Senator Eyinaya Abaribe is a former deputy governor of Abia State. In this interview with SANYA ADEJOKUN, the Senate Minority Leader spoke on burning national issues.
THIS government has is just one year in office but the polity is awash with the politics of 2023. Some prominent Nigerians have been canvasing that the president should be a southerner for the sake of equity while others say pure merit should determine where the next president should come from. What is your take?
Let me start from the point where you said it is just a year. Former Governor Peter Obi was asked the question recently and I fully agree with him when he said that we’ve just elected a government, which had just spent one year but nobody has bothered about the welfare of the people. He said, what we should be concerned about today should be how to deal with all these numerous problems around us and not to get into a frenzy over who gets what in 2023. So, I align myself fully with Peter Obi’s postulation about that. But I have a feeling of what I think is going on. My thought is like this one of Nigeria’s very respected columnists, whose name is Sonala Olumheser, who wrote a seminal article a long time ago when this kind of frenzy was going on titled Going to Afghanistan. In other words, we leave the immediate problems confronting us and head out to go and talk about what is going on in Afghanistan. That is what we’re doing today. We’re going to Afghanistan and leaving the gaping problems.
Look at the ethnic cleansing of Christians that is going on in Kaduna! And we are not talking about it. Look at what is going on in Katsina? Where the emirs have run away to come and live in Abuja. Look at what is going on in Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Niger including the North-East. A governor said the people who attacked him were not Boko Haram because he had his sources but the army came out to say the attackers were Boko Haram because of the sound of the guns. Look at this big problems of insecurity facing us but we leave it and start to go to Afghanistan of who becomes president. So you could see that it’s also a ploy by the government to direct attention and direct thoughts and direct people to be shouting over inanities and prompting Mamman Daura to come and make that statement (that Nigerian presidency needs not be rotated between the North and South). And so the discussion was then diverted from the current issues of security, poverty etc. Where does Daura come from? He came from Daura inside Katsina State, which is under siege but he didn’t come out to talk about the problem in his own area. He came up to talk about whether an Igbo will the president or whether competence will be the criteria.
That is why I’m telling you not to be deceived because we are being led astray from the failings of this government but I will not be led astray. When the right time comes to deal with the matter of who will take over in this country, I will be part of those that will also make my voice heard but as at today, I’m asking the Buhari government “face your front; deal with the problem that we have. The economic problems, the security problems and every other problem. So, don’t send us into Afghanistan.”
And all of a sudden, we, as intellectuals and elite and all were suddenly sucked into this diversionary discussion. This government still has three years to go and so, they should buckle up and do the needful of making the welfare of the people their number one priority but they don’t. And so, we should know when people come to send this type of feelers. And of course if you ask the leader of any group, he will say let me add my own opinion. Like I said say my opinion is the same opinion with Peter Obi: deal with our problems today because if you don’t deal with this security situation, a man who is murdered in Kajuru today, who becomes president in 2023 is not his concern because he is a dead man or a dead woman, dead child! A man whose home or village was burned and has nowhere to go, for him, everything is bleak: will he be running around to see who becomes what in three years’ time? So, I believe because nobody asked that question, all that we saw was that all of a sudden, somebody came and dropped the clangor.
So, what should citizens do?
What we should do is to hold the government to account. A citizenry that is up to it continues to hold their government to account, continues to shout. It was the late Chuba Okadigbo who said if they don’t listen shout. If they listen, continue shouting until they do something. So we as Nigerians shouldn’t be cowed. We shouldn’t be diverted. All of a sudden, we are being told that petroleum product price is going up to N150 or more. Some people even quoted N157. And we are sitting here pretending that it doesn’t matter to us. We are bothering about whether it is going to be Kanuri or Igbo or whoever will become president in 2023. I think that If you don’t have food to eat today, the job of the government is to ensure that you can get food to eat. When you don’t have food to eat, government shouldn’t tell you to start to debate where the levers of government will go tomorrow.
A few years ago at the National Assembly, you appropriated some money for the government to fund security architecture but some people like Senator Ali Ndume continue to say that the military does not have required weapons to combat insecurity. What is the issue?
I go back to Governor Zulum, who is at the epicentre and at the theatre where everything is happening, said if I quote him correctly, that the military has turned this thing into a business; that it is as if they are no longer trying to fight to relieve the nation of this cancer of insecurity. So if Governor Zulum said that, what is the corollary of that statement? It’s not the question of funding that you throw at them. It is the question of the way they have used that fund. A short while ago, we heard about a General who is presently being tried on accusation of taking away hundreds of millions. Just one man! So, how can anybody tell us that story?
I go back to Fela Anikulapo Ransome-Kuti? Is there something that we haven’t seen or heard? With all due respect to my colleague and friend, Ndume, he will quote what he is being told by the commanders that he meets. I’m going to look at it in a more holistic and bigger picture and I’m quoting someone who is in the front there with the soldiers and also using his own state resources to fund the soldiers. Every Nigerian should also take a step back, reflect on the Nigerian Army. From the time that the army was sent to Congo in the 1960s to the time that they did all international peace keeping operations under the auspices of the United Nations, they have always been commended for their bravery and for the fact that they do very well. At the point that West Africa was under siege, the Nigerian Army stepped into Liberia; they stepped into Sierra Leone and they acquitted themselves creditably and they brought peace into those countries. Are you telling me the Nigerian army cannot even bring peace to Nigeria? Come on, I think that we should reflect far more on this whole thing and know exactly where the rains started to beat us.
So, how worried are you about this US report that ISWAP was making inroads into the North-West and the North-Central. Meanwhile, Abubakar Shekau who is the leader of Boko Haram posted a video of his fighters celebrating eid el Adhar somewhere in Niger State?
We are very worried about all these reports and all that. We are far more worried about the fact that the presidency is keeping mute and acting as if these things are of no moment. That is where the worry is. When I as a Senator get all these reports get very worried and I will look up to the executive who has the responsibility to execute all the laws that we gave them. And there is nothing that they asked from us that we have not given them and then this type of reports come and we hear not a word. Not a word. So we should really be very worried. That is why we talk about the fact that this present government of the APC has shown gross incompetence and there is nothing we can do about that.
The minister of humanitarian affairs said that every Nigerian got palliatives from the government; that she personally went all over the country and distributed. Did people in your constituency get Federal Government palliatives? What is the feeler you are getting from home about employment?
If she said everybody got palliatives, you can also through this interview pass back to her that nobody in Abia South senatorial district has told me that they have gotten palliatives. If they did it, they did it without my knowledge and I don’t know. I think that maybe we should just stop glorifying these abysmal failures everywhere. Maybe when they make these statements they make it tongue in cheek like “let us just say something after all, Nigerians are not very rigorous in thinking; so, that maybe ‘I can get away with something like that,’ but we are not deceived one bit. I have a good friend who in a very humorous way said, “oh I just I just learned all this one by hearing.” So, this one that she is saying, I’m just getting it by hearing and I am giving it to my people by hearing. I guess if you don’t use humour during these perilous times, you will simply go mad.
I want you to comment on the anti-corruption scorecard of this Administration. When the party was campaigning, what got many Nigerians was that they will fight and improve security and get the economy growing. Now we have discussed about the security and we have also partly touched on the economy. How do you reach this Administration in the fight against corruption five years on?
I go back to Fela Anikulapo Ransome-Kuti: old, old news. Stealing by government. The mere fact that the head of the anti-corruption agency is facing a panel! Just that fact alone just tells you that everything that they have talked about anticorruption by this government is a sham Just that fact. The popular cliché is that Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion and you drag your own anti-corruption czar in front of a panel on corruption allegations is a story that tells itself and simply scores this government zero on that part. They have been going around telling us they recovered stolen money. Recovering money is not fighting corruption. Sometimes too, you credit people where they do well. It doesn’t matter who they are. But at least what to do is to plug loopholes, do the needful make sure that the processes are followed and we have a government in which people right inside the villa are not following the processed. Reporting lines are ignored. What is corruption? What corruption is bigger than the nepotism that is going on in this government in which only people from a certain part of the country and given credence and jobs. How can a government now come out and say it has done anything about fighting corruption and that it had done anything about it? They have also on their own scored themselves zero by dragging their champion to a panel. I don’t know whether it is true or not, we don’t know whether it is infighting within the government. Even if it is infighting, what does that tell you? It goes back to what I said that what you have is a Fuji House of commotion not a government.
How else can people shout? Some protesters at the #RevolutionNow event recently had their heads shaved with broke bottles but people are being killed in every part of the country due to security issues. What should Nigerians do?
Let us put it this way: “fundamental reason of having a government is to have a unit that has a monopoly of force. So do you think is that this government does not know how to get a monopoly of force and make sure that people are secure? I do not think so. I think that this government is working for a particular set of people and using that to want to hold the rest of us as subjects of their hegemony and expansionist plans. So when you identify a problem it is half solved and so when you ask what so we do? It is the responsibility of government to protect Nigerians. So we have to continue shouting on that government that they are not doing the right thing so that they will do the right thing. That is our responsibility. Our responsibility is not to take up arms. Our responsibility is to point out to those who have that responsibility to be up and doing. And of course, when the time now comes, we make sure also that anything coming from this government cannot be replicated in another election.
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