President Goodluck Jonathan in an interview at the State House, Marina, Lagos, spoke about burning national issues: his relationship with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Boko Haram and the 2015 general election.
Excerpts:
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.
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?
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.
There is hope for March 28?
Yes, of course. Those of you here, I hope you have your voter cards, because my commitment is that all Nigerians must vote. And I feel sad when people say that only this percentage has collected PVCs, and it sometimes makes me get angry, because I feel that we cannot practise democracy well if people who want to vote are prevented from voting. If you register and you get card and on that day you feel like not going to vote, it is your right. There is nowhere in the world that 100 per cent of resident voters vote, but the decision to vote or not should be that of the individual. Nobody should be prevented from voting. Those willing and active voters should be able to vote and I want a situation whereby 100 per cent of registered Nigerians will have their voter cards, because that is democracy. Without that, you are not practising democracy and I don’t want anything that will have the symptoms of pseudo-democracy in Nigeria. We want something that will make the whole world see and know that we are practising total democracy; it is costly and easier for countries that are ruled by kings and queens. But if you are practising democracy, though it is costly and painful, it should be total.
But Mr President, apart from the local challenges you have with your critics here, there is this impression being created that quite a number of the Western powers are not happy with your government. The impression being given is why ‘will you vote for someone who is not even in good terms with the major powers’ and they are quick to cite the instance of when the United States refused to do anything concerning the Ebola Virus Disease, the procurement of arms and when they said they were coming to Nigeria to help us fight Boko Haram and train personnel, they were not forthcoming. Now, when you connect that impression with what is being written by some international magazines such as The Economist and the New York Time the impression given to Nigerians is that you are not in good terms with quite a number of these Western powers and that a vote for you will be confining Nigeria to becoming a sort of pariah country. How will react to these?
No, no, no; Nigeria cannot be a pariah country and there is no problem between Nigeria as a state and other nations. Of course, we are in the United Nations and before the last UN’s major voting, I think I was called by the vice-president of the United States and the Secretary of State, who calls me regularly. The vice-president visited us not too long ago and there were some areas we raised issues, that you need to do this and that. So if somebody gives the impression that Nigeria and the US have major problems,that is not true. Even in the ongoing fight against terrorism in the North, they are still supplying us with a lot of intelligence. I think the areas that became pronounced was that we wanted to acquire some attack helicopters that were based on American technology, with some produced directly in the US and some in Israel. Of course, because of the global practice on platforms for war, if a technology is American-based, wherever you are producing that, the US must agree before it can be sold to any client. But the US had the feeling that our military had issues of human rights abuse regarding fighting Boko Haram and they felt they would not allow the sale of the attack helicopters, because the helicopters were strong platforms, and the they felt that the military would use them wrongly and the US would be indirectly dragged into human rights abuses, which will make the congress harass the government. That was the issue; it was not as if we had major problems with the US. We never had any major problem with them and as we speak now, they are still supplying us with intelligence. So also are France and the United Kingdom. So, Nigeria cannot be a pariah state.
Of course, you are journalists. There are some countries where the heads of governments come out and quarrel with the superpowers and often insult them, even on the UN floor. Go and read about it. They will go to the floor of the UN and attack US, attack Europe and all the G5 and their countrymen vote for them. So the issue of Nigeria and the US fighting is non-existent and no one should create an impression that I am not in good terms with the Western countries. The only thing is that if you look at the media outfits, we have not been managing the media well. As a government, we have been doing well, but we have not really managed the media outfits, especially the international ones very well, even the local media. Probably, our Ministry of Information is poorly-funded. I believe we must review the funding of the ministry, because image-making is a key thing and we have not really invested enough money in the aspect of image-making and the opposition parties knew our weakness in that regard and keyed in very well. By so doing, they have been able to change the perception. And what are they doing? They are using the Chibok girls’ issue and Nigeria is now being defined by the Chibok issue, which is very unfortunate. There is no country where only a terror attack is used to define the state; they said because Jonathan was unable to recover the Chibok girls, then that he is a failed president. Is that proper? If you are a failed president, that means you are running a failed state; is Nigeria a failed state?
Mr President, at this point, do you regret losing the five PDP governors, including Amaechi?
We did all we could to bring them together. I had several meetings with these governors. I am sorry to use this comparison, but it is like marrying a wife and for some reason, either the size of your pocket is not big enough or you are weak in some other areas or in-laws are harassing her, she makes up her mind to leave. If another person eyeing her is around the corner, no matter what you do, she will leave. After leaving, it will not be too long after, before you hear that she has remarried. As the president, I scheduled meetings for 9 p.m and I would be there before that time, but these governors would come one hour after. We had several such meetings, because I wanted the unity of the party. As the leader of the party, I did not want to preside over the disintegration of the party. But as a president, I would be there to wait for a governor for one hour and we had several such meetings. It was obvious that there was nothing we could do to stop them from leaving. It was like doctors saying we tried our best to save the patient but we lost him. Doctors cannot save all the patients. So I have no regrets. I would have had regrets if it was possible for me to stop them from leaving and I did nothing to stop them. But this one, it was not possible, because they had their reasons. We know the reasons now, because we have all followed the political process so far
Excerpts:
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.
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?
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.
There is hope for March 28?
Yes, of course. Those of you here, I hope you have your voter cards, because my commitment is that all Nigerians must vote. And I feel sad when people say that only this percentage has collected PVCs, and it sometimes makes me get angry, because I feel that we cannot practise democracy well if people who want to vote are prevented from voting. If you register and you get card and on that day you feel like not going to vote, it is your right. There is nowhere in the world that 100 per cent of resident voters vote, but the decision to vote or not should be that of the individual. Nobody should be prevented from voting. Those willing and active voters should be able to vote and I want a situation whereby 100 per cent of registered Nigerians will have their voter cards, because that is democracy. Without that, you are not practising democracy and I don’t want anything that will have the symptoms of pseudo-democracy in Nigeria. We want something that will make the whole world see and know that we are practising total democracy; it is costly and easier for countries that are ruled by kings and queens. But if you are practising democracy, though it is costly and painful, it should be total.
But Mr President, apart from the local challenges you have with your critics here, there is this impression being created that quite a number of the Western powers are not happy with your government. The impression being given is why ‘will you vote for someone who is not even in good terms with the major powers’ and they are quick to cite the instance of when the United States refused to do anything concerning the Ebola Virus Disease, the procurement of arms and when they said they were coming to Nigeria to help us fight Boko Haram and train personnel, they were not forthcoming. Now, when you connect that impression with what is being written by some international magazines such as The Economist and the New York Time the impression given to Nigerians is that you are not in good terms with quite a number of these Western powers and that a vote for you will be confining Nigeria to becoming a sort of pariah country. How will react to these?
No, no, no; Nigeria cannot be a pariah country and there is no problem between Nigeria as a state and other nations. Of course, we are in the United Nations and before the last UN’s major voting, I think I was called by the vice-president of the United States and the Secretary of State, who calls me regularly. The vice-president visited us not too long ago and there were some areas we raised issues, that you need to do this and that. So if somebody gives the impression that Nigeria and the US have major problems,that is not true. Even in the ongoing fight against terrorism in the North, they are still supplying us with a lot of intelligence. I think the areas that became pronounced was that we wanted to acquire some attack helicopters that were based on American technology, with some produced directly in the US and some in Israel. Of course, because of the global practice on platforms for war, if a technology is American-based, wherever you are producing that, the US must agree before it can be sold to any client. But the US had the feeling that our military had issues of human rights abuse regarding fighting Boko Haram and they felt they would not allow the sale of the attack helicopters, because the helicopters were strong platforms, and the they felt that the military would use them wrongly and the US would be indirectly dragged into human rights abuses, which will make the congress harass the government. That was the issue; it was not as if we had major problems with the US. We never had any major problem with them and as we speak now, they are still supplying us with intelligence. So also are France and the United Kingdom. So, Nigeria cannot be a pariah state.
Of course, you are journalists. There are some countries where the heads of governments come out and quarrel with the superpowers and often insult them, even on the UN floor. Go and read about it. They will go to the floor of the UN and attack US, attack Europe and all the G5 and their countrymen vote for them. So the issue of Nigeria and the US fighting is non-existent and no one should create an impression that I am not in good terms with the Western countries. The only thing is that if you look at the media outfits, we have not been managing the media well. As a government, we have been doing well, but we have not really managed the media outfits, especially the international ones very well, even the local media. Probably, our Ministry of Information is poorly-funded. I believe we must review the funding of the ministry, because image-making is a key thing and we have not really invested enough money in the aspect of image-making and the opposition parties knew our weakness in that regard and keyed in very well. By so doing, they have been able to change the perception. And what are they doing? They are using the Chibok girls’ issue and Nigeria is now being defined by the Chibok issue, which is very unfortunate. There is no country where only a terror attack is used to define the state; they said because Jonathan was unable to recover the Chibok girls, then that he is a failed president. Is that proper? If you are a failed president, that means you are running a failed state; is Nigeria a failed state?
Mr President, at this point, do you regret losing the five PDP governors, including Amaechi?
We did all we could to bring them together. I had several meetings with these governors. I am sorry to use this comparison, but it is like marrying a wife and for some reason, either the size of your pocket is not big enough or you are weak in some other areas or in-laws are harassing her, she makes up her mind to leave. If another person eyeing her is around the corner, no matter what you do, she will leave. After leaving, it will not be too long after, before you hear that she has remarried. As the president, I scheduled meetings for 9 p.m and I would be there before that time, but these governors would come one hour after. We had several such meetings, because I wanted the unity of the party. As the leader of the party, I did not want to preside over the disintegration of the party. But as a president, I would be there to wait for a governor for one hour and we had several such meetings. It was obvious that there was nothing we could do to stop them from leaving. It was like doctors saying we tried our best to save the patient but we lost him. Doctors cannot save all the patients. So I have no regrets. I would have had regrets if it was possible for me to stop them from leaving and I did nothing to stop them. But this one, it was not possible, because they had their reasons. We know the reasons now, because we have all followed the political process so far
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