Nigeria Has Gone Backward Since Abacha’s Death
Twenty years after he took the polity by storm by organising the two-million-man march for the late military Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, Daniel Kanu still stands by his action. In this interview, Kanu tells about his ambition to contest the Imo State
Why do you want to be Imo State governor? I have been on a divine journey that didn’t start today. My year of activism started when I was much younger. It has been my desire to offer myself to serve the people. They said it is without vision that people perish. I have always believed in vision. I believe if you don’t play a role in leadership the wrong people will keep leading us. I participated in activism to create awareness and call for vision for the country. But many people didn’t see what I saw back then – during my years of activism 20 years ago. We are worse off today than we were 20 years ago. So I believe time has vindicated me. It is time for me to come out to serve my people to change their fortune.
Obviously, we know that the country is going through a lot of difficulties. Many of these difficulties have been foreseen. Some of us didn’t see it. If we don’t participate (in politics and governance) in changing our fortunes, things will continue to get worse. Hence, I am running for the governorship of Imo State. I believe God has blessed me with what it takes to improve the fortune of our people.
What change do you want to bring about in Imo State?
To bring about change to the society, you have to start from the grass root. You have to start from the core. A lot that has been happening in the past has been more of window dressing. Where you have a society that has high crime rate you don’t just fight crime by deploying more police officers. You fight crime by changing values. You need to engage the youths in positive activities and things like that. There are many things that we need to do in Imo State that are not currently being done. I believe that my leadership will provide these core ingredients that will translate into a moral, peaceful and harmonious society.
Imo State Government said it is providing free education to the people. How do you intend to improve Imo people’s lives?
The pronouncement of free education is one thing and to provide qualitative education is another thing. We can say free education but what quality of teachers do we have? I applaud the free education policy and I intend to continue with the policy of free education. However, I intend to pay more attention to the quality of teachers, train and re-train them, recruit more teachers, and improve on the quality of the classrooms. As a matter of fact, I just came back from the US from consultation with the Mayor of Dallas, Texas. The Deputy Mayor has agreed that the city of Dallas will partner Imo State under my leadership for a student exchange programme that will make a huge impact on the quality of education that our kids get.
Many of our children will be sent overseas to school and bring back the knowledge that will impact the society. We are coming up with many ideas that will transform education in the state. One of which is using the Internet to teach. I will like to have a situation where every classroom will have a computer laboratory. We have to arm our kids to compete in the current global environment. Without computer education, without IT knowledge our children won’t be able to compete. If you give them all the education they want without IT knowledge they will still face challenges and we intend to do something about that.
During the late Gen. Sani Abacha regime, you spearheaded the now infamous two-millionman march for the dictator to transform into a democratic president. Do you regret your action?
We all have our destinies. As far as our past activities are concerned that is our decisions. Everyone has their own way of doing things. As far as I am concerned it is quite unfortunate that we live in a society that is hypocritical; a society that doesn’t see vision. Many people would have seen my ability at the age of 26 to organise the two million Nigerians to get together. In many civilised countries, many people would have seen me as a talented kid to have the confidence to say, ‘Look that administration constituted a National Constitution Conference which put forward vision 2010’. If you remembered there were 248 members: from traditional rulers to academics, to politicians, professionals and Nigerians from all walks of life that gathered at the conference and came up with a document called the Vision 2010. That vision was intended to make Nigeria the largest economy in 2010 and what I felt was ‘here is a vision for the country, why don’t we pursue that vision and see where that gets us in 2010?’ But no; some people will rather throw away the baby with the bath water. They were busy looking at the man that constituted the vision instead of the vision itself.
Unfortunately, the country threw away the vision and things regressed because without vision you perish. You have to know where you are going. You have to have a blueprint of where you want to be 20 years from now. Look at the western world: they think and plan ahead. But we tend to always take the fire-service approach. That is what I was telling Nigerians that many didn’t see what I saw and at the end of the day the whole vision was discarded. Back then the foreign exchange rate was officially at N22 to a dollar. Today, a dollar exchanges for N325. Petrol was N11 per litre then. Today, petrol sells for over N145 per litre. We did a sur-