http://tribuneonlineng.com/buhari-people-just-stealing-left-right-centre-buba-galadima/

November 27, 2016

BubaGaladima, an engineer, is a member of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and a close ally of President Muhammadu Buhari right from the days in the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). In this interview, he insists that Nigeria is drifting politically and economically. He reveals why he parted ways with Buhari.Group Politics Editor, TAIWO ADISA, presents the excerpts:



YOUR recent comments about President Muhammadu Buhari is eliciting reactions from different quarters. Would you say Nigeria is on a reverse gear?

At least if it is not on a reverse gear it is on a standstill.



What do you mean by being at a standstill?

In all human endeavours, there is no development. A lot of money was pumped into the economy and one is not seeing the impact of the money that was put into the economy. The reason is simple, the government of change has not changed the personnel of those they call names every day. They only decide they are giving money and they pay themselves because nobody has checked or cross checked or investigated what commitment the previous government held. People are just stealing left, right and centre because their initial fear that when this government comes in they would be chased is no more there. So, it is business as usual in everything.



Are you saying the alleged stealing spree is being perpetrated by those appointed by President Buhari?

How many were appointed? Ministers were appointed nine months after election and the ministers were forced to work with those they inherited in the system. People who call the shots for 16 years still call the shots. So, how do you expect the government to move forward? Talk to any of the ministers individually and hear them talk.



Do you agree with claims in some circles that some of the ministers are misfits and are responsible for the poor state of the economy?

Yes and no. No because it is the prerogative of the president to appoint whosoever he wishes to help him deliver on his promises. Yes, because the president has not appointed those who have the capacity, knowledge, and experience to run a government of the 21st century. Those appointed were accused severally of being outsiders. The reason that most of the people that were appointed, were appointed was because they knew one person or the other; they are linked. They were brought in by one person or the other and that the president does not even know those he appointed and gave public trust. This was variously canvassed by Dr Junaid [Muhammed], Dr Usman Bugage, Senator [Saidu] Dansadau and above all, the president’s own wife and all these four people cannot be wrong.



But some of the president’s men have argued that the appointments were made because the president wanted the best?

No, we should be fair to him; he has the prerogative to appoint anybody that would help his government. But in appointing people outside the party, the president must look at those key areas of national life within government and look for experts not lackeys. They should be technocrats, world class or nationally acknowledged experts.

It should be such that when they are appointed everybody would say yes, these are people we know that can help the president deliver his promises. But if he appoints people who have no credentials, no background or have not been tested, obviously, the result will be what we have obtained.



So you belong to the school that believes that the president should quickly rejig his cabinet?

I have a different opinion on this matter. What the president needs to do is to make sure that he gives directives and blueprint to whosoever he appoints as minister or head of parastatal and let him deliver on those blueprints. This has not been done because there aren’t people of experience and knowledge around the president, to assist him develop such blueprint.

This has not been done because there aren’t people of experience and knowledge around the president, to assist him develop such blueprint. So, even if he appoints whosoever, no matter how much of an expert he is, if there is no blueprint, if he doesn’t know the thinking of the president, if he doesn’t know what the president wants to achieve, it will come back to the same thing.

However, whether the president rejiggs the cabinet or he doesn’t, the buck stops on his table. That is why I keep saying that the president does not need to appoint people because they are brought in by people close to him. He needs to appoint people that can help him deliver on his promises, people of impeccable character, a woman or man of substance, knowledge that can help the president deliver on his promises.

For now, everybody is just waiting for what the president has to say. So, there is no motion in the country. This is why everybody is complaining and some people holding critical offices receive quarterly allocations and just pocket them.

There is nothing positive anybody is seeing around him or her, no impact of development, money is not in circulation. When people claim that they have done or achieved 70 per cent budget implementation, then you ask, what have you seen that is that new since this government came to be? They are only paying salary, pocketing recurrent expenditure. Roads have collapsed; infrastructure is decaying. We shouldn’t be accusing PDP when we ourselves have not shown visible efforts to better the lives of the people.



There is this claim that the president has been hijacked by a clique. As someone who has worked with him closely, can this be true? Do you see him as someone that can be hijacked?

The issue is that people do not understand the president. The country does not understand the president. Many around him do not tell him the truth because they fear him. And in this business if you want to deliver, you don’t need to fear the principal, you tell him to his face what you believe is correct and right.

I don’t want us to accuse innocent people as I have said in other interviews.

Those people that we accuse of influencing the president, were they there some two, three, four, five, ten years ago? They are there because he is there and everything we say about him, the president hears.

If the president does not act on rumours we peddle around about the activities of those people, it means the president must have checked, investigated and found out that what we are saying about those people are wrong.

Or alternatively they are doing it in cohort with the president himself; that he accepts what they are doing, if not things they say about them shouldn’t have been left unpunished.

What I expect the president to do is to come out clean. The other time, the president said anybody accusing top members of his government should come up with his or her evidence if such person had any .

The following day, Sahara Reporters came out clean on a minister, divulged all his properties, bank account in the United States. Every sensible man would have thought that the president would query such a

minister or at worst ask him to step aside until proper investigation is carried out on how he came about those properties and money in his account. But that was not done.



You have been attacked by the presidency over a report credited to you that the president may be alone in 2019. Did you make such comment?

Do you know Shehu Garba very well? Do you know his political career? Two years ago, was he talking for the president?Have you researched on what he has been saying about Buhari and on Buhari in the last 16 years? How did he suddenly become a Buhari man, a Buhari protector if not that he is only protecting his salary? Does he share in Buhari’s ideals, if Buhari has any? I keep on wondering when people just speak.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have joined issues with people like Garba Shehu because they don’t have the

Mynd44, Lalasticlala