Sunday, 6 March 2016

Nancy Reagan, an Influential and Stylish First Lady, Dies at 94

By LOU CANNON MARCH 6, 2016

Nancy Reagan, the influential and stylish wife of the 40th president of the United States who unabashedly put Ronald Reagan at the center of her life but became a political figure in her own right, died on Sunday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 94.

The cause was congestive heart failure, according to a statement from Joanne Drake, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Reagan.

Mrs. Reagan was a fierce guardian of her husband’s image, sometimes at the expense of her own, and during Mr. Reagan’s improbable climb from a Hollywood acting career to the governorship of California and ultimately the White House, she was a trusted adviser.

“Without Nancy, there would have been no Governor Reagan, no President Reagan,” said Michael K. Deaver, the longtime aide and close friend of the Reagans who died in 2007.

President Obama said on Sunday that Mrs. Reagan “had redefined the role” of first lady, adding, “Later, in her long goodbye with President Reagan, she became a voice on behalf of millions of families going through the depleting, aching reality of Alzheimer’s, and took on a new role, as advocate, on behalf of treatments that hold the potential and the promise to improve and save lives.”

Mrs. Reagan helped hire and fire the political consultants who ran her husband’s near-miss campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 and his successful campaign for the presidency in 1980.

She also played a seminal role in the 1987 ouster of the White House chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, whom Mrs. Reagan blamed for ineptness after it was disclosed that Mr. Reagan had secretly approved arms sales to Iran.

Behind the scenes, Mrs. Reagan was the prime mover in Mr. Reagan’s efforts to recover from the scandal, which was known as Iran-contra because some of the proceeds from the sale had been diverted to the contras opposing the leftist government of Nicaragua. While trying to persuade her stubborn husband to apologize for the arms deal, Mrs. Reagan brought political figures into the White House, among them the Democratic power broker Robert S. Strauss, to argue her case to the president.

Mr. Reagan eventually conceded that she was right. On March 4, 1987, the president made a distanced apology for the arms sale in a nationally televised address that dramatically improved his slumping public approval ratings.

His wife, typically, neither sought nor received credit for the turnaround. Mrs. Reagan did not wish to detract from her husband’s luster by appearing to be a power behind the presidential throne.

In public, she gazed at him adoringly and portrayed herself as a contented wife who had willingly given up a Hollywood acting career of her own to devote herself to her husband’s career. “He was all I had ever wanted in a man, and more,” she wrote in “My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan,” published in 1989.

He reciprocated in kind. “How do you describe coming into a warm room from out of the cold?” he once said. “Never waking up bored? The only thing wrong is, she’s made a coward out of me. Whenever she’s out of sight, I’m a worrier about her.”

In truth, she was the worrier. Mrs. Reagan wrote in her memoirs that she sometimes became angry with her husband because of his relentless optimism. He didn’t worry at all, she wrote, “and I seem to do the worrying for both of us.”

It was this conviction that led Mrs. Reagan to take a leading role in the Regan ouster and in other personnel matters in the White House. “It’s hard to envision Ronnie as being a bad guy,” she said in a 1989 interview. “And he’s not. But there are times when somebody has to step in and say something. And I’ve had to do that sometimes — often.”

She did not always get her way. Mr. Reagan ignored her criticism of several cabinet appointees, including Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

In 2001, seven years after her husband announced that he had Alzheimer’s disease, Mrs. Reagan broke with President George W. Bush and endorsed embryonic stem cell research. She stepped up her advocacy after her husband’s death on June 5, 2004. “She feels the greatest legacy her family could ever have is to spare other families from going through what they have,” a family friend, Doug Wick, quoted Mrs. Reagan as saying.

Years on Camera

Born Anne Frances Robbins on July 6, 1921, in New York City, Nancy Davis was the daughter of Edith Luckett, an actress, and Kenneth Robbins, a car dealer who abandoned the family soon after her birth. Ms. Luckett resumed her stage career when her daughter was 2 and sent the child to live with relatives in Bethesda, Md. In 1929, Ms. Luckett married a Chicago neurosurgeon, Loyal Davis, who adopted Nancy and gave her the family name.

Almost overnight, Nancy Davis’s difficult childhood became stable and privileged. Throughout the rest of her life, she described Mr. Davis as her real father.

Nancy Davis graduated from the elite Girls’ Latin School in Chicago and then from Smith College in 1943. Slender, with photogenic beauty and large, luminous eyes, she considered an acting career. After doing summer stock in New England, she landed a part in the Broadway musical “Lute Song,” with Mary Martin and Yul Brynner. With the help of a friend, the actor Spencer Tracy, her mother then arranged a screen test given by the director George Cukor, of MGM.

Cukor, according to his biographer, told the studio that Miss Davis lacked talent. Nonetheless, she was given a part in the film she had tested for, “East Side, West Side,” which was released in 1949 starring Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason and Ava Gardner. Cast as the socialite wife of a New York press baron, Miss Davis appeared in only two scenes, but they were with Miss Stanwyck, the film’s top star.

After her husband went into politics, Mrs. Reagan encouraged the notion that her acting interest had been secondary, a view underscored by the biographical information she supplied to MGM in 1949, in which she said her “greatest ambition” was to have a “successful, happy marriage.”

But this was a convention in a day when women were not encouraged to have careers outside the home. In his book “Reagan’s America: Innocents At Home,” Garry Wills disputed the prevalent view that Miss Davis had just been marking time in Hollywood while waiting for a man. She was “the steady woman,” he wrote, who in most of her 11 films had held her own with accomplished actors.

The producer Dore Schary cast Miss Davis in her first lead role, in “The Next Voice You Hear” (1950), playing a pregnant mother opposite James Whitmore. She received good reviews for her work in “Night Into Morning” (1951), with Ray Milland, in which she played a war widow who talked Milland’s character out of committing suicide. Mrs. Reagan thought this was her best film.

Mr. Wills wrote that she was underrated as an actress because she had become most widely associated with her “worst” and, as it happened, last film, “Hellcats of the Navy” (1957), in which Ronald Reagan had the leading role.

The Reagans at a premiere party for the film “Moby Dick” in 1956. Credit Hulton Archive/Getty Images

How They Met

As she so often did in life, Nancy Davis took the initiative in meeting the man who would become her husband.

In the late 1940s, Hollywood was in the grip of a “Red Scare,” prompted by government investigations into accusations of Communist influence in the film industry. In October 1949, the name “Nancy Davis” appeared in a Hollywood newspaper on a list of signers of a supporting brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the convictions of two screenwriters who had been blacklisted after being found guilty of contempt for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Such newspaper mentions could mean the end of a career, and Nancy Davis sought help from her friend Mervyn LeRoy, who had directed her in “East Side, West Side.” LeRoy found it was a case of mistaken identity: another Nancy Davis had worked in what he called “leftist theater.” He offered to call Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, to make sure there would be no problems in the future. Instead, Miss Davis insisted that LeRoy set up a meeting with Mr. Reagan.

The meeting took place over dinner at LaRue’s, a fashionable Hollywood restaurant on Sunset Strip. Mr. Reagan, recovering from multiple leg fractures suffered in a charity baseball game, was on crutches. Miss Davis was immediately smitten.

Mr. Reagan, though, was more cautious. According to Bob Colacello, who has written extensively about the Reagans, Mr. Reagan still hoped for a reconciliation with his first wife, the actress Jane Wyman, who had divorced him in 1948.

After dating several times in the fall of 1949, Mr. Reagan and Miss Davis drifted apart and dated others. But they began seeing each other again in 1950. Miss Davis had been accepted on the board of the Screen Actors Guild, and she and Mr. Reagan began having dinner every Monday night after the meetings, often with the actor William Holden, the guild vice president, according to Mr. Colacello.

Mr. Reagan and Nancy Davis were married on March 4, 1952, at a private ceremony at The Little Brown Church in the Valley, in Studio City. Mr. Holden and his wife, Ardis, were the only witnesses.

After their marriage, the Reagans bought a house in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, where their daughter, Patricia Ann, was born — “a bit precipitously,” Mrs. Reagan wrote in her memoirs — on Oct. 21, 1952. She is known as Patti Davis professionally. The Reagans also had a son, Ronald Prescott, on May 28, 1958.

Besides her son and daughter, survivors include Mrs. Reagan’s stepson, Michael Reagan, and her brother, Dr. Richard Davis. A stepdaughter, Maureen Reagan, died in 2001.

At the time of their marriage, Mr. Reagan’s film career was, as his new wife put it, at a “standstill.” Although Nancy Reagan had vowed not to be a working wife, she made a low-budget science-fiction movie, “Donovan’s Brain” (1953), with Lew Ayres. Her working was “a blow to Ronnie,” Mrs. Reagan observed in her memoirs, “but quite simply, we needed the money.”

The money worries ended early in 1954, when Music Corporation of America, the entertainment conglomerate, offered Mr. Reagan a television contract for $125,000 a year to be the host of “General Electric Theater.” It had a long run, broadcast on Sunday nights until 1962, and Mrs. Reagan herself acted in a few of its episodes.

Indeed, when her film career was over, she continued to work sporadically in television, in episodes of “Zane Grey Theater,” “The Dick Powell Show” and, as late as 1962, “Wagon Train.”

A Loyal Supporter

By then, Mr. Reagan had changed his partisan affiliation from Democratic to Republican and was giving political speeches. In Hollywood, Mr. Reagan’s shift toward the right was often attributed to Mrs. Reagan and her father, Loyal Davis, a staunch conservative. Both the Reagans denied this; she was barely interested in politics at the time, they said. Ironically, when President Reagan began to negotiate with Soviet leaders, conservatives accused Mrs. Reagan of pushing him in a liberal direction. Evidence is lacking to support either suspicion. As Mrs. Reagan put it: “If Ronnie hadn’t wanted to do it, he wouldn’t have done it.”

Though Mrs. Reagan was not at first keen on her husband’s entry into politics, she loyally supported him. His career took off when he made a rousing nationally televised speech for the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater on Oct. 27, 1964. The following year a group of wealthy people from Southern California approached Mr. Reagan about running for governor of California. He was interested.

From the first, Mrs. Reagan was part of the campaign planning. “They were a team,” said Stuart Spencer, who with Bill Roberts managed the Reagan campaign. New to politics, she said little at first. But Mr. Spencer found her “a quick learner, always absorbing.” Before long she was peppering Mr. Roberts and Mr. Spencer about their strategy and tactics.

Mr. Reagan won a contested Republican primary and then a landslide victory in November against the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Edmund G. Brown. For the Reagans, that meant a 350-mile move to the state capital, Sacramento.

Mrs. Reagan was not happy there. She missed friends and the brisker social pace and milder climate of Southern California. And she hated the governor’s mansion, a dilapidated Victorian house on a busy one-way street. So she persuaded her husband to lease, at their own expense, a 12-room Tudor house in a fashionable section of eastern Sacramento. Mr. Reagan’s wealthy Southern California supporters later bought the house and leased it back to the Reagans.

The mansion episode, and Mrs. Reagan’s unalloyed preference for Southern California, aroused parochial resentment in Sacramento. She in turn disliked the city’s locker-room political culture, which required her to socialize with the wives of legislators who had insulted her husband. She bristled at press scrutiny, which became more intense after Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, wrote an unflattering article, “Pretty Nancy,” in The Saturday Evening Post in 1968. The article described Mrs. Reagan’s famous smile as a study in frozen insecurity.

Mrs. Reagan, who thought she had made a good impression on Ms. Didion, was crushed by the article. Katharine Graham, the longtime publisher of The Washington Post and later a friend of Mrs. Reagan’s, said the article set the tone for other unfavorable ones.

But not all the press coverage was unflattering. A few months later, The Los Angeles Times published an article whose tone was telegraphed by its headline: “Nancy Reagan: A Model First Lady.” She also received positive publicity for welcoming home former prisoners of war from Vietnam and taking an active role in a Foster Grandparents Program for mentally disabled children.

Governor Reagan left office in 1975. With President Richard M. Nixon enmeshed in the Watergate scandal, the Reagans had already begun planning their next political move. In May 1974, they met with supporters at their home in Pacific Palisades. Among them was John P. Sears, a Washington lawyer who had worked for Mr. Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1960. Mr. Sears, alone of those who attended the meeting, predicted the Nixon resignation. That made an impression on Mrs. Reagan.

After Nixon resigned and was succeeded by Gerald R. Ford, Mr. Reagan began planning to challenge Mr. Ford for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination. Mrs. Reagan recommended hiring Mr. Sears to direct the effort, which Mr. Reagan narrowly lost. (Mr. Ford was then defeated by Jimmy Carter.)

Four years later, as Mr. Reagan again sought the nomination, Mrs. Reagan played a leading role in the firing of Mr. Sears. The campaign had just won the New Hampshire primary, but Mrs. Reagan nevertheless came to believe that Mr. Sears was a disruptive influence. She also had a hand in the hiring of his replacement as campaign manager, William J. Casey, whom Mr. Reagan later named director of central intelligence.

But after Mr. Reagan won the nomination and got off to a flustered start in his campaign against President Carter, Mrs. Reagan became critical of Mr. Casey and urged her husband to bring in Stuart Spencer, who had run Mr. Reagan’s first campaign for governor. Mr. Spencer was persona non grata in the Reagan camp because he had managed Mr. Ford’s campaign in 1976. But Mr. Reagan followed his wife’s advice. Mr. Spencer joined the campaign and ran it smoothly.

Not all of her advice was equally good. For instance, she opposed Mr. Spencer’s proposal that her husband debate President Carter. Mr. Reagan decided to debate and did so well that he surged ahead in the polls and won convincingly a week later.

Mrs. Reagan, wearing a dress by the designer Oscar de la Renta, left, in 1989. Credit Bill Cunningham

A Sophisticated Turn

As first lady, Mrs. Reagan was glamorous and controversial. The White House started serving liquor again after the abstemious Carter years. Mrs. Reagan reached out to Washington society. More sophisticated than she had been in Sacramento, Mrs. Reagan also reached out to politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans. She became friends with Millie O’Neal, wife of the House speaker, Thomas P. O’Neill, who was a political foe of President Reagan by day and a friend after hours. During one period in 1981, when Mrs. Reagan was getting “bad press,” as she recalled, Mr. O’Neill leaned across at a luncheon and said, “Don’t let it get you down.”

Mrs. Reagan’s critics said she had brought the bad press on herself. After one look at the White House living quarters, Mrs. Reagan decided to redo them. She then raised $822,000 from private contributors to accomplish this. Another contributor put up more than $200,000 to buy a set of presidential china, enough for 220 place settings; it was the first new set in the White House since the Johnson administration.

With a slim figure maintained by daily exercise, Mrs. Reagan looked younger than her years and wore expensively simple gowns provided by Galanos, Adolfo and other designers. One best-selling Washington postcard featured Mrs. Reagan in an ermine cape and jeweled crown with the label “Queen Nancy.” It touched a nerve with Mrs. Reagan, who had been surprised at the press criticism of the china purchase and the White House redecoration. But the rest of the country was kinder. In 1981, a Gallup poll put Mrs. Reagan first on the list of “most admired women” in the nation. She was in the top 10 on the list throughout the Reagan presidency.

White House image-makers, aware that President Reagan was generally well liked for his self-deprecating humor, urged Mrs. Reagan to use humor as a weapon against her critics. She did so spectacularly on March 29, 1982, at the Gridiron Dinner, an annual roast by journalists, where, to standing ovations, she made sport of her stylish if icy image in a surprise on-stage appearance as “Second Hand Rose,” wearing feathered hat, pantaloons and yellow boots and singing a parody of “Second Hand Clothes.”

Mrs. Reagan’s darkest memory was of March 30, 1981, when she received word that her husband had been shot by a would-be assassin outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. She rushed to the hospital, where her husband, although fighting for his life, was still wisecracking. “Honey, I forgot to duck,” he said to her, borrowing a line that the fighter Jack Dempsey supposedly said to his wife after losing the heavyweight championship to Gene Tunney in 1926. But Mrs. Reagan found nothing to laugh about. “Nothing can happen to my Ronnie,” she wrote in her diary that night. “My life would be over.”

After the assassination attempt, Mrs. Reagan turned to Joan Quigley, a San Francisco astrologer, who claimed to have predicted that March 30 would be a “bad day” for the president. Her relationship with Ms. Quigley “began as a crutch,” Mrs. Reagan wrote, “one of several ways I tried to alleviate my anxiety about Ronnie.” Within a year, it was a habit. Mrs. Reagan conversed with Ms. Quigley by telephone and passed on the information she received about favorable and unfavorable days to Mr. Deaver, the presidential assistant, and later to the White House chief of staff, Donald Regan, for use in scheduling.

Mr. Regan disclosed Mrs. Reagan’s astrological bent in his 1988 book, “For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington,” asserting that the Quigley information created a chaotic situation for White House schedulers. Mrs. Reagan said that no political decisions had been made based on the astrologist’s advice, nor did Mr. Regan allege that any had been.

But the disclosure was nonetheless embarrassing to Mrs. Reagan; she and many commentators saw it as an act of revenge for the role she had played in forcing Mr. Regan out after the Iran-contra disclosures. Mrs. Reagan’s low opinion of Mr. Regan was well known; she had said tartly that he “liked the sound of chief but not of staff.” In fact, however, Mr. Regan’s resignation had also been demanded by powerful Republican figures, and the president had agreed to it. When Mr. Regan saw a report of this on CNN, he quit and walked out of the White House.

Within the White House, Mrs. Reagan was known as a meticulous taskmaster. Some staff members feared incurring her disfavor. The speechwriter Peggy Noonan was wearing walking clothes in the White House the first time she passed by Mrs. Reagan, who looked at her with disdain. “The next time I saw her I hid behind a pillar,” Ms. Noonan wrote in the book “What I saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era.”

Other staff members found Mrs. Reagan more approachable than her husband. One of these was the speechwriter Landon Parvin, who worked with Mrs. Reagan when she was engineering her husband’s recovery from the Iran-contra scandal and drafted the apology in the president’s televised speech.

The first lady with students of the Second Genesis drug rehabilitation agency in Upper Marlboro, Md., in 1981. Credit Charles Tasnadi/Associated Press

Her Own Causes

As first lady, Mrs. Reagan traveled throughout the United States and abroad to speak out against drug and alcohol abuse by young Americans and coined the phrase “Just Say No,” which was used in advertising campaigns during the 1980s.

In speeches about drug abuse, Mrs. Reagan often used a line from the William Inge play “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs,” in which a mother says of her children, “I always thought I could give them life like a present, all wrapped in white with every promise of success.” Mr. Parvin, in an interview, said she had become emotional when she read this line, “as if it had a power that went back to her own childhood.”

On Oct. 17, 1987, a few days after cancer was detected in a mammogram, Mrs. Reagan underwent a mastectomy of her left breast. Afterward, she discussed the operation openly to encourage women to have mammograms every year.

After the presidency, the Reagans returned to Los Angeles and settled in a ranch house in exclusive Bel Air. In 1994, Mr. Reagan learned he had Alzheimer’s disease and announced the diagnosis to the American people in a poignant letter, which Mrs. Reagan had helped him write.

For the next decade, Mrs. Reagan conducted what she called a “long goodbye,” described in Newsweek as “10 years of exacting caregiving, hurried lunches with friends” and “hours spent with old love letters and powerful advocacy for new research into cures for the disease that was taking Ronnie from her.”

At Mr. Reagan’s funeral, at the National Cathedral in Washington, she remained in tight control of her emotions. Then she flew west with the coffin for a burial service at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., where Mrs. Reagan will also be buried. At the conclusion of the ceremony, at sunset, soldiers and sailors handed Mrs. Reagan a folded American flag. She held it close to her heart, put it down on the coffin, and at last began to cry.

Lou Cannon is the author of five books about Ronald Reagan and was White House correspondent for The Washington Post during the Reagan administration.

The New York Times

Nigerian Senators Now Looking For A Successor To Embattled Saraki As His Corruption Trial Starts On Friday

Following the failure to secure a safe landing for Senate President Bukola Saraki at the Code of Conduct Tribunal penultimate week, members of the upper chamber of the National Assembly appear to be closing in on a successor in case the inevitable happens, SUNDAY ABORISADE reports.

The Senate President, Bukola Saraki and his army of supporters across the two main political parties in the red chamber, the Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress, would definitely had wished that the cup of this week should pass over them. The Code of Conduct Tribunal has fixed March 11 to start the trial of the number three citizen of Nigeria who is the head of the federal parliament.
The Code of Conduct Bureau is prosecuting Saraki for alleged false declaration of his assets. Virtually all legal and political steps taken to stop Saraki’s trial by the Danladi Umar-led trial appeared to have hit the rocks.
For instance, a last-minute hope of securing a judicial remedy through an Abuja Federal High Court after a devastating blow from the Supreme Court which allowed the CCT to continue with the trial, was dashed penultimate week, when the court failed to heed a fresh prayer seeking to stop the trial.
The Senate President had sought an order quashing his trial before the CCT on ground, among others, that he was denied fair hearing in the course of investigations leading to the charges preferred against him.
While necessary judicial solutions were being explored by the Saraki’s team of legal experts, his friends and political associates within and outside the National Assembly had equally intensified efforts to lobby the presidency to prevail on the CCT to stop the case.
Part of the thinking of Saraki’s lobby team was that since an outright dismissal of the case would generate serious public outcry, especially when the case involved an alleged act of corruption, a deliberate delay through long adjournments of hearing dates could make Nigerians and the international community lose interest in it, while the Senate President enjoys his tenure. But feelers from some heavyweight politicians involved in the lobby showed that major political actors in the presidency claimed that their hands were tied on the matter because all facts were already in the public domain.
A senator who claimed to be privy to the lobby option told SUNDAY PUNCH on condition of anonymity that Saraki’s emissary to the presidency said attempting a political solution at this stage would cause a setback for President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade.
A presidency source had said, “If Saraki’s hands were not tied when he rejected the party’s nominations for the principal offices of the National Assembly, perhaps the rope would not have been tied tightly on our own hands at this moment too.”
Saraki’s loyalists in the Senate, however, saw an opportunity to save their colleague when Umar appeared before the Senate Committee on Judiciary to defend the 2016 budget of his tribunal penultimate week.
A senator, who would not want his name mentioned, confided in our correspondent that the Senate committee raised some issues in Umar’s budget and gave him a date to come back to defend the queries.
The senator however said the plan failed when Umar refused to show up for the budget defence until the deadline for the submission of committee reports on MDAs budgets lapsed last Monday.
Since the grand plot to bring Saraki and Umar together at the upper chamber failed, Saraki’s loyalists at both chambers are now allegedly mounting pressure on the House of Representatives’ Committee on Ethics and Public Petitions to intensify its probe of the alleged bribery allegation against Umar.
Both chambers of the federal parliament had asked their ethics committees to investigate an allegation contained in a petition by the Anti-Corruption Network that the CCT boss allegedly demanded and collected a N10m bribe.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, Sen. Samuel Anyanwu, told our correspondent last week that his panel would await the outcome of the House committee, which had already started work on the petition.
But the spokesperson for the camp loyal to Sen. Ahmad Lawan, Saraki’s main opponent for the senate presidency seat, Senate Unity Forum, Sen. Kabir Marafa, said in an interview with our correspondent that the trial of Umar was politically motivated.
He therefore reiterated his call for the resignation of the Senate President in order to enable him to attend to his case.
It was learnt that part of the strategies of the SUF members was to constantly attack Saraki’s leadership, using the proposed purchase of exotic cars at a time when the Federal Government was finding it difficult to pay theN5, 000 meant for jobless Nigerians.
But the Special Adviser to Saraki on Special Duties and Intra-Parliamentary Affairs, Mr. Moshood Mustapha, described the public outcry over the reported purchase of some vehicles by the National Assembly for security operatives in the convoy of principal officers of both chambers of the legislature as “unnecessary.”
Mustapha said critics of the project vehicles were not being fair to the federal parliamentarians, arguing that nobody was raising eyebrows when the political office holders in the executive arm of government were allocated at least two vehicles each.
He said Saraki, for instance, had been using his personal cars since he was inaugurated as President of the Senate. He also cited instances where some of the vehicles he inherited in the convoy of his predecessor developed serious mechanical faults.
The pro-Saraki lawmaker said the car transaction was purely between the National Assembly management and the beneficiaries of the vehicles who are not even lawmakers.
Mustapha said Saraki was entitled to two vehicles but that only one was replaced in his convoy and that he chose so, on his own, because of the economic situation of the country and to minimise government expenses.
Mustapha also said Saraki saved the country N5bn when he rejected the N6bn put in the budget of the Federal Capital Territory to build his official residence and reduced it to N1bn just to exhibit prudence.
“Left to other people, they would have allowed it to go. As an individual, he doesn’t believe in that project but because a lot of money had gone into it; he believed that having N6bn in his official residence is a waste and decided on his own to take away N5bn from this project and put only N1bn.
“So, what is the N200m used to buy vehicles for security personnel and protocol compared to the N5bn he had saved the nation. I wonder why people are talking as if the vehicles are his personal property or for his children.”
He also said no form of bribery took place at the upper chamber during the screening of the ministers, contrary to insinuations in certain quarters. He added that no form of corrupt practice took place during the recently concluded budget defence by federal government agencies.
Mustapha said, “Bukola Saraki had created the most democratised, participatory and rigorous budgeting process as we have all seen, this is perhaps the most disciplined senate since 1999. We have ministerial screening and budget approval process without bribery and other forms of corruption. It is a scandal free budget process. Nobody has ever said anybody brought money or anything.
“Everybody has been busy doing his work and it was through this painstaking process that we were able to discover errors in the budget and even the president himself had said it that there are errors and that he would hold the culprits responsible.”
Neverthless, having considered the sensitive nature of the case before the CCT, some senators were said to have been making frantic efforts to shop for Saraki’s successor.
Findings by our correspondent showed that members of both the SUF and pro-Saraki senators under the aegis of Like Minds Senators had started making contacts on how to agree on an acceptable candidate.
Some senators were also said to have agreed that the Deputy Senate President, Sen. Ike Ekweremadu, would not be affected by the change as he would be allowed to continue in office.
“However, senators from the anti-Saraki’s SUF group were advocating the change of the principal officers to reflect the position of the leadership of APC,” one of those privy to the plan had told SUNDAY PUNCH.
If the SUF members should have their way, the implication is that Lawan would take over from Sen. Ali Ndume as Senate Leader, while Sen. Bala Ibn N’Allah might lose his Deputy Leader seat to Sen. George Akume, who has not been attending activities in the Senate for some time. The newcomer from Edo State, Sen. Francis Alimikhena, might also be asked to vacate his seat as Deputy Whip for Sen. Abu Ibrahim.
It is still not clear how the issue of principal officers would be resolved but one of the Like Minds Senators said Saraki’s successor might come from his state or from the neighbouring Nasarawa State.
He said, “Both the SUF and Like Minds Senators had agreed to support the emergence of somebody from the North-Central geopolitical zone, a Muslim, who will be a bridge builder and acceptable to every senator.”
He also said the Saraki loyalists, who were in the majority at the upper chamber, had insisted that his successor must also be a member of the ‘New PDP’, a breakaway faction of the PDP which joined the APC at its formation.
The lawmaker said, “This issue had gone beyond SUF or LMS. We are coming together as one to ensure a rancour free arrangement that would lead to the emergence of a new senate president. Most of the people that we have consulted agreed that another senator from Kwara North should take over the mantle of leadership.
“It has been agreed that with this, the people of Kwara would not feel too bad, while the current arrangement in the red chamber will remain as it is. ”
Close watchers of the development at the senate were of the opinion that the resumption of Saraki’s trial at the CCT this week will obviously shape the nation’s political history.
Saharareporters

MEET GODWIN OBASEKI

Mr. Godwin Obaseki was born in Benin City, Nigeria to the famous and illustrious Obaseki family. He had his early education in St. Matthews Anglican Primary School Benin City from where he proceeded to Eghosa Anglican Grammer School, Benin City for his secondary schoool eductaion. He attended the University of Ibadan where he obtained a BA in Classics.
Mr. Obaseki attended the Columbia University and Pace University in New York and has an MBA in Finance and International Business. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Stock Brokers, Nigeria and an alumnus of the Lagos Business School Chief Executive Program.
He was nominated a Global Leader for Tomorrow (GLT) by the World Economic Forum in 2001.
Career
Godwin Obaseki began his career over 30 years ago and has established track records in Investment Banking, Asset Management, Securities Trading and the Public Sector both internationally and in Nigeria.
He started out in 1983 with Capital Trust Brokers Limited Lagos as a stockbroker where he excelled and subsequently worked with International Merchant Bank (an affiliate of First Chicago Bank). In 1988 he joined AVC Funds Limited, Lagos where he served as a Project Manager and led the core team that set up two of the new generation banks which eventually reshaped the face of the banking industry in Nigeria. Between 1993 and 1995 he worked in New York as a principal of Equatorial Finance Co, a Financial Advisory firm with a focus on Africa and providing Structured Trade Finance for African related transactions through credit, financial advisory and risk insurance.
He Founded Afrinvest West Africa Limited (formerly Securities Transactions & Trust Company Limited (SecTrust)) in 1995 as the pioneer Managing Director. The firm has since grown to become a leading Investment Banking and Investment Management firm in Nigeria. In 1995 SecTrust was appointed the correspondent stockbroker for Nigeria by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). In 1996, SecTrust established the first derivative product, the Nigerian International Debt Fund (NIDF) on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, which allowed Nigerians invest local savings in US Dollar instrument. This fund has outperformed projections on returns.
SecTrust pioneered and was local adviser on the first global offering by a Nigerian bank through the issuance of Global Depositary Shares (GDS) to raise UD$50 million from the international Capital market. Afrinvest has acted as advisers on some of the largest and most significant transactions in the Nigerian capital market since 2005.
Afrinvest is one of the most trusted advisory firms in the domestic corporate finance market, pioneering major innovations and providing leadership in the Nigerian Securities market. The Firm has advised on numerous landmark transactions including the first Eurobond Issue by a Sub-Saharan Africa Corporate (outside South Africa); the first ever simultaneous merger and tender offer transaction in Sub-Saharan Africa and the largest ever listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Afrinvest has been ranked as a major Investment Research firm which is at the forefront of playing instrumental roles in the introduction of new financing products such as Eurobonds and Global Depository Receipts to Nigerian Companies.
Mr. Obaseki is presently the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the firm which won the Best Asset Management Firm in Nigeria (2014) Award by the Wealth & Finance International Magazine Finance Awards.
Mr.Godwin Obaseki currently serves as the Chairman of the Edo State Government's Economic and Strategy Team (EST), a position he has held since March 17, 2009 Pro bono publico.
Key achievements as chairman of the economic team of Edo state Government include:
Documentation of State Economic Development framework through Sectors' Strategic Planning which is reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis;
Introduction and enculturation of retreats as a platform to ensure all parties engagement not only in planning and executing state development initiatives but also in monitoring and evaluation of outcomes;
N25 Billion Infrastructure Development Bond from the Nigerian Capital Market in 2010;
$225 Million Concessionary rates Development Loan from the World Bank with the 1st Tranche of $75 Million already accessed;
Successfully hosted Sector based Economic Summits and Policy Dialogue Series including the Power Round Table in 2010, 2011 Education Round Table and 2012 Agribusiness Round Table.
These summits have translated in measurable and desired outcomes including:
i. Azura-Edo IPP project with over $1 billion in FDI currently under development in Ihovbor, Uhunwode LGA
ii. Education Reforms which have translated to significant improvement in Educational Infrastructure and student performance in WAEC and other Exams.
iii. Following the 2012 Agribusiness Summit, the state has attracted investment in the Rubber Sub-sector for the development of the single largest Rubber Plantation project in Nigeria in Sokponba in Orhiomwon LGA under a privately developed and financed initiative;
iv. A framework for Local Economic Empowerment through out-growers schemes is being finalised to attract funding into the development of key crops for which Edo State has natural endowment including Oil Palm, Rubber, Cassava, Cocoa, Rice and other grains
Other Committee activities in Edo State Government
1. Tax Assessment Review Committee for Edo State Internal Revenue Service (TARC) - Chairman
2. Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) - Chairman
3. Committee on the Implementation of the Law Establishing the Edo State University of Science and Technology, Uzaire - Secretary
4. Committee on Contributory Pension Scheme - Member
5. Edo SEEFOR/DPO Steering Committee - Member
6. Committee on the Report of the Audit of the Credentials of Teaching Staff in Public Schools in Edo State.
7.State Steering Committee on the European Union Assisted Niger-Delta Support programme (NDSP) Component 3 (Development of Edo State Water & Sanitation Policy and Law.
Professionally, Mr. Obaseki has served on the Presidential Committee on the Reform of the Nigerian Pension System. He also served on the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission Committee on the Re-activation of the Nigerian Bond Market and the review of the Investment and Securities Act. He served as a member of the Nigerian Stock Exchange Council between 2006 and 2009. He also serves on the board of some companies such as Dorman Long Engineering Limited, Pillar Oil Limited, Seric Impianti International Limited.
He was the founding secretary of a New York based US Africa Chamber of Commerce in 1992, which promoted US organisations doing business in Africa. He was a Director in Junior Achievement of Nigeria - the local affiliate of the worldwide Not for Profit organisation which trains students to appreciate market economy values. He also participates actively and serves as Trustee, in the Dr. Jackson Owen Obaseki Foundation, a family owned NGO which is involved in providing free educational and health services to the less privileged.
He has been a card carrying member of the All Progressive Congress (APC) since xxxx and has participated actively in all elections since 2009 and was Chairman Fund Raising Committee for the Oshiomhole-Odubu re-election bid in 2012.

‪#‎WeAreUnited‬
‪#‎WeHaveDecided‬
‪#‎GO4Governor‬
‪#‎ContinuityNotNegotiable‬
‪#‎TeamGO‬
‪#‎Godwin

Monday, 29 February 2016

Edo 2016: Ofeimun, Edebiri, Emuan, Esele jostle for space

By Alemma-Ozioruva Aliu, (Benin City) and Debo Oladimeji, (Lagos) on February 29, 2016

AHEAD of the Edo State governorship elections, aspirants from the All Progressive Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are positioning themselves for relevance to get the electorates’ attention.
But while more aspirants are springing up from the ruling APC, fewer persons appear to be showing interest from the opposition parties including the PDP. Still others like Odia Ofeimun are yet to indicate which platform they want to use to get to the Dennis Osadebey House.
Chief Solomon Edebiri of the PDP believes that human capacity development and a resuscitation of the industrial sector hold the key to the hearts of the Edo people, while Arch Ilenre Austin Emuan and Comrade Peter Esele of the APC are focusing on an economic blueprint anchored on welfarism; and education, agriculture and culture respectively.
Ofeimun on the other hand wants to modernise Edo through cultural civility and technological proficiency within a period of 40 months.
In an interactive session with journalists, in Lagos, Edebiri said that human capacity development and industialisation have been neglected by successive administration in the state noting that the state lacked the required foundation for growth and development.
According to him, the graph of growth and development has been declining since the end of Dr. Samuel Ogbemudia’s administration stressing that economically virtually all the industries that made the state robust have become moribund.
“Delta Line, Bendel Brewery, Bendel Wood Treatment plant, Bendel Printing press, Afuze sports complex, the Agbede Wareke farms, Bendel Insurance, etc. are dead. As the industries get castrated so our people began to loose their jobs. As they loose their jobs, the resultant effect was that the young ones went into crimes and the young ladies started finding their ways out of the country”, he stated.
Edebiri said he was stepping into the gap to provide the foundation for growth and development of the state. He acknowledged that the state governor did well in the construction of some roads, which would be built on.
“We need a man who is liberal who understands the business of the state, who knows how to run the state as a business entity and turn it around for good. That is where I come in,” he disclosed stressing that he would localize crops in their local government area of advantage along with their identified natural resources to grow the state’s economy.
“The principle of one local government one commercial crop syndrome with each local government area concentrating on the area of advantage will be adopted with the attendant agro-industry established,” he said.
Edebiri promised to de-emphasise taxing the citizens, grow the revenue base of the state to make it an export hub as against the current import hub.
Esele of the APC said he would focus on education, agriculture and culture if he becomes governor

On why going into the race despite rumours that the governor has his preferred candidate, he posited, “I think the governor has every right to support any candidate of his choice. But I also have my right to contest. It doesn’t have to do with whether the governor has a preferred candidate or not. But again, it is the delegates that will determine who bears the party’s flag. I think we should be open to discussion and ideas to broaden the space. And I think that is the biggest problem.”
“The bottom line, which I think, is a matter of ideas, considering what Oshiomhole has done in the last seven years. It is a matter of telling ourselves the truth; moving beyond ethnic politics and not queuing behind somebody that is not going to add value. It is all about building beyond what we have today. That is why I am into the race today,” he added.
Emuan, a development expert explained that his passion for development generally informed him asking why do nations failed and that this stimulated the interest in international relations that eventually prompted him to join politics.
He said he would democratize development and investment process with 25 years solid economic development plan that will enable Edo State become one of the most industrialised economies and investment destination in Nigeria.
According to him, Edo would be modernise and provided with infrastructure that will offer Edo people wherever they are located in the world to grow themselves economically, adding: “The philosophy of this vision is hinged on co-ownership and participatory democracy.”
He said that he belonged to the neo structuralism ideology where credit is given to welfarism of the state in line with the ideology of the APC. “The only way to go about this thing that I am talking about is to create the Economic blue print of Edo State that is quite peculiar to Edo State. It is a very unique model that will be used to develop Edo economy.”

Besides, Emuan promised to introduce a policy he called vernacular education at the formative stage designed to empower the people to study, learn, innovate and communicate in their language.
His words: “We need to develop the next generation such that they can think, write and innovate and communicate in their own language because culturally if we don’t do that we can go extinct. Any people that loses her language loses their identity.”
Ofeimun who said he was interested in only one term in office, promised that in forty months he would have turned Edo around and laid the foundation for a “Singapore” within the Nigerian nation.
“I am determined to prove that within the particularity of one nationality, Edo, and the fold of a multinational state, Nigeria, it is possible to achieve high feats of modernity, cultural civility and technological proficiency comparable to that of any other country in the world,” he stated.
The renowned poet and polemicist said if he makes it to the office of the governor, he would create money, investible and welfare funds, through aggressive solid minerals, gas and agro-allied industries as well as eliminate punitive taxation, waste, and improper expenditures.

APC chieftains bicker over board appointments

By Adamu Abuh, Abuja on February 29, 2016

CHIEFTIANS of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) across the country are at loggerheads over the sharing of positions on the boards of government parastatals and agencies.
The problem, which has the prospect of tearing the party apart, had been on ground even before President Muhammadu Buhari sacked the heads of no fewer than 26 heads of parastatals and agencies of government.
Trouble started after Chief John Odigie-Oyegun leadership of the party mandated chairmen and vice chairmen of the 36 States chapters of the APC to come up with a list of fifty nominees from their respective States that would form the pool of those to be considered for board appointments.
Rather than call a meeting of stakeholders of the party, The Guardian was reliably informed that most of the states chairmen and vice chairmen opted to pick their cronies and relatives as their preferred nominees for board appointments into agencies and parastatals of government.
The situation was further compounded by claims that members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who recently defected to the APC and were keen on getting board appointments, induced some party chieftains with monies in a desperate bid to get on the list of the nominees for boards appointments.
Expectedly, the development led to series of complaints and petitions from aggrieved members of the party from across the country, forcing the presidency, which was piqued over the issue to come to the rescue of the ugly situation.
The source who asked not to be named said: “The truth is that most our party chairmen in the states in conjunction with some states governors settled for their relatives, wives, friends and cronies. The worst side of it was that the mode of selection actually negated the goal of Mr. President who wanted men and women that he could work with to move the country forward.”
However, it was learnt that a committee led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Babachir Lawal has been constituted to correct noticeable anomalies and hold due consultations with aggrieved members of the party in a bid to arrived at an amicable resolution on the issue.
The committee which comprised Oyegun, the National Secretary of the party, Mr. Mai Mala Buni, and the six zonal vice chairmen of the party have been mandated to meet with the states chairmen, secretaries, factional heads of the party in the states so as to ensure that those deserving of appointments into boards of agencies and parastatals were given due considerations.
States believed to be hit most by the crisis were Kaduna, Kano, Enugu, Imo, Anambra, Lagos, and Oyo States.

With Crisis in PDP, Discordant Interests in APC, Politicians Realigning for New Party

A growing number of politicians are making moves for a realignment of political power in Nigeria towards a new political party, THISDAY has learnt. This is amid crisis in the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and conflicting interests in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

It was gathered that discussions among politicians from the two leading parties towards the floating of a new party started in earnest some months ago, and it was fast gathering momentum. Insiders said the new political move had the support of some serving governors from both the APC and PDP, key principal officers of the National Assembly, and some aggrieved political leaders across the six geo-political zones. A former senate president, Ken Nnamani, is being prevailed upon to act as the arrow-head of the emerging party, it is gathered.

Nnamani announced his resignation from PDP on February 6, saying, the party had abandoned “the path of its noble vision and values”. He was elected Senate President in 2003. In his statement titled, “PDP, the Burden and My Conscience,” Nnamani said he was fed up with the state of things in the party. But said he was quitting “without any iota of bitterness.”

He stated, “I do not believe I should continue to be a member of the PDP as it is defined today. This is certainly not the party I joined years ago to help change my country. I do not also believe that the PDP, as it is managed today, will provide an opportunity for me to continue to play the politics of principles and values, which I set for myself as a young man on leaving graduate school and working for a large multinational in the United States in the 70s and 80s.”

Nnamani did not announce an intention to join any political party, but he promised to remain politically active.
A former Senate Chief Whip, who chose not to be named, confirmed the emerging political moves. He said, “Go and talk to many political elites across the country today, you will hear and confirm huge frustration among them. Nobody seems to be happy with what is happening in the APC and the PDP. And some of us have come to a conclusion that there is urgent need to have a new and credible platform to save this country.

“You will be shocked to know that the agitation for a new political platform is more pronounced in the North, in spite of the fact that we currently have a sitting president from the North. It shows how frustrated people are in the country today.”

Another enthusiast of the emerging political grouping, who is a prominent leader of APC, also told THISDAY in confidence, “The hope that things will change for the better, with President Muhammadu Buhari in power, is being dashed by the day. As I speak with you today, the soul of the APC is gone. Go to the national secretariat of the party, they will tell you.”

It was learnt that some desperate efforts recently by concerned leaders of APC to iron out things among themselves were frustrated by the political hawks around Buhari, who are already strategising for 2019.

“What you are likely to have in the coming months is a congregation of old PDP members in the APC pulling out to form a formidable political party with some progressive-minded members of the present PDP,” the APC leader said last night in Abuja.

The special caucus meeting held last week by APC was said to be part of the measures to halt the tide of disenchantment, which promises to seriously threaten the ruling party. Very little was achieved by the meeting following the absence of President Muhammadu Buhari, who was unavoidably absent. But another meeting is being contemplated for this week, where aggrieved APC members would be expected to table their grievances before the party and the government.

Many APC members are said to be calling for the removal of the national chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, citing poor leadership. It is suspected that the replacement for Odigie-Oyegun would come from the North as part of a grand plan to put the president in a position of comfort as far as party administration is concerned. But that is expected to meet with resistance, as party leaders from other parts of the country are likely to oppose the idea. Generally, many leaders of the party are said to be unhappy with the current status of the party and the government, having been shut out of the decision-making process, despite their commitment to the success of the party.

One of the problems believed to be delaying the manifestation of the idea of a new party, according to the promoters, is the question of the personality around which the party will be built. They want a personality that would sell, like Buhari did, for the APC.

Indications of how the politicians are readjusting towards the eventual formation of a new party are clearer in PDP. The party has lurched from one crisis to the next since it lost the general election to APC last year. The high turnover of PDP national chairmen since the election is symptomatic of the crisis within.

Adamu Muazu resigned under pressure as PDP national chairman on May 20 last year, accused of leading the former ruling party to a devastating defeat at the polls. He was replaced by Haliru Bello, who was appointed acting national chairman on May 25 last year and was sacked on February 10 this year. Bello was succeeded by the PDP deputy national chairman, Uche Secondus, who worked in acting capacity until February 16, when he handed over to the newly-appointed national chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff. Sheriff’s appointment has been enmeshed in controversy.

Though, PDP says it has resolved its leadership crisis following an agreement to let Sheriff run the affairs of the party for three months, until the national convention, when a new national leadership of the party would be elected. There are fears that PDP may come out of the national convention more divided than it went in. This is due to the very huge likelihood of a clash between the PDP governors, who were the main force behind Sheriff’s emergence as national chairman, and other groups and interests in the party that had opposed his choice.

In recent times, some prominent PDP members have resigned from the party without joining other parties, in what is seen as a strategic move to help nurture the expected new political platform. Besides Nnamani, Samuel Ogbemudia and Dalhatu Sarki Tafida have recently left PDP, but did not defect to other parties.

In APC, the National Assembly has been the main theatre of war. Senate President Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara won their positions last June against the wish of the party, in connivance with PDP legislators. Sources say Saraki’s current trial by the Code of Conduct Bureau may prepare the ground for the consolidation of the moves towards a new party. Both Saraki and Dogara belong to a bloc within the party, the New PDP, which believed they needed to be compensated for their contributions to the victory of APC.

ThisDay

Buhari in Quest to Secure Nigeria

His quick, light steps belied his age. The smile on his face, his clear tone and his eagerness to provide details painted a vivid picture of a man at home with himself and the society at large. His wit and quips revealed an often unexposed funny side that were difficult to place with the no-nonsense, carefully cultivated image ascribed to the former military Head of State and All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential aspirant, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari.
However, the irony in Buhari’s character could be deemed a reflection of his transition from a military officer who overthrew a democratically elected government in December 1983, to one who after retirement became an avowed democrat that has sought to rule Nigeria via the ballot, albeit in three unsuccessful attempts.
But for many who have followed Buhari, they would be the first to remind anyone who cares to listen that his democratic conversion occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union and dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Essentially, it took the collapse of communism and totalitarianism in Eastern Europe for Buhari to take the journey on the road to Damascus like the biblical Apostle Paul.
For some, drawing the similarities between Buhari, a practising Muslim, and Paul who is considered one of the most important figures of the Christian Apostolic Age, may be taboo. But after the THISDAY Board of Editors met with the retired army general last Friday at his home in Abuja, the board came away with the view that Buhari is anything but a religious bigot, as his opponents would have us believe.
Yet, despite Buhari’s best efforts to distance himself from religious extremism, he cannot runaway from the fact that in his three attempts to return as Nigeria’s head of state through the ballot, he has not been able to build political structures that transverse the fault line between the north and the south. Indeed, whilst his following among the masses (better known as the Talakawa) in the north is cult-like, the same cannot be said of his followership in the south.
For the first time in his political career, the general would also have to compete for the ticket of a political party to contest the 2015 presidential election. In the past, Buhari was handed presidential tickets without lifting a finger. To secure a win over four other contestants on the platform of the APC, especially his closest rival former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, Buhari has been forced raise the ante by lobbying for delegates’ votes.
Should he win the APC presidential primary and go on to win the 2015 presidential election, Buhari informed the THISDAY Board of Editors that one his primary goals will be the defeat of Boko Haram in the North-east and combating corruption in Nigeria. Indeed, on matters of security, Buhari’s military background and grasp of warfare shone through during his interview with THISDAY.
So did his disdain for corruption, even though he acknowledged that times have changed since his stint as head of state between 1984 and 1985. On the economy, however, Buhari has so much to learn and found it difficult to present a coherent blue print on the economy. The conversation with the THISDAY Board of Editors, nevertheless, was not just limited to matters of security, corruption and the economy. Uncharacteristically, Buhari opened up on a host of other issues.
In thefirst installment of its Presidential Series, THISDAY presents the man and presidential aspirant, Muhammadu Buhari.
INTERVIEW
Buhari: Nigeria Will Be Secure Under My Leadership
The key issues facing Nigeria obviously are security, corruption and governance. I believe your last beat as a serving general before you became head of state was GOC Jos Military Command. As the then GOC Jos, the current North-east was under your command. Given what is happening today, given the onslaught of Boko Haram, how would you have prosecuted the war differently?
Differently? Certainly something has to be done first to secure that part of the country, which is virtually under Boko Haram. I have the background information of what happened in the North-east then as the GOC in Jos back in 1982-83. You would recall the Chadian troops made an incursion into Nigerian territory. The United States then asked (former President Shehu) Shagari to help Chadian President (Hissene) Habre because Habre was suspected of being used to destabilise Libya. Oil had not been discovered in Chad then and the country was a bit poor. So the president agreed to provide petroleum products to Chad. All the tankers were lined up and were providing fuel to Chad. And Habre decided at that it time to attack Nigeria and killed our soldiers, took some of our military hardware and I was extremely concerned. I flew into Lagos, saw the Chief of Army Staff, General (Inuwa) Wushishi then, and I moved into Maiduguri. That was the last time, until recently, in whatever form the Chadian troops dared Nigeria. I have also been a governor in that area, the North-east.
The question is how did Boko Haram start, because we have to know how it started before we can effectively get rid of it. Just like how did the Niger Delta militants start in the South-south. Politicians use unemployed youths as vanguards, they called them ‘Ecomog’ in the North-east then. One of their leaders called Yusuf, a young charismatic man, tried to give it a religious tinge but unfortunately the chaps were badly handled by the security forces – a combination of the police and the military. There was a small demonstration by members of the sect on motorcycles over the death of one of them accompanying a corpse and seven of them were shot dead. Of course they were not wearing protective helmets. Now this is an ordinary offence in this country and it was easy to handle. Just arrest the people, take them to a police station and charge them to court the following day and fines could be imposed. But instead, they chose to shoot them. From there, Boko Haram really started and they have never looked back. And once the police couldn’t handle the situation, according to the Nigerian internal security operations, they handed the matter over to the military. The army commander then did extremely well. The GOC of Third Armoured Division in charge of the command went and looked for Yusuf, got him and handed Yusuf to the police. The police killed Yusuf, his in-law and levelled their houses and since then Boko Haram got out of hand.
What would I do differently? It is to make the military much more effective in their operations. If we get the opportunity, we will make the Nigerian military capable again because if we could go through ECOMOG forces to stabilise troubled zones and go to Darfur and to other places of the world and perform, why can’t we perform at home when our national sovereignty is being threatened? That is what we will do differently, to make Nigerian military capable again.
The Nigerian military became incapable following a failed coup against your successor, General Babangida. And following the failed coup, the command and control of the army decided, as it were, to disarm the army so that they were not able to take on the political leadership of the military at the time. We heard some of our helicopters were even given out to Congo and other countries, so that the army would not have the weapons. Since then, the army has not been equipped. So is it a question of lack of equipment, a question of will or that of rot over the years?
I think it is a question of the rot over the years, because the most important thing is the intelligence. Having known how the Boko Haram developed, what I would have personally done differently would be to get the Presidents of Cameroun, Chad and Niger together to say, ‘look our borders are porous and that we are not able to effectively protect them and monitor movements of people in and out of our territory, but please make sure that you do not provide training facilities or allow people to be coming into the county.’ The practical possibility of guarding our border from Lake Chad area to Sokoto is nil. If you look at that area, you cannot stop the donkeys, the oxen, the camels and human beings from crossing that border. It is impossible, unless you will line up all the Nigerian population, which is not possible. But firstly you have to reach an agreement with your neighbors. As we talk now, Cameroun seems to be fighting Boko Haram more effectively than Nigeria, from what I read in newspapers. You cannot change the Nigerian military overnight but still, but I think there are trained officers who can train the men and you can get the weapons legally. There are government rules and regulations and as an elected government, the people or countries that normally provide you with weapons will not refuse to provide the weapons because it is an internal operation. We are not attacking anybody, rather we are being attacked. So countries that have been providing us with military hardware will have sympathy for us and provide us with weapons. We do not have to change money in the black market or take it from the vault of the central bank in a hired aircraft and say you are going to buy weapons. This is unusual, very, very unusual as government has legal ways of how to source arms and ammunition. Look at how we fought a serious civil war for 30 months without borrowing a kobo. General Gowon was the head of state then, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was the Minister of Finance and deputy chairman of the Federal Executive Council. We fought the civil war without borrowing a kobo. Now you want to chase insurgents after spending what they have spent, they are rushing to the National Assembly for permission to borrow $1 billion, there is a problem of leadership and I think everybody knows it.
But how will you make the US to supply us arms given the accusations against the military and how will you get Cameroun to cooperate more given the crisis over Bakassi and the border demarcation, bearing in mind their refusal to cooperate up till now?
On the question of the US selling arms to us, the US can influence our traditional arms suppliers but the US is probably not a major supplier of arms to Nigeria as far as I can recall – right from independence till now. But they can influence those that can supply arms to us. As you know, the black market of sourcing military hardware has never been stopped even with international pressure. I think for the weapons we need to fight Boko Haram, a group of people taking arms against the country. I do not think we need weapons of the magnitude people are talking about. Of course, the military was disarmed in order to stabilise democracy. But how can I stabilise the army and get the cooperation of the US to help us and at least to give us the moral support and allow our traditional arms suppliers – France, United Kingdom and Russia – to give facilities for maintaining those weapons like tanks and armoured cars? I believe the US will not stand in the way of a democratic country getting supply of weapons and ammunition to defend itself against internal or even external aggression. As I have said earlier, Cameroun is even fighting Boko Haram more effectively than us. If you would recall that there were some kidnappers that took away the wife of a (vice prime) minister but the Camerounian law enforcement agency got her released.
Given your experience in the military, what can you point to as the problem with the military in challenging Boko Haram?
I think what I can do is appeal to the patriotic sense of the military. The military’s constitutional role is to protect this country from external aggression and I mentioned earlier on, even in internal operations, the police are allowed to come in at the initial stage but once things are bad, then the military has to come in, just as it is happening now in the North-east. I believe the military would like to preserve a strong Nigeria because if they allow Nigeria to be balkanised, they will be the first to lose their security because I do not see any part of a balkanised Nigeria that will like to get a general or colonel to be in charge, and you don’t talk about pension or even gratuity. So there will be total insecurity if they allow anything to happen to Nigeria. I think the situation needs a leadership that will give the military the backing in terms of sourcing the weapons and ammunition to fight. And Nigeria, no matter how oil prices have fallen, will source enough funds to fight the insurgents.
Do you see corruption in the military as a major problem?
It is a major problem. As I have just mentioned there are ways to source weapons, ammunition and other military hardware; there are rules and regulations; tenders boards at various levels where they examine applications by suppliers; getting the best for the country and then recommending to the government to go and secure it. The issue of putting dollars in an aircraft or handbags or asking one senior officer to go and look for weapons does not arise under the Nigerian laws. This is corruption and I do not blame the military because it is a situation of a fish with rotten head.
Don’t you think that the nature of the warfare, which is asymmetric, in the fight against insurgents also has a lot do with the limited successes the military has recorded? We have a situationwhere you have to seek out terrorists who live in the midst of the people. It is not like fighting with a conventional army?
I agree with you partly, but look at how some of the committed commanders that dealt with the late Yusuf’s case. I talked about intelligence; we have structures of assistance throughout the country. We have ward leaders, district heads and emirs – these people are good sources of intelligence. There is this structure on ground and it still exists. Some parts of Nigeria have been able to ward off Boko Haram. It is not because of government’s effort but people started their own JTF. If Maiduguri people did not organise their own Civilian JTF, the city would have been overrun.
At the initial stage of the insurgency, you were quoted as saying that any attack against Boko Haram was an attack on the North and that while federal government negotiated with the Niger Delta militants it was attacking Boko Haram. So you were now tagged as one of those behind Boko Haram. How would you react to this and what do you think is the place of negotiations in arresting the insurgency?
Yes, I spoke on the radio and gave a press statement. I hope you would take the positive ones as well and not only the negative aspect. I mentioned that they were trying to give it a religious tinge and I came out to say that no religion advocates hacking the innocent and our people can easily understand. Christianity and Islam do not authorise anyone to take the life of any other person. Justice, which needs restraint, is what is supposed to be applied by the strong to the weak. The incident where I made that statement was, if you could recall what happened in Barma and Baga. I think Boko Haram killed a soldier or two and the whole town or part of it was razed, some satellite pictures of it were published. This is not how to do it. What to do was what was done to Yusuf before he was killed. If you recall, the army did not have raze the part of Maiduguri but they went and caught Yusuf and handed him over to the police. This is what the army then was supposed to do and even now. It is not to go on a rampage killing everybody and that was why I made reference to what the late President Yar’Adua did when he invited the militant leaders, sent them presidential jets and they came here in Abuja and they negotiated with him, empowered them and put them back into the society. But that type of army, which was sent to Barma and Baga, they created part of the problems we are in now and now the problems have proved stubborn to be solved. Instead of trying to get the leadership as Yusuf was found, they just went and razed parts of the towns and alienated themselves – the military and law enforcement agencies – from the people rather than getting their sympathy. This is what could be done differently, use intelligence, find out the leaders that are responsible and deal with them.
But that statement led to the feeling in many quarters that you were sympathetic to Boko Haram and that led to the political brickbats between your party the APC and the PDP, and PDP alleging that APC is sympathetic to Boko Haram. Do you regret the statement now or the context in which it was made?
The problem is the failure on your part, the media, to carry out investigative journalism if I may use the word, because when I made the statement it should have been in the context of my position that no religion advocates the hacking of the innocent and that the strong should be sympathetic or show some restraints when dealing with the weak. If it were in that context, then the question of I being sympathetic to Boko Haram would never have arisen.
When I was bombed, what was the reaction of Boko Haram? Did Boko Haram ever put out a statement? It was the government that quickly said that they were not responsible and that was the last we heard about it. Even if it was an unknown Nigerian, I think a proper investigation would have been carried out to find out what happened. How did they get the sophisticated weapon to bomb your headquarters in Abuja and the United Nations building? How did they get to such a sophisticated level of detonating an explosive device just adjacent to my vehicle and see how it pierced the body of the bullet proof vehicle as if it was a piece of paper. I think that we have to really have a capacity for investigating this type of things. So my party and myself have shown enough patriotism that we are not behind any insurgency in or outside Nigeria. The harm it is doing to our economy has not yet been calculated by anybody but I was reliably informed that everyday about 100 articulated vehicles, not even tankers, used to go to Maiduguri and traders from Cameroun, Chad and Niger do business there. At least two million Nigerians, from wheelbarrow pushers to big time shop owners, make their living in the city. But look at it, these are all being destroyed.
Tell us what happened on that day you were bombed.
I don’t know why you want to listen to a disaster story again. Well, you know Rilwanu Lukman died somewhere in Europe and if you could recall he was my Minister of Power and Steel. So I was told that his body was to be brought the following day. I was told on Tuesday that on Thursday he would be brought home for burial, through Kano Airport where it will then be flown by another aircraft to Zaria. So I decided to drive to Daura, my hometown to be able to come to Kano the following day to receive the body. Luckily, was in a bulletproof vehicle. I was only using it from Kaduna to Abuja and may be Abuja to my hometown because armed robbers are getting more desperate now and they operate 24 hours a day now. A vehicle was trying to overtake us, but my backup vehicle stopped him in Kaduna. But when we came to that market before the overhead bridge, there was confusion in the market located on the right side of the road leading to Zaria. So that driver got an access and quickly drove close to my vehicle. Then the bomber exploded the device and when I came out I saw blood on my trousers and I looked to the right and I saw body parts of people selling second hand clothes, sugar cane on the roadside. I don’t remember the law enforcement agencies ever telling Nigerians how many people were killed there. I shook my head. Some of my operatives quickly came to me. I saw some of them were bleeding. They pushed me to the other side of the road in case there was another bomb. They stopped another vehicle coming, replaced the driver and drove me home. That was what happened. They tried to take the picture of the vehicle and we saw the army when they came. I noticed one person dressed like a woman with a handset contacting some people while beside the armoured car. So I told them, go to the military, show them the picture and tell the soldiers that you too want to interview the man in ladies dress. I do not know why he left his jeans trousers on but he had his wrapper around his body. That was the last I heard about it. Nobody ever bothered to brief me on the outcome of any investigation on the incident.
From all you have said, we are persuaded to believe that the solution to the problems afflicting the country is just about having a good leader. What credentials are you presenting to Nigerians as an alternative to what we have currently?
Yes, I tried to mention one. While I was the GOC in 1982 and Nigeria was giving Chad economic help and instead of the president of the country coming to thank our president for giving him economic support, he just sent his soldiers to kill our soldiers. I had a command then and it was within my area of responsibility. I went and sorted it out. Secondly, you must have known about Maitasine sect. I was the Head of State in 1984. Maitasine, you recall developed from Kano and he was killed during the Second Republic but his followers resurfaced in Burunkutu, again in Borno and Jimeta, Yola. My second in command then, Tunde Idiagbon, was not in the country. I flew into Yola, Gambo Jimeta, I think he was the AIG and Wash Pam were there and that was the last we heard about Maitasine. Really, I do not think the Nigerian military including the law enforcement agencies have absolutely lost their capacity to deal with internal security problems. The leadership seems not to be aggressive and cannot properly lead. And the fundamental problem of Nigeria now is security. Nobody is feeling secure in the country and I think this is the fundamental responsibility of government. So the leadership must make sure that they secure Nigeria and efficiently manage it.
Are you also thinking of doing something to beef up your charisma? Nigeria is a complex entity and needs somebody who is flexible. People say you are stiff.
If I can achieve results with my stiffness, let the stiffness stay. Because when you go and ask ordinary people, when we, myself and Idiagbon, came on board, ordinary people in Kano came out when it was hot, they put the keys of their cars on top of the cars, slept in front of their houses and woke up the following morning. People say time changes, yes, but when people find out that you do not tolerate big thieves not to talk of the small ones, then they will sit up.
Do you subscribe to the view that oil is an issue with regards to this security challenge? What is your position on the role of Chad in the botched ceasefire agreement?
I think Chad knows that Nigeria can certainly secure its borders. I still cannot understand why it took the leadership of this country so long to get those three presidents to sit down and agree. I think even within the framework of ECOWAS such agreements were feasible to make sure that weapons do not cross our borders and that people were not given training facilities. How could Boko Haram abduct 200 schoolgirls of ages of 14 to 18 from their school and we were giving the impression that these girls were in Nigeria? For seven months, the Nigerian government could not get the intelligence of where these girls were in particular and where they were moved. They kept saying they know where the girls are, then what the hell is stopping them from getting the girls out? Imagine you have got a daughter there, how do you go to bed and how do you wake up for seven months? Your 14-year-old daughter is in the hands of insurgents and your government is making noise and spending money on unnecessary things. I think the whole country ought to have been mobilised to get those girls back alive or their bodies so that their parents can get closure.
Should the Nigerian government negotiate with Boko Haram?
Well, since they are stronger than the government, I think the government should negotiate with Boko Haram. But we did not even negotiate with President Habre of Chad when he tried to come into our country. We tried to solve our problem ourselves. Nigeria is capable, this is my point. I firmly believe that because when we were there with Prof. Gambari as Minister of Foreign Affairs, we had an Afrocentric foreign policy, that is, first Nigeria in our heart and then our immediate neighbours. If you do not cultivate a good relationship with your neighbours, it will cost you so much in terms of security and the economy. So you have to cultivate a friendship with your neighbours and then it goes on to ECOWAS, Africa and the rest of the world. I think this is a viable policy option. But if your neigbours think you are a nuisance to them, then the economic activities and the cross-border trade suffer. Since colonial rule, when they sat down with rulers and maps and they cut us off; they cut us off in Benin, in Niger, in Chad and Cameroun. We are virtually surrounded by people who are culturally related to Nigerians. So it is quite easy to get our neighbours to sympathise with us and help us check insecurity so that we can stabilise out country and move forward.
The North is backwards in terms of development and the Boko Haram scourge has further compounded it. If elected the president, how do you hope to bridge the gap and reconstruct the economy of the North-east?
First of all it is important to debunk the notion being peddled by Boko Haram that Western education is ungodly. They go into schools and slaughter children both Christian and Muslim children. They go to mosques and explode devices, they also go to the churches and motor parks. So really, it is very easy to disabuse the minds of Nigerians on the wrong notion that Boko Haram is a religious enterprise. They are just simply terrorists. Having reduced them to that, then you can earn the support of the immediate communities for you to flush the insurgents out of the society. I believe that this will not take a long time. Then you discuss with your neighbours to make sure that weapons are not crossing the borders and that there are training facilities for terrorists. As we can see, the Camerounians are very serious about fighting Boko Haram. They are fighting the sect more than we are fighting the insurgency and they are doing it more successfully because they are able to secure their own part of the country from being occupied by Boko Haram. So you have to first get rid of Boko Haram before you can talk about rebuilding the North-east because you cannot do it while the fighting is still going on.
Then we have to go back to General Gowon’s three Rs. We have to assess how much damage to infrastructure has been done and then see how we can re-equip them and help people to get employment and access to goods and services. I think that soldiers and police barracks and their armories must be strengthened to ensure that they are properly secured. Thirdly, I think that the air force has to be made more effective by acquiring more new aircraft and establishing a base in Kano so that the distance to cover is shorter and returning to base is made easier.
Is oil an issue in this insurgency, especially with regard to the role of Chad?
Yes oil has now become an issue because Chad no longer needs us as it used to need us in terms of supporting them because oil has been discovered and developed in commercial quantities and they generate more money now. They can really bypass Nigeria and get what they want. So oil is an issue. It makes a country economically viable, especially because foreign countries investing in Chadian oil will certainly have sympathy for them and they can try to help them to be stable.
Why did Boko Haram prefer you leading their negotiation with federal government at the initials stage?
You know there were problems with the Boko Haram leadership, there were some people that claimed to be leaders of Boko Haram and the sect disowned them. So we have to identify the real leaders of Boko Haram before you can negotiate with them. I do not think the government has identified the leadership. So it is shooting into the dark and this is why I am insisting on intelligence, which means gathering information and making sure that it is correct and you deal with it. Without intelligence you waste too much resources and lives.
In terms of economic policy, the central question right now is oil and the fall in (foreign) reserves and the exchange rate? What direction of economic policy will you take Nigeria if you are elected president?
You see, it is a pity that we have a mono-cultural economy and we all depend on oil. We have agriculture, mining, things that can complement oil in terms of income and employment. I think insecurity cannot be separated from this. The amount of oil lost to the activities of oil bunkers sometimes has put Nigeria in a very serious condition. On the question of reserves, having been in charge of Ministry of Petroleum for over three years, I know that people who invest their capital and knowledge, they know Nigeria has prolific fields but they have moved offshore mainly due to insecurity. Unluckily for Nigeria, the offshore oil fields, most of them are prolific but are expensive to develop. The best way we can persuade investors to come in and invest is to secure the country. Security is still key to economic development. People will just load the barges and tankers on the high sea and come to collect the crude from the terminals and go and empty them because part of the oil proceeds belong to them (60:40%). But when they are losing, they cannot bring in more resources and technology to establish more reserves in the country. So security is the key, this country has to be secured.
If you are elected president when the country is in great economic deficit, how will you turn things around and secure the economy?
I think that for the navy, air force and the army it is their fundamental constitutional responsibility to secure the country with whatever we have. I believe this country is still strong to make sure that we secure these areas as quickly as we can and re-establish confidence in ourselves, in the world and in our business partners. The capacity to do it rapidly, I am afraid, one has to know the total intelligence, one has to know where we are exactly before you can make a determined move to correct the situation. Really, it is a question of putting whatever we have available in terms of fighting capability to first secure that area, to earn the confidence of investors for them to quickly come back, because they can even organise soft loans for us to stabilise our budget deficits so that we move forward.
So can we deal with security without tackling corruption? When you came to power last time, you were known for your fight against corruption. Today, it’s a different kind of fight. In your party, the APC, there are many people accused of corruption, so how do you first put your house in order and then deal with the hydra-headed issue of corruption?
I think the priority has to be the other way round, we have to put the country in order first. In attempting to put the country in order, it is going to be a terrible situation for whoever wins and I pity whoever succeeds President Jonathan, even if it were to be myself. But this is what we can do; the practical way to tackle corruption is to draw a line, because institutions have been compromised. We cannot go on the way we did in the military in 1983 to fight corruption. This time around, you cannot do it that way because most of the institutions have been compromised. The person you will depend on as the auditor to go and check the CBN, maybe he has got some substantial part of the deal. These are the facts on the ground. So what you do is to persuade them and tell them to help to amend it. You have drawn a line, part of these are in courts and you cannot interfere with the judiciary, no matter how bad you believe the judiciary is. Constitutionally or otherwise, you have to leave the judiciary, you cannot bring better judges and put them on the job over night. It takes generations. So you have to appeal to their conscience and prove to them that you are serious and that cases in the courts that you are interested in them but let the judiciary continue. Cases that have been struck out, the government will move forward but any case that comes up will be handed over to the judiciary. But to say that you are going to investigate, I am afraid that government will not last a quarter because the institutions have been compromised.
So there is no capacity to investigate corruption and what you are proposing is to draw a line going forward?
Yes, to be honest, the capacity is not there because as I said, institutions have been compromised but if you say I am not going to participate in corruption, I am not going to tolerate it from day one, I hope the people will believe it and those that have cases in court have to give way so that people that have not been caught because God help those caught helping themselves then. We can deal with them. But as I said, you cannot go head on as we did under the military.
Essentially to understand you sir, so all these governors who are alleged to be corrupt, all these senators and others, you are drawing the line. Is that amnesty for corruption? Don’t you think that you are also being a victim of your past, that something you did successfully, that because you were criticised, you are now afraid to do it again?
No, I am not afraid. If I was afraid the day they attempted to bomb me, I would not have felt like continuing. But I felt I have done nothing wrong other than telling the truth where I find it serious enough to tell the truth. The important thing is that I mentioned it, you don’t have the capacity to catch the big thieves right now, you don’t have the capacity. You have to do it gradually because, as I said before, all the institutions have been compromised. Do you know that I said it about 18 months ago, I think it was at a book launch where I said in my own area in Nigeria, people hardly go to the police. If they are cheated or something, once they are alive, they say ‘God dey’ and they continue with life because they cannot afford justice, they cannot get it. Virtually the whole country has reached that stage.
How do you reconcile your party’s position to ensure zero tolerance for corruption with the approach you have decided to adopt on corruption?
No, I said that as far as corruption is concerned I will not tolerate it from the day I take charge of governance. But those cases that are in courts, they will continue but as we move forward, cases that come up will be handed over to the judiciary.
The effects of shale oil and the direction of our oil right now, how do you intend to save our mono-cultural economy, given the new world order for oil?
Again, the issue is the security and then the unemployment of restive youths. Those who go to school cannot get jobs and others cannot go to school. I believe agriculture and solid minerals are the sectors we can move quickly into in dealing with the unemployment of the youths. But then moving forward has to take a lot of thinking and planning and cooperation of the international community to come and invest. We must get our infrastructure back. For instance, power supply. A lot of industries were closed because they cannot afford the diesel, they cannot survive the roadblocks from the ports to their places. You can imagine how many roadblocks are mounted by the military, police, customs and immigration. Everybody is asking for money, whether you are guilty or not guilty. So to secure this country is no joke. It has to be done. That is the bottom line.
Now let’s talk about religion. There is a perception that you are either a fanatic or a fundamentalist. Are you a religious fundamentalist?
Well, what I know is that I am a practising Muslim. I think that those who accuse me of being a fundamentalist ought to have seen which career I came out from. From the day I left school I did not work for a day and I joined the military and consistently the Nigerian military has been 80 per cent Christians. So you find out that your orderly, your cook and sergeant major are Christians and you are a Muslim. And fighting through the civil war, if you could recall the international media was saying the Muslim North versus the Christian South. You remember how it upset General Gowon to the extent that after the civil war when they rushed to help us, he said, ‘I do not need your blood money.’ They refused to understand that Gowon was and is still a Christian and all his commanders were Christians and less than 10 per cent of the military were Muslims. So this perception that I a religious fanatic is what can I call sophisticated disinformation. I cannot disown my religion because of the accusations. People I worked with for more than 20 years and I rose from second lieutenant to general. All the commands and staff that I worked with along the line, most of my associates were Christians, for example when I moved into Maiduguri to sort out the Chad invasion, my number two then was Ugokwe. He is a Chritian from the South-east. He happened to be my coursemate but because of civil war he lost his seniority and he became my number two. When the Americans provided President Shagari with satellite pictures that I had gone beyond Nigerian border, I received a presidential order to pull out and fall back into Nigeria. I handed over the division to him and went back to Jos.
Do you go to Mecca? When last were you in Mecca?
I did not know you were following me so closely. The last time I was in Mecca was 12 years ago. Somebody asked me this question why was I do not go to Mecca like some others and I told him that I come from a big family in terms of numbers. And with the collapse of education, I have to make bigger contributions to the education of members of my family. Again with the collapse of the health facilities, these are immediate requirements for majority of Nigerian families. So I have less money to go to Mecca because I have to contribute to the education of blood relations.
So should the state fund anybody to Jerusalem or Mecca?
My opinion is no. As far as Islam is concerned, going to Mecca is your personal business.
Religion is also a toxic issue in Nigeria, I understand that there is somebody that you like, who you may make your vice-president but happens to be a Muslim. Will you have a Muslim-Muslim ticket?
Yes these developments are very irritating. I talked about General Gowon and his commanders and his nine years in office. I talked to you about past pairings: (Bashorun Moshood) Abiola and (Ambassador Babagana) Kingibe and I told you myself and (Major-General) Tunde Idiagbon – military – and Abiola and Kingibe – civilian. So this surge of religion consciousness, as far I am concerned, is a recent development and it has been taken to a bigger dimension. Let me tell you in 2007, I went to Lagos to meet with religious leaders and one of the biggest Christian religious groups. After an hour of meeting with them, the leader said to me, general, I replied ‘Your Eminence’, and he said, ‘We are not going to accept a Muslim-Muslim ticket.’ I said thank you very much. I respected him because he meant it. But if you ask me, I think Nigerians ought to be less concerned about the issue. I joined partisan politics in April 2002 and by 2003, there were governors, there were senators, but I got the ticket. I picked late Chuba Okadigbo, every Nigerian knew Okadigbo, he was a Roman Catholic and an Igbo and he was brought up politically by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, we were rigged out and we were in court for 30 months, up to the Supreme Court. In 2007, I picked Chief Umeh-Ezeoke, he was an Igbo and Roman Catholic. Again we were rigged out. In 2011, I picked Tunde Bakare, a pastor. So how more Christian do you want me to go in picking as running mate? I never picked a Muslim as a running mate.
But this time around?
I am not going to tell you. I would do that after the primary. If I win the primary then I will reveal who is my running mate.
But would you consider a Muslim-Muslim ticket?
I said I would not tell you.
There is a school of thought that said your incursion into Chad was in disobedience to the civilian authorities. That you did not wait to get the permission of President Shagari.
The type of training I received up to my commissioning and up to my rank then, major-general, was that you have to be loyal to those that are below you and those above you. How can a country, which America literarily forced us to give petroleum products to, instead of its president flying in to come see our president and thanking him, went and killed our soldiers and you think I will wait for orders. Well, I asked for their understanding, whether they gave me or not I do not know until they asked me to pull out, otherwise I would have lost respect from my soldiers.
I think that most people think that you are not a fundamentalist. But I have seen your children at the airports, they are like my children, they love good things. I do not think that you raised yourself in that fundamentalist way. However the fear is about those around you, that the nature of your support base is driven by clerics. The fear is that if you become president will these clerics not take over the Villa?
I am just a Muslim and those who studied Islam or know more about its tenets know that it is all about justice. But in Nigeria, we are not practicing Sharia, the constitution has set out legal provisions and states that have voted for Sharia have got their courts to some extent. But then in the end, it is the Supreme Court that will decide. So I cannot work out of the constitution of the country. If those clerics are supporting me as you alleged, then perhaps they are supporting me because they feel there will be justice. If you steal, you will have to return it and maybe get some punishment but if you do not steal you will live in peace.
There is this perception that Boko Haram has religious undertones. If elected president, what will be your position be on Sharia?
It is about the constitution. It is the constitution that we agreed to follow as an emerging nation. The 1999 Constitution gives every Nigerian the right of practicing any religion of his or her choice and not to even practice any religion. I had deliberately refused to make comments on what happened in Nassarawa State where some 70 policemen were killed by a militant group and one misguided SSS person came and said that they had pardoned them. I issued a statement that she had no right to do that. The fundamental responsibility of government is to protect the lives and properties of citizens. And Nigerians, by the constitution, can practice any religion they wish to or refuse to practise any.
Now what do you like about President Jonathan?
His smile.
If you look at other four people running with you under the APC, assuming that you choose not to run again, who would you chose to fly the party’s flag at the election?
I think if I am not running, I should leave it to the party to decide. I understand Rochas Okorocha got two forms, one for president and one for governor, I do not know which one he wants. In any case, I think by receiving those two forms he has disqualified himself from the race. So out of the remaining, Atiku Abubakar, Kwankwaso and Nda-Isaiah, I think I will choose Kwankwaso. Atiku was the vice-president to President Obasanjo for eight years and you know how they ended up. You know that one more than myself. While in school, I was a class monitor, a prefect, a head boy. From there, a governor, a minister, chairman of PTF and a head of state and so people can refer to something. Kwankwaso has also served as governor for the second time and was Minister of Defence, may be you can refer to something. But Sam is a very difficult one.
What is your economic blue print?
It will be a set of regulations, strategies, policies and a vision on how to stabilise the economy, secure the country and move forward. I think that’s what it is.
The APC presidential primary is coming up this week and you have never gone through a competitive primary. What do you think your chances are in the contest?
Well, that is why I have been going round the country meeting the delegates to seek their understanding and support. There are these reports that some people are spending so much money. But I think Nigerians have suffered enough and I think it is not a question of getting just N50,000 and then you are on your own for the next four years. I think it is a question of thinking seriously among the five of us who will really make an attempt at securing our country and managing it efficiently. I respect the system, so the best way we sell ourselves is to tell the electorate what we can do and leave them to decide based on our previous performance or lack of it and then vote for us. If they make a mistake, then we will suffer, our children will suffer. If they make the right choice and regroup around the right person, then we may salvage our country once more.
You presented yourself to Nigerians in the last three elections but lost although you claimed you were rigged out. What measures have you put in place to ensure that this does not happen again?
What I am suggesting is that Nigerians should stand for a free, fair and credible election, otherwise look at the problem some parties are having anointing candidates before the primaries. The system does not stop parties from having consensus candidates to produce the candidates but the ideal is to go through the primaries and choose who they want to represent them. The bottom line is to have a credible election.

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