Still on security, what is your take on the sack of the Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba by President Goodluck Jonathan?

I welcome it. It is one of the nicest news I have heard from Aso Rock since the last election, frankly speaking. I understand this Suleiman Abba of a fellow comes from somewhere in Jigawa, and his family lives here, not very far from Rumfa College. I don’t like the look of him, I don’t like his incompetence and I believe he is a rogue. The only thing I heard about him is that he used to be ADC to Sani Abacha’s wife. As far as I am concerned, Abacha’s wife and President Jonathan’s wife or any other person, even Buhari’s wife, have no position in the Nigerian constitution. So, you can see that there is something funny; elevating such a person to the rank of Inspector-General of Police on the only qualification that he was an ADC to a woman whose constitutional position is totally alien to our constitution will tell you that there was a mago mago there.

You can also agree with me that this PDP government, and in fact, the previous PDP governments have the reputation of making top police and military appointments on the basis of forthcoming election. Whenever there is an election, definitely, they will cook up their records, go to the Police Service Commission and say these are the people we want because they want these people to come and do their dirty political job. That is the problem with the Armed Forces and it is about becoming the problem of the Police. All the Inspector-Generals of Police appointed by the late Umar Musa Yar’Adua, by even Obasanjo himself, through to Yar’Adua and now this fellow, Goodluck Jonathan, were appointed basically because of election and they pumped out money for these individuals and the money never permeated to the suffering policeman on the road. That is why they always collect N20 on the road. There is no way you can stop that unless you take care of the welfare of policemen and also make self esteem part of their training.

So, I am absolutely happy over the sack of that fellow. And for the first time that I can think of, I say hurray and congratulations to Goodluck Jonathan. I hope he will do the same thing to all the Service Chiefs, all the GOCs, all the Brigade Commanders in the Army and all the other formations. It is not a joke, we have to start from somewhere, and starting from such a corrupt scoundrel like Suleiman Abba is a very big beginning. This is a man who took cops to the National Assembly complex and they were tear gassing principal members of the National Assembly, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Senate President. He should not only be sacked, but he should be sent to jail.

Ethnicity and religion are major factors militating against national unity. What do you think General Buhari should do to tackle this menace?

First, we are not the only country in the world that has multiplicity of tribes, ethnicities, religions, and so on and so forth. What your call a problem is not a problem. The only problem is that these phenomena are politicized. If I am what I am-I am a Fulani- and because I am a Fulani man, that becomes a single political issue about my identity, then there is no way we can solve this problem. I have always said this, that the only way to tackle corruption is to make sure that the laws are applied correctly and without fear or favour. And it is the same thing with ethnicity. If you look at it critically, you will observe that for us to move forward, the issue of ethnicity should be reduced, if not eliminated, as the single determining factor or one of the primary factors of appointments and other considerations in governance. And if you want to tackle it, you start from punishing people who make hate-speeches in order to derive political advantage. I have been to Ghana and I still have a daughter in Ghana. Ghana has as much of its own complications as we have. Ghana has a population of 22 million, which is about the population of Katsina, Kaduna, Kano and Jigawa. But I have seen how Ghanaians have been able to manage their own affairs in the face of ethnicity and religious differences. In the case of Nigeria, once we have a leadership which is up and doing, once we have a political class and an economic class which is determined and which has faith in the country, these factors will be greatly reduced. I am not saying that it is going to disappear, but after a while, I can tell you that with good leadership in place, those factors will no longer threaten the very existence of this country.

After all, Ghana became independent under Kwame Nkrumah in 1957 and Nigeria became independent in 1960. Actually, some other component parts of Nigeria like the old West and the old East, had their own local government arrangement in the same year with Ghana. In Ghana today, the problem of ethnicity and religious differences are far less serious than they are in Nigeria. There must be a reason. And the answer has to do with the way the political class has been able to handle it. Nkrumah saw the problem and he handled it well. That is why, in spite of the existence of military coups and what have you, Ghana is still a much united society than Nigeria is today, in terms of the way they handled their own ethnic configurations and religious difference. It will become a major problem for us if we fail to handle it.

Besides, corruption is a major factor that is encouraging and fitting into these ethnic problems, because people believe you can go and make absolutely tendentious and irresponsible statements and get away with it simply because you are abusing other people. You can see the likes of Femi Fani-Kayode, Reuben Abati, Doyin Okupe, and even Chidoka, the Minister of Aviation, making absolutely tendentious and irresponsible statements about other ethnic groups—blaming everything on others, and not on themselves or the man who appointed them. With this kind of attitude, we have a very long way to go. Until the likes of them are investigated, prosecuted and jailed, we are not going anywhere. Let me tell you, to jail them, we don’t need new laws. There are already existing laws for that issue. But again, we need a serious national consensus of the political class and those elites in our society are supposed to come together and help the government proffer solutions on the best way to handle the issue.

With all these issues at stake, how do you think the composition of General Buhari’s cabinet should look like for him to get a better result?

Again, I have to be very modest here. I have not been too close to the leadership of the APC or, for that matter, to some of the people who are now behind the thinking that goes into some of the considerations of the formation of Buhari’s administration. But one thing I know, Nigerians are going to give Buhari a honeymoon period. The better the cabinet, the better the quality of the appointments he makes, the longer the honeymoon period will be for him and for his party and for the government which he is going to lead.

If, however, he listens to the professional politicians in the APC or some of the opportunists around him or around some of his friends or whatever, the honeymoon will be very short and Nigerians will start shouting. Already, the APC itself is a very interesting formation because there are quite a number of people in the APC who are progressives. But there are some people who are worse than fascists in terms of their reactionary approach. Now, to weigh the APC into a single party formation with a coherent ideology, with a worldview which is in tune with progress, which also considers the whole of Nigeria as its constituency, whether people voted for them or did not vote for them, is a very important consideration.

And I hope, I sincerely hope, that General Buhari will be persuaded by factors and challenges which surround him and that he will appoint into the cabinet people who are going to be good performers when in government. Because performing in campaigns, political rallies and affairs of the political party is different from performing when you are in government. It is therefore very important for General Buhari to understand the difference because some people are very good at one, but not good at the other but some can also combine and be good in the two. Besides, whether people came from the APC or came from other professional considerations, accountability must be the watchword. If anybody in APC feels that he has the divine right to be given some important appointment, some high profile appointment, that will be the beginning of the failure of General Buhari’s administration and the party itself. And it is going to be a major tragedy and a major smear on General Buhari’s reputation.

Are you not worried over the mass defection of members of the PDP to the APC as a result of the party’s victory in the 2015 polls?

There are two ways I can answer this question. If you ask me as a man who hated and still hate PDP as a party, and who will like to see PDP destroyed forever and ever, I will tell you that I am not worried because anytime people leave PDP, PDP becomes weaker and I think the weaker the PDP is, the better for our national integration and a healthier politics that will emerge eventually along the line.

But if you ask me, is it healthy to have this kind of mercenary manifestation of politics whereby everybody wants to be with the winning party and anybody who loses election on the platform of his party will now decamp to the winning party or if an individual wins election, people find reasons to defect to the party based on that individual, that is a dangerous development. But let me assure you that it is a transient and a very temporary development. The weakness of the PDP is in the best interest of democracy in Nigeria and I am happy about that. So,I don’t mind about defection now, because some of these people who are now defecting to the APC will also defect themselves out of APC very soon.

I will like to see a two or a three party formation in Nigeria, but which excludes the PDP as a party. PDP must be destroyed by whatever means necessary because it serves no good purpose. They have wasted 16 years of the life of this country and they have done nothing. But for some of the achievements of Olusegun Obasanjo in terms of debt recovery and what he did in telecommunications, we would have been in a bigger mess. Although Obasanjo has disassociated himself from the PDP, he was never the kind of a person you can associate with the PDP. He saw the PDP as an instrument he could use to achieve his own aim, whether good or bad.

But as far as I am concerned, PDP serves no good purpose, it must be destroyed, so that at least, we can have a sane political profile and a level playing field that allows people who take politics seriously and who are serious about national development to step in. PDP is a disgrace and I don’t believe it should be described as a party. It is not a party. They are a bunch of bandits who are out to steal. If you ask anybody in PDP what they believe in, they cannot tell you anything reasonable. They will only tell you that they believe in power. In other words, they believe in power to steal, power to get into office in order to loot the national treasury and that is what they have been doing. So, PDP should not have existed in the first place because political parties are based on certain key ideological principles, on certain key world views, and those who are in the party must have something in common, not just to be in government and steal government money.

Therefore, I have no sympathy for PDP whatsoever, but I will like to see the emergence of another party that is right or centre that will serve the purpose of vibrant opposition in this country. And in fact, the APC itself will have to look further to the left if it will survive. The way it is now, the PDP and the APC are nothing but two-sides of the same coin. Nigerians will not accept this for long. There must be a clear-cut delineation of ideology in either APC or PDP. And I believe the only way the APC in particular can survive is to determine that it is a left or centre political party and not the kind of thing we had in the Action Group and UPN which was nothing but fascist or capitalist parties enveloped in socialist slogan. Slogan alone will not do. I want to know where the APC stands in matters that are so vital to the politics of this country. What is the role of government in managing national economy? What is our relationship with IMF and the World Bank? Are we to continue to be dealt with and treated as if we are still under a colonial power? No. These are very important issues that need to be tackled. The APC will have to make this decision and if it has not made this decision, that means the party remains one side of a coin from PDP and Nigerians are not going to accept that.

Recently, a group of northern women farmers urged General Buhari to create the office of the First Lady. What is your advice to General Buhari on this issue, having been aware that such office is not recognized in Nigeria’s Constitution?

I have read on the pages of the newspapers that General Buhari is not going to recognize the office of the First Lady. I don’t believe in that office and I believe that no matter how good his wife or any other woman is, there is no need creating what we don’t have in the Constitution. If they want to have the office of the First Lady, they should go and amend the Constitution and make that office of the First Lady engraved in the Constitution so that expenditure of the office of the First Lady will be a charge on the treasury and the money that is being spent by the so called office of the First Lady is appropriated the way every other money is appropriated. This is because under our laws, money that is not appropriated cannot be spent. So, as far as I am concerned, there is no need for the office of the First Lady. I don’t believe in it and I have never believed in it.

Are you satisfied with the manner Prof Attahiru Jega’s INEC conducted the 2015 general elections?

No. I am not satisfied with it.

What are your disappointments?

First and foremost, I don’t believe an election can be regarded free, fair and credible only because the party I respect and I like won the election, no. In looking for a decent electoral system, I think the process is more important than winning. I believe that Jega was only lucky and INEC was only lucky when due to the stupidity of the National Security Adviser and the Service Chiefs, they forced and blackmailed INEC into postponing the election by six weeks. If the election had been held then, it would have been a total disaster because clearly INEC was not prepared. Even with the six weeks addition they got, the exercise was still a mess. The technology was not mastered.

Those who were to operate it said they were not taught how to operate it. It was clear and it is an open secret, it was on interviews, it is not something I invented—that is number one. Number two, Jega was the man who conducted the election in 2011 and everybody knew that that election was not credible, except, of course, his pay-masters or managers in the West who would say that everything he did was correct. Everybody knew that the election of 2011 was a sham and a complete farce and this one of 2015 came about because he was lucky, because some people in their plan to rig the election and in their desperation to stop the Buhari momentum decided to force a postponement of the election which was partly the saving grace for INEC. As far as I am concerned, Jega is not a manager, he is not an independent umpire and I do not have confidence in his abilities and I am not saying anything new. I have been saying this since 2010 and I have told him to his face and there have been witnesses, including a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, who witnessed my face-to-face challenge to Jega here in Kano, at Mambayya House, where Jega used to be a Director.

So, I don’t believe simply because a party I like, a party I support won an election, that election must declared free and fair, no. We are on the way, but we are not there, we are not there at all. But as far as I am concerned, PDP serves no good purpose, it must be destroyed, so that at least, we can have a sane political profile and a level playing field that allows people who take politics seriously and who are serious about national development to step in. PDP is a disgrace and I don’t believe it should be described as a party.

-First published on this platform on 5 May, 2015.