₦airaland Forum

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Mr. President, in recent months, there have been several scathing statements and remarks from former President Olusegun Obasanjo against your candidature in this forthcoming election and there have been so much scathing criticism of you on the fact that you agreed that you will just spend one term in office. Also some days back, he alerted Nigerians to a grand plot whether by people acting on your behalf or you also working in concert with them to foist the Gbagbo option on Nigeria. How do you react to this. What exactly is the problem between you and former President Obasanjo?

Thank you. First and foremost, Obasanjo is a father to me. By divine providence and the Grace of God I am the President of Nigeria today. It is not by my strength. But God uses human beings to actualise His own blessings on human beings. And He used so many Nigerians, including former President Obasanjo to play one role or the other for me. I became the deputy governor of a state, became the governor, the vice-president and president. I have no issues with him and I really don’t want to join issues with President Obasanjo. I think it is not necessary. But I will use this opportunity, because you asked, to just plead with my father that he is a leader, a former president of the country. He has led the country more than anybody; eight years of democratic governance and almost four years of military governance. No other person has that kind of record. The stability of this country is critical in terms of the economy of this country. Rating agencies downgrade countries that are going into elections, because the feeling is that there would be crisis. When you paint the colour of instability for your own nation, you are doing so much injustice to the country, because it affects the economy of the country, not just in terms of security and social issues alone. It affects the economy directly. So, I plead with very senior citizens to remember that Nigeria is dear to us. We don’t have any other country than Nigeria. So actions and inaction or utterances should be guarded so that we don’t expose our country to the International community as if it is a country in danger and one that is about to collapse. You are frightening the investors, especially those who invest their cash, who may begin to pull out their money from the country and that would affect the stock market and it would affect the economy.

For one reason or the other, former President Obasanjo may disagree with me as his first political son; you can even disagree with your own biological children as a human being, let alone disagreeing with your political children. So he can agree or disagree with me, but the utterances have to be managed in a way that they do not affect the economy of this country and the security of this country.

Comparing me with Gbagbo is quite unfortunate, because I spearheaded the push by other African countries to fight Gbagbo. Then I was Chairman, Heads of States and Governments of ECOWAS and I knew some of my colleagues were a bit worried about the fate of citizens of their countries in Cote D’Ivoire. But I said no, the right thing must be done.

Let me assure you again, because you asked, that we will conduct this election as scheduled by INEC and a president will be inaugurated. There is no reason for anybody to insinuate that I want to frustrate elections. So that I would stay for how long? Will I stay forever? Am I a military head of state? You and I know that in the Nigerian Constitution, there is no provision for a president to stay beyond four years once you are elected. So if I stay without conducting election after May 29, what would happen? An illegal president? There is no basis for it. There is not just any basis for it and it’s quite unfortunate.

How hurt were you when former President Obasanjo tore his PDP card on national television?

I don’t feel any difference, because the bullets have been coming over and over for a very long time. So you see, it gets to a situation you become hardened. That is why even in those days when corporal punishment was in vogue, parents were advised not to be flogging their children for all flimsy excuses. If you have children you shout at over smallest things they do, then your shouting at some points will become meaningless; even when they have not really done anything wrong, you shout, they would just say Daddy or Mummy has started again. They will not feel guilty again, because they don’t know the difference between when they have done wrong and when they have not done anything wrong. They just feel that Daddy or Mummy is always shouting.

When you are making comments, they must be targeted at events. But when they become serial, or a daily affair, then they are no longer relevant; then they are no longer helping anybody.

There is this advert running on TV in which it was claimed that you signed a one-term pact with PDP elders. The clip showed ex-president Obasanjo reading an agreement that you signed. Did you actually sign a one-term pact?

I did not sign any document with anybody and I am not someone who signs documents carelessly. I don’t even make promises to people. I am not somebody who, if you want to work for me, for example, will promise to make you a minister. Some persons can promise three people they will make them ministers. They can promise another three they will be Secretary to Government, another four persons Chief of Staff and promise another 10 the Minister of Petroleum slot. Some people do that to recruit people. But I don’t do that. I don’t believe in it. I have never signed a pact of one term. I never even mentioned it anywhere that I will do one term. Yes, former President Obasanjo spoke that way, I think the day of our primaries, and he used that to market me and I listened and I kept quiet. It was not proper for me to go there and counter Obasanjo, because I wanted the ticket. I felt that he spoke like an elder statesman and I left it like that.

I think people are misquoting me and I always say that people should play the whole statement that I made in Addis Ababa. Then, I had been elected president. But I told Nigerians in Addis Ababa, when I was addressing them, that I have looked at it that the money Nigeria spends every year on election is enormous, for candidates and INEC. I know what it takes on the side of government to conduct elections; there is the security aspect of the election people don’t even know. Right now, our eyes are red on how to get enough money to meet up the needs of security, especially when you see the way people are behaving and intimidating others and so on. There are some kinds of red spots. So I feel that the nation will benefit more if we have single tenure of seven years for elective position.

When I was Vice-President when the late Yar’Adua came up with the political reforms, I headed the committee where the whole political parties came together to submit memoranda. We advocated a single tenure of seven years. That time, we also agreed that a single tenure would be more productive than double tenure of eight years. Because the president would be focused; he would not be distracted. This four-year tenure, if you are completely new, it takes you almost a year to adjust. Then you work for two years. The next year, you waste on elections. The country is losing.

But if we have a single tenure of seven years, yes somebody who is not good may not make the difference, but some people would want to make names. People like me will want to make a name and concentrate on governance issues. By the time you adjust, you have like six years to concentrate on governance. I know what we have done within this space of time. If we have an opportunity to probably add two stable years to that, and you happily walk away, this country will develop more and the tension we are witnessing today will not be there. People say this election is an ill wind that is coming to this country. If the left wins, there could be crisis. If the right wins, there could be crisis and people are painting all sorts of scenarios. I advocated a single term of seven years. Then I added something that people are misquoting now. I said that I had won the election then. I used one year to complete Yar’Adua’s tenure and I had won election for four years. I said if Nigerians agreed to a single term of seven years, it would not be proper for me to contest. That would mean if I win, I would serve as president for 12 years. I said that people would question that. Why do you want to serve 12 years and incoming presidents would serve seven years? Morally, I cannot defend that. So, if the country agrees to a single tenure of seven years, then I will not contest. I would rather not contest so that Nigerians would know it’s because of my sacrifice, because it is something I believe in. I also believe that the interest of the country is more important to me than my individual interest. And I said five years is okay, and that even if I stay here for 100 years, if I won’t work, I won’t work; that five years is okay, if the country agrees to a seven-year single tenure. I believe it will bring stability, the struggle for power, especially at the presidential level, would be less, and the country will spend less money, because what you spend every four years, you spend every seven years. That means in 14 years, you will spend what you currently spend every eight years. Everything would be better for this country. That was my argument.

They now took off that tape and remove that area where I said if the country agrees to seven years single tenure that I will not contest. They removed that and they are just spreading the aspect where I said I won’t contest.

There is so much propaganda and falsehood that has come to play in our body politics. This is very unfortunate. But like in the game of football, if the referee is not good enough, you can use your hand to score a goal and they would count it for you. That is what is happening on the field and it is quite unfortunate. But we will also not allow that.

Mr President, with all these situations you have painted about the country, what you call the propaganda which has tried to rubbish the efforts of government and even the insurgency in a part of the country, why do you want another term sir?

If you listen to one of these Reggae artistes, I think it is Bob Marley, he said if you fight and run away, you live to fight another day. War is politics, even international politics. If you see intimidation and you say because of that you run, then you don’t mean well for your people. I was very reluctant to get involved in politics as Deputy Governor, but that is a story for another day. When I was approached I said I was not prepared to run for elective office. I was still working as Assistant Director at OMPADEC then, and I said I was not ready but I was persuaded and the day I decided to go into politics, I said okay, I am going in fully. So I have come in fully, at whatever cost. So if I am convinced that what I am doing is right, I will not just surrender because of intimidation.

I believe this government is doing well; I believe probably because we failed to advertise what we are doing, the opposition is cashing in on this and trying to becloud the judgement of the people.

Only today [Thursday] I commissioned four naval ships and the Chief of Naval Staff said this is the first time in the history of the country that four naval ships would be commissioned in a day. He said that the last time we did something close to that was when Shagari was president; he commissioned three at the same time. And these are not the only ones we have commissioned. I was here sometimes in 2012; we commissioned Andoni, and some other ones we bought through the Americans also. So this is not the only Naval platforms we have commissioned. It is historic that this is the first time the Navy would commission four at the same time.

But people are telling Nigerians that we have not done anything. Even in the Army, I am quite happy now. Yes, there are people sneaking into places to detonate explosives, to kill people, but in terms of the war area, in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, the idea of Boko Haram pursuing our soldiers is no longer there. Aggressively, we are taking back out territories, because we have acquired quite a number of Army platforms and weapons that we were looking for. So we have equipped the Army much better than it used to be. We have equipped the Air Force much better than it used to be and we have equipped the Navy much better than it used to be.

You know of our Agriculture programme. Will I stop the programme that is helping so many Nigerians because somebody is blackmailing us, or because somebody is busy intimidating people?

I was surprised last night when the owner of Chisco, the company that runs transport business between Lagos and the South-East, told me that 18 of his luxury buses were burnt down in Lagos by youths of a rival political party because my billboard was close to his facility. Is it proper? Is that the kind of people that want to take over the running of this country? Is this country going to be managed by people with that kind of background? And will I be intimidated when I mean well for Nigeria?

I feel that things must be done properly. And we are improving on all fronts.

Take the road infrastructure, when I took over, only about five, six thousand kilometers of roads were motorable. I mean roads owned by the Federal Government. Of course, you know that most of the major roads across the country are Federal Roads. Now we have added 20,000 kilometers of motorable roads. At least, now we can say we have about 25,000 kilometres of motorable roads in the country. And I believe that in the next four years, we will be able to complete the remaining 10,000kms and open new arteries.

Are you saying I should chicken out because some people are telling lies about the government?

I have given freedom to Nigerians. Before now, Nigerians don’t talk about voters’ cards. It is from 2011 that we brought that awareness, that a voter card owned by Nigerians must be the potent tool to be used and Nigerians must decide who governs them at all levels. And we tried to stop the old ways of manipulating and rigging elections at all levels, so that Nigerians become relevant in the voting process. But the way some people are saying it, it is as if they created it. Before 2011, who cared about voters’ cards? You go to a community, one big man has carried away the voters’ cards and other people would go about their businesses. So many senior citizens told me that they never rested until 2011. So we have reformed the electoral process and freed Nigerians. We have now given Nigerians the power to decide who governs them and you want to say I should chicken out so that we go back to the old ways?

Look at the freedom Nigerians enjoy. You abuse the President and I smile. In some countries, you abuse the President, they deal with you. In so many countries, including African countries, you cannot abuse the President and go to sleep with your two eyes closed. It is only in Nigeria that you can do that.

Well, but some people will say that your inaction in such instance is a sign of weakness

Well, people are abusing it. But sometimes if you want to move, the same people who say it is a weakness will come and beg and say Mr President, please, leave them. It is like this story of a man riding a horse with his son. If the two of them climb the horse, people will abuse them, ‘why should the two of you climb a horse. Do you want to break the back of the horse? This man is a foolish man.’

Then the man would say let him ride the horse; let the boy trek and they would say, this man is a foolish man. He is the old man; the boy should be on the horse and he should trek. When the man carries the boy on top of the horse and they would say, which kind of man is this?

So, however you put it, people will have something to say.

But one thing people clamour for globally is freedom. The whole essence of democracy is freedom. If you have a democratic environment and people are not free, then it is pseudo-democracy and that is why I frown on intimidation.

If Jonathan is bad and PDP made a mistake to present Jonathan, the duty of a rival political party is to bring a credible candidate whose credentials are okay, that it can market freely and can beat Jonathan any day, any where. And the electorate will decide. It is not by going to intimidate people. It is not by abusing Jonathan. Jonathan is not claiming that he is the best person in Nigeria. No, never. I used to say that even in the University, I made a Second Class Upper. I didn’t make a First Class, but there are so many First Class graduates in this country. I don’t have the best brain. I didn’t study a prestigious course. I am not a lawyer or a doctor; I am not an engineer. So I cannot say I am the best. But if Jonathan must be changed, get a better material that you don’t need to intimidate people or tell lies to market. I have not seen anybody that has been presented among the 14 presidential candidates that can run the country better than me. If I have seen any, I would say yes. So if Jonathan is bad, give Nigerians a better alternative. It is not by blackmailing Jonathan. It is not by abusing people. That is no longer democracy. If we are practising democracy, then there must be freedom of choice, freedom of speech. If you take these ingredients out of any government, then it is not democracy it is pseudo-democracy, false democracy.

I am coming from a background of a government that stood by the rule of law. I came as vice-president to the late Yar’Adua who advocated the rule of law and I agreed. I cannot now say that since Yar’Adua is late, I would no longer believe in that philosophy of the rule of law. It is easy if you write something against me for me to ask my security agents to come and arrest you and throw you into a dungeon for 24 hours, so that you know that there is government. Yes, one can do it. But is that what you use power for?

Yes, if you write something we feel you should not have written we can caution you or take you before the law court, but we should not lock you up for one week in an underground dungeon.

It is costly, yes. I am the one receiving the flaks. But you need that for you to move the country forward. Nigeria is a country with a high degree of diversity in terms of language groups, in terms of tribal groups and in terms of religious groups. Within the two major religions, Christianity and Islam, you have major sects and all that. So when you are managing that kind of a country, when you are practising true democracy, you may be perceived as a weak person. But I told Nigerians the issue is not whether Jonathan is weak or not, the issue is that within these five years, including the one year I used to complete Yar’Adua’s tenure and the four years of my first tenure, what have I put on the table?

I used to tell people that human memories are short. In 2012, we experienced the biggest flood in this country. The biggest flood I witnessed was in 1969; that was the year I wrote my primary six examinations. It was before the Kainji Dam was completed. Since the completion of Kainji Dam, there was no such flood again. In my community, even in the place where I built my house, in those days, nobody would have built a house there, but since that time [1969] there was no flood again. In the 2012 flood in my compound that was sand-filled before the building, if you stand on the floor nobody would see your head. That was the extent of the flood. People thought we would have food crisis, we never had. That didn’t come by chance. Because of the fall in oil prices, in a number of countries that depend on oil like we do, people are queuing up for essential commodities. Here, even though the value of the Naira has gone dow, because of the drop in oil prices, food prices are relatively stable. These things don’t come by chance. By now we would have been queuing up to buy bread. And people would have been angrier with government. Because of our agric programme, we are producing much of our food requirements. We have been assisting farmers and encouraging them in various ways. Fertilizers are getting to the farmers; other agro input are getting to the farmers; real seedlings getting to the farmers; lots of financial assistance. These things don’t happen by chance. We mean well for this country. So I can’t succumb to any intimidation. It would be a failure on my own part. If you have something to offer your country, you will want to do it.

You said that none of the presidential candidates can do better than you in running this country. I am sure that includes General Buhari, your main challenger. How do you rate General Buhari?

I said that none of the candidates from their history, from what we know, can do better than me in terms of governing this country. General Buhari has governed this country before for 18 months. It would not be fair for me to comment on one individual, especially the number one contender. So, I will not want to rate him. But what I will like to say is that out of the 14 presidential candidates, none of them can do better than me in terms of running this country and I have listened to statements, speeches, interviews and I have not seen any of them offering anything new.

I have not seen any of them saying that in agriculture, this is what the present government is doing, I want to do it this way. I want to do things this way and it is a better option. I have not heard any of them saying anything about Railways. Railway was dead in this country for over 30 years; I remember in those days when Buhari was Head of State, I was doing my Master’s degree programme and there was this screaming headline in one of the national dailies, ‘weeds overtake Rail lines!’ That was what we got.

But now we have rehabilitated 90 per cent of this old narrow gauge and we are adding the standard ones. Even in the power sector, we have not reached where we want to go but you can see the progress we are making. Be it in education or aviation, name it, I have not seen any new idea from my opponents.

A lot of people have been presidents in this country before I came. I came on board and some states have degree-awarding institutions while 12 states had no degree-awarding institutions. I did not create those states but I felt it was not good. I opened 12 universities in the 12 states that had no federal universities, in addition to the one specialising in Maritime studies, the Maritime University, because we have the longest coastline. Apart from the Maritime Institution in Oron in Akwa Ibom State, we don’t really have an institution that can train the highest level of manpower in the maritime sector. So, we said we must have a university to take care of that.

Look at primary and secondary education. By our laws, it is not the responsibility of Federal Government, but I looked at the North, the rate of school dropouts is so high that some states had as high as 70 per cent. Some states had 40 to 50 per cent, some 30-something per cent while the rate in the South was about two per cent. The average in the North was about 35 per cent; that is from primary to the first three years of secondary school education. So, I said the Federal Government must assist. And there is no state we have not built at least five schools to assist. I also built the Almajiri schools, primary schools to assist the downtrodden, the children that are underprivileged, whose parents cannot cater for them. Nobody has done that before.

You said that none of the other presidential candidates has better ideas on governance than you. But General Buhari has been campaigning on two major fronts. He said he can fight insurgency better and he will fight corruption. How would you react to those two points he has been using to campaign?

You see, I laugh when I hear these things. To us Nigerians, the word corruption is very painful. When you tell Nigerians you want to fight corruption, people will be happy. It is like a dummy that you can use to deceive people. I don’t know how old you were when General Buhari was Head of State. He used the same corruption-fighting ploy to chase the politicians away. He said this country was too corrupt; he was going to deal with them and he took over. Some people were given 300 years imprisonment, 200 years imprisonment. But did that stop corruption? Even the report of Transparency International that has been analysing corruption from that time till date has not exonerated that government. And for 18 months, the country was going down; people were queuing up to buy essential commodities. I was doing my Master’s degree then as I said earlier. Some nights, I couldn’t even read, because I had to go and queue up to buy one tin of milk and one packet of sugar. If you didn’t queue up overnight, the items won’t get to you when they open the warehouse in the morning. By the time they open the store by 8 a.m., the items would have finished before it gets to your turn. So if he had defeated that corruption then, it won’t be with us today.

To me, if somebody says he wants to fight corruption, you must tell me how you intend to fight corruption. Look at what we have done in the Agric sector. We stopped fertiliser corruption. We are going to make that cut across all sectors. The next sector we are going to is petroleum. That is a sector many people have raised all kinds of issues. We are doing quite a number of things in that sector, which I will not say because if you say it a number of people benefitting from the slease could create all kinds of scenarios and block it. If you take the Agric sector, for instance, the first thing a Minister of Agriculture would ask from the President is money to buy fertilisers. And at the end of the day, the fertilisers and agro inputs would not get to the farmers. Less than 10 per cent get to the farmers. We have cleaned up all that, using the electronic wallet. The corruption in that sector is gone. Look at the payroll system, in December where some departments of government couldn’t receive salaries. It was because people started to divert the money meant for salaries to pay other allowances and the system shut them off. So we are building a system that, even if a person wants to steal, he will not be able to steal. First, you must prevent stealing before you talk about enforcement. It is just like when you are in the Customs and they tell you to prevent smuggling, you enforce it also. All over the world, prevention is more potent than enforcement, because in enforcement, there are lots of limitations, because of our legal system. We operate a legal system that says it is better for nine criminals to get away with a crime than for one innocent man to be punished. The concept of proving beyond reasonable doubt comes in. How reasonable is that reasonable doubt.

So, if Buhari wants to reduce corruption, he will have to tell Nigerians how he plans to do that.

General Buhari was Head of State in a military government and when they set up tribunals, the tribunals did all it wanted to do, just like the one that ruled on the death of Ken Saro Wiwa. But we are in a democratic setting, where you must obey the law. Yes, you can disobey the law by locking up people for a very long time, but people will go to court and the courts will tell you what you are doing is wrong. You can only continue to disobey the law for as long as possible. Even on the question of arresting and prosecuting people, we have done a lot. We have even arrested and prosecuted more people than the previous governments. Maybe, you will go and interview the chairman of EFCC. I used to tell him to talk to the press because the tendency is for Nigerians to think we are not fighting corruption.

Ibrahim Lamorde was Director of Operations at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) under Mallam Nuhu Ribadu. When I came on board as vice-president, Ribadu was removed, Lamorde was posted out and Farida was brought in. When I took over, a number of people clamoured to bring Lamorde back, especially from the international community, the people who trained him. They said they have trained him very well and that if we brought him back he was going to do well. So, luckily he had not been retired. I brought him back. And I told him the whole world appears to believe in you, come and head EFCC. And he has been doing well. But because some people want to bring Jonathan down, the good works of Lamorde too must be brought down.

Don’t you think that the lull in the fight against corruption is as a result of the fact that during the administration of President Obasanjo we saw more trials and the media was very well used. But this is not so at this time. Would you also consider a change in strategy?

I agree with you that the media publicity helped to paint the picture that that government was fighting corruption. Society behaves in a particular way. So, by the time you arrest some people and show them on television, people are happy. If you are somebody who will play to the gallery, that is what you will do and that is what we don’t want to encourage. So a government that wants to take the populist option may not achieve much, but it would be celebrated.

Probably, we may have a kind of balance. We will not go to that extreme, because if you suffer from that you will not want to encourage it. I was a governor in Bayelsa State. I took over the governance of Bayelsa on the 12th December, 2005 when we had crisis in the state. During that time, we had a bit of unstable governance in the state and I was just paying salaries and I said contractors should wait. That lasted till February 2006. And by that time we had accumulated about N25 billion debt but the total income of the state was below N13 billion. In February as I arrived Abuja, I saw a headline ‘Bayelsa Gov in N50 billion whatever,’ I said what is this? I have not even awarded contracts. I started calling everywhere to make sure they correct the false allegation. In those days, if you don’t like a local government chairman, you wrote an anonymous petition to EFCC and the EFFC would, chain him and show him on television. At the end of the day when they got into the matter nothing came out of it. Would you prefer such a situation? Those who arrested and disgraced you would not even come and apologise to you. So it gave a false impression that corruption was being fought but that extreme is not the best in the circumstance. Probably, we must do a little of letting the media know what we are doing, but we must select cases we are sure of. We do and not want expose innocent people and make innocent people look like ordinary thieves on television. Because the day you announce that this person has stolen money, that impression is there forever. And on the internet, whenever you search through google, you get that story despite the fact that that person was not even tried. So, there is no way the court can say the man did not steal any money. When you investigate the case, you just ask the man to go. No statement is issued to clear the man, that the man is not a thief. But in the media system, especially these days of social media, whatever goes in there is permanent.

So these are the issues. I believe we may begin to do things slightly differently, but not to that extreme. The emphasis is that all these areas where we have leakages have to be blocked so that nobody will steal money through payment of salaries. Nobody will steal money through award of contracts. That is why we have the Bureau of Public Procurement and, of course, this fertiliser issue. In fact, arms and ammunition now are being procured from government to government. People say oh, because the Army is corrupt or because the government is corrupt, that is why we couldn’t recover the Chibok girls. That is not so. Look at what is happening all over the world. People underrate terrorism. Now, with what we are doing with arms and ammunition, we are no longer procuring through direct contract. We are doing it government to government, because most of these companies that manufacture arms and ammunition have links with their home governments; these are not just businesses you just operate without control. So, we are going through the states to buy.

Despite the stories that America is not doing this or that, we are buying through the states. So, by the time we get over this Boko Haram debacle, which certainly we will get over, major procurements, would be through the governments so that this issue of corruption would be reduced. Assuming that people were padding contracts, by buying through the countries directly, you cannot do that. And that is what we are doing in major sectors and even with our procurement at the Federal Government level. If we are buying things, we buy directly from the manufacturers. We don’t approve the payment through contractors. Except some manufacturers who don’t sell directly, that have agents either for your country or the sub-region, we get through those ones, so the prices are standard. Any addition would just be for logistics and so on. So these are the areas we are using to reduce corruption. If somebody tells you I will fight corruption, I have fought corruption before by arresting somebody and jailing somebody for 300 years, such is a big lie. Were those people really corrupt? Most of the people involved are South-Westerners that you know very well. I don’t want to mention names. Were they really corrupt people that deserved 200 or 300 years jail terms?

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