Igbos’ Agitation For Secession All About 2023 Presidency – Sen Adamu
● Tackling Insecurity Beyond Buhari ● I’ll Fight For LG Autonomy With My Last Breath
Aformer governor of Nasarawa State, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, has said that the agitation in the South East geopolitical zone is all about the 2023 presidency and nothing more.
Adamu, a ranking lawmaker, stated this during an interview on Trust Television.
There has been tension in the SouthEast following the agitation for secession by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), led by Nnamdi Kanu, who was arraigned on Tuesday after he was re-arrest following jumping a treason trial in 2017.
Adamu’s position is coming days after a former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu (PDP, Enugu West), said the Biafran agitation would become unpopular if the Igbo presidency is actualised come 2023.
Adamu said. “This hullabaloo is about the presidency. To them, why must any northerner take the presidential seat after Buhari? I don’t beat about the bush, I’m old enough. I know Nigeria enough to know that at the moment a pronouncement is made, I want to see it pushed to test.”
Reacting to the claim that President Muhammadu Buhari has marginalised other parts of the country in appointments and projects, he said, “If you take all the strategic offices in this country, you would see the Igbo, Yoruba and people from the South South. So, who is being marginalised?”
He further said none of the South-East leaders deserves to head a critical section of the security architecture considering their secession agitations.
Responding to a question on the recent resolutions of the South East leaders on IPOB, he said, “I’m sorry to say that while I welcome such a development, I am not yet convinced; we have to give it time and see what happens. People just don’t sit down and make a pronouncement and expect us to go by it.
“Sometimes you just wonder what they are complaining about.”
He also condemned plots by some leaders in the country to abolish the third tier of government, saying he would resist every attempt to achieve the motive. He berated governors of various states for hijacking local government funds.
“There are a lot of injustices that have been meted out on the local government administration in this country, to the extent that they seem not to even exist.”
A former governor of Nasarawa State and presently, chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, has added his voice on issues confronting Nigeria at the moment, such as insecurity, constitution review, agitation in the South-East, among others. He spoke during an interview on Trust Television recently.
The government of the All Progressives Congress (APC), led by President Muhammadu Buhari, has made agriculture one of its key programmes. As the chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, what have you done to ensure that this vision is achieved?
I want to start by congratulating Media Trust Limited for this very praiseworthy effort at establishing a television station. I have followed with very keen interest, the progress your organisation is making in the media industry. I am really impressed, and I am sure I am not alone in this. The only thing I can do is to pray that the Almighty God would continue to guide your efforts and ensure that the success you dream of is realised.
Having said this, I want to identify myself with the efforts of this administration to ensure that agriculture receives a new lease of life. Since President Muhammadu Buhari came on board in 2015, he made it very clear that agriculture must be placed in the front burner.
So, on our part as members of the National Assembly, we are required to look at it and identify where there are lapses and intervene by way of legislation. We will give every support to ensure that the president’s commitment to agriculture is achieved.
What specific support have you given to agriculture?
Financing. We passed varieties of legislation aimed at giving smallholder farmers the opportunity to have access to funds.
We have heard stories of a lot of problems associated with it. For instance, there is a huge lack of repayment. At a time, the banks were complaining that 70 per cent were not paying back these loans.
Unfortunately, different parts of this country are facing different types of problems, including insecurity, and these have impacted negatively on agriculture.
When he appointed the new service chiefs, the president assured that within a certain period, before the rains, they should be able to solve this problem.
It was only last week that we finalised the screening and clearing of the Chief of Army Staff.
Let’s be very practical. Nobody who is fair to his mind and the government would expect that within three months, these problems we have been going through for the past eight years would become a thing of the past. It is just not practicable. But a lot of progress is being made.
Would you say there’s progress when some states like Niger, Kebbi and Sokoto, which were hitherto relatively peaceful, have come under bandits’ attacks and farmers are deserting their communities?
I think we should be a little more pragmatic on the situation we have at hand. We are not fighting a conventional war. We are dealing with terrorism, which is a very new phenomenon in our security architecture. As such, you need to readjust the focus of your security structure and have a new orientation for your men and women in uniform, who are directly involved in this battle.
We have had these challenges in the North-East for more than a decade; how long will this take?
Nobody prays for it to go for a long time. Nobody who is patriotic and in his true senses would want this to continue.
People are saying that corruption is playing a big part, especially in arms purchase. We have also heard whispers from the National Security Adviser that some Army generals have been compromised. In fact, one of them is presently under court-martial for diverting a lot of millions. What do you have to say?
I am not in the position to deny or endorse that. As a lawyer, I have no place to pre-judge any accused person, and till such an accused person is found guilty in accordance with due process of law, he is innocent before the law.
The fact is that we are in a very deep winter on these security issues and everybody’s hands must be on deck. There’s almost a total collapse of the security outfit, and the terrorists are taking advantage of this.
All the solutions we have been proffering haven’t solved the problems; instead, they have become worse. Why?
I share your sentiment on this, but it takes a process. The media will be the first to criticise if the government tries to do anything outside the norm. The government has to be very systematic and follow due process in approaching these problems, no matter how pressing they are.
But the government is elected to lead, not to fall victim of criticism or recoil when there is a lot of it, what do you think?
The President Buhari I know is not the kind of person who will recoil. He speaks straight, but we are in a very deep trend on this security situation. I try to check my emotions when I am discussing this matter.
You don’t have to lose a relative to understand the gravity of the situation we have in our hands. We have met with service chiefs and visited some of the troops in the battlefront as a committee of the Senate.
It is one thing to wish this away and quite another to face the realities of getting it down within the timeframe that everybody will be happy.
Part of the realities is that governors in your party, like that of Niger State, have been expressing a lot of anger and disappointment with the federal government, which has the exclusive right over matters of defence, over the way it is handling this matter. People are now resorting to self-help, which itself will be dangerous because people are arming themselves in all the villages for self defence because they feel there’s a failure of the state. Are you not all concerned?
Inasmuch as I appreciate the concerns and appreciate what the governor of Niger State is saying, the fact is that no country in the world will face a situation like this and sleep few seconds without treating it.
There are so many diversionary issues. It is easy to say we made a promise to secure the country and to ensure the welfare of our citizens, but this is not in a vacuum. Buhari has no control over the migration of these terrorists. On the control of the borders, there is a limit to what he can say, you and I know.
Immigration will tell you how many borders and potential entry points we have; not just for smugglers, but also for terrorists.
The government has been trying, but the biggest problem is the fact that we have not been able to get the totality of our citizenry to stand up and be patriotic.
This security situation is everybody’s challenge and concern. It is not a matter of anybody folding hands and saying the Buhari government must take care of it. We are all part and parcel of the challenges.
What can communities do? Last week, somebody said there were bandits at the outskirts of our villages. And there are soldiers in the villages but they have never bothered to take the fight to the bandits. Do you have to wait for them to kidnap students before you go after them?
In this situation, I expect everybody to stand with the government instead of engaging in diversionary criticisms. Let us be together.
I cannot comment on the allegation that some terrorists have occupied certain locations because I don’t have any intelligence on it. I don’t have anything to confirm it. In the National Assembly we only deal with what comes to us.
It appears you are trying to absolve the National Assembly and pushing everything to the executive.
No, I don’t go for blame games. I stand shoulder to shoulder with this government and the president.
But government officials sit in safe places with security agents while ordinary people are dying, yet government is saying it is not being given enough cooperation, what’s your take?
I cannot pretend. I have heard various complaints from every part of this country. But one thing I know is that as lawmakers, we have had many sessions on this matter, but we are not the end producers of what it takes to bring peace from the battlefront. I am not a member of the security committee.
I know the commitment President Buhari has in this matter, but the elite are the ones posing the greatest problems, criticising the government.
Do you think criticisms are not good?
You can criticise positively, there is nothing wrong with that. No good government would say it doesn’t want criticisms, but it should not be negative. The sooner we realise