Presidential candidate of the United Democratic Party (UDP) in the 2015 general election, Godson Okoye, tells Acting News Editor, ISHAYA IBRAHIM, the consequences of the delay by President Muhammadu Buhari to constitute his cabinet, among other issues.
As a presidential candidate in the last election, do you think President Muhammadu Buhari came prepared with a master plan on how to run the country, going by what you have seen so far?
If he has master plan, it is probably not for this era. If he came prepared, by now he would have had his ministers. He contested this election four times. All this while, did he not have a cabinet? At least his inner cabinet.
The argument out there is that even in the United States, it took President Barack Obama sometime before he constituted his cabinet.
You are going to ask somebody a favour and you are telling the person that he is so weak like you. So, how is that person going to take kindly to your request? America is not like Nigeria. But the point is that they had a system. With or without Obama’s cabinet, the system was working. But Nigeria does not have that kind of system. In America, whether you are Republican or Democrat, nobody cares; the system goes on. You cannot do anything that will upset the system. The system is already set. You have to blend with the system. The system doesn’t have to wait for you. America’s interest is permanent and steady. In Nigeria, there is no interest. As it is now, the APC is trying to re-invent the wheel. Have they consulted with PDP people that ran the system for 16 years? If they came prepared, they should be able to have a machinery by which they will consult with them. At least somebody that has been running the system for 16 years should have certain things to tell you. PDP did not run Nigeria for the sake of PDP; they ran Nigeria for Nigeria. And APC is not going to run Nigeria for the sake of APC; they will run Nigeria for Nigeria. Therefore, you must interface with those that were there before you came. Get some briefings from them, and then you carry on. You can even carry some of them along and move on. But at every point we come, we are starting afresh. Even when we have a master plan, we must start afresh. It is not right.
But the presidency said governance has not stalled, that permanent secretaries are carrying out the day-to-day activities of government.
Okay, permanent secretaries were here and you announced that you had removed roadblocks; permanent secretaries were there, suddenly you said they were back. Permanent secretaries were there, you said that you had recalled all your ambassadors; suddenly somebody remembered you were going to America and then you said the ambassador in U.S. should go back. Permanent secretaries were there, you dissolved all boards, suddenly you remembered the universities had to function and then you said okay, the universities were not included. What are we talking about? I am only trying to tell you that the system is not as programmed as that of the U.S. And the sooner we realised that, the better for everybody.
We need to form a system that works for us. And the sooner we operate Nigeria for Nigerians, the better for everybody. We should not operate Nigeria or organise Nigeria in the way that suits anybody or any country. That is the problem we have. And the current leaders are people that are very deep into this kind of stigma. They have that kind of sentiment. They must get approval from foreigners before they know that they are doing the right thing. Do something right for your own country for goodness’ sake! Why do we have to go seek clearance from somebody else to do something here? Why do we have to wait for foreign investors before we can operate our economy? How many foreign investors did (the people of) Singapore get before they kick-started their economy? How many foreign investors did Indonesia(ns) get before they operated their economy and now they are doing well?
Somebody is doing something, unless dollar is waved at him, he will not sit up. You are bringing money, you have no respect for your currency and then once a foreign currency is involved, ‘oh the person is serious’. Nobody can love your country better than you, no matter how we pretend. They will only take what they want and then walk off. You only need to operate Nigeria in the way that suits Nigerians. But because they (political leaders) believe in outside endorsement, nobody believes in Nigeria’s endorsement.
Did Americans vote for him? Did the Europeans vote for him? Nigerians voted for him! Wouldn’t it have been a better thing for him to do a tour of the country after swearing-in? At least if you don’t tour state to state, you tour zone to zone. Thereafter you go abroad. Our charity begins abroad because these are people that are suffering from colonial mentality. If Britain or America does not approve of what they are doing, they are not comfortable. And it is insulting to your generation and my generation that what they are implying is that the school they established for us is faulty. If not, why won’t we be ruling Nigeria? It is because they don’t have confidence in the education they gave to us. It is the same people that have been recycling themselves. Therefore, they should give way for those who have solution to the country fundamentally. They grew up in an era when Nigeria was fragmented, was ruled as regions. If they come to the national stage, they say ‘oh Nigeria is big’, because they only see Nigeria from the narrow view of their regions and zones.
These people grew up when Nigeria was Eastern Region, Northern Region, Western Region and all that. They don’t look at the national picture. Classic example; look at the National conference. All the people that came to that conference were all the people that do not believe in Nigeria. Look at their demands: South East wants this, South West wants this, North East wants this, North Central wants this’. Where was Nigeria in the whole of that conference? Those that are in the command centre of power in this country do not believe in this country. The sooner we take over and take charge of this country, the better for everybody.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recently came up with some policies, including restriction of certain imports and non-deposit of dollars in domiciliary accounts, apparently to shore up the value of the naira. How would you react to the measures?
You don’t shore up the value of the naira with haphazard policy. If the CBN wants to shore up the value of the naira, you encourage production. They have not been supervising banks over a period of time. And the banks have been going on round-tripping with people’s money. If they had been sitting on the banks to supervise them properly, they would go into the real sector, fund productive activities, fund agricultural activities. But bank workers live ostentatious lifestyles, and it rubs off on CBN people, and CBN people are trying to catch up with their commercial banks rivals. Where in the world do you see a bank worker, may be in England, living in Central London. How? With whose money? They occupy palatial homes in Nigeria. They occupy all kinds of five-star hotels. Nobody is asking. They buy private jets. With whose money?
Banking is a conservative profession; it is not a profession that you engage in and live like a king. It doesn’t work that way. And it is for CBN to curtail such lifestyles. They did not, because they have interests in most of the commercial banks. And instead of putting maybe 20 per cent of their operations into commercial activities, 80 per cent into productive activities, they put 80 per cent into commercial activities and 20 per cent into productive.
People are applauding the president for tackling the menace of insurgency. Do you share in such sentiment?
If you are in a conflict and you are calling for negotiation, are you the person winning or the person losing? You do not call for negotiation when you are winning. The claim was that within two weeks of his swearing-in, Boko Haram would be history. Today, they are talking about going to negotiate with them. By offering to negotiate with them, they are only saying: we made the mistake in assuming that Boko Haram would be history in two weeks after inauguration. Yes they have done some things like moving the Command and Control Centre to Borno State. That is where it is supposed to be in the first place. It is only when you have boots on the ground that you can be anybody. And for me, we are going to have barracks in every reasonable length of all our borders. That is the only way you can check and monitor external aggression. You cannot be in the centre of town and when they breach your border, before you think of attacking, they are already in your territory. You should prepare those territories to ward off such breaches, so they don’t come in. Ward them off at the door, so they don’t come in. And these people have been part of the system one way or another. They know that we don’t have men. You must have men for you to protect a country. It is scandalous that in a country of more than 100 million people, we don’t have up to 200,000 people in the Army, Air Force and Navy. That is scandalous. There is no reason we shouldn’t have more than one million armed men. When you have that, in the interim, you have also taken care of unemployment, because it is the reason for armed robbery and many other crimes. By so doing, many unemployed will be absorbed in the Police, Air Force and all that. And they will be trained in a positive way to help the country.
But the money you should use to pay them has been pocketed by few people and they have walked away. Whether people applaud him or not, the important thing is that when (former President Goodluck) Jonathan attempted to negotiate, he was condemned. Now, after swearing-in, you are offering to negotiate. You were not voted to go and negotiate. He said he should be voted, so that he can go and defeat them in two weeks and not to go and negotiate with them. So, who is fooling who? People are not being careful in the things they do and the things they say.
Yes, the man may be a good man; no doubt about that. But he is in an environment that he did not prepare very well for. Nigeria of toady is different from Nigeria of five years ago. It is different from Nigeria of 10 years ago.
Look at it, for example. Are you expanding the economy when you say shut down the treasury banks because you want to make sure that those that have dollars don’t go to bank to pay them? You may end up getting at those people, but you would have shut down your economy. So what have you achieved? You know the number of businesses that would have gone down since they started experimenting with this haphazard policy. People have ordered for goods. People can’t meet up their obligation. Those that are supposed to have remitted money can’t remit money. And the supplier says you have breached the contract, I will not supply the goods.
And we want to create jobs. So look at the collateral damage you are doing to our system. The people that will benefit are our neighbours. Since this happens, people have been coming from Ghana, Togo, and Benin Republic to buy money at the rate that is low, go back to their countries and sell at the rate you would have sold it in Nigeria. It was the same thing that happened when we messed up our educational system. Is it not the Ghana system that benefited?
People have been raising eyebrows over the president’s appointments. Do you have any problem with that?
Of course, it is very slanted. You cannot run an efficient system on tribal or religious sentiment. For any system that will be efficient, you must have competent people running it. You cannot tell me that you have only qualified people in one side of the country. Competence knows no tribe or religion. You have competent people in the North and in the South. I am not saying you are going to base your appointments on North or South. But because of the precarious nature of our system, you must take that into consideration. When you make an appointment in a way that shows you are favouring one side, perception is almost 80 per cent of what life is. It may not be true. But once people perceive it to be like that, it will be difficult for you to tell them otherwise. You make sensitive national appointments like about 13, and 11 is from one side of the country and two is from the other side. Common, man; tell me something else. I am not saying those you have appointed may not be competent, but in also trying to do that, that federal character that people have been talking about, that ethnic balancing, must be taken into consideration. The way you have competent people in the North, that is the way you have them in the West, East, Middle Belt and South South.