‘Why It Took Buhari So Long to Constitute His Cabinet.’.. Cont’dfromPg.74
political office. How are you going to probe me? That is the truth of the matter. If you want to start a probe today, a person who had no access to power, who had no access to public office, you can’t bring him in.
Two, we want anybody that is being probed by this government today to come and say I am innocent, I am only being persecuted. We’ve not had one. On the contrary they have been giving all kinds of flimsy excuses.
Of course, if they pleaded guilty they will go to jail straight away. And we’re saying that these are the facts, they were never manufactured. Thirdly, it is not correct to say those who have been accused of corruption, once they move over to the APC they are forgiven their sins.. That is not true. They should tell me just one example of anybody who has a case in court and that case has been withdrawn just because he has moved over to APC; It is what I call insinuations, it’s not true.
Then, again, anybody that wants to fight corruption must be ready to see corruption fight back. In the last two years of anti-corruption, we’ve seen corruption fighting back very vigorously and viciously because a lot of money is still out there; we’ve seen cases of when we are fighting corruption we went to somebody’s house and almost $10 million was found in a refrigerator when they got there. We’ve discovered another $146 million in another account which had no owner. Within two months of our whistle blower policy, we’ve been able to retrieve N8billion, $160 million. I mean these are not things that we are imagining or that we are fabricating.
You talked about what you called trial by media; what is called trial by media? If I go to your house today and I find $10 million in your fridge, won’t the media cover it? We don’t do media trial, what happens is that when things happen, the media will have to report it. Those are part of the half truths and outright falsehoods that are being bandied out, and it is always easier when you are out there to bandy these things, you don’t have to substantiate them, you just throw them in the air. But let anybody come and tell me today that X was charged to court for corruption and he decamped to APC and the Federal Government withdrew all the charges, then I will be able to respond.
Apart from the military era, there are views that this present government has exhibited high-level of impunity in terms of disobedience to court orders. I will give two examples, the Shiite leader, Sheikh El Zakzaky, and former NSA, Col Ibrahim Dasuki (rtd), who are being held despite court orders that they should be released. Even though government has a right to appeal or ask for stay of execution, until that is granted, that order stands. Why has the government been flouting court orders affecting this two personalities?
Every government in the world will at a point in time balance individual freedom with national security. Let me take the first case of El Zakzaky. I think people are just being mischievous; people have expressed a lot of ignorance in respect of El Zakzaky. Yes, El Zakzaky has not been released but where is El Zakzaky today? Is he in prison custody? Is he in police custody? No. He is in a house provided by government with his family.
Against his consent?
Why? It is because the court order said we must release him within 45 days, rebuild his house and there is nobody today within Kaduna State or anywhere else that wants to accept El Zakzaky as a neighbour. So who do you release him to? For him to be killed? So, he is in protective custody with his family and this is one thing people don’t say. Like I said, at a point in time, a government will be faced with this kind of dilemma, so how much rule of law do you want to balance against national security? In the case of Dasuki, Dasuki received two transfers in one day totalling $1.2 billion and he has refused to say where that money was sent to, who was given that money and the government said, where is that money? As we speak today he has refused to tell. Now, $1.2 billion is a lot of money. Who can guarantee that if he is released today he will not abscond? And with $1.2 billion at his disposal, is any government safe? It is good when people start talking about human rights and rule of law, but as a government, that is responsible for territorial integrity of this country, at times you have to take the heat because you want to ask yourself, if such an accused person is released and he disappears, and this is a country that we are still battling with terrorism, this is a country that we’re still battling with insurgency, and he links up with other enemies of government with an arsenal of $1.2 billion, would the people not blame us? So, I think these are high profile cases. On the surface it appears like a government that violates rule of law, but in reality it is a dilemma for government because we must balance individual freedom with national security. But I will say overall that we’re not a government of impunity
How long will this last?
Like I said, any government in the world will at a time be faced with this kind of dilemma, and we do not know, I won’t say we don’t know how long it will last or how long it will take to release him, but you see, frankly speaking, it is a situation that is being reviewed daily. I just hope we will get to a situation where we will be able to balance individual freedom with national security.
There are other things that agitate people’s minds. The president nominated the headship of EFCC and another agency of the executive wrote to the parliament that the decision taken by the president was wrong, that the person that was nominated was not fit and proper to be made to head of that organisation. Not once, but twice, thereby stalling the process of what ordinarily should have been a smooth consideration. That is not even the problem; the president was expected to either call that agency of government to order and say this is my nominee, so stop writing report on him, or to withdraw the nomination and say based on this damning report I am dropping you. But nothing of such happened and it has created an impression that the president has lost control of his government. How would you react to this as the spokesman of the government?
You talk as if we are not in this country. You see, it is the responsibility of the Executive (arm of government) to nominate and it is that of the Legislative arm to confirm but the fact that I have sent your name once, twice, it does not mean I cannot send your name three or four times. May his soul rest in peace, the late former Minister of Aviation, Babalola Borishade, his name was presented three or four times because this is a democracy, it is a collaboration between two arms of government; so Mr. President has the prerogative to say let me see whether I can convince them and Mr. President has confidence in his nominee and that is why he is returning the nomination, because Mr. President has confidence and trust in his nominee. He probably feels there has been some misunderstanding and that is why he is re-nominating him; and like I said we saw what happened when former President Obasanjo nominated late Borishade.
In the case of Aborishade it was because there was an issue between the president and the parliament, they didn’t want Aborishade. In this particular case, it is what I will call inter agency issue, an Executive agency wrote faulting the nomination made by the president; that is the point I am making, and the Senate based its decision on the letter.
Mr. President probably has information that even an agency may not have.
Do you know if he has done that? As Mr. President, you have access to information that even some of the agencies don’t have. You don’t even know the content of that letter, the president probably understands it better and said, okay, I have seen your letter but I am still going to nominate this person.
This administration has done well in the area of fighting terrorism and tackling insurgency in the North East, we saw that the nation was moving towards the precipice just before the election. But another front has also opened up in the form of herdsmen versus farmers, and it is killing people daily and displacing communities and rendering people jobless. It has also led to high cost of living because farmers are afraid to go to farm and prices of food stuffs have gone up. Many do not believe this government has a clue on how to solve the problem. We have had about grazing routes, we have heard about ranching, but none has been properly articulated into a policy statement. Does this government have a clue on how to solve herdsmen/farmers clashes?
The issue of herdsman and farmers is not the responsibility of the federal government alone, it is the responsibility of the local, state and federal government and the three tiers of government must work together to find a solution to it. I am glad to say that many states today have seen that this is largely a local problem and they are finding their solutions to it.
Edo State for instance have come out with a programme of finding a grazing territory whereby water and grass will be provided for the cattle and any herdsman found anywhere outside the grazing areas, we will now know that these are marauders. Kaduna State has also come out with a combination of both grazing land and ranch; because at the end of the day it is about two communities that used to live together in peace and harmony then what went wrong went wrong? Oyo State too has come up with a very good formula; we regret the needless deaths but I can assure Nigerians that everything is being done to return things to normalcy. We recognise it as a problem and we are working round the clock to find a solution to it.
And then there is also the international angle to this problem with the free movement of people within the West Africa sub region as a result of the ECOWAS protocol. You cannot even tell the difference between the herdsmen from Cameroun, Niger or Senegal and those from Nigeria, and these are issues that we are going to address both at the African Union and ECOWAS level.
The release of Chibok Girls is another area where this administration has done well. Kids were taken away under a past administration, but this government has rescued almost half of the girls and they are undergoing the process of rehabilitation. Not only the family, the whole world is happy and they are hoping that the rest would be rescued. But then, there are also other people that were abducted, women, children and men that were liberated when this government dislodged Boko Haram fighters from Sambisa Forest but nothing has been heard about them. Is government catering for them, in terms of rehabilitation, like the Chibok Girls?
Tokunbo, I am happy that you raised this issue, you are one of the few journalists that have raised this issue and I am happy that you did, because besides the 106 girls that have been freed, we’ve been able to free more than 10,000 children, women and elderly people from the captivity and daily we are getting more and more people, but nobody speaks about it. And every day we are working on rehabilitating them, we provide schools, we provide healthcare services for them, we’re rebuilding towns. The truth of the matter is that people fail to appreciate the enormity and the scale of carnage that went on during the six years of Boko Haram and that it is not a crisis that affects only Nigeria; as a matter of fact about seven countries in the Lake Chad basin are affected so what Nigeria is grappling with today is a humanitarian crisis of global proportion and it is to the credit of this government and the state governments involved that they have been able to address these issues frontally. So when we even ask for international support, it is because it is not a problem that is limited to Nigeria alone. Chadians, Nigeriens, Cameroonians, many of them are all in our IDP camps; many of them are also victims. We are talking of an area that encompasses almost 20 million people from seven countries and daily we’re getting more and more people and as we are get more and more captives out, so also is the burden of how to resettle and rehabilitate them and this is what the government is facing squarely.
Are you getting the required assistance from international agencies?
We’re getting assistance and I must say the international donors are doing great but we need better coordination among the international donors, the Ministry of Budget and National Planning is doing a yeoman’s job trying to get a better coordination among the international donors.
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