Onwubiko : Amnesty International Report on Nigeria Military is One-sided
Executive Director of Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), Emmanuel Onwubiko, is a former Federal Commissioner of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and member of the Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peace in Northern Niger
We have a new administration, which is historic, being the first time a democratic opposition is forming the government at the centre after a successful general election. What is your reaction and what are your expectations?
Yes, I think the event of March 28, 2015, that is the general elections that saw the emergence of the then opposition candidate Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) as the winner is quite phenomenal. And for the fact that the then incumbent President (Goodluck Jonathan) conceded and accepted his political misfortunes and has hid himself out quietly and handed over on May 29th, 2015 is significant. It has brought a lot of goodwill to Nigeria; it has actually given Nigeria another window of respectability in international community; because when that event happened, I was in faraway South East Asia, in Malaysia. I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when the former president of Nigeria accepted to concede defeat to the All Progressives Congress (APC), and a lot of people were actually discussing the matter and were impressed as far as Asia. This means that the event that happened in Nigeria reverberated across the world and it was for political reasons, it wasn’t for the common reason that everybody usually associate with Nigeria, especially with the issue of drug trafficking or human trafficking; but this time around, it is something that happened to be a political phenomenon taking place in Nigeria. Meanwhile, with the swearing-in of the current president, Nigerians expect him to hit the ground, Nigerians expects him to tackle the immediate challenge of insecurity, and Nigerians expects him to use the manifesto of his party. It is expected that his party must have formulated the best practical approach towards a total resolution and defeat of the armed terrorist that have ravaged the greater parts of the North East of Nigeria. Nigerians also expects him to have by now started implementing those policies. A lot of Nigerians are not very keen about this junketing that he has just started again, this issue of travelling to Chad, Niger Republic and the rest of them; if he has a homegrown solutions to this terrorism in the North East, let him start it especially given the fact that he is from the North and that is the advantage he has to use. He has to use the advantage of talking to traditional institutions in those conflict afflicted areas to find a way of making it impossible for the Boko Haram terrorists to have the capacity to recruit fresh members, because the members of the traditional institutions in the North are quite influential in terms of the grassroots and members of the leadership of the different religious groups. He has to also find a way of bringing them on board and find a way of equipping our military. It is quite important that the military of Nigeria is sufficiently equipped, trained and motivated to battle the scourge of terrorism that has unleashed a reign of havoc that has led to the killing of over 20,000 Nigerians in the last three or four years. So, it is important that the president begins to handle all those measures. Then, there are several other expectations that Nigerians have tabled before the current government; the issues of basic infrastructure, the health infrastructure, the educational infrastructure, the roads network in Nigeria, because most roads especially federal roads, all across the country are in terrible shape and I think the current government has its work cut out and there is no time for playing mundane politics. This is a period of reconstruction and rebuilding Nigeria because Nigeria is in a state of near anarchy and a state of near collapse.
The administration is just about two weeks now, are you impressed with its performance so far? I know you have cited the issue of unnecessary international travelling, even I read somewhere a critic suggested that instead of the President hitting the ground running, he has only hit the ground crawling?
I think the current president has a very monumental goodwill from across the various segments of the Nigerian society and from across a certain level of international community. He enjoys a lot of goodwill but I think it is not in the best of shape that he has started. For instance, it’s over a week and the President has yet to appointed his key aides, chief of staff and all this other important aides that will assist him in terms of bureaucracy and the rest of them. I quite understand for the fact that the president may be waiting for the National Assembly, which has just been inaugurated, to be on board before he could submit the names of his ministers, but I don’t think the president has actually started even though it’s quite too early to assess the performance of the current administration. However, Nigerians are in a hurry to see this government begin to work and government should deemphasize the issue of excessive foreign travels. Foreign travels are almost of no consequence, because it has never helped us and he should concentrate on how to rebuild our devastated economy because the economy is in a very terrible shape, there is general insecurity, we have huge problems that the president should sit down on his desk and solve these problems.
Talking about insecurity, during the campaigns, they seemed to have condemned the immediate past administration on how they tackled the ongoing war against terror but the current government seems to be following the same blueprint it so criticized its predecessor for…
(Cuts in) I don’t think he will follow the same path...
I know, but take for example the visit and seeking of cooperation from our neighbours within the Lake Chad Basin area, it is the same strategy he castigated the former President for adopting during his campaign and the video has gone viral as we speak. Do you think he is right to be following the same strategy he seems to have condemned or is it an issue of reality setting in now?
As at the time they are doing the campaign and you know that campaign is different from the real politics. Then he was asking Nigerians to have trust in him because Nigeria lost confidence in the last government, virtually everybody, including if you are not mistaken, even the family members of the former president were not comfortable with the way he was tackling the issues of insecurity and nobody is happy about that. So, Nigerians wanted to hear a different story and they got it from Buhari. Now Buhari has got into office and he is facing the reality, as you said, now is real politics and he has seen that governance is a continuum and I don’t think that there is anything wrong in that when he was campaigning and what he is doing now.
I mean the issue of integrity...?
(Cuts in) No! There are even other models that the current president have to put in place; for instance how do we secure our international borders? Those borders right from Katsina, Adamawa, Sokoto and the rest of them that link us to Niger Republic, Chad and Cameroon are so porous. There was a time we suggested at the level of our group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), we suggested that government should think of how to fence-up our borders just like the way the Israeli government have been able to protect their own territory where they make use of the solid traditional borders. Let there be a separation and a clear demarcation between Nigeria and these other countries.
Have you considered the fact that the cost maybe so much, especially given the state of our economy?
Yes. The cost might be so much because Nigeria has a large land mass but there is no amount of money that is invested into protecting our country that is something that would be too much. If you compare it to the amount of damage, havoc, violence and the bloodshed that have taken place over the last three years, there is no amount of money that would be committed into protecting our borders that will be too much. There is another suggestion that may not necessarily require that we build fences across our borders; we can use IT mechanism, we can use technology to monitor movements, because the problem we have with our borders is that a lot of freelance arm suppliers come in through those unprotected borders. They have not given serious concerns in the areas of arms proliferation where there are a lot of arms and weapons that are circulated all over the place and across the country from these borders. I think the president should think of how to protect our borders first and foremost because there is nothing wrong in working with your neighbouring communities but the issue is that he has not even settled down to see what we can do at our own level. How can we equip our army? To begin to junket all over the place is not appropriate? And I don’t even understand the reason for Nigeria allowing the Headquarters of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) that are fighting Boko Haram to be sighted in N’djamena, Chad, whereas the Boko Haram problem is faced in our country. So why is the MNJTF Headquarters not located in Baga or even Maiduguri, Borno state?
I learnt that the other Francophone member countries cited the issue of insecurity on the Nigerian side, they think that Baga is not secured that is why they located it in Chad?
That is not the reason because the other time that we suggested that Nigerian government should consider building barracks in Sambisa Forest, they said Sambisa Forest would be very expensive and very wide. How wide is Sambisa Forest? Or is it as wide as Abuja that you cannot build barracks nor have military presence located in those places? If they are saying Baga is risky for the multinational office to be based in that place, are you saying that human beings that live there should face the consequences instead