But if you think these men who benefit from the mess we are in today would let go, then you better go and look for a Rawlings that would kill all of them. And Nigerians don’t want to kill anybody but simply to take from whatever they can get. Men in this country are not ready to die for their country, they are ready for others to die so that they can benefit.
About 2015, if I had my way, I would give room for two years to what I would call a national government – like the one we had in the days of the interim – where men of goodwill come together. Don’t remove the President, but let men of goodwill from North, South, East and West come together, look at the report that over 490 people laboured for about five months and all the recommendations made therein including a new constitution (because we have more or less torn the constitution into pieces, state police, state constitution, federating units, removal of the list of the local government from the constitution, zonal commission where states can come together and form one). We have viable states and non-viable states and so on as so forth. Let us find a way of implementing them. Then there should be a people’s constitution.
Number two, let us set a new political environment where the INEC receives funds directly for its expenses from a special fund so that it won’t be something by appointment and it becomes a case of he who pays the piper dictates the tune. Number three, let’s have an accurate census so that we know who is where and all these figures that we have been turning up and down and that has not been articulated properly.
Some people believe that the North is scarcely populated; I don’t believe that. I campaigned with General Buhari and we went into the North and I saw the masses of our people, majority of them with no jobs or future. If they are not properly taken care of, there would be no proper planning. We must do that and it will take two years to do this with the President in office. Then it would bring a situation of “as you lay your bed, so you lie on it.”
But with what is driving the politicians of today – securing power at all cost – you are going to play into the hands of the President in so many ways. If I don’t believe in APC, I would not move the motion for the merger. And you should know that I am a man at 60 who says it the way it is according to my level of understanding.
But when you look at what is happening in APC itself, you’ll begin to say: “God help us.” I believe in democracy and democratic principles, but I see all kinds of confusion coming. When we were going into the merger, we were thinking it was a merger between ACN and CPC and then eventually, ANPP came in and a faction of APGA also came in. All our thought at that point in time was if we can get the North and the South-West to come together, it would not be difficult to dislodge PDP from power after so many years, since 1999 that it has been in power. But the way things are now, it is going to be a tall order, because right inside APC are PDP men who left PDP for reasons best known to them and who are now looking for a safe haven to protect them because they may not be able to live if PDP wins again.
And by the way, the North is threatening that power must go back to the north as if it means anything in terms of the people themselves. When power was in the north from the military and in the days of Shagari, how many northerners benefited from the largesse and the government? From the days of the military, you have had power for 35 years, how did this benefit the ordinary people these? When it was in the hand of the southerner called Obasanjo, how did it benefit us? Ota bridge, you can still not pass through the place, yet he doesn’t want anybody to call him names. Who says Nigeria cannot have six Dubais in the six geo-political zones if you are planning effectively and we are not looking for immediate gains and short-cuts?
Now, if a northerner wins the election and those of the South-South think they were rigged out of that election, all your pipelines are not safe. They have asked Jonathan not to return home, he must stay there because it is their turn. That is the mentality they have with our money, as if oil is the only thing we have. Bill Gates did not make one kobo from any oil well, but from his brain. And if Jonathan wins, the North that says power must come to us, you can get Boko Haram times 12. So who wins or who loses, the election does not stabilise this nation. Let us look for what will stabilise our nation. You can’t ask the President to vacate his seat for you. You have to look at things that would stabilise this nation. And they also are not going to just say come and take it, you have to show that you have won.
I believe that if the APC puts its house in order and they pick the right candidate who can deliver the votes, and they go with the thought of changing Nigeria for the better, perhaps there would be that change. But if that is not done, they will be playing into the hands of the PDP. I hope not.
You are talking about a national government, what about the National Assembly?
Well, they will have to pay their way through. If they were doing well, why did we have a National Conference? I’m talking about the executive arm of government in particular, to be able to implement what we got from the National Conference. And if you say we will go for election in 2015 so that we will have a brand new President, I wish you well. Maybe that new President would take 100 per cent of the Senate, 100 per cent of the House of Representatives and he would have the whole of the judiciary backing him. I don’t want to waste my time but it is not going to be easy for whoever wins. Do I want the best candidate to win? Yes, I am not averse to that. I want the best to win in our time, but whether they would get there or not is in the hands of God. I don’t know how they would package themselves.
We want your opinion on the cash-for-arms scandal and the involvement of a pastor in the scandal.
I don’t have any penny in the money. How was a man of God involved?
His jet was used to ferry the cash…
He has told you that he leased it out and the company to which he leased it out was the one that leased it to those who used it and that he was not involved in any of those transactions. I think the jet had since been returned to him and the government of Nigeria admitted that they knew about it. So the question is: why that jet and not any other jet? Is it an accident? Is it planned? These are questions begging for answers. Yes, is this not an embarrassment because we function like we are doing money laundering? If the country wants to buy equipment for stopping Boko Haram insurgency, why do you have to, in this day and age when with the touch of a button you can transfer money abroad, why do you have to carry cash and why the jet of a man of God? Those are the questions we should direct to those men who are involved – the owner of the jet, the company to which it was leased and if the man of God also has an interest in the company to which it was leased. So you don’t even know which direction to go. Chris Okotie who tried to say this is an embarrassment, they have asked him to put his house in order and stop marrying many wives, so they would look for something to say back to you. We no longer blush and we don’t have a sense of shame. And when you don’t have a sense of shame, you do anything.
Leave a Reply