FROM THE GUARDIAN
ALHAJI Abdulrahman Mohammed, a chieftain of the pan-North political organization, Arew Consultative Forum (ACF) and former Vice president of Kaduna Chamber of Commence, Industry, Agriculture and Mines (KADCCIMA) spoke to Saxone Akhaine in Kaduna. Excerpts:
What is your reaction to last week's resolution of National Assembly vesting power on Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as Acting President?
It is not the best, but it has created a safety value for the pressure Nigeria is going through. You know, the political and economic phases of the country have been over-charged. The economic phase has been given the banking reform. The political has just got its safety valve: when there is too much pressure there would be explosion, unless there is a safety valve. The ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been digging in, digging in enough to make a military regime more democratic then the democracy that we are operating, they were not running a democracy. Everything is on the threshold of illegality. We are a decent country. Nigerians are the best operators in foreign countries Nigerians have strong business acumen, from the Ibos to every body.
A Yoruba Nigerian just got the concession for Gatwick Airport in London, to operate it. The Nigerian has been in America for 25 years. That is what Nigeria is known for. Not the mess of the political situation we've been thrown in, in the last 14 years. This action of the National Assembly was a safety valve, a very good one. Addressing whether it will be sealed or not, we must accept it. When they were carrying out their illegalities before this time, we accepted it. Nigerians don't know how to obey laws, because the leaders don't care about the laws. That is why all the tactics of Michael Aondoakaa, the former Attorney General didn't amuse anybody. We have carried statecraft to those dubious limits where it is personal interest that matters and not national interest.
The National Assembly, in terms of the attendance to their jobs, the quality of discussions, and debates on the floor of the Assembly and everything, have alienated themselves from the people, from being their representatives. It got to a point they were no longer representing the interests of Nigerians but themselves. We have a country where the people desire that things should get better, but we have representatives who didn't care about the country getting better, because they were over-paid. Any man who is making dubious profits from his business will misbehave.
I must tell you that Acting President Goodluck Jonathan now has the goodwill that the people in government never had. He is a fine. Umaru Musa Yar'Adua got completely messed up. We have all been praying for him, both Christians and Muslims, for God to make him better. Now he has enough time to rest. We can now talk to each other as Nigerians who have a stake in Nigeria. This is no time any longer hiding under the cover of a sick President and unlashing corruption, banditry on our common wealth and or our common good. Now, I commend the Acting President for deploying Aondoakaa. He had created a lot of pressure within the system. His going is good. When you have a football team and the captain whom everybody has relied on turns ill, you must have another captain. The captain you are getting is either the deputy captain or somebody from the team. In our own situation, it is the Vice President. He has been part of the system, been watching and he is a highly intelligent man.
Some say he (Acting President) is just a lucky man while others say he is ambitious... (cuts in)....
Not ambitious; he is behaving the name God gave to him. His parents were full of wisdom, because not everybody that has been Jonathan is necessarily lucky. Right from day one up to this day, he did not fight for anything, he just got it. And we do hope that Luck will manifest itself in Nigeria's problems and we would get out of our problems. You don't expect the new captain of a team not to re-arrange the players. He knows better what he wants to do. We don't want a Jonathan that will finish in 2011 and fail; no, he knows what he wants to achieve, the buck now stops on his table. And if he doesn't want politicians to use him to create the excuse for the failure of our democracy, he has to choose those who will help him to deliver. And having been part of the stakeholders, and the victims or beneficiaries of the misdirection in the area of Niger-Delta, that feeling and that pain will make Jonathan deliver to Nigerians. The Niger-Delta issue has been mishandled from day one. In the North we don't know about degradation and pollution; we know about desertification. And the desertification here is creating problems too for all of us. See poverty walking on four legs on the streets in the North. But the Niger-Delta issue in Nigeria should be a prime issue because that is where are get our lifeline where we get our food; that is where we get money to run our governments.
I am advising Jonathan to ensure less government in Nigeria. We have too much governments and bureaucracies. We have too many powers and little or no action. All these are what is creating the corruption. Power is eating up the money and resources of the nation and the people are dying of hunger daily. If you look at the amount of money they are spending in Abuja, on projects and other things, it can build and feed twice the size of Nigeria. It can build many cities. And they should better start building the cities in the Niger-Delta. Even Angola is building a new city in that country. It has just found oil. We have been in oil exploration for years now let us follow the path of other oil-producing nations in development activities.
The government should start with building new city in Niger-Delta if they want the oil money to continue to flow, so that the restiveness of militants in the area could be brought down; the people must be made to have a sense of belonging if the unity of our country is to have meaning. We have been saying things; been letting the government know this since the period of the late Saro-Wiwa. We read about Isaac Boro, as children, we knew what happened. I had a personal discussion with Late Saro-wiwa during Abacha's time. If you go into a person's courtyard where there is a big mango tree and you throw stones, pluck the mangoes and do other things, if you finish, he will insist that you clean up the place. That is ordinary mango not to talk of Niger-Delta oil, which dominates our peoples lives.
The government of Jonathan must be serious to redress the Niger-Delta problem. We can't spend more on exploitation and overheads in Abuja and Nigeria than Niger-Delta can have attention. All of them are equal. Next, the lives and properties of Nigerians need protection. The people also need food. And I want to tell you, if you double the finance of police in Nigeria today, it will still not work. Unless they redress all the bad work the people have done in the past. The Boko Haram Leader, Yussuf, his father in-law just instituted a case against the police. A man presented himself at the police station, they caged him, the Boko Haram man was said to have been seen alive by the Army; in fact, the Army personnel handed him over to the police, then the next thing we heard was he was dead in police custody. In Jos, more than 150 people were removed from wells. BBC confirmed that there were more than 150 people removed from wells. And police said that 26 people were dead. The police need to change. We have able and responsible people in the police force, our operational mode should change.
How do want the Acting President, Jonathan to run his administration now that he is in full control of the economy?
Economic advancement of the nation is not an easy task. But, I advise Acting President Jonathan to put attention on the Niger-Delta area. All the promises made to the people should be fulfilled. That budget that they claimed Umaru Yar'Adua signed should be prepared, vetted and given to Jonathan to put his signature on it because that budget was essentially meant to solve some of the teething problems, including those of the Niger-Delta Area. They should review the finances of the National Assembly. They should set up a committee to review the wages and salaries of the National Assembly members. And they should work out new salaries and allowances of the National Assembly and re-direct the excess funds into the development of the economy.
It is unacceptable for a Senator or member of House of Representatives, as it is now to receive a totality of more than N10 million monthly. The disparity between the wages in the private sector and public sector should also be looked into immediately. Those are the issues presently encouraging corruption in the system. The gap in wages and salaries as in the Public and private sectors is too much. After all, it is the same resources capacity they are engaged in or employing. That is what has fuelled corruption in Nigeria. The issue of the refineries is another subject that should engage Jonathan's attention. You cannot sell refineries and expect them to work under private institutions that have stolen money from Nigeria treating or benefitted from the corrupted Nigerian establishment that sold out refineries and expect them to work
I assure you that if the government is serious about the refineries they will work. Jonathan should set up groups to look into power, oil sector and other areas in the economy that need attention. All these things they are claiming are too much and it is all lies. They have been stealing the money. And let the Acting President get the CBN governor Sanusi Lamido to come out with the investigation of those who chopped off the N25 Billion in banks. Let them come out with where they found the money, where the money came from, in the last 16 years. Not to allow people to start living in corruption. You can see that in the case of the refineries, it is the top Nigerians that have been working in NNPC that killed them. All appointments in NNPC should last for only eight years. You pay them so much money and when they go on retirement, you are paying them the same salaries they are earning while they were working, throughout their lifetime. Why is this so? And yet, we still don't have refineries to give us fuel in Nigeria.
So, why are they still on big salaries in NNPC while the refineries are not working? All other international oil sectors in other countries have their refineries working but ours are dead and nobody cares. They keep on importing fuel at outrageous prices and we are under pressures as Nigerians while others are making huge profits. These are the issues that the Acting President must give attention to.
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