My names are Daniel Richard from Adamawa state born in Garkida of Gombi local government. I currently reside with my family in the United States. As I am talking to you now, I have been in business almost all my life. In recent times because of situations in this country I have taken up certain issues that confronts us as a nation. Currently, I participate in politics, my participation is not political party based. It is issue based and individual based. Unlike other politicians, I am not a member of any political party and I have always said that clearly. I don’t believe we have political parties so I do not belong to a political party but I support issues that I think will help solve some of the teething Nigerian problems. I support candidates that I believe have the capacity to move their local government or there state or the federal government forward.
As an active participant and observer, what is your overview of the Nigerians political situation as it is now?
You see, the Nigerian political scene is still characterized by the dismal military intervention in government. So currently, our politicians are still having the military hangover. You still see things that were done militarily before are still being done by civilians. You see the way our politicians conduct themselves especially elected politicians conduct themselves. This is a country where I see a local government chairman with a police to protect him. If you have that fear, it means either he was not very popular or something went wrong or he should not be the one.
We are still talking politics but really there is no separation of powers. So it still like a military kind of arrangement where the governor spends money as he so desires, the president and the local government chairman does the same which means we still have the military kind of dictatorship only that they are wearing civilian clothes. Nigeria’s politics up till today has still not streamlined with effect to the kind of civilian clean-clear administration that normally should be obtained in a civilian administration. So there is still a mix-up and even the electorate themselves see politicians as rulers and not as leaders, and in a situation where you know that somebody is just ruling you, you have some level of disconnect. Whatever he does he is there as my ruler whatever I can cut too, that is my own. So there is military injected into Nigeria’s politics.
Would you say the same about Yar’adua our deceased president and president Goodluck Jonathan?
You first have to look at the emergence. How did they really emerge as candidates. You know what happened during the Obasanjo days, Yar’adua was not on the cards initially, nobody was talking about him and he was not even a dark horse. But because our politics is being run as if it is a garrison arrangement, Yar’adua also emerged and Jonathan too was handpicked. You see, you must have an agenda backed by the zeal for you to actualize your agenda, for you to participate meaningfully in the political process. When you are a draftee you do not have an agenda, you do not have a working sheet and a roadmap on what you want to do, the possibility is that you just run a government that is completely flawed. Look at the emergence of most of our elected officials, they did not merge because of the content of their character, they emerged because of the content of their establishment who want to put them there, and as such most times, they are not prepared. So assessing them is very difficult because they did not emerge as a consensus or Nigerian candidates, they emerged as an establishment candidate. This means that there is a serious disconnect between the politicians and the electorate. So assessing Yaradua or Jonathan or any Nigerian leader for me is very difficult.
Given the vision 20 20 20 programme Yar’adua began which Goodluck promised to complete. Do you think that the political climate for such has been created?
Right from the beginning of time, because of the nature of the emergence of candidates, they do not have any working paper. Most time, it is either after they are elected, nobody discussed vision 202020 during the primaries, during the electioneering campaign building up to the final election. Now if any society in any political process, the candidates will start discussing the ideas they are bringing to the office first, so you begin to understand that the Yar’adua administration wants to bring vision 202020 and the seven point agenda. That would have been the cardinal thing and Nigeria would have been awash with all the ideas behind the vision. Now if those things did not happen, the vision came after the man was sworn-in, then he sat down and say now I did not have anything let me put this on the table. You remember even during the military era, the green revolution, operation feed the nation, structural adjustment programme, all these are ideas that were loaded on the leaders because they did not have their own. So anybody that has an agenda or an idea suddenly says “I think if we can do vision 202020 it will work.” So they just buy into it, that is why assessing the administration is very difficult.
Now Jonathan has come out with his own transformation which is a far cry from vision 202020, just to let you know that it is only when they come to office they start running around and say what do we put together. Some will now say let us do transformation, what is transformation? What is vision 202020? Where are all the ideas that have been put in place by our past leaders? Why were they not actualized? It is because it is not deep rooted there were no foundations for them?
(Cuts in…) With what is going on, how we can go about continuity as it is always said, with government abandoning…
That is what I am saying, the process has to start from the beginning. If I am running elections, I will bring my programme from the beginning indicating what I will do and what I will not. But Like I said, most times the candidates themselves do not emerge as consensus candidates, they emerge as establishment candidates. “Look we brought you here there is nothing like vision 202020. We brought you here and we are doing transformation here which include A, B, C, and D which will benefit us, you and your family, so it is not going to be possible for Nigeria to move forward as long as the process is flawed.”
You can look at all the political parties now, nobody has seen the transparency in their conventions that produces the party leadership. Look at PDP for instance, since 1999 PDP has not sat down and elected their leadership. It is only a foolish man that would expect that the same party can give you democracy, they cannot do it by themselves. Since 1999, it has always been selection and appointments. 80 to 95% of all the PDP leadership are appointees, just like civil servants that went for interview and were selected based on certain criteria that is put in place by the establishment. So he is an appointee, he doesn’t have anything definite to do with the larger public, he is responsible to the person that brought him. That is why we are talking about rigging and violence because there is always a disconnect. First and foremost the party chairman was not a consensus candidate, he was not elected by anybody.
Look at what is happening in Adamawa now, the PDP chairman and all other parties, nobody ever heard that they went for elections, everybody is just there. Of course it might be an unseen hand, it might be to some other people from outside that brought in the chairman. So it is always difficult for you to continue with a programme of your predecessor because there is a huge gap as to how he came in. So there is no way I can continue a programme if I have my other masters who are on my neck. If you continue with your predecessors programme, what is there for us.” That is why they abandon these projects. The projects have already consumed N10m and what remains is only N2m now if I continue how much will I get? But if we start a new one of N50m, you will get N10m, I will get N10m and the contractor will go home with N5m.
So these are the major problems, it is not policy failure, policy formulators might have done their job but implementation has become floppy and there cannot be continuity simply because the changeover from one administration to the next is a clean break, it is a new set of people. So it is very difficult for Nigeria to move forward, to have continuity when the process of bringing the leadership is wrong.
Given the time that political events as we talked about party leadership and how they emerge, what is your assessment of what transpired in Adamawa state from 2006 during the registration and revalidation exercise of the Peoples Democratic Party and how that has affected the state?
You cannot take a scene from the middle or the end, if you take the case of Adamawa you have to start from the beginning. First and foremost, any Adamawa elite that I know alive or dead has at some point run the state. During the military era, Adamawa is the only state where all the armed services had served as military governors. We have had a naval officer as a governor, an Air-force officer, a Police officer all as governors or administrators which means by extension the police governor would have been influenced possibly by our former chief of Air staff who was in office. So what I am saying by extension is that every elite in Adamawa, people like Nyako himself when he was in the system was able to produce a naval governor, late Ibrahim Alfa was able to produce an Airforce governor, Late General Jalo was able to produce an Army governor. So by extension, they have all been there before. Whatever Nyako is doing now, his boy was there before as governor and during that time it is their own people that the military administrator will appoint which means if the governor is an Airforce officer, it is all the people that AVM Alfa wants that will be appointed. Ogbonnaya appointed only those Nyako wanted.
So they are not new in these things. Let us not be deceived, the fighting between our Elders did not start today. All of them have run the state at one time, Ibrahim Alfa, Murtala Nyako and Gambo Jimeta. They are only coming back now. The problem did not start today or yesterday. So what Nyako is doing now is not new, he already had a picture because he was there too in a military uniform and by proxy. Then all these coloration of Christian – Muslim divide, coloration of minority Hausa/Fulani divide are all hug-wash. The reality is that every known Adamawa elite has been there before, they are only coming back now in another form.
So our case is so bastardized by our elites and they use religion and tribe only as cover. A Christian, Muslim or a minority can win election in Adamawa state, but the fact of the matter is that our elite who have been there all the time right from Jang have ruled the state. Adamawa is the only state in this country that during the military era every arm of the military minus the fire-brigade, every other uniformed person was governor in our state. You see, all these people that are fighting now have been fighting long before now but it should not affect us and my generation. So, I am telling Adamawa people that look, let us work together across party and religious lines and elect a governor of our own. The governor to be elected will now be the first governor who is nobody’s proxy. You know how Boni Haruna emerged and how Barde emerged. So Adamawa had never had a consensus governor, a governor we call our own.
How do you think, we can overcome this problem we are talking about?
For me, I believe in providence. The way God brought in Jonathan now I believe something similar may happen in so many parts of the country. Jonathan is the first president that was not brought by them. He never won an election, he was not on the card. He was not even going to succeed Yar’adua even if Yar’adua had done four or eight years but somehow he emerged as president. Now some are looking at him as if he is an armed robber or a thief who broke into the Villa. They do not even know where he was coming from or who is his godfather or master. Everybody is now fighting and asking who is this boy and who brought him here? How did we get here? This is because Jonathan was not on the radar. If Jonathan had been on the radar he would not have gone this far. The establishment never contain that this one will even get close to Abuja not to talk of going to the Villa. So he is seen as a thief in the Villa, in fact the establishment in this country literally has serious contempt to our president. They are asking, what is he doing here? Who is he? What is his background? Who are his parents? What is his pedigree? They do not see Jonathan as a leader and our president. They see him as a thief. Over the years they believe that certain people own the Villa and for them to see a stranger inside the Villa and he is not even talking to them.
If you see what characterized his emergence, from the time our late president was sick to whether he can act, to whether he will be a candidate to the zoning is all the fight. Finally when they realized that God is doing something by bringing somebody here whether you like it or not that was when they started asking how can this person be here. He does not belong but finally, finally he is here.
Instead of this country to look at what God has done, instead of us to reposition this one, that was brought in anyway and partner with him. “Agreed you are not supposed to be here but you are now here, how do we now work with you so that we can now move this country forward.”
What is your comment on this issue of marginalization both at the state and national level?
When you talk of marginalization, what is meant by marginalization is something very marginal. It means you will still get but it is something marginal. If you are supposed to get 50 but you are able to get 20. But now the marginalized people themselves are their own problem because if you get marginal things it means you have the capacity to get it anyway. The meaning of marginalization is you get something by the best margin, now if you get something small, you too know that there is a way that you can expand it which means you have the capacity to get much more than what you are getting now. But the marginalized people themselves do not help matters by thinking maybe this is all that I can get so let me just remain where I am. Unless the marginalized people stand against the establishment that is sharing this, it will continue. If you are the fastest runner for instance in 100 metres and there are ten of you and you are the person coming first the entire time do you think that you have the right more than the man coming last? You do not; the man coming last knew that he was also qualified to run the race. First thing you put in your mind is that if you are qualified to run the race and you are ten in number then you should know that you have the capacity to qualify so what is in that man that is not in you? Which means that God has put in you all the things he has put in your competitor. The ability to come first depends on you not the way you are created. Marginalized people have to realize that if they can get marginally in the first instance, they have the capacity to expand it. This we do not do because we are still clogged by the same establishment who in the first place are marginalizing us.
Somebody was asking me a question in an interview on minority and I asked him who told you that somebody is a minority? I remember I once asked one of this our so called minority leaders in a meeting, I said, Sir, who told you that you are a minority? How did it all start? You have to know the root of a problem before you even attack it. In the beginning all of us supposedly were the same, who singled you out and told you that you are a minority? And he was very insulting to me and said why should I ask him such a question? I said because somebody has to deal with this. You cannot just wake up one morning and say you are a minority. No, somebody must have said that look “you don’t belong here” and the reason is that you are not like us. You are a minority person, you should go, when we finish we will give you. So the problem again is our so called past leaders who claimed they are our leaders who agreed in the first instance that they are minorities, who are serving their masters simply because they have convinced themselves that they are not equal to other people. It does not affect me, I am not one. I am definitely not a minority. I do not agree that I am not one. I did not see where I did not get anything because of where I come from or because of my faith. People peddling the word minority are counter-productive and show that they did not believe in themselves. The marginalization or minority thing will continue as long as this so called minority or marginalized people do not understand that they are as equal and the so called majority are as ordinary as all of them. This situation will go on and on. Though it is a mind thing now, not a physical attribute. It is just put in your mind that you do not belong and you sit there and complain.
I was in a meeting one time in Jos and those at the meeting said it is a middle belt forum and I said I cannot attend. They asked why and I said I cannot be in the middle I am either at the bottom or the top, but if you tell me I am in the middle, being in the middle already is a word that is not consistent with my own ideas. I would rather be where I have firm control of myself. If I am at the top, let me be there where I can sustain it. If I am at the bottom completely, at least I am standing firm and I will know how to push forward. But if you start telling me that I am in the middle, already I am discounted, it means it will either fall or I will go out. But the key thing here is that I do not have any base that will sustain me because if you are in the middle, you are not sustained by anything; you are floating. Therefore they either hit you down or its only by luck you can go up. You cannot use your ideas to come down or to go up if you are in the middle. In fact, the man at the bottom is better than the man at the middle because at the bottom he is firm and is able to factor how to push through and get to the top. The man at the top can fall onto where he is than the man in the middle. So, some of these things that we say are counter-productive and so inconsistent with the reality on the ground.
Do not tell somebody that he is in the middle, middle of where? Now, some people are saying they are core-North, which means they have gone farther than where we are. They have gone farther from the bottom and the middle and they have gone farther and farther to wherever. But we that call ourselves the middle are still stuck. So certain words are so key to human elements and development.
Jonathan is president now, he convinced himself that if his wife’s name is Patience and his name is Goodluck, it is just a matter of time. That was why he served as deputy governor patiently and he thought certain things played a role in his life. So when he realized that his wife’s name is patience and what he needs to do is just to be patient then goodluck will come. He is president today. He became president without running an election and without printing posters until after the election which he contested. Some of these words we use are not palatable, so we should desist from this idea of minority or marginalization which is counter-productive. I am not marginalized, I am not a minority and I am not from the middle, that is why I succeeded in life. Once you put these things in your mind and in your psyche, the possibility is that you cannot go forward. It is like somebody driving a car looking at the rear mirror, you cannot move forward.
About the coming gubernatorial election in Adamawa state, how do you see it?
You see, our Adamawa elections by now every indigene has made up his or her mind on where he or she will cast his votes. Every indigene of Adamawa, based on what is happening now, the average Adamawa person does not need any conviction, they will vote according to their conscience. So it is not as if you are going into an election where certain things are being expected, no, we are going into election based on our faith and tribe as far as Adamawa is concerned. People will line up behind someone of their tribe or religion. Adamawa is one of the few states in the country that has never ran its administration based on ideas. Like I said earlier, every elite in the past has been a governor before by proxy. That is how the state has been run from then till now.
In fact, the election campaign in Adamawa state now is the first I have seen where there is some divergence that the people are in it for different reasons. Initially it was just “this is what we want, this is our man and we are the people that will put him there.” Now people are coming to terms with the reality “I can also put my man there too.” So there is a big fight now, “let us put our own person.” The so called disadvantaged indigenes of Adamawa state who call themselves minority or Christians are working very assiduously now to make sure Gundiri gets there. The other Fulani stock who have been benefiting from this Nyako administration also want to continue. Marwa too is trying to smuggle some other things, nobody has a clear cut agenda or idea as to why he is in the race and all that.
Like I said, it is all hanging around these two issues, religion and tribe. You cannot run away from this one. Anybody that tells you it is based on development in Adamawa state, you know that it is a lie and he is just using it as a cover. The reality of it is that people will come out and line behind the candidate they preserve will further their interest.
Unfortunately for us, we still have not come out of this, “our founding fathers agenda which was build around themselves.” You can only imagine that naming FUTY has become an issue because it is Moddibo Adama University. How does it become an issue? How does it affect the life of an Adamawa person? Why should they question even the name? Let them name everything Adama in Adamawa state as far as I am concerned. What can they bring on the table? For me, those are the issues. That they name the University Moddibo Adama, now does it affect you? You and I know that at some point all those will be meaningless. Why do you send time trying to fight the name of a dead person? When we have some many other critical issues to talk about?
I congratulate the president that in fact it was good that we even have Moddibo Adama University in my state because if the likes of Sardauna or Awolowo will get Universities named after them, do the same too in Adamawa. I had a lot of quarrel with people that why am I excited? Why would I not be excited? I was excited because again for people that actually led, whether they lead you or they lead other people. But the fact of the matter is that every society writes their history based on their past. As far as I am concerned, the president did the right thing by naming the University after Modibbo Adama and I am very proud of that. Again, we are trying to digress from the past. For instance, it is going to be Adamawa governor not Kilba or Christian governor. Everybody will participate. He is not going to run a Christian based or Muslim based administration, we have to get off this because we are in the 21st century now. Things we were doing in the past out of ignorance, we now know clearly that it has not helped and it has not worked, we have not gone anywhere. So if Gundiri wins this election, I will be so disappointed if he has seen any sign of an unbalanced administration. It will be an administration that will be by Adamawa people, whether you are Fulani, whether you are a Muslim or Christian, it will be people- oriented government.
We know what is happening now, that Nyako has taken graduates to universities abroad, and all are fulanis. Even the recent Hajj operations, it is only Fulani people that got the free government ticket which means he has hurt everybody else and even among his Fulani people not everybody got anything. We need the governor of the state, not a governor for minority or majority or for Christians or muslims. The state needs the governor that will stand and say this is where we are, we must digress from here and start the process of repositioning this state or re-inventing the state. We have a lot of potentials and we have no reason to cry, even regarding the strike, people should be able to go to their backyard and have food to eat. It is despicable that Adamawa is where it is now, given all the resources God has given us, 70% of our indigenes go to bed hungry.
What is your take on the minimum wage palaver and the issue of insecurity?
Government is always government because like I always say, the way every government came to power is very flawed. How do you talk of a minimum wage of N18,000 when in the same country, a governor stole N50 billion, in the same country, you see headlines EFCC lines up this person for N50 or N100 billion. Recently, the National Assembly gave us statistics of approved money meant for fuel subsidy was N250 billion, again N1 trillion was spent. You see, there are a lot of discrepancies in the system, I do not agree with the fuel subsidy because already we do not get subsidized fuel in this country. I did my own statistics, I am from Garkida and I live in Abuja. The distance between Garkida and Abuja is 810 kilometres. 90% of this road is bad, now if I buy fuel at N65 per litre in Abuja for instance, by the time I go to Garkida on bad roads, I will end up with the mechanic the following day. I will spend about N45,000 to N87,000 depending on the type of car I drive. If you factor that cost into fuel, you will find out that you may be paying N1,000 per litre.
This is the only country endowed with this resource. Today they are even selling vehicle registration plate for N45,000 and then drive on bad roads. This is the reason why we get so disconnected between the ruled and the rulers. We do not have leaders. If the rulers knew what they were doing they should have known before they came into office, all these issues will not even be raised because they were on the other side before.
Everybody in office today was on the other side before. Jonathan and Nyako were on the other side, you see, the Abacha PTF has exposed the lies government is peddling now. Abacha increased fuel marginally and within a short period of time Nigerians were awash with development. That was why when Obasanjo increased it Nigerians did not fight because they thought it will be the Abacha system. Obasanjo increased it about five times nothing worked out. These people will now come with their ideas without statistics we cannot drive on bad roads go to hospitals without medication, public schools closed and you say you are enjoying government. Nigerian government as far as I know whether, states, local government or federal governments, for me they are not responsive, they are not responsible, they are completely disconnected from the very people they are ruling out but they do not lead anybody.
You will factor fuel subsidy without having wider consultation with the very people you intend to serve. The money has been going to private pockets. I have never been in government, but I do know that there is no one naira of government that will be released to anybody without it going through certain process. If it is going through process, it means government knows where the money is going to or who is collecting it. So Jonathan knows exactly who has the private pocket, it is either him or his cronies because they are the only people with private pockets. But government will go on television and tell this country that money is going to private pockets, it is very cynical. They have not given us any evidence, they did not tell us that the subsidy is based on ABCD. If it is going to their pockets, let it come to all Nigerians pockets. Let it be 1000% or 20000% as long as it comes to our pockets.
So all these ideas they are peddling of fuel subsidy or we cannot pay wages, governors have agreed simply because they want to get the largest.
As an international businessman does it mean that the atmosphere in Nigeria is not conducive for investments…?
When you talk of investment from a business standpoint if you put money inside a hole, any businessman whether black or white, foreign or local, if there is money inside a hole and there is a snake by it, he will stand there as long as he will devise a way of getting the money. There are certain criteria for making money. There are certain things you need to put in place and there must be certain infrastructure to make it possible for the money to be taken. You must convince the man coming with his money that if he puts ten dollars he will get twenty dollars. We still have not laid the infrastructure for investment, in any case any foreigner you see coming to Nigeria today is either a crook or he cannot make it in his own country that is the only reason. I have travelled around the world, I have lived in the United States. Any American or European that has an income of 250 thousand dollars or Euros will not come here for 25 million dollars job, knowing what is on ground here. If you see them here, they have an agenda. Of course they know we have crooks in the system. They are not here because they want to add value, most of our foreign partners are not adding value because if they are, 50 years down the road, Nigeria would have started seeing the light in spite of our political situation. The average foreigner that comes here as far as he is concerned is going to a gambling house, a casino, it is where you can put N10 and get N1000, where you can put N1000 and get kidnapped.
What is your take on the security situation bedeviling the country now?
As long as you reward criminality, as long as somebody did wrong and he is rewarded, the system as you know is the only country in the world that you go to any type of jail. Since we started jailing the so called politicians, only 2% went to jail because of their ideology. When Awolowo went to jail, he was pushing his own agenda. People like Aminu Kano went to jail based on what he perceived were right for his people. Only this group went to jail based on their political belief. 98% of people that went to join after them were jailed for dubious reasons, either political or economic crime or just criminality in its entirety. Nobody has ever been punished for it. People that have committed serious and heinous political crimes causing the death of innocent citizens, maimed people and never went to jail for it. People stole billions and billions of public funds went to jail, came out and became governors or ministers, never punished for it.
The point is, the average person in Nigeria sees that “it would not happen to me, it did not happen to my grandfather so it would not happen to me.” So we are running a system that has no punitive process. Look at the way they share national honours here. How is it possible in a country like this with serious security challenges, with a dysfunctional economy, with a crooked political system, that 360 people got national honours in this country? Where in the world, a country ravaged by so much turmoil yet 360 persons qualified to get national honours. Yet the following day Jonathan was chairing a Boko Haram security meeting after he gave the award. He sat with this same people and was saying how do we go from here on security challenges after he has distributed 360 awards to Nigerians without any criteria? United States of America has been running their national award process for the past one hundred and fifty years. As I am talking to you now only a hundred and twenty people have collected it so far in one hundred and fifty years. With about 400 million people in the United States, they hardly get six to seven in a year and in some years zero. Here 360 persons are qualified to be singled out for national honours.
It was mentioned to me that about 37 persons on that list had EFCC issue and I understand that Farida was even there with their names and as they called them she will tick it but they walked away with national honours. They kept our president for almost the whole day just to give award to people who have failed the nation.
Finally, what word do you have for the people of Adamawa state as they prepare for the gubernatorial elections?
We should digress from this “my person, my faith and my tribe.” All these issues have never pushed our state forward.
For me, I will want a situation whereby an Adamawa based person is elected. Even how Nyako came, we all know it. Nyako did not have anything to do with Adamawa people at all from the process up to the time he was smuggled in or rigged and sworn-in. He was not an Adamawa candidate. He brought his cousin in as Chairman of the party, they already have their agenda and made up their mind on what they want to do and what they want to achieve. So it is left for the Adamawa people now. After this dismal performance, after this crisis ridden performance in the last four years, how do we get out of the woods now. I believe our people have made up their minds, the man that did not get his salary, the man whose son is not in school knows exactly where it hurts. I believe too that he will vote based on the situation he finds himself. He will have to look at some of these issues and then vote according to his own conscience because he has seen it all. Vote according to your conscience and issues that confront you. If the people believe that another person can do it differently, it is left to them. Nigeria is in a transition but it is taking much longer than necessary in other countries it takes a shorter time.
Nigeria is still immersed in the former system, this politics is just by name but the system is still a militarized system. Governors will run sirens to churches and mosques, it is only dysfunctional person that will carry sirens to the place of worship to show God his own power. Even God they are confronting him in this country, God himself. We are not running democracy in this country. DO you know that there are cases brought before tribunals from the 1999 elections, till today they are still not settled? They carry them over to 2003 to the 2007 elections. To tell you how dysfunctional our system is, that there are people who contested election in 1999 till today still have not agreed. That administration has passed and even some of the people they took to court have died but they are still contesting it. Where in the whole world that a 1999 election is still being contested?
In this country, anything goes. The system has systematically been eroded so we do not have a system. If you recall when our dead president was alive and when he fell sick, the story making the rounds was that his wife was not allowing people holding positions of public trust; that a housewife did not allow the vice president to see our president, that she did not allow all the security chiefs to see him. The very people he appointed as ministers could not see him. This woman is a housewife, she was not elected, and not an appointee, how was she able to stand at the gates and not allow anybody into the villa is a big question Nigerians have refused to ask. I asked somebody one time that is she in the police now? He said no and I asked how did she not allow people in? You see we do not ask questions in this country. We just see things loaded unto us and we just queue into it. Till today nobody has asked the question how did it happen, how do we prevent it?
Apart from the few Kangaroo arrangements they did in the constitution. The question is that how did it happen, was she a policeman? No, was she in the army? No, was appointed by law? No, is she an elected official? No. A housewife, but where are the institutions? I always tell people that this Turai for me should get the GCFR because she is my heroine. That she was not included in this year’s award, I thought initially that Turai should get this GCFR in a reasonable society. If the criteria for giving an award is performance, Turai should get GCFR. As I am talking to you now Turai still remains my heroine. I do not know how she did it, I am not close to her but I wish one day I will have a close contact with that woman because she is an icon. A woman that held 150 million people outside villa, outside the constitution, outside the security system for months.
This should be a case-study in other countries; an ordinary housewife has caged the entire security system, the entire political system and the entire administrative system and kept her husband to herself.
Is there any light at the end of the tunnel in spite of all that you have said?
Our own light is behind us unfortunately. For me the light is not at the end of the tunnel, it is at the beginning. If you look at our founding fathers, you will see clearly their objectives. If you look at their developmental efforts and even their social services you will know that they were much focused. The western region did their railway and brought it up to the Niger Bridge, Sardauna took it quickly to Maiduguri through Jos, went to the South through Minna and all that. By the time Awolowo finished the first television station in Ibadan in 1958, by 1961 the Nigerian Television in Kaduna was already on stream. By the time, they were almost graduating the first batch from University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria was almost preparing for their graduation ceremony. By the time, Wema Bank was on stream, Bank of the North had already gotten their license, by the time they finished Premier Hotel, Ibadan; Hamdala Hotel, Kaduna was already commissioned. So you can see the progression of that first administration. Unlike any other person, our own light is behind us, it is just the shadow you are seeing. So what we have to do now is to turn back and say we are in the wrong direction. My advice in any interview is that we just have to go back because we have left our light behind us, where we are now we are really stuck.
Even socially, the relationship between the Christians and Moslems, between the so called minority and the majority were so cordial that you did not notice which faith you belong to in the past. Everyone was so glued and joined to each other, the only issue was how do we go forward? If you go to Kaduna today, Ibadan or Enugu, the same hotel that you have been hearing. If anybody is going to Ibadan today, they will tell you about Premier Hotel, if someone is coming to Kaduna, certainly he will hear from his friends of Hamdala Hotel. Can you imagine that in 50 years, even a hotel which will make money has still not been built to measure up to what Sardauna did? You know that during Sardauna’s time, it was a hotel for every northerner. They sell drinks and any time of thing there. Today, there is Halal Hotel and they say there are some things there you do not do in the open.
This is a country where people go on television and Newspapers and just lie. So, if you ask me of how far we have come, I will say our light is behind us.
It has been a pleasure talking with you.
The pleasure is mine, thank you.
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