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•Northern elders must blame themselves on insecurity
The Chairman of Christians Association of Nigeria (CAN), Kaduna State, Rev Hayab, has said restructuring is the only way to progress in the country.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, the CAN leader, noted that instead of finding permanent solutions to the poverty ravaging the country, Nigerian leaders hide under palliatives to continue looting the national purse.
HAYAB
What is your view on the state of the nation?
There is a picture of progress but it is actually a progress that we are still standing in one place. Because nothing has changed about our insecurity, nothing really has changed about our economy. We have seen the naira appreciating against the dollar, but it has not reflected on the cost of commodities. If the dollar going up was the reason for the high cost of commodities, we have seen the dollar coming down, but we have not seen the prices of things coming down. So, you can see that there is no tangible progress that people can feel. That is the kind of situation we are in our country. If at this moment we are still having school children being kidnapped in large numbers from communities, then something is really wrong.
You mentioned that school children are being kidnapped. That is mostly in the North, which is said to be educationally backward. What is the fate of the region now?
Before we conclude about north being backward in education, we have to understand that the enemies of this country, those who hide under religion of whatsoever thing to perpetrate evil in this country like the Boko Haram, which one of their primary aims was to present a picture that education is evil. Today, those who are going about kidnapping are partially Boko Haram unfolding as bandits or Fulani herdsmen or whatever name you call them, and people from other groups have joined in the criminality. You can see that they are only helping Boko Haram to achieve their agenda or the insurgent group has successfully sold its agenda to them and they are pursuing it, not knowing that they are pursuing the agenda of Boko Haram. People now run away from education; parents are scared of allowing their children to go to school.
With that situation we have at the moment, that is why the Northern elders must blame themselves because when Boko Haram started and efforts were being made to nip it in the bud, they were the ones protesting that their brothers, their people were being killed. Now the evil has swallowed everywhere. They are no longer their brothers because they are kidnapping them and kidnapping the defenders of those evil activities. We have serious problems as northerners and it has affected our country economically, politically and socially and we have to rise to the challenges. The north needs to wake up and do something positively and take drastic measures to stamp out this evil. There is kidnapping of people in other places but not these terrible things that are happening in the north. The north needs to look inward and find a solution to ensure that it does not continue to remain backward and a laughing stock even in the country.
What are your solutions to this insecurity in the country?
During the recent rescue of some of the school children, the Defence headquarters said it was a synergy among the army, other security agencies and the local people. This shows that if we want to address insecurity, it must be everybody’s business; it must be everybody’s collective responsibility. It is not some people thinking that they are better than others; some people thinking that they understand the problem and can do it alone. We must get everybody on board.
How do we do it to ensure that local people get involved? The people now don’t trust government; they don’t believe what the government says. So, government must find a way of winning the confidence of the people. When the people trust her, when the people believe in her, the people will work with her to find solution. But when the people don’t trust her, don’t believe in her, they will instead keep quiet and turn their faces the other way even when they see evil. Though the evil may come to attack them, they will think the evil is against the government. Government must deliberately find a way of winning the people; get the people on her side and work with the people.
Have you seen what those in power are doing today? Right before our eyes, they disrespect our parents. Right before our eyes, they maltreat our children, our brothers and maltreat our people. So, people get angry easily and sometimes uncontrollably, they use their anger negatively and that is where we are today. So, winning the people is number one way of addressing the insecurity.
Secondly, the security agents must find a better way of tackling this insecurity. Some of the things we see and understand among them are that there is no synergy among the different security agencies. Everybody wants to show off, everybody wants to claim credit for a simple thing that they would have passed information to another group to work with them, but because money is involved, everybody wants to do it alone. So, if there is one security breach, police want to address it, the DSS wants to address it, military wants to address it, NIA wants to address it. Everyone is putting a particular budget to address that same thing the other group is supposed to have addressed. How can we find success under this arrangement? The time we waste going back and front, the enemies continue to spread and before we get there, the enemy has concluded his mission and we start chasing shadows. Probably, we may arrest one, but the larger group has escaped. The security agencies in Nigeria must work in synergy, with the understanding that all sides must work to secure Nigeria and not show off who is better. And not issue of who gets what, but how secured Nigeria is.
The third one is that government must show the will. When there is danger, the government or the governor would first go in to bureaucracy. This must stop. The government must be firm and say, enough is enough. We can’t have a country where we have a Commander-in-Chief, and we have laws that guide the land and someone violates the law and nobody goes after him. That is why lawlessness has become the order of the day. But when people know that you cannot do evil and go scot free, that the government would take action, and if you deny citizens sleep, the president, the governors or those who have taken oath to protect citizens would not allow you go free, then evil will stop.
President Tinubu has mooted the idea of state police. What is your position on it?
We have been entertaining fears a lot about the state police, but we have to be careful with our fears and rethink about our fears. Firstly, we rejected state police, but accepted that our governors can create vigilantes. The state police and the vigilantes are they not almost the same thing? The difference is that state police have some powers that the vigilantes don’t have, but they are still tools the governors can use. If state police can bring about security, let’s go for it. Have we ever had state police before? Yes. Did it give us result? Yes. Was there problem? Yes. Even, if there is a problem, we find a way of resolving it. I quiet go with those who are asking for state police, as long as it will solve the security problem. One of the arguments that I have heard and agreed is that a state police will be made up of indigenous people; people from that community, people who are familiar with that terrain, people who would understand the situation of the area and they know who is a criminal and know how to deal with such person. But in a federal police, you recruit someone from Lagos and post him to Adamawa, Borno or Kano. He doesn’t even know the terrain. You recruit someone from Kano and you post him to Delta, Enugu or Rivers; he doesn’t even understand the terrain. Yet, there should be a federal police; there should also be a state police to deal with local issue. We have mistakenly allowed our army to get involved in issues that ordinarily they have no reason to be involved. That is why today, the army is not where it supposed to be. As much as they are angry and we are worried with what happened in Delta, where our gallant soldiers were killed, part of what led to it is this mistake that we keep having them involved in the things that they were not supposed to be involved in. So, let’s correct it and protect our army and give them the integrity of their work than involving them into issues they have no business with.
Sheikh Gumi has asked the government to allow him negotiate the release of the kidnapped school children, which means he knows where these bandits are. What’s your take?
Gumi’s claims of knowing the bandits didn’t start today. Some years back, he went into the bush claiming to have gone to preach to the bandits, but government didn’t do anything. Gumi is hiding under those things, but we don’t want Nigerians to be fooled. He should not think that we are all blind. When he started his evangelism strategy, he called it at that time, did we have any result? No. It was a time that the bandits went deeper and more furious, more violent. There is nothing that Gumi can tell that he achieved with that.
Secondly, a close associate of Gumi, who was with him in the bush, has been declared by the government as a sponsor of terrorism. We knew the game he played when bandits attacked a train and kidnapped the passenger and he was made the chief negotiator and at the end of the day, INTERPOL tracked him to Egypt and brought him back and has been in detention till now.
What moral justification does Gumi have to still talk about negotiation while his closest ally in the process of negotiation was found to be culpable? I think he is interested in drawing attention to make the presidency and those in power to know that he exists. I respect him as a person, but this particular issue, he said he would do, I don’t give it any meaning. There are so many stories surrounding all efforts to negotiate when people were kidnapped and Gumi’s boys were involved. Who can come out today and tell of a successful outcome?
So Gumi should keep his idea of negotiation for himself. I want people to ask him: who does he want us to negotiate with? What have we as Nigerians done to those bandits that they would come and kidnap our children? Can you imagine that the children these bandits kidnapped are children of poor people who are even struggling to eat food? The only thing is that their parents’ value education and they send their children to go to acquire education and you torment and terrorise them. That is not fair. What exactly are we negotiating with them? The law of the land is supposed to show them that they are criminals and they are tormenting our citizens and disturbing the peace of our land and we can’t allow it. Unless government shows that they have might, a new group can spring up and cause us more havoc than this one because tomorrow someone like Gumi will tell us to go and negotiate with them.
What is your view on restructuring, even as some northern leaders seem to oppose it?
One of the reasons that some people behind the scene wanted Tinubu to become the president was because they knew that Tinubu has the moral gut to mould the agenda of restructuring. We knew that a committee was set up by the last administration, which is also the party of Tinubu on restructuring. What is good in this country is that every part or region has what it can bring and showcase her might and defend her economy.
If we restructure this country and every region or every part of this country depends on all what she has, the competition in this country will really be interesting. If you are producing food, you produce food to the best of your ability so that the other group would buy from you. If we are producing oil we make sure that it is optimum so that it would boost our economy. This centralisation of government in Nigeria is not good for us and that is why we are spending huge money. We don’t need this number of ministers as we have in today’s government. Restructuring will help us to reduce this over centralisation of government, reduce this bulky people serving in different offices that have no meaning but just to make money. It will also help each region to come up with an idea that will help her grow, make her strong so that nobody tomorrow would say you are a parasite. There is no region in Nigeria that is a parasite but they are depending on the centre. Nobody is doing anything at home to improve his region; everybody is just waiting for the monthly cake that they go to collect at the centre. Restructuring is good and would help the country to grow, and people who feel they do not belong in certain regions could align with areas that really fit them. All these are parts of the things that make people feel that restructuring is okay for the country.
We know before now, Tinubu has been an advocate of restructuring. Was he just doing it because he had no power? And now that he has the power, Tinubu, can you ensure that you really mean well on restructuring?
Who is afraid of restructuring? Anybody kicking against it is used to eating that national cake and doesn’t want anything to stop him. He doesn’t want to be productive, he doesn’t want to be creative, he doesn’t want anything to take away his food; he is only interested in eating and eating. But if you want progress in this country, honestly restructuring is the way.
People are also talking about going back to the parliamentary system of government. What is your view on this?
Even though the parliamentary system may look attractive because it was what we started after independence, but we have to also be careful so that we don’t want to do everything and anything. We have to choose what exactly we want. Are we talking about restructuring? We came from parliamentary and went into the presidential system, has that really helped us? We have to be careful so that we don’t get ourselves into -: we want to do this; we want to do that and end up not doing anything.
The best thing Nigerians would love to hear is restructuring. Yes, many Nigerians are angry with the class of National Assembly we have today. Much more money is being spent on some individuals we think are not producing enough based on their performance. We can’t carry everything at once or get confused, but the larger and stronger voice is restructuring. Let’s restructure and see what would come out of it. We could do some little adjustment in the way and manner the parliament plays their role, but to quickly go back to parliamentary we would be confused as we want to do everything at once. If you want to play the game of soccer, play soccer and not soccer and volley ball in the same pitch. I don’t want a situation where we want to do all things and end up doing nothing. Why not do the thing that people understand, which is restructuring?
What do you think of the government’s palliatives? We’ve seen cases where people died scrambling for food?
It is sad. Instead of finding permanent solutions to our poverty, instead of finding sustaining solution to our hunger, we are hiding under palliative to continue to steal people’s common wealth. The reality of life is that what today we call palliative in Nigeria still ends up in the hands of a few who would enrich themselves, and what is given to the people is nothing to write home about. The government has not really come out to analyse the practicable and sustainable programme that would alleviate our poverty and change the life style of our people. Every time, it is trial and error and we don’t have any good programme. There is hunger in the land and why is the hunger? It is because in the past few years, insecurity has stopped many people from producing what they can eat. The cost of living has grown big, and our currency power has become so weak that people cannot buy food. And even to travel, the cost is high. The cost of living has become so high that people are hungry. The government should focus on addressing insecurity, focus on addressing power supply. If they focus on addressing insecurity, they would be solving food problem in a short while. If you provide stable power, quality educational services, good medical services, good transport services, you would have reduced the cost of moving from one place to the other that someone would have to buy tomatoes in Kano and before he reaches Lagos, he would have spent ten times the cost. So he wants to make profit out of the tomatoes, he has to increase the cost. It is the same with the food items and that is why you buy a cup of beans for five naira today, it is ten naira tomorrow. This is simply because certain things have not really been done; the government is not thinking right, it s playing politics with virtually everything that needs to be done. I hope and pray that this government will listen and find a way to say, why are we hungry? Why didn’t we produce last year? Address the reasons that stop people from producing food. Address the reason that makes food expensive. Why are children not able to be in schools? Address these reasons in a practical and holistic manner. This hit and run manner of doing things only helps people to steal money. If you a give a state N3 billion for palliative , a committee will be set up and probably N2 billion would go to the committee and the committee would find away to make sure that at the end about N800 million will go to the people. When you keep announcing that the palliative was N3 billion, but what was used on the people was N800 million. That is where we are.
