Convener, Coalition for Good Governance and Justice, Mr Emmanuel Umohinyang (Esq), in this interview with DEBORAH ONYOFUFEKE, speaks on the joint Muslim presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the recent attack on Kuje prisons, among others issues
The presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has settled for a former governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, as his running mate, and the development has elicited a lot of criticisms because it is a Muslim-Muslim ticket, do you share in the views of those who do not agree with the arrangement?
I have always held the view that we should not build our political system around ethnicity and religious beliefs. I have always held the view that it should be on merit, competence, and capacity to deliver because the ordinary man on the street is not looking for a President that is a Muslim who will become a collateral failure, nor is he looking for a President that will be a Christian, who will fail woefully to deliver. We have seen a Muslim who came and failed, and we have also seen a Christian who failed woefully. So, I have always advocated that we should begin to look at merit. Who can deliver? If the man that can fix the problem of Nigeria is from the North and a Muslim, so be it. If he is from the South and a Christian, so be it. The same thing applies to ethnicity. However, I was glad when Asiwaju Tinubu emerged as the APC presidential candidate. The reason is that you can draw some inspiration from his leadership when he held sway as governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007. Is Lagos a state you can say is a work in progress? The answer is yes. Lagos is doing well, he has been able to lead by example. He has had that succession plan that is working in Lagos. We have seen a state that you can say in the next 10 to 20 years, this is the vision. This is where you want to be. So, you can see the trajectory that he has put in place. Even the Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC) that he brought to Lagos is also healthy in the sense that not only is the governor ruling, but he also has a basket which he fetches ideas and advice from. However, I was a little bit surprised when the choice of the former Governor of Borno, Senator Kashim Shettima was made. The last I had a conversation with him (Shettima), I was surprised he could understand the system so deeply. However, we must not throw away our eyes from the fact that politicians, mostly the elite have found a way to divide the country between the Muslim and Christian debacle. Hence we must always act to preserve and ensure that we do not act to drive the sword of division through that line and my view is that Asiwaju should not give his opponent a campaign message to use against him by settling for the Muslim-Muslim ticket and I heard a few of those words he used as a reason. He talked of fairness and integrity, he talked of competence as his reason for this choice, but my worry is that is he (Tinubu) saying that in entire states in the North that there is no single Christian who can fit into that position perfectly better than Shettima? So, I am really worried about how the party called APC is going to drive that message mostly to the Christian community in the North and the South.
In 2014, one of the reasons why Tinubu was not picked as President Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate was because of the joint Muslim ticket factor, what has changed?
Honestly the 2015 arrangement, the news was that Asiwaju was supposed to be Muhammadu Buhari’s vice, but other party big wigs felt a Muslim-Muslim ticket was not going to work. So, what the party felt then was that look, we cannot go this way because Nigerians will not buy it and we must always remember that we are not in 1993. People voted for a Muslim-Muslim ticket during the MKO Abiola-Babagana Kingibe era in 1993. Nigeria of 2023 is not Nigeria of 1993, so, you don’t also expect that under this era, the way people had become civilised and conscious of their rights and what their thumbs can do at the polling booth, is different. In 1993, we were just struggling out of a military government that had tormented the country for so many years, so, democracy then, was like a new world in the vocabulary of the ordinary Nigerian. So, we were not given into where you come from which was ideal but the consciousness has moved from there and the politicians have not helped matters because they have divided the country along religious lines, and so you don’t go ahead and fall into the trap of taking a Muslim-Muslim ticket how do you convince the Christian community in the North. You can see what has started happening at the party, one of my good friends just announced his resignation from the party and he sighted that decision and I’m sure, some other party bigwigs might also take that position. I think it was not ideal, I also believe that the candidate of the APC would have looked beyond that sentiment of only a Muslim VP can win votes in the North. It doesn’t work that way. He would be shocked that a Northerner is not bothered about which religion he represents. He wants to see who can put food on his table, who can restore power, I need to put on the switch, light comes on, I need to turn the kitchen tap and water comes out. An average Nigerian is looking for who can fix the infrastructure, who can protect me. Religion has no place, it does not have a weapon of protection. It is the security architecture you put in place that guarantees people security and not where you come from or the religion you practice. I think the decision that was taken in 2015 was right because of our consciousness now and the decision that has been taken by the same party in 2022 ahead of 2023 is wrong. The candidate of the party ought to have fallen back on those sentiments that the political class has introduced to Nigerian politics by ensuring that you look for the best, a cerebral Christian in the North to compliment that ticket. I agree that Asiwaju Tinubu is one man who does not look at tribe, because he has done it while he was governor of Lagos State, his wife is a devoted Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God and they have lived for several years. So, the issue of religion as far as Asiwaju Ahmed is concerned has no place in governance, but what I am saying is that Lagos is not Nigeria. We are talking about Nigeria, a larger population, a larger view so he should have looked at it from the prism of a country of over 200 million people.
The two major political parties, the APC and the PDP, seem to be having a little controversy over the issue of running mate and it’s still ongoing. Will this give an advantage to the Labour Party, which is a fast-emerging party?
I don’t think so. Why you see the two major political parties having these challenges is because most likely, that is where the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will emerge. As for the Labour Party, I see them as a group of people for whom the promise of a loaf of bread has been made and they are not patient to get the loaf. At the mere dangling of a doughnut, they abandoned the promise of a loaf of bread for a piece of doughnut. I do not see Labour Party as an alternative to these two and the reasons are obvious. If you critically look at the recently picked vice presidential candidate of Labour Party, Datti Baba-Ahmed, it reminds me of Nuhu Ribadu’s era, where he contested first as the President under ACN (defunct Action Congress of Nigeria) and then went back to Adamawa to contest as a governor. We must respect certain offices and we must uphold such offices based on our actions. If we want to go buy a track record, let us look at Peter Obi, he has been a governor in Anambra. The track records are there- relatively, that he did well while he was governor. Let us look at Baba-Ahmed, aside from being a member of the House of Representatives and then in 2011, he also contested to be Senator but the court nullified his election and the position of the court was that he was never a senator even though he was sworn in. You can’t continue to hold such a person in that regard that he was once a senator because in the eye of the law he was not. You then begin to look at what it is he has done that merits that position, and what is he bringing to the table. Okay aside from being the founder of Baze University, can this man’s ideas fit into our daily needs and requirement, the answer in my opinion is no. So, the quarrel in PDP and APC over the issue of running mate, will not necessarily confer any advantage on the Labour Party. Party politics in Nigeria are not run basically on ideas and manifestoes. It’s all about what structure have you put in place. That is one of the challenges INEC has to deal with. The issue of money politics where vote-buying is now the other of the day, in my view, in 2023 many politicians may do less advertisement or publication of their manifesto. Rather they will save much money to see how they can buy votes at the polling booth and that’s why I am afraid that the 2023 election may come with the resemblance of credibility, but it will be marred by vote-buying because obviously from the Ekiti incidents, we have seen that INEC are incompetent of dealing with that emerging challenge.
You used the word incompetent. Is it INEC’s duty to deal with vote-buying? We have security agencies who are posted to virtually all the polling booths. INEC has to conduct a free and fair election, but what happens behind the scene, is it INEC’s responsibility or the security agencies?
The incompetence there is not to the extent that INEC would not do their best to bring about a credible election, but if you want to define the word credibility, it would mean that from the beginning, of the process to the proper election and after casting of vote, that credibility can be seen and felt. Now the point is, INEC is empowered by law to ensure that before, during, and after the election are creditable by all sense of it and standards but in this case, they have also been empowered to ensure that issues of vote-buying are prevented so it is the duty of INEC and we have said it that until INEC begins to prosecute people who go against their electoral rules and regulations, we are going nowhere. But the idea has always been that INEC will push their responsibility to security agencies, security agencies push the responsibility to INEC and for you journalists, you visit the polling booth you see something like that happening you call a security agency, he says that was not what I was posted to do here. It is an extended mandate you are giving me. It does not cover what they were directed to do. They were only told to come and ensure there is no violence within the polling booth, but that has already marred the credibility. It’s not only violence that mars the credibility of an election, the issue of vote-buying also mars the credibility of an election. Besides, in Ekiti, you are aware they set up some designated places for that thing to take place, some used some schools where people write their names. These were the reports that came out. Submit their names and when they are done, you can go there and collect your goodies. Some of these things have to be checked and INEC if they want credible elections, must-drive that process by ensuring that the security agencies posted to work with INEC in my view are under the purview of INEC to say this is what you are to do.
During the primaries of the two parties, we saw the role that money played in terms of wooing party delegates. It was reported that this was done in foreign currency. Now in those two primaries, we had situations where the anti-graft agencies were fully on the ground to try to curb this kind of thing and to date, we haven’t heard from any anti-graft agency, or was it that nothing happened?
You see, it is a terrible error of judgement for a policeman to blow a siren to go and arrest an armed robber in an environment where robbery is going on. What happened in those primaries, Rashid Bawa’s EFCC was on a jamboree mission. There’s no way you can dress in an EFCC robe and visit an environment like that with the expectations to catch politicians sharing money. It was such a shameful display of ignorance on the part of Bawa. For him to have sent his men, dressed in EFCC logo. These politicians seem to be smarter than him in terms of how things are done and I think he might need to review the political space he is operating on. He has to learn from the likes of Nuhu Ribadu how things work. If you want to get politicians to share money, you do so discreetly. You don’t have to advertise yourself, he won’t catch anybody sharing even pure water. It was an error on the part of EFCC to have even dressed in such a manner and think you can catch somebody sharing money. We saw pictures and images of money being shared, but these things are not done in that same venue. These things are done several hours before the delegates visit the venue to decide on who to vote for. That’s just the irony of it.
Why do you think the issue of the religious divide is more obvious in the North than in the South? We have the South-West that has a huge Muslim population but we hardly see a religious divide in the South-West of some parts of the South-South. Why is it only in the North?
I think we have to give it to the North because that is where religion is being driven fanatically. You have people groomed into it, born into it. In the South, there is some form of educational liberalisation. That is why when you submit your CV (curriculum vitae) to a company in the South, nobody wants to know which religion you belong to. The emphasis would your competence, and your ability to deliver on those set targets, but in the North, the politicians have used the lopsided nature of education to drive those fanatical beliefs on some of their people on the issue of religion and that’s why you have somebody who was been lynched for making remarks against the Prophet, but such a thing, if it happens in the South, you will discover that the same people of the religious group will overlook it. Why is it so? It is because civilisation here has taken care of that understanding that nobody fights for God. God fights for himself.
Despite the heavy investments in the purchase of fighter Tucano jets, the spate of insecurity is increasing, what do you think is responsible for this?
I think we must understand that the Tucano jet is a child whose time has come and the aim of it. You must understand that the government of Nigeria led by President Muhammadu Buhari, entered into with the American government before they agreed to sell the jet to Nigeria. Don’t forget that the request was not made first by this government. It has been made by the previous government, but it was rejected. I think we must first and foremost understand the terms in which it was sold and this is what Nigerians are not looking at. The aim was to use it in the North-East against the terrorists. Under the Buhari-led administration, that issue has been largely dealt with, but new security challenges emerged. We now have bandits which we did not have during the Jonathan Era or if it did, it wasn’t obvious, we didn’t have the issue of IPOB in the South-East, we now have the issue of kidnapping in the South-West. SO, the Tucano jet was purchased and approved for certain specifications and to deal with certain exigencies. Now it is not in our place to now divert from those. The primary reason for which it was sold was to go after the bandits. Doing so will fall back on the country because the American government will now feel you have gone against the agreement for its sales and then they may now deprive you of access to those parts. It simply means that the jet has been grounded and become useless and if you know how much the country had to spend to procure those pieces, then nobody will want to dare go against the agreement that was sold. However, the Nigerian government is not only relying on Tucano, I know that the government has placed requests for helicopters from other countries and even from America, and these things I keep on saying are not things you pick over the shelf they are things you must make Payment, you must have made the request, and a period is given for it to be delivered. Some of these things don’t just come in because you also have to train the people who would use them. The government has indeed done so well in terms of procurement of hard wares for the Nigerian military in the face of the insecurity that keeps biting hard. My concern has been that the military institution that we currently have, whether we will be able to sieve out the bad eggs, that may have been responsible for some of the leakages, and the challenges we are still having within the security circle. The Buhari administration inherited a military that was almost left with nothing but presently now, the president can raise his head very high and say that yes, if it comes to the issue of procurement, this government has done excellently well and of course, what we are expecting is that our soldiers will then make use of those weapons, arms, and ammunition, for the better use and protection of Nigerians
You said something about the bad eggs in the system, if you can recall, just after this Kuje prison attack, the president visited the facility and expressed dissatisfaction over our security surveillance in terms of our intelligence system and he questioned it seriously. The Senate President also went there and said this would not have been able to work without an insider. There were reports that the terrorists had resided in the community for months working as casual workers, selling fruits and other items, and even selling marijuana around the facility, why was there so much laxity despite intelligence reports?
The attack on Kuje correctional centre is by ISWAP. It is what I refer to as the audacity of purpose by those guys and for seven years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, for the first time in seven years I was indeed disappointed in Mr president, disappointed with the presidential race on the intelligence community should have come with a rider, consequences and the consequences is right at the full top of that prison, the president should have sacked those responsible. Right at that place, the president should have sacked the inspector general of police whose responsibility it is to protect lives and properties. Internal security if the country the president should have sent Rauf Aregbesola back to Osun state. Don’t forget that this attack makes it thirteen in two years and Oyo state, Rauf went there and said this will not happen again. Those were his words but it happened and it happened when he was not around to deal with the mess. I expected that the president would have seized that golden opportunity and made a statement, a strong statement at that- sack all the heads of the intelligence security agencies who should have ensured that this didn’t happen right there on the spot, sack and then replace them with those willing to work. The report has it that the guys who did it must have been around that vicinity of the course. You must not only be within that vicinity, there is also an insider collaboration because it is the rat inside that goes to tell the one outside come there is food in the kitchen. No matter how many years you have worked within that facility, you still need insider information to know how the inside is, to know the location of the Book Haram inmates where they were. How come they knew the right direction to the place? An outsider may get the information externally but he won’t be able to tell what uniform is been used, and how to access the place. These are some of the challenges in the system. Is it Muhammadu Buhari’s fault, the answer is no. Does the bulk stop on his take? Yes. As the commander in chief and that is why some of us felt that he shouldn’t have ended his speech with disappointment. The right word for that action is consequences. Heads should have been rolling right at that place before he leaves. As for the safety of Nigerians, one thing I want you to understand is that one of the ideas of terrorists all over the world is always to put fear in the mind of people and that’s why some people have said when the incident happened the President ought not to have gone to Senegal and I said you will play to the hands of the terrorist, you will be helping them achieve their goal and then at that point they will say we have been able to stop him from carrying out state functions with that attack and I think the president was right to have gone for that summit, however, we as Nigerians, while section 14(2) talks about the welfare and security of the people is a primary duty of government. What Nigerians have always asked for is a government duty to protect but they also forget that there is an underlining responsibility on us as citizens to provide security agencies with information. The man selling weed behind the correctional centre that you referred of, these are things that ought not to have been allowed by the correctional centre themselves but who knows if the one selling is not even one of the operatives of the correctional Centre. We have had situations where personnel smuggle those weeds to go and give to inmates. Intact Femi Falana SAN, said just a few weeks ago, how inmates are being swapped somewhere around mile 2 bridge by personnel. These are weighty allegations nobody has been able to challenge. So, these things happen that is why insiders’ job is said. How come under the correctional act, the provision of CCTV, movement and human detective movement are all provided that it has to be in every correctional Centre. It’s in the act. Can the Kuje orison show us that if the cameras are working and the Ines that are not working, why are they not working? Why must the controller general of the prison continue to sit in his office as the head of the prison service under his watch, prison is attacked, and inmates are being freed. We are not talking about pure water thrives, criminals whose hands have been soiled with blood are now living with us and you are showing us images asking Nigerians to go after Book Haram members whom it took the loss of men’s lives in getting them to that facility. We lost lives, money was spent, a huge amount of money was spent in procuring weapons, time was spent, to be able to get them and put them in that facility under their care so much was expended, and then out of your negligence and carelessness. These guys were in one night freed and then you now issue a publication asking Nigerians to help you look for them. It’s such a shame.
