Nigeria is inching close to the next general election. Yet, a thick cloud of uncertainty is still hanging over the polity about the future of the present democratic dispensation. The state of insecurity is threatening the very basis of the co-existence of the various ethnic nationalities lumped together to form the geographical entity called Nigeria. In this interview, Senator Joseph Waku, takes a review of the political environment and expresses concern over what he describes as politicization of the most crucial national institution-the army, warning that the nation is on the edge of precipice.
His words: “Jonathan will want to sit somewhere and announce the result using the military, but Nigerians will stop him. Two things will happen in 2015. Jonathan will lose election and go home freely or he will sit in the villa to announce result and there will be civil war.” Events of the next few months will confirm or dismiss the doom prediction of a failed state.
Excerpts:
What is your assessment of the political environment in the country today?
Nigeria has collapsed. We don’t have government; we only have people in offices. And in a situation like this, it is difficult to make a good assessment. I watched the council of state this morning and I shook my head. We have leaders and our country is rotting away. They used money to bribe members of a State Assembly to remove a governor. They have abandoned their responsibility to protect the lives and property of the citizens. It is a big shame. They used $2 million to bribe members of the National Assembly to defect to their political party.
That is not governance but corruption. Yet, we have people who want to compare themselves with the leaders of the world. I am sick and tired of this mess. This is not what we bargained for. We bargained for democracy in this country, we bargained for good governance, we bargained for genuine improvement in the lives of the downtrodden. Democracy was meant to be for the people and by the people. But regrettably, it has turned to the government of the few for the privileged. When you get into a country where you hear the governors addressing themselves as executive governors, you will agree with me that dictatorial tendency is about to be introduced into the system. There is nothing like executive governor anywhere. Even in the era of military, military administrators did not address themselves as executive governors. If anybody would address himself as executive governor, it would have been military, not the civilian. For one, you did not vote for them (military administrators).
Two, they have no legislature. Yet, they never addressed themselves as executive administrators. In this country, our girls were captured over 100 days ago, they are kept within our territory and nothing has happened to the perpetrators of the dastardly act and yet our President is happy going about dancing in some states in the name of seeking for second term. Because they wanted to conduct an election, a duly elected governor was stopped by the military from moving from point A to point B and they saw nothing wrong in that. Something is wrong somewhere. I don’t blame Chief of Army Staff or Chief of Naval Staff; they are all under the command of the Commander-In-Chief. So, when they say the order is from above, it is from the Commander-In-Chief. Have you heard the Commander-In-Chief summon any of these service chiefs and asked them why they did what they did? Look at what happened in Adamawa, they sent military to go and invade the house of the Chief Judge of the state and conscripted him into signing a document. Sooner or later, they will begin to look for you to demand for your reasons for publishing this kind of report. Sooner or later, they will begin to look for me to demand an explanation for the boldness I have to say all I have said. Only God will protect us. I can never stop voicing out my opinion. It may not matter, but posterity will judge.
In view of the protracted Boko Haram insurgency, some people have raised issues about the huge financial expenditure being committed to fighting the war, particularly in the North Eastern part of the country. What is your take on this?
I don’t agree with you that so much money is spent in the North East. The so much money pulled out of the coffers of the federation is being kept by security agencies by the directive of the Commander-In-Chief. Let nobody deceive you. What happened to our 20 billion dollars? This money is for preparation for the 2015 general election. I am afraid of what will happen in 2015. May the good Lord protect us.
But the National Assembly recently set up a committee to look into some of these missing funds. Don’t you have confidence in your colleagues?
I am not comfortable to talk about my colleagues in the National Assembly not because I am a coward. But let me give you a little bit of hints about the rot in this most corrupt National Assembly Nigeria has ever produced under the leadership of David Mark. Nothing will go right in that place because Mark himself knows that he did not win the election that brought him to the office. Has the leadership of National Assembly questioned what happened to a democratically elected governor who was compelled to take an order from the military? Has the leadership questioned why the Speaker of the House of Representatives was subjected to an embarrassing search by the military even with all the security aides and other paraphernalia of office attached to him? Let me tell you the most shocking of what one of my colleagues told me.
He told me he has never sponsored a bill because you must bribe the Chairman, committee on business rules before your bill is read. A colleague who is a serving senator told me that your bill will never see the light of the day if you refuse to bribe the chairman, Senate Committee on Business and Rules. So, he sees no basis of sponsoring any bill. In particular, if you come from the opposition, it will never see the light of the day. So, he decided not to sponsor a bill. The bills are no longer meant for good governance. And I held back and shouted. It is embarrassing. I have to go to Church to pray for this country and also ask my Muslim brothers to use the period of Ramadan to pray for this great country.
We are besieged by corrupt leaders. The last hope of the people in a democratic dispensation is the National Assembly. If the legislators can be used for these anomalies, where do we go from here? When the former Senate President, Adolfus Wabara, was accused of asking for money to pass a budget in our time, we rather encouraged the government to propose a people’s oriented budget. That is to say, budget for water, education, health and security. These were the cardinal objectives and principles of our legislature. Obasanjo wasn’t happy with us because we refused to do what pleased him. We knew we were democratically elected by the people and so we were determined to serve the people. But today, there are corrupt legislators both in the state and National Assemblies. It is a shame!
How do you see the suggestion in some quarters calling for the extension of the tenure of the president, if the security situation does not permit the conduct of a peaceful election in 2015?
We are not in a war situation. Are we in a war? If the security situation does not permit the conduct of the election, then there will be a need for declaration of a state of emergency which means the President himself will be out, and the Chief Judge of the Federation will take charge to organize elections. How can you be a judge in your own court? So, if he comes to tell Nigerians from the horse’s mouth that he can no longer manage the security problem, then he has to go. And in that circumstance, there will be an interim government. So, let nobody deceive you.
Do you see any sinister motive about the national conference?
The national conference is an extension of PDP caucus. It does not have anything to do with the Nigerian people. It is an illegal body; it has no bearing with the law. It is an exercise in futility.
Even with the huge sum of money sunk into it?
That is due to administrative incompetence and corrupt practices that have engulfed the government of the day. It will not work. Is it different from Oputa panel? Is it different from the National Political Reform Conference Obasanjo set up? For anything that is done there to become legal, it has to be sent to the National Assembly and subjected to thorough constitutional amendment. I watched some fools saying that the constitution itself expired. By implication, they are indicting the President that he has no business being in office.
People speak with both sides of their mouths. This conference is an extension of PDP caucus. It has nothing to do with good governance of this country. It is meant to serve the interest of few individuals that are there. It is a good national cake sharing for themselves and their families. It has no legal backing and it cannot. To make a constitution, you need two-thirds of the federation. You need at least 24 states to pass it. The PDP doesn’t have that much. They do not have two-thirds requirement of the constitution either in the House of Representatives or the Senate. So, why are they wasting their time? Obasanjo’s third term agenda was defeated not by the men sitting in the chamber; it was defeated by Nigerians. Those Nigerians are still alive. If you bring obnoxious and vindictive laws to make you a tin God, we will stop you. The God Almighty you worship knows your thinking. He knows that it is not in the best interest of the country; so, you will not scale through.
So far, President Goodluck Jonathan has not declared his intention to run for second term but campaign is going underground. What can you say about that?
We are in a corrupt society. It is not supposed to be so, if we have to follow the INEC guidelines. But if the head is rotten, the shoulders can never stand. Jonathan knows that he has lost out. Jonathan has nothing left in the head for another three or four weeks after May 29. So, if you give him ten more years, Nigeria will become more distressed, misused and abused. You can see a clear indiscipline and lawlessness from the top because he does not have what it takes to run the country. And nobody around him is courageous enough to say this is wrong. When a dictator begins to emerge, he recruits the yes-men.
2015 is drawing nearer by the day. Do you see Nigeria having a credible election?
Jonathan will want to sit somewhere and announce the result using the military but Nigerians will stop him. Two things will happen in 2015. Jonathan will lose election and go home freely or he will sit in the villa to announce result and there will be civil war.
What is the prospect of APC winning the next general election?
We have challenges in APC which is normal in any political party. There is nothing that has happened to this country that is greater than the emergence of APC. The PDP is worried. As a matter of fact, the mechanism Jonathan adopts now by using the military gives the signal that there is an alternative government in the waiting and that is APC. That is why they are jittery using all kinds of undemocratic norms to stop our party. We are going to take over the Federal Government of Nigeria and we are going to win sizeable states in the federation, given one man, one vote. Nigerians are fed up with PDP. They said we were not going to merge. They said we were strange bedfellows, but we proved them wrong. We became birds of the same fellows flocking together. When we were holding our national convention, they said the party would be torn apart. I was a member of the national convention committee. I took charge of the election. If I drop dead today, I will be so happy knowing that Nigerians are ready for change. That day, there was heavy rain at the convention and from the top leadership of the party to the lowest, nobody moved out of the rain. Even those in the state box were more soaked than those of us in the rain. Yet, nobody showed any sign of discomfort. Voters stood on the line.
Even when a canopy fell on my feet and it was swollen, I was still there. My Chairman, Baraje said, ‘hai, Senaor Waku, take a seat.’ I said sir, don’t worry, we would do it. That is the commitment I saw Nigerians demonstrate. APC is getting stronger. There is only one thing that can stop APC. That is imposition of wrong candidate. If we have people’s choice as our candidates, APC will beat PDP hands down. They have the money, they don’t have the brain. We don’t have the money, we have the people, we have the brain and we have God on our side. They don’t think about God. God has left them.
You know you have already lost one states.
(Cuts in)….We lost one state because the people spoke and that is how people are going to speak in several states, including the PDP states in the next election. If you are a governor and you disconnect with the people, they will vote you out. I was in Ekiti for seven days. I was involved and I am going to submit my report to the national secretariat of the party that gave me an assignment to go there. It was the same APC that voted out APC because of disconnect with the people. I leave it at that.
Then, how are you going to go through the hurdles of electing an acceptable candidate?
Any candidate we field in APC will beat Jonathan.That means you don’t need to campaign again.(Cuts in)…. Any candidate, I repeat, will beat Jonathan. Jonathan has already campaigned against himself in our favour.
How?
You are asking me how. Don’t you see the state of insecurity, the stealing, corruption and general maladministration of the country? Jonathan is hanging on the military only to stay in power. And I bet you, we are going to resist him.
What do you think is responsible for the persistent state of insecurity?
Jonathan is creating it. And we know it. At the appropriate time, Nigerians will know of it.
You earlier spoke about Adamawa State. Are you saying that PDP had a hand in the impeachment of former governor Murtala Nyako?
Who controls the soldiers?
Who is the Commander-In-Chief?
You want to say that it is the Minister of Defence that deployed military there? Minister of Defence is a very decent human being. He is not happy with what is happening but as a trained General, he does not want to quit. Jonathan has politicized the military. He has privatized the military. He has ethnicised the military. He had to pick his brother who has no knowledge of military command. And so he had to retire senior trained officers to pave way for him. He does not know how to run the country. You don’t run a country to suit you. You run the country to promote the integrity and wellbeing of the nation.
It is alleged that APC has a strong leaning with a particular religion. Isn’t it so?
Meaning what? Meaning what?
You know, of course, that Nigeria is a secular state.
Yes, it is. So, if I am a Muslim and my son is a Muslim and we belong to the same party, I should drive him out of the party because they will say it is a Muslim party? If I am a Christian and my son is a Christian, my wife is a Christian, my father-in-law is a Christian, I will drive them away so that they will not nickname that party a Christian party? It is all trash. And it is because they have no message to tell Nigerians. Nigerians are too intelligent to be cajoled into religious politics. Is the National Chairman of our party-John Oyegun, a Muslim? Go and look at the composition of our national officers, there are more Christians than Muslims. Middle Belt Forum is dying fast because the concept of the founding fathers is being converted into religion. We are aware that Nigeria is no longer like the days of MKO and Baba Gana Kingibe Muslims/Muslim ticket. Those days are gone. Today, Nigerians are more sensitive about religion and APC is fully aware of that.
Do you have internal mechanism in your party to ensure internal democracy?
Yes, we have. Yes, we have challenges like every other party. But for APC to send Jonathan packing, all it needs is a free and fair primary. If you look at our convention, we encouraged consensus. Where consensus failed, we did election in a very transparent manner. The distortion of democracy in Nigeria today was caused by Obasanjo. But I still give one thing to him, he is a strong leader. He is a hardworking leader. He is vindictively hardworking, viciously strong, and unrepentantly a dictator.
But his activities in recent time tend to suggest that he is having romance with APC?
Obasnjo is a free citizen of this country. He can join any political party he wants, provided he will work within the rules and the norm of the party. I am not against him. You can’t take it away from him; he is a hardworking leader. In fact, I have never seen a leader in this country that worked as hard as Obasanjo. Even at his age, Obasanjo has only three hours to sleep. And the next day he goes to meeting, you will never see him dosing. He is alert; I give it to him. But he does not imbibe the norms of democratic dispensation and he is not ready to learn.
Obasanjo thought he had done Nigeria a favour by becoming president. He regretted handing over power to former President Shehu Shagari, most especially when he saw Ghadaffi, Mubarak and others staying in power for 30 to 40 years. That was why he wanted third term. If he had his way then, there wouldn’t have been any party now.
He would have declared a state of emergency. Obasanjo knew that Umaru Yar’Adua was sick. What he had in mind was the clause in the constitution. If a leading political candidate dies, the president will suspend the elections for a period of three months and search for a new candidate. Obasanjo’s native intelligence thought at that period of time that the tenure of the National Assembly would have expired because the constitution does not permit them to extend their tenure.
So, they would have gone. The tenure of governors would have also expired since the constitution does not permit them to extend either. The tenure of the State Assemblies would have equally expired. It is only the president the constitution permits to extend his tenure and re-conduct fresh election. At that time, Obasanjo would have been sole administrator and he would have just called on his vicious army officers to be on the streets and declare a state of emergency. Obasanjo would have sworn-in himself as life president. Two things would have happened. We would have been like Ruwanda now, Egypt or Syria.
He took Yar’Adua through the pains of electioneering but he concluded and won. After swearing-In, he had already put a system in place. This is what God is going to do for us again. This country is His own creation; He will not let it go like that.
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