So will you comfort Nigerians now that they are crying? I
put it back to my party. I believe in multiparty democratic system. I
sincerely believe in it and this is why I’m in it for the past 10 years.
If my party which by God willing is going to APC, in approach to the
processes of 2015 general elections give me the ticket, I will
favourably consider it.
You were fairly clear in 2011 that you
were through with running for elections. Given what you have been saying
recently and which you just repeated now, could it be said that you
have now become a normal
Nigerian politician who says something and later changes his mind? I
expect people to say that but every situation is unique in itself. I
have never denied the fact that I said I’ll not present myself but I was
also very clear that I’ll remain in partisan politics to the end of my
life. I did not say I will not participate again. People came with
different convincing reasons that I should reconsider it and I told them
that I’m prepared to reconsider it.
Now that ACN, CPC and ANPP held their conventions and have approved their dissolving into APC, where do we go from here?I
think you go back to the Electoral Act of 2010. That is where the
answer is. The conventions of the parties you have mentioned is one of
the criteria necessary for the formal application of the three parties,
having met and agreed to merge and form one party. They have to take to
INEC the resolutions of the conventions. Two, their parties
headquarters’ must be at the nation’s capital in Abuja. Three, the
names of the executives of the party as prescribed by the Electoral Act.
So, the next move is for us to send the formal application to INEC
according to the Electoral Act.
Those are the
technicalities but what about the politics? Have you agreed for example
on how you are going to merge the various state chapters?You
will not hear this from me now because we have a system. The
resolutions of the three merging parties at the end of the conventions
is that in the interim, the highest ruling body of the party---in our
own case the CPC Board of Trustees---will continue to be the chief
executives of respective parties until we formerly receive our
certificate as APC. So no vacuum because nature hates vacuum. So we will
continue according to the resolutions that we have passed which will
entitle us to submit application and become APC. We will continue to
work with this until we are registered as APC. We are APC from the date
INEC gives us the certificate.
Have you agreed on who the national officers of APC will be? That too I won’t tell you.
The public wants to know because 2015 is not far away.
This one too I won’t tell you. So, there are two things I won’t tell you.
What
about this third one; we hear that the ACN leaders have conceded the
presidency to the North while the party chairman will come from the
South.
Well, I feel that for the stability of the party, at my own
level I wouldn’t encourage rumour and I wouldn’t encourage incitement to
make unprepared releases of our confidential discussions within the
parties.
Several newspapers reported that there was an agreement
between Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and yourself for both of you to renounce
your personal aspirations in the interest of the new party.
I’ll
resist all temptations to get me roped into making fundamental
statements about this merger. When we formally submit our applications
then I will answer such questions because then the documents are with
INEC and I feel it is safe enough. Now it is not safe for me to confirm
or reject your suggestions.
Is it true that when this
merger process started personally you wanted it to be between ACN and
CPC and you were not keen on allowing ANPP people to come in?It is incorrect.
You don’t seem to be very comfortable with ANPP people.
You are still incorrect.
What
is your current relationship with the ANPP chieftain Senator Ahmed Sani
Yariman Bakura? In 2007 when at one time he was the chairman of your
campaign organisation a problem developed at some stage.
Well, he remained in ANPP and we went and floated CPC and we are in it. So we are in different political parties.
But
now you are coming to the same party, APC. Given what happened between
you and him six years ago, are you comfortable now that you will be in
the same party again? Yes, I feel comfortable because we
have just discussed the legal terms of coming together and we have all
accepted it. The three parties that are coming together. We are working
towards the final stages of submitting our formal application to the
INEC for registration. So, what else do you really want?
What about Ali Modu Sherrif?He
is the chairman of ANPP’s Board of Trustees and I’m the chairman of
CPC’s Board of Trustees. Check the constitution of their party and see
how much power their BOT has and check our own to see how much power our
BOT has. We are trying to be very legal because this is the safest way
to arrive at the merger. The legal documents involved are, firstly, the
Electoral Act 2010. This is fundamental because it is the constitutional
one so to speak. And then followed by the constitutions of respective
parties and their manifestos. So we came and arrived at the top of the
pyramid.
Are you sticking to the rules like this because you fear that people outside may try to scuttle the merger?I
think I have a different perception of the merger. There is Electoral
Act on how to merge or form a new party and we are following the laws.
I’m not too legalistic; I’m just trying to follow the laws.
This
merger business is more politics than the law. Are you satisfied with
the kind of people that are coming into APC because there are
allegations that some of them are PDP moles.
You see, when we get the
registration the next thing legally is for us to do our convention
whereby the party will choose its political leadership at all levels,
from ward upward. Moles or no moles, whoever wants to participate will
be given the opportunity. So let all the moles be coming, let them go
and register with APC in their ward, get their cards and then let them
start, if they want to be councillors or president. This is what we are
going to do.
You are coming together trying to displace
the ruling party that is used to the spoils of office for so many years
and obviously they won’t sit on their laps and wait for that to happen.
Is that why you’re being careful about whole thing?We are
being careful because that is the right thing to do. You can’t ride
shoddily on laws. You just interrogated me on what happened in Nasarawa
State and I told you what I think is the lawful way to do address it.
We came together to stabilise the system because PDP has compromised the
security and the economy of the country. We realised that the only way
to stabilise the system is for the opposition parties that have
representation in the legislative arm of government at both national and
state levels to come together and face PDP. This is the only way to
stabilise the system otherwise they will keep on doing what they like.
Are
you willing to make some sacrifices because I hear people saying that
in the event it is not Buhari, will he back someone else, or must it be
you?I have answered that question. You know when you tell
the truth you don’t forget it. It is lies that you forget. Somebody
asked me the same question in Minna and I told him that after
consummating the merger under APC, if somebody wants to become a
presidential candidate and I agree myself to participate, we can go to
the primaries together with that person. Let the party choose who
becomes its presidential candidate for the 2015 election. I have
answered that question, so please be fair to me.
You recently turned 70 and by 2015 you will about 72. Is it appropriate to run for office at that age?Why
not? I’m not a lawyer but I try to go by the rules. I think
participating in voting and looking for political office by our
constitution is from the age of 18 and they didn’t say when you reach
the age of 100 you shouldn’t participate. So I’m even relatively young
to seek for election. So it is up to firstly my party to give me the
opportunity to participate and then secondly is for Nigerians to vote me
or reject me because of old age.
Given the kind of political
estate you built within short period of time with millions of followers,
we haven’t seen a conscious effort on your part to groom a successor.
When
you are running a system unless you are so primitive, I’m sorry to use
that word, you don’t have to choose a leader for your supporters. You
should allow the system to identify and pick its leadership. This is the
beauty of the system.
Many observers say that CPC was a highly
personalised arrangement with only one real political asset, that is
you. That is why people say that if some accident were to happen, there
won’t be CPC again.
No, no! We have got infrastructure on the ground
and in spite of coming into the field relatively late, look at what we
did. CPC was registered in December 2009 and look at what it achieved.
CPC has done extremely well. We did our registration, congresses,
convention and then the elections all between 2009 and 2011.
People say you mismanaged a golden opportunity to capture many states in 2011 election.
Golden
opportunity to go outside the law? You don’t know what happened. You
don’t know the way the elections were rigged especially in Kaduna. There
was curfew imposed with the military on the streets during elections.
Our candidates and our agents in polling units couldn’t move under the
curfew but PDP agents and INEC officials can move.
Can that happen again? But
now when we have all the opposition parties together and we go back to
our constituencies, empower and train our people, rigging will be
extremely difficult. Rigging will be extremely difficult in 2015 with
APC around.
You were able to win 12 states the presidential
election only to come down to one state in the gubernatorial election a
week later. Though the rigging you talked about could be a factor, there
were also signs that perhaps you were interested only in the presidency
and that you didn’t worry too much about winning governorships.
There
was internal party squabble at state level. I will give you an example
with my state, Katsina. There was so much infighting among the
executives of the party [CPC] from ward upward. Everybody wants to be
the governor or anoint the governor and because of the infighting, it
was resolved by the state executive that they should all forget about
positions but that they should go and campaign for the party.
CPC
won all the senatorial seats in the state; it won 12 out of the 16 House
of Representatives seats. How then can CPC fail to win the
governorship? You see it doesn’t make sense. What makes sense is that
greed divided the officials of the party in the state.
Some of those problem festered for a long time, like that of Kano State. How come it wasn’t resolved? I have given you the breakdown of the time.
What is your take on the current crisis in the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF)?It
annoys me in the sense that we have more serious things for the chief
executives of states to occupy themselves with rather than the NGF which
is unconstitutional.
Could it be a dress rehearsal for 2015 probably because the Rivers State governor is seen not to be with President Jonathan?Well,
they are from the same political party, the same geo-political zone, so
I don’t have the inner intelligence as to why they don’t want Amaechi
to continue.
CPC’s governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa State appeared to have voted for Amaechi.
Yes,
why not? He knows as a person he cannot make much difference. Perhaps
PDP is extorting him so much that he better shows them that he is not
with them. He supports anybody that will give them a good fight.
This week we marked the 14th anniversary of Nigeria’s return to civilian rule. Do we have anything to celebrate?I
congratulate Nigerians. They have the patience to tolerate
misgovernance. The government has failed in its fundamental duties of
protecting lives and properties. They have woefully failed in providing
jobs and in getting the infrastructure that will make the economy to
pick up and to bring back manufacturing, employment and goods and
services. I cannot congratulate failure. To me, our democracy is a total
failure. Go to your local government and do some exercise.
Get the
amount that accrued to it from 1999 to date and then check what was the
state and number of schools; health centres; roads and water supply
before 1999 and now. At any level, from local government upward to
states and Federal Government, the money gotten from 1999 to date does
not correspond with what is on the ground.
What you just said now
about the record of 14 years of civilian rule sounds like your speech
of December 31, 1983 when you overthrew a civilian government.
No,
what I’m saying is that at any level from the local government upward to
states and Federal level check what was the situation of infrastructure
an before 1999 and now. Let me give you example, which is based on
facts and not hearsay. There was hearing at the National Assembly on
them.
The money spent on National Electric Power Authority (NEPA)
now Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) from 1999 to date was
between 11 to 16 billion dollars, not naira because they have turned our
naira into paper. Look at the state of power now, after 16 billion
dollars. In my town Daura about two weeks ago, there was no power for
three consecutive weeks. If you go to parts of Abuja, sometime for a
week there wouldn’t be light. This is after 16 billion dollars was
invested in the sector.
They are now privatising the sector. Do you support that?Who am I to support or reject it? It doesn’t make any difference.
It is good to know where you stand on major economic or social issues as major contender for the presidency.
But
that’s just a stand. It was said that we have 8000 megawatts then, what
do we have now and what have they put in infrastructure with the 16
billion dollars? You have to know where you are and where you are
heading to.
What else will you do apart from probing?I
didn’t say I’m going to probe because if you say so the country will be
at a standstill. We have to find out what happened between the periods;
the amount that was actually realised; what is the level of
infrastructure; where are the agreements and with which companies? Have
they brought the equipment they promised in the agreement? Have they
used technically competent people or firms to do the transmission or
generation of power? All these vital questions must be answered by
those who are responsible for keeping the country where it is.
Will you continue with the privatisation program if you eventually become the president?You
see, governance is not a question of whims and caprices of individuals,
it is a system. You don’t sell a country’s asset by saying just go and
take it. There is a process. Does the firm or individual have the
capacity to run the firm? This question must be answered, not just
because somebody is a former Head of State, therefore he is infallible.
He went and floated companies and then he lobbied for the business and
afterwards he will go and keep the money in Switzerland or invest in a
developing country and allow his country to be going down. There is a
system.
That sounds like you are going to stop the power sector privatisation.
How
can I stop it when I haven’t even studied how it came about? I’m not an
impulsive person. You can tell me that I’m rigid and this and that but I
personally believe that I’m not an impulsive person. I’m a systematic
person and a law abiding Nigerian.
People say that in your career
you tend to over trust some people and they abuse power in your name.
When you were Head of State, you over trusted Idiagbon; when you were in
PTF you over trusted the consultants and now in politics you over
trusted TBO.
I did not go to the university to study management or
whatever. I learnt management of people in the field, especially people
under fear, in war and in the battlefield. This is where you understand
the strength and weakness of individuals. But when it comes to the
management of people and materials you look for the clever ones, the
armchair professor of everything. How can you have a structure without
trusting people? No matter how greedy you are as a leader at every level
you have to delegate to people. Even in your house, you have to assign
some responsibilities to your wife. You can’t say you‘re going to the
market, buy vegetables, cook the soup and count the meat. From the
management of your house to wherever you find yourself, you have to
trust people. There are things you can’t put in writing or talk about
when you trust people because you’re not perfect and you don’t expect
perfection from anybody. Only God is perfect.
I’m happy that the
people I mentored, the people I’ve been accused of trusting have kept
the trust. Nobody can blame Idiagbon of laziness; of lack of courage or
of incompetence. Nobody can blame Afri-projects for short-changing PTF
and the government. There is no type of inquiry that Obasanjo’s
government didn’t put in place to get something against PTF. Not a kobo
was found against us. Nobody can say Idiagbon has floated a company and
gave himself licenses, so Alhamdulillah.
In politics, I have
attempted and I was given presidential ticket by ANPP twice and by CPC.
Yes, I have a team that is supposed to run the party but we were not
successful. In each case we went to court, in 2003, 2007 and in 2011.
The
Supreme Court judgement favoured PDP. Get the judgement, you can buy
it, it is now a public document and study it in detail. You will find
out that my team of lawyers and those around me did all that is humanly
possible. Under our political development, they have done their best and
I’m very proud that we have not been caught or disgraced in the system
for dishonesty.
Do you have any regrets for something you didn’t do or you could have done differently as military Head of State? It
was a long time when I was Head of State and under the circumstance
that I came in, I think we tried to do our best. When we came in, we did
four things. One, we refused to devalue the naira. Secondly we refused
to remove petroleum subsidy.
Thirdly, there were states that owed
their workers up to nine months salaries; we got money from the
federation account and paid them all. And subsequently we removed it
from their allocations and we returned same to the federation account.
Fourthly, we refused to remove subsidy on flour. I couldn’t regret doing
any of these four things and making sure they all worked.
We also
refused to take loans and we were servicing effectively both medium and
long term debts according to the agreement entered into by previous
governments. We were not a perfect regime but these are what we did in
20 months.
You don’t regret that you didn’t shoot some politicians Rawlings style? No,
we didn’t shoot anyone! It was deliberate; all those we arrested we
said they should be kept in detention---president, vice president,
ministers and some governors. We said they should be treated with
respect until various tribunals successfully prosecuted them with
documents presented against them and not by hearsay. There were people
that were released because nothing was found against them. People like
Adamu Ciroma, late Biliyaminu Usman who was junior minister of education
and some were from the south. They were released and allowed to go
because nothing was found against them. Of course they were embarrassed
that they were detained.
Did you say sorry to them? Yes, we said sorry officially.
How do you remember your daughter who died recently? Zulaiha
was my first daughter; she was to be 40 a week to the time she died.
She had three children including the [one she got by] Caesarean section.
She was a sickler but she was an extremely hardworking person. She went
to the university and she was working with a Federal Ministry until she
died.
Apart from politicking, what do you do in the form of exercise?I
think prayer is a good exercise especially when you are getting old, if
you do it properly. I complement it with walking within my compound.
I’m a lucky person and I thank God I’m a healthy person.
What is your favourite meal?I
think because of my military training and during the war, I virtually
eat everything but I like kunu da kosai in the morning. In the afternoon
I eat tuwon alkama da miyan kuka. I hardly eat rice and I eat a lot of
vegetables.
