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•North uncomfortable with restructuring because we don’t know its definition
•Relocation of FAAN, CBN department to Lagos, agenda to diminish North
The Coordinator of the Coalition of Northern Groups, Jaliu Aliu Charanchi, has asserted that his group is against the proposed relocation of some departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to Lagos.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the CNG coordinator noted that those clamouring for restructuring of the country have not properly defined the term, noting many in the North do not understand what restructuring means.
What is your view on the state of the nation?
There are confusions in the country because things are not going the way they should; there are lamentations from the masses, particularly from the northern part of the country.
Insecurity is escalating; the value of the naira is depreciating every day. There are so many indices to show that the masses are not happy with the government; people are losing hope that this administration can do anything better for them. We are seeing doom and the way things are going it seems that the country has no future.
The fragile unity we are enjoying in the country, it is unfortunate that the actions of Mr. President want to scuttle this peace in the country.
The insecurity in the country is escalating particularly in the north. Why is this so?
It is lack of political will from the angle of the leaders and everybody. It is because of lack of involvement by all categories of people. The security agencies don’t seem to be fully involved. The government should give a timeline to the security agencies to end the insecurity in the north. There should be a clear demarcation of their role. Every stakeholder in the north – the traditional rulers should know what to do, the clerics should know what to do; the security agencies should know what to do so that blames can be apportioned to those who don’t play their roles effectively and timely.
It is in line with this that our group, the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) decided to organise a roundtable so that the state governors, various security agencies, the traditional rulers, the clerics and everybody would have a clear demarcation of the roles assigned to each institution. The traditional rulers must play a vital role in ending the insecurity in the north because they know their localities and know their people very well, they can easily trace those people and they can easily point at the villages where they have problems. The clerics need to do their own part by engaging the people to fear the God they are worshipping and to know that there would be a day of accountability of all their deeds in this world. The state governors should know their boundaries and what they are expected to do. Lamentations are no more to be tolerated. How are you going to secure your state? What are you doing to those securities agencies in your state to ensure that the state is secured?
The synergy among various security agencies is something to look at. In fact, it is not only among the security agencies, but also within a security agency. For example, in the armed forces, where you see the Army, it is acting differently from the Air Force. This will not help in ending the security challenges in the north. The police are doing differently, likewise the immigration. So, there has to be that synergy, a collaborative effort to fight the war. The state governors should have unification; have overall framework on how they are going to fight the war. Example, Zamfara cannot be acting differently from what Katsina is doing; from what Sokoto and other states are doing. They must have a timeline, the same pattern of operation and they must do it at the same time, the same hour so that the terrorists would be fished out from their hiding places and they would have no other state to go and hide. But if these states were operating differently, the criminals would have a hiding place in any of the states.
The northern leaders are accused of not doing much in ending this insecurity. Do you agree with that?
Yes, we have to agree. The political leaders, especially the state governors, who have great roles to play in ending the insecurity by telling the president the level of insecurity in their states, the region and what they are doing in their own capacity; or even bringing stakeholders to discuss on the way forward. The political leaders are not doing enough to end the insecurity and what we are seeing is that they lack the political will. And now the insecurity in the region has become a business venture where many people are benefiting from, either directly or indirectly.
A state governor collects N10 billion security votes or more and he is enjoying the money and may not be interested in ending the insecurity so that he continues to collect the security votes. Soldiers are getting money; the police are getting money, as well as other security agencies because of the insecurity.
The lucrative money in that venture is what is hindering the end of insecurity. Money must be withdrawn from this battle, but it will not be completely. The amount of engagement with money has to be reduced so that people will know that they are fighting for the sake of their people, not because of money. Security is money today in Nigeria, particularly in the north and that does not augur well for the security system. The political leaders don’t have the will. Even if they had; we are not seeing the political will to adequately end the insecurity.
What’s your view on the relocation of some departments in CBN and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to Lagos? Some northern leaders are kicking against it.
The reasons given by the government for the movement of key departments of the CBN and the FAAN are flimsy and do not hold water. The reason that Abuja is congested and their movement to Lagos would help to decongest Abuja is laughable. How can somebody who knows Lagos well say such a thing? That reason is flimsy. The reasons are not genuine. Why is this happening when Tinubu has become the president? Even if he has reason to move the departments from Abuja, it shouldn’t be Lagos. People would personalise it; that he is doing it because he is from Lagos. Had it been that he is moving them to another state, it would have been a different thing. Don’t you see what is trending on social media that he is planning to move the FCT to Lagos, despite that fact that there has to be a constitutional amendment for it to be possible? That cannot be accepted. Some are alleging that he is doing it because he wants to have Lagos as a nation.
The president shouldn’t even allow all these rumours to be going about; he is only creating disunity among Nigerians. The Hausa man is saying that Tinubu is doing what he is doing because he wants to favour his people and doesn’t want to favour them. Majority of votes given to Tinubu came from the north, so politically he is supposed to reward them, instead of punishing them.
If you are taking CBN and FAAN back to Lagos just for reason best known to you, we don’t agree with that reason and we reject in totality. The reality is that this is already affecting his political career and the All Progressives Congress (APC) as a party. The north is beginning to lose hope in the Tinubu administration. People are seeing what he’s doing today as partial, selfish and as a punishment to the north. It is a calculated agenda to diminish the north and to jeopardise Abuja as FCT.
But is Abuja part of the North? Isn’t it the federal capital territory?
We believe that FCT is the middle of Nigeria. If it is the middle of Nigeria there is no reason you will take it to one side of the country. Whatever it is Abuja is Abuja; FCT is FCT and all ministries and other departments should be in FCT.
FG claims it is the CBN, not Abuja that is congested, and that former CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, former Emir of Kano, made the proposal. So, why the noise?
Jonathan was there as the president, but he didn’t do it. Is it that the emir gave them the opportunity now to accomplish it? How are they decongesting the CBN? We know that CBN doesn’t have parking space, but they are parking their cars at the national church. Can’t they find another place and build a car par park? Is it only when they move to Lagos that they can find a parking space?
During the electioneering, you kept talking of competence. Is that what you are getting today?
I cannot say that we have got 100 per cent of what we wanted. In some places, we got the competence and in some others we didn’t get it. When we were advocating for competency, we were not talking about any political party or any position in the country, neither were we talking about the president, governors or any member of the National Assembly. We were advising that wherever you were going to vote, competency should be the keyword. Most of the people being elected in their positions are not competent; that is why we are seeing what we are seeing today. One dollar is exchanging for N1510 today. See what we are getting because of lack of competency. People are stocking dollars in their homes and the government doesn’t want to do anything about it. The National Assembly is keeping quiet about it, the governors are also keeping mute about it and nobody is willing to do anything about it.
People are suffering and Nigerians are in acute hunger; there is poverty, insecurity everywhere, people are getting out of school; the number of out of school children is increasing, unemployment rate is skyrocketing and the leaders are not doing anything about it.
How can you expect to end insecurity when unemployment is shooting, poverty rate is shooting, out of school children is shooting, drug abuse is shooting. How can you expect to end the insecurity? The government is not even close to ending the insecurity because the tripod of insecurity has not been blocked. If you want to end insecurity, you have to block the source of their supplies. Where they are getting their drugs has to be blocked. Where they are getting arms and ammunition, it has to be blocked. Where they are getting the motorcycles, it has to be blocked. If you blocked this tripod of insecurity, I can assure you that insecurity would be history in Nigeria.
However, in as much as you allow the drug supplies to continue everywhere, arms supplies to continue everywhere and these motorcycles are being supplied at everywhere, and then insecurity has come to stay.
More people are clamouring for a restructuring of the country. What is your position on this?
People are agitating for restructuring, which has different meanings. A northerner is seeing restructuring differently, southerner is seeing restructuring differently; an Igbo man is seeing it differently, likewise the Yoruba man, Hausa Fulani man is seeing differently. What we have to do first is to define restructuring, what do you want to restructure? If we define restructuring and what we want to restructure and how we go about it; if we have all these things then we go on to debate whether we want restructuring or not.
What people are saying is going back to the 1963 constitution where each region controlled its resources, but in this instance, the states that are the federating units.
That is their own meaning, but in my view, I see it differently. I said there should be the need to have a national conference and define restructuring; and let all of us agree on it. If we agree on that, we will go on to debate whether we need it or not.
Niger Republic has, alongside Mali and Burkina Faso pulled out of ECOWAS. What is the security implication for Nigeria?
It has serious security implications, particularly in the north. That is what we have been saying that for Nigeria to allow its relationship with Niger to sour will be detrimental to Nigerians. We will have more security challenges, particularly those states bordering Niger.
For now that Niger, Mali Burkina Faso have completely left EOWAS, they would no more block the flow of arms and ammunition into Nigeria; they would just allow it to move. Before, if there was any security challenge in some communities in Katsina State, they would call the attention of the security forces in Niger and they would attend to them by chasing the bandits or kidnappers.
That is why we have been warning President Tinubu administration never to tamper with the relationship between Nigeria and Niger in order to serve some interests of some people living outside the two countries. Tinubu is the chairman of ECOWAS because he is the President of Nigeria. If he were not the president of Nigeria he would never have been the chairman of the regional bloc. That means, he should respect the interest of Nigeria than any interest that is coming outside Nigeria. He has not done that and has allowed the relationship to sour. He jeopardised the relationship.
Ask people from Katsina, they would tell you that they are suffering from the deteriorating relationship between the two countries. That is the same thing with Mali and Burkina Faso. Historically, Niger has been assisting Nigeria in so many ways, particularly in terms of security, blockade of supplies of arms and ammunition, drugs and other illicit things that were coming to Nigeria. Security forces in Niger mostly arrested criminals that operated in Nigeria. We are no longer enjoying this today because of personal interest that Tinubu administration wants to protect. The interest that will never give him the mandate to be the president of the country and he decided to ridicule the interest that gave him the mandate and the privilege to be called the president of Nigeria and to serve as the chairman of ECOWAS.
