Shittu: Buhari Has Wrestled Corruption to the Ground
Clearly one of President Muhammadu Buhari’s main man, having come a long way since their days together in the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Alhaji Adebayo Shittu, currently Minister of Communications, in this interview with Bolaji Adebiyi
Recently you flagged off the campaign for the re-election of President Buhari in Ibadan and said the President had done well in almost three years. Has he really performed well? Let me start by correcting that impression. I did not start the re-election campaign. What I merely did was to commission the office of the Muhammadu Buhari Dynamic Support Group. A few months back, I was made the Chairman, Board of Trustees. I then felt that as the board’s chairman, coming from the Southwest, charity must begin from home. I thought we must have a physical presence of that group in the South-west and you know very well that Ibadan has always been the headquarters of the politics of the region. That was what we did. Secondly, I have been in politics, with all humility, for 40years. I became a lawyer in 1979, even before then, I had been a member of the then Committee of friends of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. I was the only student member of that committee and consequently I had the privilege of being part of those who formulated the four cardinal programmes of what eventually became the Unity Party of Nigeria. I contested the House of Assembly election at that time from the law school and I won. Since then I have never been on sabbatical from politics except during the military intervention in politics. So, I have been known over this years as a serious minded person who never tells lies; who will not deceive people; who would not be intimidated; who has always been principled and would tell you as it is.
As a minister of the Federal Republic, therefore, I didn’t become minister because I paid money through anybody, I became a minister because of my antecedent in politics. So when I speak I say only the truth. I stand to be corrected or challenged by anybody, what this government has done, in a number of areas in three years, is more than what PDP has done in 16 years and I give you simple examples. The last road budget of the PDP government before it left office was in the neighbourhood of N2b. Last year alone this government spent N265b on roads alone. On electricity the best that we ever had under a government was less than 5,000 MW, today you have 7,000 MW. We are also on course to deliver 3,500 MW more in Mambilla within the next few years. We knew how much money was invested in electricity during the PDP years, what came out of it.
This government has commenced railway building, new railways, not the standard gauge, which has existed from Lagos to Kano to Maiduguri and so on; now we are building new standard gauge railways from Calabar to Lagos, from Lagos to Kano, from Kano to Maiduguri, from Maiduguri to Calabar. These are ongoing projects, which are verifiable.
In the Agriculture sector alone, Nigeria used to be a dumping ground for all kinds of rice from everywhere, which consequently killed local rice production; today we have stopped or eliminated the import up to 90% of the rice.
Today, consequent upon the revolution that we are doing in agriculture, more than 8 million new jobs have been created. You can go to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to confirm this.
Are you not attributing too much to the APC government, because virtually all of these examples that you have given are buildings on the foundation laid by the PDP?
Which capacity has been there? If you won’t believe me then you must provide better recorded evidence of what had existed. In fact the new thing we are also doing is the mixture of the sources of electricity. All of these policies were on ground.
Well, it is up to you to believe what you want to believe. I am talking as a member of government who knows how many memos have been brought to government for contracts on all of these things. Go to the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing; go to even Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and find these things out.
You talked about the number of jobs that has been created but the NBS record does not confirm what you have just said. It said 8 millions of jobs had been lost in the last two and a half years. In which area? I spoke on jobs being created in the Agriculture sector. We are taking about the entire economy.
I said in the Agriculture sector alone we have created more than 8 million jobs and the CBN and NBS will tell you.
Again for the first time in the history of this country, in one fell swoop the federal government created 200,000 graduate jobs through N-power. In one day another 300,000 are being processed making 500, 000. It has never happened in the history of this country that government will specifically create an avenue for graduates to get jobs and the target is 500,000.
Statistics show that thousands of Nigerians were killed in the last few months by criminal gangs. What is going on? You have to bring your statistics. Do you know
for many years Boko Haram persisted? Do you know how many people were killed by Boko Haram alone? Did you care to find out? You should because Boko Haram persisted for more than 10 years and you need to know how many people were being killed on a monthly basis in mosques, churches, markets, garages, and motor parks. Has that changed in the last two and a half years?
Let me tell you, on security we did promise that this government will fight insurgency to a halt. Before this government came on board, Boko Haram was in firm control of 14 local governments areas spread across three states.
We are told they are still holding positions. The local government chairmen recently said that...
That what? At that time we were talking about, there were no policemen in these local government areas, all of them had ran away. There were no local government officials, all of them had all ran away. Even communities have been deserted to IDP camps. Do you still have IDP camps today? Do you still have Boko Haram hoisting its flag anywhere on the Nigerian soil again? These are generally the claims of your administration.
Jonathan’s Chief of Army staff, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minima, which you inherited, said those councils had been cleared before the elections. That that
was why elections held there and huge returns made for President Buhari. Whatever happened during the PDP government, this government was expected to change it. But the level of insecurity is still high.
What is the level of insecurity in Abuja for instance? What is the level of insecurity in Benin? What is the level of insecurity in Lagos and Ibadan where I come from and so on? There are still killings, it is like Nigeria has become a killing field.
Have you ever seen any country where there are no killings? In the US, how many killings on a daily basis? I have said one thing which you are free to believe me or not believe me. My identity has been defined by the fact that I say it as it is. I will not tell lies and whatever I should tell Mr President as fact I will tell him. Nobody is perfect, we don’t have perfect situation but if you are talking of killings there is no country where there is no killing. But that is not justifying any killing because as a lawyer I am trained to detest extra judicial killings. So if killings happen I will never be happy. But unfortunately, on the recent killings by herdsmen, people get excited at the current victims more than the previous victims. The herdsmen came from Sokoto to Zamfara in search of fresh grass and they were similarly killing people in Zamfara, in Sokoto and taking away herds of cows. In fact statistics showed that they killed more people in Zamfara than in Benue. So how do you tribalise such a thing?