Continued from last week

By Kenny Ashaka

Is this happening in the APC?

Not as much as I want to see it happening. This was the reason we started this thing and you asked me are there problems within the party and I told you yes. There is. There are serious problems. At state level, at national level, yes we have problems. My hope is that we can fix them. If we don’t fix them, they will fix this government and we could wake and find that there is no party. We’ll have a government that has no political platform to canvass and campaign for election. Whoever the next presidential candidate on our platform is, it is important to preserve the party. It is important to preserve it as a platform and a vote winning platform, not just one to contest an election, but to contest an election and win.

Is the party, not President Buhari now, addressing these issues you have just enumerated?

Again, let me remind you that I am not speaking…I can’t speak for…

You are a member of the APC, a staunch member at that

(Laughs) Not every member knows what goes on in the party. I know the leadership of the party is very worried. All I can tell you is that I know a large number of the top leadership of the APC and I know that they are concerned about maintaining momentum, preserving key electoral alliances within the party, keeping the hope of ordinary. Nigerians alive that we haven’t abandoned them, that APC is still the party for change and is still the party for the people. I know this. Now, whether we are actually translating that concern in terms of everyday perception is a different thing. One, I cannot decide. I don’t have the mechanism for judging how acceptable APC is today, 2017 as opposed to what it was in late 2014 and early 2015. And I am not in the party hierarchy. So, all I can tell you is the issues you have raised are important. They are the kind of issues that the political party in government should pay attention to and a party that wants to win another election and deliver more, particularly in areas where it failed to deliver.

I foresee the president slowing down or trying to head off a crisis involving massive depletions of powerful allies by engineering fresh concessions that give him attractive incentives to stay close as it is. Is it not advisable he commences the delicate process of grooming a potential successor for the 2019 election or would you advise him to run in view of all these disadvantages?

It’s important for President Buhari to keep those people who made massive contributions to put together APC close to him. And I mean really close to him. Politically, he needs to reassure them that this is still their government. He needs to reassure them that there is a future under his administration and they have a place in his government. As much as it is possible, it is his responsibility to reassure those people. If these depletions have to occur, they must occur only in spite of the efforts of President Buhari and the party leadership, not because of them. There is a difference here. If people have made up their minds to go, they should go, but it is important that it’s because they have decided and whatever you do, they won’t stay.

But like I said, people will go, but President Buhari has the responsibility of minimizing the damage of those people who will go. He needs to take greater control of the political process. We know that he has his hands full running the government, he’s committed to change, dealing with recession, he’s still dealing with security and corruption; but he needs also to be more political. He needs to increase his awareness about the political terrain. He needs to build stronger alliances with a lot of the people who were key to his success, who are part of his success story who are still relevant. Not everybody wants to go. Some of them just want assurances that they are still relevant. And in politics, you really make concessions. Some need much, some need a little. So, when you talk about concession, those are the kind of things you need, not awarding contracts worth billions or trillions like they used to do under the PDP, not in monetary terms. They just need assurance that they are important, maybe they have one or two people they want appointed into boards, they want to see evidence that they have their people in key places and these things can be done. This is what governance is all about, so what is wrong in appointing people if they deserve or merit it? People who can assure that some of your key allies are actually relevant are important and are involved in running your government. That’s all.

Let me repeat this question because I need your thoughts here. Is it not important he commences a process of grooming a successor for the 2019 election, assuming he doesn’t want to run? Or would you advise him to run despite all that is on ground?

I can’t advise President Buhari to run or not to run. If he is going to run in 2019, it will be entirely his decision and quite possibly the decision of those very close to him. He has two choices. He can run, it is his right or he can groom a successor. If he is going to groom a successor, it is important for him to take fairly early decision on that, find whoever it is he wants to groom to succeed him and at the right time let Nigerians know that he is handling the mantle to someone he believes will not let him and the country down. On the other hand he could run again in 2019. If he runs, he will either win or lose.

You are saying here that you cannot advise him to run or not, but the statement you made on behalf of the Northern Elders Forum expressed a tacit approval for President Buhari to run. How can you…

(Cuts in) Look, we in the Northern Elders Forum have never hidden our appreciation for what President Buhari has done. We campaigned for him, openly, sincerely and vigorously. The Northern Elders Forum went out for the first time to campaign for a northerner in a very open and transparent manner and we succeeded. For the first time, every northerner…the North was solidly behind one candidate and I will make bold but be modest to tell you that a large part of that is not as a result of the hard work that we put in convincing northerners, Christians, Muslims, Berom, Fulani, Kanuri to vote for Buhari not because he is a northerner, but because he will address the concerns of the North, better than Jonathan was doing.

Has he done that now?

Absolutely.

In what areas?

Well, I told you that we have seen evidence that Boko Haram can be fought and defeated and we are grateful for that. We here in the North know what it was to live under Jonathan’s ineptitude and incompetence.

But that was not the only concern of the North?

It was. It was our major concern. We saw evidence of Federal Government that didn’t care enough to fight Shekau and Boko Haram. We wanted a presidency that will fight it and we got one. We wanted a presidency that will fight the pillage of our resources, we got one.

We wanted a president who will be so transparent that even people who are working with him will be afraid to touch our kobo and we got one. For the North, President Buhari has delivered, up till now. He has done well. So, when we say that the North has no regrets voting for Buhari, we mean it, not just on sentiments but because we can prove that the evidence on the ground proves that we were not wrong in asking northerners to vote for him, Northerners, Muslims, Christians, all tribes and they did.

Now, having expressed that sentiment on behalf of the Northern Elders Forum, because that was some months ago, would you now sit here and tell me that you want Buhari to run or not?

I have told you I have no business telling you whether Buhari should run or not.

You have said you support Buhari for 2019…

I said northern leaders..nobody says we support Buhari or we don’t support Buhari. Whether Buhari runs in 2019 or not will be the decision of President Buhari. The question you will ask me is what will be the reason behind the Northern Elders Forum endorsing and saying we are happy with President Buhari and I have given you reasons. And they are there on the ground. Ask any Northerner who used to pass 22 military checkpoints in a 60 or 70-kilometer journey. Ask any Northerner who was traumatized and humiliated and embarrassed, not just by Boko Haram, small, small boys who were defeating the might of the Nigerian military, but people who were responsible for protecting us, who were humiliating us as if we were foreigners, illegally operating in this country. Believe me we know the difference between the Jonathan administration and Buhari administration. The Buhari administration may not have done everything we wanted but we certainly know and it is not because Buhari is a Northerner. It is because Buhari is markedly different from Jonathan. Jonathan had Northerners working for him. His vice was a Northerner; a lot of his ministers were Northerners. There is nothing about what we did that was patently about the North, but we wanted somebody who will address our problems in the North and we got President Buhari to do that. If in 2019, President Buhari comes back and says he wants to run, like we said at the last Kaduna Summit of Northern Elders Forum or Northern groups, we will assess him critically. Has he delivered on the promises he made to Northerners? Has he done well? So, the decision to run will be his and the decision whether to vote for him or not will be made by Northerners on the basis of his record. But we have not come to that bridge, so we will not cross it.

It will appear as if there is a conspiracy of silence by elite of Northern extraction now that the man in the saddle is a Northerner.Under President Jonathan, northerners were loud and vociferous in their criticism of the government, what some people chose to describe as hegemonic tendencies of the North

There is no conspiracy of silence. Northerners are complaining; northerners are hungry, they are angry, many northerners feel that President Buhari has not performed to expectation and they are speaking up. Many northerners are worried about the Shiites issue, the Boko Haram insurgency is still potent.  Even if it is crippled it’s still walking around with one leg, farmers, herders clashes and Southern Kaduna. There are a lot of issues, so there is no conspiracy of silence. The problem is that when you talk about South and North, many people close their ears. They think the whole North is just one people, but there are a lot of people who complain and they criticize President Buhari. We are not very happy about allocation of resources to some parts of the South. We are not happy about the manner the budget has been done and we say so. Again, I will take you back to the last summit we held here in Kaduna where we x-rayed issues and we told the president that even though he has done well in many areas, we are not happy about the fact that in terms of allocation of economic resources, the North is not being treated fairly. And we are still saying so. We will like to see a radical change in the North, not just because we gave the president the votes that made him president, not just the president is a Northerner, but because we are Nigerians deserving our rights and fair share of resources. We want to see a fair budgetary allocation to the North; we want to see serious investments in agriculture, water resources and mineral development; we want to see investments in the Northeast, reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Northeast; we want to see resources in terms of addressing the massive humanitarian disaster in the Northeast. Those are not favours to the North. They are our rights because they constitute the hard core of our concerns that a North that is economically viable is an asset to the rest of Nigeria.

Would you support a probe of former President Goodluck Jonathan because it appears the noose is increasingly tightening around his neck with more and more allegations of scams that reportedly took place under his watch?

If there is evidence that President Jonathan violated his oath of office and as president failed to protect his people and the assets of Nigerians, certainly I entirely agree. I do not see how you can justify drawing a line regarding accountability on the president. Impunity survives because you say certain people should not be accountable for what they do. As far as I am concerned, anything that suggests, even remotely, that President Jonathan willfully and deliberately was involved in massive scams involving billions of naira of Nigerians, I honestly think he should be tried.

You were Secretary of INEC and I am happy having you in view of our electoral problems. What would be your response if today you were told that President Buhari has frittered away the electoral gains we had during Professor Attahiru Jega’s tenure at INEC and that we are now contending with inconclusive elections? What do you think is wrong with the system?

It’s not true. There have been three major gubernatorial elections that were conducted. Let me remind you, Kogi, Edo and Ondo. All of them were successfully concluded. And there were huge inconclusive elections that were to be done. Rivers was a great success. People thought there would never be elections there until President Buhari became president.

Let me also remind you that Bayelsa State’s election was not concluded at a go. Well, Bayelsa was inconclusive, but so was Rivers until now and we will continue to make the effort. I think INEC under President Buhari has done well. INEC has done well and President Buhari himself has done well and we haven’t frittered away anything. I think INEC is better now and even prepared to deal with the challenges of the electoral and political process. They are two different things. The political process, the political system creates turbulence around the electoral process. I think President Buhari has done well. I think Prof Yakubu and his INEC now have done pretty well and I think Nigerians should praise them for what they have done. It isn’t only to conduct any election in Nigeria. This is the simple, honest truth. Jega did well 2015 and left a huge legacy that this current leadership of INEC has to deal with. I have followed them very, very closely and I tell you if they continue this way, then we can sleep now and pay attention to campaigns and politics and leave elections in safe hands because those people in Abuja in INEC are good people.

What do you think is wrong with our electoral process?

Many things are wrong with our electoral system. Nigerians still believes that you can buy ballots, violence is still a huge factor and it must be reduced or eliminated, Corruption of the electoral officers is still there, the use of security agents is still a factor, substantial Nigerian politicians do not believe that you should trust the electoral process on its own and the verdict of the people. Ninety percent of Nigerian politicians will rig election if they have the opportunity. I don’t care what their party is. I am telling you the honest truth. In fact, let me raise it, 95 percent of Nigerian politicians will rig an election, use violence, use security agents, corrupt the electoral process. There is nothing wrong with the electoral process, what is wrong is in the Nigerian politicians.

Has power of incumbency got nothing to do with it from your experience?

Of course, incumbency gives you certain advantages. You are in control of security agencies, for instance. It gives you an advantage. That doesn’t mean you should abuse that advantage. What counters that tendency is the integrity and the capacity of electoral manager to say no to you. Every incumbent tries to cut corners and use the weight of office to get an advantage. But   we had people like Jega and now Yakubu now in INEC who can look you in the face and say, “sorry sir, but this can’t be done. That will be against the rule or the law, we can’t do that.”

How can we attain that?

We have already.

When the president appoints the chairman, national commissioners and state electoral officers?

We have it already. Jega was appointed by Jonathan.

From your experience as an administrator in INEC what would recommend should be done to complement the efforts of INEC?

Hopefully, we will have better politicians, because the quality of politicians we have now is substantially low. Hopefully in the build up to the 2019 elections, candidates who will want to offer themselves for elective offices will be better educated with greater respect for the electoral process and be more honest. That will substantially reduce the tendency to think “if people don’t like me I can always bye-pass them by compromising INEC.” That is important. Secondly, INEC needs support from the government. They must get all the support  they need technologically as well as in terms of human resources.

Most importantly, you need to give them confidence. I know the guys in INEC now; I know most of them, at least the chairman and national commissioners. Believe me, these people are among the best Nigerians can produce. I think the president did very well in engaging them. These people who money cannot buy. I think they are people who have integrity, name and reputation to protect. What we need is to trust them. All parties must trust them. President Buhari’s party lost elections in Rivers and the heavens didn’t fall. He didn’t call the INEC chairman and some commissioners and say “I hold you responsible”. President Buhari won an election because INEC was willing to allow voters to decide. So, President Buhari should be the first person to respect INEC, because he won an election in spite of attempts to subvert INEC.

INEC stood by the electoral process, not for Buhari or Jonathan, but for the person who won. So, APC and Buhari should understand how important it is to allow the electoral umpire to do its work. If they begin to interfere with INEC, then we are going to have serious problems because the opposition or the remnants of the opposition, PDP, are masters in rigging elections. I am telling you, when we were there, this was a party that perfected election rigging. When I was there, I didn’t know they were rigging elections; otherwise, I could have opposed them.

You mean they rigged the elections behind the Secretary?

Of course, rigging doesn’t take place in Abuja. Election rigging takes place substantially in places far away from Abuja. And you could be sitting in Abuja and swearing left, right and center that there will be no rigging, but because the electoral process is contingent upon the operations and integrity of more than one million people, at any level it can be subverted.  INEC has improved its technology very well and if their card readers, PVCs work and you keep the same chairman, national commissioners and scrupulous Resident Electoral Commissioners, not errand boys that governors keep and just dump there, things would be perfect. The president should not take nominations for RECs from governors.

Really?

Yes. He should hire good RECs the same way he hired national commissioners, not ask governors to submit names which makes room for their PAs or whatever.

He has made his appointments?

No, he has appointed national commissioners, not resident electoral commissioners. Well, some are already on the ground. It’s not all that are going to be re-appointed. But there is a huge number still to be appointed. What I am saying is that he should appoint people of integrity at all levels, people with reputation to protect. In fact, if I have my way, I will advise President Buhari not to take nominations on any office that is important to him from state governors only on the basis that they are state governors. If they have to make nominations, there must be a threshold in those nominations to be made. But this business of saying, “okay bring nominees” and they will bring somebody today and they put him in office should stop. Let them run their state the way they want it and let him run the federal government the way he wants it. But this business of governors bringing in people for very sensitive positions and just dumping them there because the president says bring names would not suffice; you need to bring more than name. You need to bring quality.

What’s the implication of governors submitting nominees for federal appointments?

The implication is that governors can actually subvert federal government by nominating trash. They’ll off-load their difficulties on the president; either people they want to do favours for who are not good enough or opposition that they want to get out of the way. They ignore merit, competence, and loyalty.  They just want the president to hire them so that they can claim credit that they are the ones who facilitated their appointment. So, they are getting rid of their problems and creating problems for Abuja and President Buhari. This should stop. I am happy I have seen instances where he said no and I hope it would continue.