Penultimate Saturday, Nigeria was thrown into another moment of mourning, following the avoidable helicopter crash that killed the former Governor of Kaduna State, Patrick Yakowa, and former National Security Adviser (NSA), Andrew Azazi. In your independent observation, what do you relate to the cause ofthat national disaster?

First of all, I wish to express my deepest sympathy to the family members that lost their loved ones in that totally inconsolable circumstance. Nigeria is coming out to look, within the African continent and even the whole world, as a country with the highest number of air disasters. Whenever this kind of a thing occurs, we are often told that investigations would be done; but after that initial stage, nothing is heard about it. In recent years, we have had Bellview, Sosolisso, Dana plane crashes that have wiped out innocent Nigerians, including serving Generals in the military and other top ranking officers. We have had a situation whereby military students who were returning to Jaji ended up being killed in their prime through air crash. The number of air disasters that have befallen Nigeria recently is quite uncountable. If you order investigation and when it comes to an end, the results are not made public, and people who should be held accountable are not touched, there is a problem.

We deserve to know whether it is the incompetence of the pilot; I am not saying it is so. But my point is that whatever is the reason for the crash, there must be a measure that is set up to forestall the recurrence in the future. Nigeria is one country that does not take responsibility of what happens to its citizens. Nigerian government is run on the platform of speculation and lack of appropriate information. If we speculate, the tendency is that we will definitely come to a hasty conclusion because there is no information out there. There were witnesses when the ill-fated helicopter took off at the scene. There is a witness account that there was a serious noise when the helicopter took off. There are witnesses of what people saw at the Air Force base when the plane took off to take the Kaduna State governor, the former NSA and their aides. The President did not even need to call for an investigation, but the institution that is directly involved in this ought to have known what to do. This is a process of accountability.

There is nothing wrong if the Police carry out an independent investigation into such matters. I don’t really know where Nigeria is heading. If you look at the picture of the Dana plane crash and the one that just happened in Bayelsa State, the scene is the same; in the sense that people who are not qualified for rescue operations are often seen milling around the scene of the disaster. These people are just the ordinary people who are close to that community. They often go there just to help. But you will also see them picking up things that would have ordinarily helped in the investigations. They are things that can be used to identify the people and to know what really happened. We are told that up to the time the helicopter took off to Bayelsa, they were working on it. And it is a Navy helicopter. It is the property of the Federal Government and the property of Nigerians. Now the big question is, was that burial an official burial? Was the governor of Kaduna at that burial to represent the people of his state?

There is nothing wrong if I invite a governor to attend my father’s burial, if I know him as a friend. As a people, we must begin to draw the line between official and private responsibilities. The Navy has come out to say that the crashed helicopter was serviced on November19, which means it was in good order. The same serviced helicopter has taken the life of the Kaduna State governor and has thrown the entire state into mourning. It has killed the former NSA, the two pilots and the other two aides who were on board with their bosses. I was at the home of the National Security Adviser. I know the pains and anguish we are going through as Ijaw people. This is a man that has served his people creditably; so his death is unacceptable to us.

I was on a commercial airline that was supposed to take off by 5 p.m. from Lagos to Port Harcourt. It rather took off about 6 p.m., and 20 minutes into the flight, just when they were serving the meal on board (which is normally 15 or 20 minutes after take-off, the pilot announced that the flight must be turned back to Lagos. The decision was taken because the equipment to communicate with the Port Harcourt control tower was not functioning, but that of Lagos was in good condition. We were off-loaded and had to wait for the same airline to bring another plane from Abuja. The plane arrived after 9 p.m. and we boarded about 10 p.m., only to get to Port Harcourt after 11 p.m. That tells you a story of the type of airlines that fly in our country. The lives of Nigerians don’t count for anything in this country.

You can see that we have moved from the culture of buying jeeps because of bad road to buying jets. People own private jets in Nigeria than the commercial airlines. I want to buy one of those private jets, but where do I get the money from? I cannot afford to buy a jet because I am not a politician neither do I lift oil.

Does it surprise you that after successfully bringing him to power, President Goodluck Jonathan is now at daggers-drawn with his political godfather, Olusegun Obasanjo?

Olusegun Obasanjo alone cannot claim that he brought Goodluck Jonathan to power. As a matter of fact, Obasanjo can be seen as a vehicle of necessity, if you like, of how Jonathan eventually emerged as the President of Nigeria. Obasanjo is not God, and he can never be one. The story of Jonathan must be highlighted here.

Jonathan was working in Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) when he was picked to become the deputy governor of Bayelsa State. He was the deputy governor when he became the governor of Bayelsa State by circumstance. Jonathan wanted to run for the governorship of Bayelsa when Obasanjo failed in his third term bid and he chose the late Yar’Adua as President and Jonathan as the Vice President. Obasanjo knew that Yar’Adua was terminally ill but he put him there. Nigerians should now ask whether the choice that Obasanjo made was the right choice for Nigerians. But we have a system in this country where a group of people who call themselves the big PDP family take a decision on behalf of the rest of us.

On the misunderstanding between Obasanjo and Jonathan, it is not abnormal in any sense. But my worry is that about 160 million people have become the grass who suffers as these two elephants fight.

You cannot ignore Jonathan because he is the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Obasanjo too, on his own right, is just out there; you cannot ignore him. But I don’t think these two men have the right to play Nigerians the way they are playing them today. The circumstances that brought Jonathan after Yar’Adua’s demise in 2009 should be enough to spur him to do well. We know how he struggled to become the Acting President and then the substantive President, with the support of Nigerians.

What is more disturbing today is the disbelief of bad governance. Things are really getting worse now than before. I agree that Goodluck Jonathan is not responsible for what Nigeria is passing through today; the problem of Nigeria started with when it was colonised, amalgamated, military dictatorship, looting of Niger Delta and the high rate of corruption. Though Jonathan is not responsible for all these problems, he is the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and he must do everything within his power to correct those problems. We expected Jonathan to take decisions that will be in the interest of the entire Nigerians. Where is the power, the good road, the fight against corruption that he promised us? We want to see the development of the Niger Delta.

Yar’Adua promised us two things: to empower the people that were in the creeks, and to massively develop the Niger Delta. He also promised that the communities that produce oil will have 10 per cent of oil revenue put back for their development. None of these things have manifested. The only thing that has manifested is the empowerment and the enrichment of a handful of people.

Those people are not even from the Niger Delta. This is why I choose to disagree that Jonathan is a Niger Delta President. No; he is the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If he were a Niger Delta President, we would have seen the difference. That is why I am so shocked to read some of the agitating statements that are emerging now that the Federal Government has allocated so much money to the Niger Delta region. The money for the Niger Delta in the budget is yet to be seen in terms of development. We have not seen contracts awarded to the Niger Delta people. Why should any other state be agitating to own more money than the Niger Delta region which suffers all the environmental problems that are associated with oil exploration?

The Niger Delta region is yet to benefit from the government of President Goodluck Jonathan. The Niger Delta people are yet to feel that somebody from their region is the President of Nigeria. The Niger Delta people are yet to be empowered in a way Obasanjo empowered people like (Femi)Otedola, people like (Mike) Adenuga and Aliko Dangote when their person was in power. I don’t understand the kind of shyness that has affected the President and ministers from this area to do something for their own people! What is wrong in fixing the East-West Road? What is wrong if I am allowed to lift oil or transact the gas business as a Niger Delta person?

It is most annoying to hear people like the governor of Niger State, Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, say that the North must unite to reclaim power from the South. Then I will say that the Niger Delta people should unite to reclaim their resources. People are saying that Jonathan cannot run in 2015; but why? Well, we are a bit handicapped because there is nothing yet to show in the Jonathan government that will spur us to speak boldly in his support. There is nothing to defend here. We are keeping quiet because this government has made it impossible for us to talk; if this government was accountable and responsible, then we would have known what to do. But given those inflammatory statements by the North, I will say that they are free to keep political power while we keep our resources. We have never said that we wanted the Presidency, in the first place; we have always wanted the control of our resources.

Some elders of the Niger Delta region are already grumbling that the President has abandoned them and can only listen to one man from the Ijaw axis. This has also generated the fear that Jonathan may be abandoned by his own people in 2015. What danger does this portend, if any?

It is not a matter of foreseeing anything, but a matter of assessing what is on ground. People may be grumbling in the Niger Delta because they have both political and economic interests to protect. I cannot grumble because I don’t have that special interest. The Niger Delta people are not happy with Jonathan because they know what they suffered before now. I have put my life on the line for fighting for the right thing to be done in this country. There are children in this country that are going through what Goodluck Jonathan went through 30, 40 years ago. They are going to schools now without shoes. But to the contrary, the rich men now own two to three private jets. Jonathan should ensure that, as a President, no Nigerian child goes to school without a shoe. We voted for Jonathan because he said he was one of us. If he is one of us, then let him change the situation. We are not condemning him, but trying to tell him the truth; so that we can vote for him again in 2015.

The North has decided to fight Jonathan. The Vice President that Jonathan chose to work with him is now seen to vie for that same office of Presidency. Our hands are down because we have not seen anything we can defend in this government. Jonathan should be able to sack any minister that has failed to perform maximally. If things begin to change in 2013, I will be the first person that will jump up and campaign for Jonathan in 2015. I believe that when 2015 finally comes, Nigerians will know whether they will have to vote for Jonathan or Namadi Sambo or Atiku Abubakar or Pat Utomi or anybody. But whoever wants to contest this election will not be supported on the platform of where you come from again.

In the past, we from the Niger Delta had believed that the reason things had been this way with us was because there had been no Niger Delta person as President in this country. It is not good enough to say that the Petroleum Minister is from the Niger Delta, if she is not empowering the people from there. It is not enough to believe that the person in charge of the Niger Delta Ministry is from here and he cannot do anything to change the fortune of his people. We must strive for our right and that is what we have been talking about.

Obasanjo seems to have recommended the use of naked force to President Jonathan to deal with the Boko Haram sect, the same measure he applied to the Niger Delta militants; do you think this is a system that can actually work in this present circumstance?


As a matter of fact, Obasanjo did not do anything to stop militancy in the Niger Delta. It was the action of Obasanjo in Odi against the Ijaw people that made them to go into the creeks. That was the turning point for us an ethnic group. He went there and mauled down a whole community because of nine boys. The brute force that Obasanjo used in Odi, Odioma and Zaki Biam has not been the answer.

Obasanjo went to speak with the uncle of the slain Boko Haram leader; few hours later, the man was killed. You cannot use violence to solve violence. Obasanjo was trained as a soldier from 19. He is a soldier, even in agbada . Jonathan cannot do that. But that does not mean that this government cannot rise against the Boko Haram menace. Boko Haram has stated what they want from the rest of Nigeria.But their demands cannot be granted. We should now re-consider the issue of Sovereign National Conference (SNC) or a referendum. You cannot keep Nigeria together by force. We must come to a roundtable to discuss whether we can still be together or not. It is very important that we talk. If we don’t come together to talk, this country can never move forward.


http://dailyindependentnig.com/2012/12/jonathan-not-responsible-for-nigerias-woes-but-kio-briggs/