APC should consider self a failure —Babangida Aliyu

The two-term governor of Niger State and former chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum (NGF), Aliyu Babangida, speaks with ADELOWO OLADIPO on the Fulani herdsmen and their kolanut culture, PDP and 2019 elections, among others.

 

The rumour mill was agog recently that you were planning to defect from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with the view to joining the All Progressives Congress (APC). How true is this information?

No, the unconfirmed information that I was planning to join APC was not true. If I had wanted to join APC, I would have been one of the few persons to join the party, because the national leadership of the APC came here when they formed the APC. They came to appeal to us. As I told everybody then that what I did either as the chairman, Northern Governors Forum (NGF) or as the leader of the G-7 Governors or as a leader of the PDP at the time was just to correct some anomalies in our party. And for me when we were making our grievances known , I was reporting back to the leadership of the party in the state , every little decision that we took, I called a meeting of  all the stakeholders which included  the local government chairmen of the party. And at the end of the day, when finally some five of us took the decision to move to APC, I did not go with them. But we said we would not go and we would remain in PDP and as a very excellent democrat, I have clearly said the minds of the people that I thought I was representing. So, if I had wanted to behave like some selfish politicians, I would have gone to APC.  And God knows that probably without being proud, I would have been either a Minister or something high in the government. But that was not it. The issue was about representing people. And fortunately for us, most of those who moved the motion and the seconder of the motion that we must not go ended up moving to APC. God has a way of testing you. But I had no  intention of moving to anywhere from the PDP no matter the difficulty, no matter how hard, because that was the party that gave me the opportunity to serve Niger State for eight years and I have not seen enough reasons to for me to leave . And if I am going to leave the PDP, may be the next thing I will do is to retire from politics rather than say you are leaving. If you see me leaving the PDP that may mean that I want to retire from politics in its entirety. But if the PDP messes up itself to lose 2019 elections, then that time  is not about you leaving   the PDP, rather PDP would have left us. It is not a question of leaving; it is when the PDP decides to leave us.

 

You met former President Olusegun Obasanjo and it was rumoured that you are among those he is screening fort the Presidency come 2019. How far is this true?

I am happy you said rumour. When you all know how I came to Niger State as governor because it was about two days or so for the close of the nomination . When I was screened to come to Niger State, the rumour did not go out until I came. So, I am not aware of any rumour and I may be aware of the discussions by many people who are discussing potential people, maybe looking at their records and their performances. I am also aware of the newly formed Northern Political Leaders of Thought who have set up some committees which include a committee on the 2019 elections. The 2019 election primarily is to say look, if the president is to come to the North,  then the northern people must be allowed to decide who is their  representative for the presidency. And therefore, we need to see who is the right person, but we do not say that by age but we need to put criteria of what kind of qualification are we looking  for, what kind of  other issues of his performances, pedigree, among others,  that we will look for rather than the way people say it is zoned to the North and you find out that the people will be dictating who they cannot necessarily  pick up from the lot.

So, if people are screening or they are discussing or they are doing other things, nobody has informed me. So, I am not aware of the screening. But whatever it is, when they finish the screening we will know. But since you say it is a rumour, let it stay as a rumour. But I don’t think anybody has contacted me in that direction.

 

Since the advent of this administration in 2015, attacks by herdsmen, including the killing of innocent children and women in Benue, Nassarawa and Taraba states, have almost snowballed into a major national crisis  in the country. What do you think is the way out?

I remember that we had a national conference on this particular issue in 2014 in Kaduna by the Minister of Agriculture because we saw it coming. There is what is known as international routes or the normal routes of herdsmen, but the population has taken over most of the routes. And in Niger State, we have about 42 grazing lands and we domesticated between 27 and 32 by gazetting them. But there are still some few grazing lands that have been taken over by either farmers or towns people . The solution is in understanding the variables in such matter.  If you could recall, there used to be an excellent relationship between farmers and herdsmen in the past. You will also recall that in the past many farmers would even invite herdsmen into their farms at a particular time because the cow dung that was there was part of the manure for the farmers . And that relationship between the two different farmers was very excellent. So, the issue is that of the economy; it is not a tribal thing. It is not Fulani versus Tiv people thing or Fulani versus Birom or Fulani versus any other different ethnic groups in Nigeria. Rather, it is purely an economic issue because the Fulani herdsmen see their cows as their economy and the farmers see their farmlands as their own economy too. And now with the population having grown more than we have planned for the country, the battle for the survival of the fittest has taken over.

So, in 2014 or thereabout we had a conference and the revenue economic council which had the state governors, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the federal Ministry of Agriculture, among other stakeholders participated, we adopted that resolutions of that conference. We agreed and suggested that out of the fund of the CBN that was normally called the intervention funds, we suggested certain matters they can bring a lot of money to intervene on a particular subject. We said the ranching for Minna in Niger State should start from there and that for a person who has so and so number  of cows then we could give him this number of hectares of land  for his grass and for his cows and even  probably  give such a person some funds to start doing  something . That way, we would domesticate all these animals. Don’t forget that all over the world, especially from Brazil to the United States of America, this nomadic movement has always been there but they found a way to solve it. In the US, they kit themselves, sell food, buy food and they do everything they need  on subsidy at about only one per cent. And Agriculture over there is mechanised. So, what to do for farmers and herdsmen is to really step forward. One, the government must see it as a security challenge and it must do whatever is necessary to stop that and the government must plan for a period of time that this movement of Fulani herders  from one place to another must stop.

 

A couple of states have rejected the proposed cattle colony in their domains. What is your take on this?

When I was hearing many of the southern states saying no ranching, no colonies, I said that is good for you. I think what the northern governors can do is now to sit down with business people, go to Mokwa of Jebba, Lokoja, Makurdi  where we used to have an abattoirs. All the meat that should go to the southern parts of the country can be processed and you don’t need to carry a cow to that place. But since again, it has become a social thing like somebody in the South-East to show he has arrived, they must be seen to slaughter cow. Such a person can take the cow by the train or in a trailer. And I think you don’t need to go to the south with live cows again. And why the herders go to the southern parts of the country is because at a given season the North may become drier and they may go to the South. But there is an issue again here. There are many Fulani that had been born in the southern parts of the country and they know who they are in the place they were born. Here in Minna, I went to my farm one day and I was talking to one Fulani man in Hausa language, but he could not speak Hausa language with me. I asked the people who he came to visit that where he was born, he said it was in Oyo and why could he not speak Hausa, he also responded that he could only speak Fulani and Yoruba. When I also asked him what he was doing in my farm, he said he came to visit some of his relations because they were complaining that they had not seen him for a long time. And when I asked him if he has become an Oyo man now, he said, yes. And you know the normal nomad people we used to say they are stateless because they can move from Senegal up to Chad and then back . And that is why they are able to establish certain routes that we need to understand.

So, it is the nature of their business. They have established a relationship with their southern country men or compatriots. There is what we called the kolanuts culture. If you offend a Fulani man from Minna here , he will send kolanuts to Senegal and the  people from Senegal would come and avenge what you have done to him. They would go back to Senegal within a short period of time. And you will never catch them. So, we need to understand this and our security personnel also need to understand the ways of the Fulani herdsmen. In fact, it happened in Niger State in the past, especially during my administration. Specifically, it happened in Lapai. There was one problem in one village in Lapai. We went only to discover that those who came to revenge came from Kogi State. Lucky enough, I was in a good contact with the governor of Kogi State so that again those in Niger will not go and retaliate in Kogi. We made sure we talked to them. And in the village where houses were burnt, we made sure that government took responsibility in repairing them because if you are trying to say this is the fault of that person, then you are not solving any problem. So, we need to appreciate this.

Other laws that will come, we need to be very careful. On the issue of this anti-grazing law, if I was the chairman of the Northern Governors  Forum (NGF), what I would have done was to say don’t make any law, instead bring it to the NGF and let us discuss it as a group. So, whatever law we are going to pass, it would be a general thing and we would have given time for people to understand what it is. So, I would what have done personally would be to have gone to each party directly because it is not a one day thing. The ranching would have started and most of the Fulani people want to settle down. To many of them, their culture has been broken as a result of their nomadic lifestyle and secondly the over population has taken over such that they don’t have enough cattle to go round for their children. But nobody has thought about what happens what happens to them.

 

The 2019 general poll is gradually gathering momentum, but about three years into the life of the present ruling APC-led Federal Government, they are still involved in blame game against with the PDP. Do you agree with those who say APC has failed?

For me, when you take over a government, may be you spent three months to tell people what you have inherited in accordance with the goals. Also, when there were 232 electoral promises, pick the ones that you can do. But if you cannot do anything and you think the only thing you can do is to go on castigating former governments that is your problem. Nigerians are not fools. If APC felt that that is what they can do by castigating the 16 years of the PDP government, that is their own problem. You cannot spend three years castigating past governments no matter what you think you are doing. For me, if I were in the position to do that, I would consider myself a failure if after three years of governance I still believe the past government had not performed satisfactorily. Then when is the incumbent government going to do their own? So, for me as a PDP person, I see it more as a result of the way and manner they came, in terms of amalgamation of different interests. Whether you like it or not, the five governors and the key leaders of PDP leaders that joined in the amalgamation, like the CPC, ACN and the whole parties that all joined to form APC, the party may take another 10 years to function as a political party. I think people must understand that. That is why we have all these disparaging accusations against the successive administrations in the last 16 years. What have you and separate people in government been doing separately in your own way to move the country forward?

 

The PDP administration set up a national conference with a view to addressing the clamour for the restructuring of the country. But when the APC administration came on board they decided to dump the reports, saying it did not represent the general views of the citizenry. But recently, the same government has come up with a restructuring agenda. What do you make of this?

If you have any member who participated in the last conference, go to him and get a report of that conference and take this so-called restructuring agenda of the APC-led administration and see if this was not drawn out of this conference of that time. A majority of what you see in that is coming from what the report discussed. And one is forced to ask why now? Initially, the government said they were not interested. In fact, the whole party structure at one time said they were not interested. But that was one of the 222 promises by the APC. The party promised to restructure the country. After serially denouncing restructuring, APC is coming up with a campaign in support of restructuring about 11 months to another general election. So, it has become election campaign material. They will say vote for us because we can’t do this for now, vote for us, then when we win we would afford the restructuring which may not necessarily be so. I am telling you Nigerians are wiser. Is PDP interested in restructuring? But we knew that things were not the way they should be.  If you remember, the argument of joint account or no joint account, the argument of whether local governments should be part of states, the argument of the establishment  of the state police or not.  All those issues were discussed during the last confab and I remember at the Governors Forum. But again, you know sometimes ideas whose time has not come would not fly. But now most of the things I understand it is the Presidency that is lobbying the state governors about the state police. Now, a decision by the National Assembly is now taking care not only of state police but the relationship between the local governments and the states. And whether some states should merge, I think that is something we should look at. There is nothing wrong in saying look, states so, so, and so are insolvent. No matter what you do even if you are going to tax the population of the states, it would still not have enough to do things. We should go back to the issues of state indigeneship, go back to the issue of payment of salaries. How can any governor go to sleep when he knows that most of the workers do not have any other means of survival except monthly salaries? That  the governors would owe 11 months or even some of them about 24 months and then when they were asked they will say it was not 24 months, but  it was only 20 months. All these issues about restructuring and what have you, they have always been there. But go and see that 2014 national confab report and also see all these things that are coming up. They are all coming out from  that conference.