No! I didn’t say quite that, but I said Obasanjo himself said so at the time he was talking about third term. Even though he had never publicly admitted that he wanted third term, circumstantial evidence made every sensible Nigerian believe that Obasanjo wanted to extend his stay in office beyond the constitutional eight years. It didn’t work but then, when debates were going on about the zoning arrangement he said he didn’t believe in zoning and that he did not become president on the basis of zoning. But Jonathan said that he didn’t know about zoning. And that the only thing that he’s aware of is that, when the president is decided, the other offices would be shared according to the zones that have not produced the president.

You were once reported as saying everything under Jonathan is collapsing. This takes us to the issue of insecurity. How could he have handled it? 

Tell me one which istitution is not collapsing. Well, he must have read the document we presented to him from the Northern Elders Forum. When we went to him with our document, we said we’re not here to confront your government, we’re here to assist you in the governance of this country for the betterment of Nigeria. Maitama Sule led us and we left the document with him; fairly comprehensive, looking at major areas of the challenges Nigeria has been facing, particularly two areas, with so many branches. But the two areas we emphatically went for were insecurity and the emerging political dichotomy.

Utterances of leaders from various interest groups and so on that seemed to be heating up the polity, these were the ones we went clearly for. In the case of insurgency, we reminded him in that document that brute force had never solved the problem of insurgency around the world. The most powerful country in the world today, United States, was defeated by insurgency in Vietnam, Iraq and is being defeated by insurgency in Afghanistan and it is the United States now that is trying to organise peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government… So we said multiple approaches is the way forward.

The stick, which is first, the carrot, which is dialogue, and the collective will of stakeholders. In the case of the military, we know where there is open violence somebody has come to kill some people innocently and so, our security forces should be there to challenge it and repel it.

But in the case of carrot, we recommended dialogue and we’re glad to say that really it was our persuasive document that eventually got us to the dialogue committee. In fact when we presented that document to him, he was having a security meeting the following day. He said he would take it up for discussion and to his credit, the following two days there was an announcement that a dialogue committee would be set up. But again, soon after a dialogue committee was set up, the pressure from other ends said no, you cannot dialogue with Islamist fundamentalists and we knew where that pressure was coming from.

Jonathan set up a dialogue committee, which had barely started work when he made two pronouncements: one, he created state of emergency and secondly, he banned the group. So if you ban the group who are you going to dialogue with? That is giving with one hand and taking with the other; and that is why the dialogue committee never really produced anything. And the other side was skeptical because there was even an attempt earlier, where Dr. Datti Ahmed and others tried to broker some discussions. That’s why he quickly took off and said he was not going to be part of it and that’s how the thing collapsed.

This one collapsed because of these contradictory positions that wer being taken. We looked at all the various facets that have to do with sources of violence. Where are they getting their recruits? Are they literates in any education including Islamic education, but they’re getting the recruits because they’re dealing with idle kids like millions of them all over the country that have nothing to do and are willing to fall prey. I saw a video on the internet of a suspect that was being questioned. How he joined Boko Haram, he explained. How much they gave him, he said he and his group got N800,000. That’s a lot of money for somebody who doesn’t get N20 or N30 per day.

He’d be prepared to die with N800,000 in his pocket he’ll take instructions to do whatever it is. And we said finally, the solution to this is to build confidence particularly between local leadership security and the government. But for you to create an impression that you’re an occupation force, you create a state of emergency and everybody has been sidelined, you’re not discussing with anybody, where are you going to get your information? You can get any information because information is power, particularly in this kind of war. Intelligence is power and you can’t get it without the cooperation of the public.

Again he went to Maiduguri and insulted the elders, so they left him alone. But all the same they continue talking to him on various aspects to no avail; apparently he has made up his mind.

Many Nigerians have blamed northern elders, clerics and politicians for allowing Boko Haram to fester. What is your opinion?