2015: Jonathan’s wife more desperate –Tsav

[Mirror]

Elder statesman and retired Commissioner of Police, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav decries the crisis rocking the Nigerian Governors' Forum. He advises that the problem should be tackled by the governors themselves adding that if allowed to degenerate, it portends a bad omen for the general elections in 2015. He also calls on the factions to sheathe their swords to move the country forward. In this interview with Henry Iyorkase in Makurdi, the ex-police boss also speaks about the many foreign trips of Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam. Excerpts:

There have been series of crisis confronting the Nigerian Governors Forum since the forum's last election. As an elder statesman, what is your take on the situation?

The governors are elected by their people and they have taken the oath of allegiance to their country and their states. Honestly, we expect all of them to be gentlemen; they are not like ordinary people on the streets who have no decision of their own. So if an election comprising only 36 people cannot be held and resolved peacefully, one wonders what will happen during the general elections in 2015. So, I am very disappointed; very disappointed indeed. It is an issue which they should have sat and resolved among themselves without bringing it to the public domain for people to hear what is happening. This which also shows that all the elections that have been conducted in this country are always marred by rigging, so to say. What would the chairman of the forum get more than the other governors? What other powers would he get more than the other governors? What they ought to do is to organize themselves and speak with one voice. So I am disappointed indeed. That is why I have not been talking much about it because I am disappointed.

Owing to the current crisis, do you foresee a fair and credible general elections by 2015?

Far from that! From what we have seen, the situation is very hazy. Nobody is sure of what is going to happen. The president himself is very desperate; he wants a second term by all means. His wife is more desperate than himself. His wife has assumed the duties of deputy president and challenges governors at will. She has forgotten that the governors are elected by the people and she is not elected and her office is not recognized by the constitution, so it's an illegal thing. But the woman is all out to embarrass governors which is exactly what she is doing. We have seen many people rule this country.

When General Muhammadu Buhari was military Head of State, nobody knew his wife. He restrained his wife from playing the role of first lady but subsequent women who comes thought that they were president themselves and their husbands were vice and this is what is happening. Well, Chief Edwin Clark said that Jonathan must go for a second term; that Shehu Shagari was elected for a second term but his tenure was truncated by a military coup; Obasanjo also went for a second term so they too must do second term. He has forgotten that people are judged by their performance. If you perform very well, people will allow you to go in for a second term. The constitution does not say it is automatic. If you perform well, the people may decide that you should go in again but if you do not perform well, you cannot come with a cane and start beating people as if you are a headmaster of a school, to force them to vote for you.

As far as I am concerned, Jonathan has done very badly in the area of security and the man does not even know how to talk. He says things the way he want to say them. Look at the issue where he told the governors on Fathers Day to sign the death warrant so that people who are condemned will die. We don't expect the president to say a thing like that. In other countries of the world, they are legislating against death sentence. And when you are condemned to death, you have opportunity to appeal the sentence up to the Supreme Court; you also have the opportunity to write the president for clemency.

He should not have even told them about that. I am very sure, he was referring to one man, Major Mustapha and I am very sure, if Mustapha was convicted in Bayelsa State or Rivers State, by now he whould have been executed. Although I am not saying that anybody is above the law; but they should allow the convicts to explore all the means of saving themselves. In the current democratic dispensation, no armed robber has been executed, no murderer has been executed; the governors are reluctant to sign death warrant. I don't know whether it is out of fear or out of sympathy, I don't know but they have not been able to sign. If we cannot sign death warrant to execute these people, let us then legislate against death sentence like other countries have done. But you cannot just come on the fathers' day and begin telling the fathers to sign documents to go and execute their children. So it means that on Mothers Day, he will also ask women to go and commit abortion since he does not like life.

Various issues are threatening the unity of Nigeria; do you foresee the country continuing in unity once again?

You see the major problem of this country is corruption. Once we are able to deal with corruption, the country will become better, but as long as we allow corruption to thrive, so long will ethnicity, religious bigotry and the rest of them will continue because people are pursuing these things because they want to make money. So, as soon as we are able to fight successfully against corruption, every other thing will take a queue. I also want to go back to Buhari's days when he ruled this country, I think he ruled in less than a year but Nigeria became a disciplined nation; we developed a culture of queueing in this country. But now we have the culture of impunity; we do everything with impunity.

If you are not a big man, if you are not highly placed, unless you commit a crime, unless you drive against one way, unless you beat the queue to go and enter the aircraft where others are on queue. If you don't do that you are not a big man. So we have a culture of impunity and who is encouraging this? Our leaders and what is encouraging this? Corruption. Security agencies at our borders and airports are not doing their job well because of corruption. Promotion is based on corruption, before you get a job, you must pay a certain amount of money and when you pay money before you get a job, you count it as an investment because since you have paid to get that job you also try to make money from that job to recover how much you have spent before getting the job. The whole thing is in a mess. The president has failed woefully in the areas of security, there is no security. For instance, I was reading in the papers today that in spite of the state of emergency in Yobe, gunmen still killed some people there. So, what is the use of this emergency rule? And this heinous thing is continuing in all these states. And the soldiers there too are killing people, innocent people who know nothing about what is happening.

What is it that the government is not doing well in its fight against corruption?

The issue of corruption cannot be tackled with Jonathan there. Because Jonathan has gone to other countries of the world and said that the issue of corruption in Nigeria is being over exaggerated; there is no such corruption as people say. But people respected Nigerians like Christopher Kolade who said there is corruption. So, it's like the president is shielded from the society and he does not know what is happening and that is why he said there is no corruption. Of course, there is corruption. If people like Kolade says there is corruption, Kolade who is interacting with people says there is corruption, who is Jonathan who will say there is no corruption? It is not only Kolade, many Nigerians have been saying it. The major talk in the country generally is about corruption. Today, we have many people who own private aircrafts. How did they get these aircraft including religious leaders? Why did they get these private aircraft? If you are not corrupt, how can you get these private aircraft? We have children of ministers owning private aircraft and yet we sit here and say there is no corruption.

What is your assessment of the PDP administration in the last 14 years?

Well, in some areas, they have done well. But corruption has played a major role in the whole thing. If there was no corruption, we would have done better than what we did. For example, Nigeria started the defense industry at the same time with Brazil; Brazil is manufacturing armored cars and armaments. We are only manufacturing cushion chairs in the industry in Kaduna, Indonesia came here and took seedlings of oil palm, today they are the major exporter of oil palm and we are no where. We established Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill several years back, Ajaokuta is not doing anything. Our railway system is broken down. If you go to railway stations, you will find that the place has been taken over by touts; we have no national carrier. Airline industries are taken over by private individuals. Everything is just decaying and the roads are very bad; nobody cares to repair the roads because they have the aircrafts, they can fly by aircrafts. Even if there is fighting on the road, they can go by aircraft. The only thing that may disturb them in future is perhaps bad weather.

Governor Gabriel Suswam has come under severe criticisms by people in the state that his administration, is no longer performing especially after the first few months of his first term in office as Governor. What are your observations?

Everybody is entitled to his opinion. But as far as I am concerned, the administration of Suswam is better than that of George Akume. I have only two administrations to compare: George Akume's administration and Suswam's and as far as I am concerned, Suswam has done better than Akume, that is my honest assessment. We can only assess Suswam when another government comes in and the government does better than Suswam's that is when we can assess him. You do not know the worth of an individual until that individual dies. We do not know how good Suswam is until he is no longer on the seat. But compared to Akume, he is much better. There was general insecurity in this state; there was killing left, right and centre. Everything collapsed during Akume's regime. He collected money for this water works, huge sums of money; to fix our water system, he did not do it. He tried to build some industries, but that one too he failed. So, as far as I am concerned, I do not need to compare Suswam with any other person, I need to compare him with Akume and he has done better than Akume.

Talking about the water works, months after it was inaugurated, there seems to be no improvement in the area of accessibility to water?

That is because there are no pipes. I am not getting water too, I drink from the well. I think what the government needs to do now is lay pipes so that water can be distributed to homes. For now, the inauguration is by name. I don't know whether they get this water in government house and in other government offices and commissioners' houses but as far as I am concerned, I have no water here. So inauguration or no inauguration means nothing to me.

But it is claimed that the problem of water is over in the state?

What I am telling you is that I have no water in this house. I don't know whether you have in your house or they have in government house but for me here, I don't have water. And you cannot even find water on the streets. When we were little boys, we had taps on the street; you can open tap on the street and drink water. You cannot get any today.

The governor has also been accused of always travelling outside the state. In what way has this benefi tted Benue State?

I am not in government but it is true that he has travelled a lot. May be more than Akume but I cannot see the end result of these travels. If he travels to go and attract any investors, I have not seen any investors here; may be you have seem them.

But don't you see his frequent trips as esential?

Well, I don't know why he visits but physically, I have not seen the effects of his visits to other countries of the world here. If we had a lot of countries here, constructing one thing or the other or improving on our environment, may be it would have been different but as far as I am concerned, there is no effect of such visits.

What is your advice particularly to the governor?

I would like him to try and leave a legacy because within less than two years, he will be leaving this seat. So he should try and leave a legacy so that he will be remembered so that one day he will come back and beat his chest and say this and this I did for the state.

National Mirror

[Folami David]

It's not good for that to happen to the first lady of Nigeria. I just hope it is not true. It would be very terrible to find that out...