By Olakunle Olafioye
A northern leader and National President, Arewa United Forum, Alhaji Ado Dansudu, has expressed concern that the direct allocations to the local government councils in the country might not yield the desired results unless state governors whittle down their influence on political parties as their leaders at state level.
In this interview, the Arewa leader argued that the local government council chairmen will continue to pander to the dictates of their state governors with the current arrangements, which vested state governors with overwhelming powers as party leaders at the state level.
He also spoke on other national issues.
As a highly placed person in the society, how do you cope with the huge demands for assistance from the less privileged who are now struggling to survive the hardship in the country?
The requests for assistance have been so overwhelming in the recent time that sometimes one is tempted to evade them when it becomes so unbearable. Out of every hundred calls you receive, you can be sure that more than 70 of such calls are based on requests for one form of assistance or the other. Because of this, even those who have can no longer say that they have enough any longer. The situation is so bad that one is afraid to even pick calls or entertain visitors because there is no way someone will explain his or her problems to you and you won’t be moved to the state of doing something for them no matter how little. But nevertheless, I have always tried to do the little I am capable of doing.
As an ardent supporter of the president during the last electioneering, did you ever envisage that things could be this hard when the president assumes power and what has been your response to the hue and cry in the land now?
Nobody envisaged that things would be this hard. Even the president himself did not know that things would be this hard. The president knew he was coming in to fix the rot left behind by the past governments, but I believe what he met when he took over was far more than what he expected. He inherited a badly managed economy and this explains why we are going through this crisis. And as we all know, it is easy to destroy something, but rebuilding is cumbersome and slow. Imagine a situation where a government took loans which it did not have the plans to pay while in power, but reached an agreement that it would be paid by the succeeding administration. That is part of the problem we are facing now because the government must offset those loans. Notwithstanding, however, I believe the president has what he takes to lead Nigeria out of the doldrums. I will only beseech Nigerians to be patient with the president because it might take us some time to fix these problems. Having said that, I also want to beseech the president to get his priorities right, what the government needs to focus more on should be the welfare of the people, especially food and the insecurity in the country. Others could then follow in that order. When we have food, tackle insecurity and address energy challenges, I can assure you that the situation in the country will improve. If it requires that the government should import food directly as it was done during the Shagari era, they should do it and sell it to the people at subsidized rate.
Since it has been established that some of the policies introduced by the government are responsible for the growing hardship in the country, is it not advisable that the president reverses some of these policies?
It is important for us to know that the situation in the country currently requires that some very stringent policies be introduced otherwise things will get out of hand. But for some of these policies, Nigeria would have inched closer to the state where the government would not be able to meet some of its basic obligations such as paying workers’ salaries, including the military and para-military. When a country gets to that stage then it is finished. Having said that, I would like to align myself with those who have called on the government to have a rethink about the policy relating to exchange rate. Our exchange rate policy is too complicated and not open enough. There are guidelines as it concerns the Bureau De Change which are indirectly impacting the economy negatively. BDCs cannot access dollars from CBN, they have to source it themselves yet the CBN will give them controlled rates to buy and sell. Another of such policies is the harsh conditions given to them. For example, why would you ask the BDC to deposit N2 billion before they operate? There is still another N500 million to be paid to CBN. They are not deposit money banks and they don’t take deposits so why would you ask them to deposit N2 billion. Moreover, the CBN gave banks a two-year deadline for recapitalization, but gave BDCs six month, why?
Arewa Consultative Forum suspended their chairman for criticizing the government’s policies. What does this suggest about the leadership of the forum considering the fact that people believe that the suspended chairman was only re-emphasising the obvious?
Every organisation has its rules and regulations, which every member is expected to abide with. Whenever such rules are broken there are always consequences as we have seen in the case of the ACF chairman. As the chairman of the forum, he is supposed to clearly delineate a boundary between his personal opinion and the collective view of the members of the forum. So, where such boundary is not drawn I believe an individual’s opinion is bound to be viewed as the collective opinion of the group. I believe the forum has the right to penalize him. However, my appeal to the forum is to temper justice with mercy and recall him in the collective interest of the group and of the region.
A new terrorist group, Lakurawa, has emerged in the North. What are your worries and fears about this development?
We believe that the security challenge in the North will be overcome very soon. Nigeria is very lucky that the problems of banditry and terrorist organisations are largely in the North. If what the North is experiencing in the hands of terrorists and bandits happens in any other region, I can tell you that the region will not survive it for a year. But because of the nature of the northern people the region is still going on despite being buffeted from right, left and centre. The emergence of this new group is an additional threat not only to the peace of the northern region, but also to the peace of the entire nation. But we are very optimistic that with the glimpses which the current administration has shown in terms of support given to the military, I am sure terrorism and banditry will soon become things of the past. In less than one and a half years of this government, the government has shown more commitment and the political will to tackle insecurity than we saw in the entire eight years of the previous administration.
Despite the poor performance of the APC at the centre, the party has continued to win off-season governorship elections. What would you attribute the party’s success at recent governorship elections to?
I don’t think it is right to say APC has failed at the centre. If you travel across the country you would notice the magnitude of work this government is doing. If you come to Abuja, for instance, you will marvel at what the government is doing here. In two years, Abuja has undergone a transformation we have not seen in decades. I would like to appeal to the government to equally attend to inter-state roads that are in bad shape in order to ease the pain of those who travel through these roads. So, I disagree with the notion that the government is not performing well. Though the government is still in the process of putting structures in place, it is a matter of time before we begin to see the manifestations of these efforts. On the performance of the party at the recent off-season governorship elections, it will be illusionary to expect different outcomes because the other political parties are still battling to put their houses in order. You can’t go to the polls with parties that are divided against themselves and expect to return victorious. Apart from the APC, every other party that contested the elections have internal crises which militate against their performances. Since they were divided it was very difficult for them to work together for their candidates’ success unlike the APC, hence their failure at the polls. On its part, APC has been consolidating on its triumphs at the last general elections. You can see that in the way the party prepares, strategizes and mobilizes its members for every election since then.
Again, the national leadership of the party, particularly the national chairman, has been working tirelessly to ensure that the party succeeds at every election by bringing people to work together without any form of division. Opposition parties left the electorate without any other alternative, that’s why APC made polls a clean sweep.
The Federal Government recorded a massive victory in its quest for local government autonomy. Do you see the state governments giving the local government the breather to make good use of its newly found autonomy?
To be honest with you, I don’t see anything changing as much as we refused to separate governance from party politics. In a situation where the governors are made to be the head of the political parties at the state level there is no way we can guarantee the autonomy of the local government. If we want true autonomy for the local government councils, the state governors must not be allowed to be above the political party in their respective states. The control of party machinery at the state level must be the exclusive responsibility of the state’s party executive. But where the state governors are made to be the head of the party at state, local government council chairmen will still be under their control because they (the chairmen) know that the failure to abide by the dictates of the governors could spell doom for their re-elections in future.