There have been allegations that the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan mismanaged the economy. Since you were a key player at the twilight of that administration, how do you respond to such allegations?
The government of the day should graduate by coming out with any revelation of anything that was abnormal (in Jonathan’s administration). Again, allegations after office are not peculiar with this administration. But we should allow due process to hold sway in the course of trying to know what happened or allow the courts of competent jurisdiction to perform their functions.
I am not saying that nothing has gone wrong and I am not also saying that something has gone wrong. What I am saying is that in the course of fighting corruption, there are laid down rules and regulations. There are laid down structures and institutions that are charged with that responsibility.
The government of the All Progressives Congress should allow those agencies to do their work without interruption and without interference. A situation where the state instruments are being used to coerce people or coerce the process here and there is not good for our democracy. The consequence of such in a democracy is anarchy which nobody would wish for.
The case is in court already; we should allow the court to look at the issues. The judiciary itself, talking about the judges and the lawyers, should stick to their ethical professions without being intimidated or stampeded by the government of the day.
It is unfortunate that the various outcries and outbursts of the APC government, as far as I’m concerned, are more political than real. It is too early for us to go into the nitty-gritty of what happened.
I want to believe that the judiciary will do its work and I want to urge Mr. President, Muhammadu Buhari, to be fair in the course of addressing the various corruption allegations in Nigeria. A situation where members of the APC that have been found corrupt in one way or the other are left while you only concentrate on the Peoples Democratic Party members is not fair enough. It is not godly and it is not Quranic. So I think corruption is not exclusive to the PDP at all. It is the problem of the Nigerian political system. And while we are looking at Nigerian corruption, we should look at political corruption too. What is happening in the South-South, like Rivers, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom states, is political corruption, which we should not encourage.
I think the President, who I respect so much because of his integrity, should be fair and just enough while chasing corrupt people. It should not be based on party platform. He should know that some of those people who are in the APC today, were ex-governors, ex-senators or occupied high positions before and had issues with anti-graft agencies. Now, everybody is now running to the APC as a saving grace. For instance, the like of Christopher Alao-Akala in Oyo State was in the PDP. This is someone who had allegations against him concerning his handling of state resources. The President should open his eyes. Corruption, if there is at all, is not only with PDP members. It is not just the PDP people that are involved. There are people in the APC now who spent over 12 years in PDP before leaving the party. The government should not fight corruption on party basis.
We can see that there is a political class that is very corrupt, regardless of party affiliations. We should be able to fish them out. Why focus only on Jonathan’s administration? What happened to other administrations? What about the various corruption allegations against the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and others? Why concentrate on Jonathan’s administration alone? For the fight against corruption to succeed, the government should identify corrupt people, regardless of their religion, tribe and political affiliation.
You seem to genuinely believe that there are APC members who are corrupt. Has any PDP member sent petitions to the anti-graft agencies against them and nothing was done?
It is not my duty to do that. The government of the day has the task, powers and all the agencies to themselves. The same government that is intimidating and pursuing members of the PDP should have the effrontery to also pursue APC members. The same political will they are using now to pursue PDP members should be used to pursue other people who are corrupt.
What did you mean by political corruption when you earlier mentioned Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa states?
Why was the governorship election in Bayelsa State declared as inconclusive? Why is it that for the first time in Nigeria’s history, we have a President that has appointed someone from his tribe as the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission? Why is it that all of a sudden, the Niger Delta Development Commission had to be restructured and a former Commissioner for Information of Rivers State when Mr. Rotimi Amaechi was the governor, had to be appointed as the acting Head of the NDDC? Political corruption is going on there and we have our facts.
But why should former President Goodluck Jonathan spend funds meant for arms purchase on political campaign and PDP affairs?
It is still an allegation before the law court. We should allow the law court to handle it. People keep on talking about arms, arms, and arms but nobody has seen the facts and figures to know whether the money was meant for arms or not. I am saying that it could not be meant for arms but security votes. It was for security votes. Normally, security vote is at the mercy of the governors and the President and some security chiefs. It is something that is a secret. Nobody knows what goes on there. Nobody will tell you how security votes are spent. So for the first time now, we have seen a government that appears to have engaged in deliberate act of trying to know how security votes are spent. I am not trying to justify it but I am saying that none of the APC governors could swear with the Quran or the Bible that they never dipped their hands in their security votes to bring the present government into power. Where did they get the money to fund the activities that brought Buhari to power? Most of these monies could have come from Lagos, Edo, Kano and Rivers states and nobody is asking questions about the security votes of those states. What is peculiar about the security votes spent under Jonathan? I am not saying that keeping security votes a secret is the best thing, but I am saying that it has reached a conventional practice in Nigeria that people hardly know what goes on there. So why are we being selective now? Why are we coming up with this now? Why are people not asking questions about the billions of naira spent in Edo, Kano, and Lagos states in bringing the present government to power? Why are we not asking that question for God’s sake? If we want to fight this rot in security votes, we should fight it holistically. If actually the money falls into security votes and it is being spent, we should go beyond what transpired under the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.). We should go beyond Dasuki’s period to know how security votes in this country have been spent before now. Now in this budget, billions of naira are being budgeted for security votes and for military offices. What for? Why are we not asking what the funds will be spent on? I think we should probe more on how security votes in Nigeria are being spent. Why are we being selective with Jonathan’s government? This is not to say that I align with corruption or that I support the destruction of the Nigerian economy. But I am asking why only PDP, why only Jonathan? Billions of money was spent to bring this government to power. Where did they get the money? Such money came from Rivers, Lagos and other APC-controlled states and most of those states used their security votes.
So, if we are to fight this, let us fight it holistically. Let us approach the issues globally and constitutionally. We should not just leave ourselves with one allegation on one party. We should go beyond that. Except we go beyond that and Nigerians stand to know the way security votes are being managed, Nigeria will not be seen to be serious in its fight against corruption.
Are you saying that the funds now being referred to as money for arms deal was meant for security vote and not for the purchase of arms to attack insecurity in the country?
Nobody has proven that (yet). They have not been able to prove that the money was meant for arms procurement. They are yet to prove that actually the money was budgeted for arms and they were not used for arms procurement. People can say anything but nobody has proven that. I see the move so far as sheer politics.
Why did Jonathan use money belonging to Nigerians to fund a party?
Jonathan did not use the money belonging to Nigerians to fund the PDP. Let us allow the court to take a position on that.
Why did the money meant for arms turn into some sort of bazaar to be shared among the cronies of the former President?
To the best of my knowledge, no money meant for arms has been used for another thing.
Does Jonathan have to wait for him to be called upon to explain what happened since the buck stopped at his table as the President at the time?
Yes. The law allows that. If you want to see him, he is alive. He is going about everywhere. He is not afraid of being invited for any questioning. He and the current president have met a few times. I think Jonathan is not afraid of that. But you know that to every issue, there is a second look to it. They must be very careful the way they handle it because already, he (Jonathan) has been hanged before being tried.
Why do you say that he has been hanged before being tried?
Because everywhere, he has already been hanged; he has been tried on the pages of newspapers. There has been media trial all over the place; when the APC will come out and slander former government officials. In governance, there are certain laid down protocols that a serving government needs to follow. And when that protocol is not followed, you mess up the whole thing. The way the government has gone about it is not right. When General Abubakar Abdulsalam’s government left office, there were issues between him and Obasanjo. But Obasanjo handled those issues in a more professional and refined way. That is why up till today, nobody has heard that Abdulsalam stole and that his government was corrupt here and there. We need to handle things diplomatically and effectively. We should not be over-heating the polity. What we are doing now is not professional. It is more of politics and propaganda. There are better ways of resolving issues between this government and the immediate past government. I urge President Buhari to toe that path rather than over-heat the polity as is being done. What they are doing now is more of over-heating the polity, which is not right. We should find a more refined way of resolving issues.
According to former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, even some of the recovered Abacha loot that was meant for arms purchase was criminally diverted to other things. Why?
To the best of my knowledge, I do not know anything about the issue of arms deal. But the Abacha loot, I think is better handled by the former ministers- the Minister of State for Finance, the Minister of Finance and the former National Security Adviser. The issue of arms deal is before the law court. I do not want to be prejudicial about that. I want to leave that for now. When the time comes, I will really know what transpired and will be able to discuss better.
Okonjo Iweala’s letter that was made public showed that the former President directed her to pay some $300m to Dasuki to purchase arms without due appropriation by the National Assembly. How do you react to this?
It is not every security matter that goes to the National Assembly or made public. If for instance, there is a war, the situation does not require the President to immediately go to the National Assembly to seek money to prosecute the war. There are certain contingencies that may not require recourse to the National Assembly for approval before they are embarked upon. It is not every issue that you discuss in the open. There are certain security issues that you do not discuss in the open. As the Commander-in-Chief, if the President saw what he should do and did not fail to do it, by law, I think he would be right. That all money should be appropriated by the National Assembly does not have to do with all security matters.
This administration said it met the Excess Crude Account red. How do you justify that considering that oil sold for about $100 or more at the time Jonathan was the President?
At the time that Buhari took over, he met on ground almost $30bn in Excess Crude Account. The account was not in red. Do not forget that before we left office, the price of oil had dipped to about $40 per barrel and Jonathan was still paying salaries. Jonathan’s government is the only government that did such a tremendous work on Nigerian roads so far than any other government. A lot of money was spent on infrastructure and we still left a substantial amount of money on ground. It is incorrect for anybody to say that he met the account red. There was almost $30bn that was left in the Excess Crude Account.
Why was it Dasuki’s function to share money among party chieftains, even though he only played an advisory role and his office should ordinarily have nothing to do with public funds?
I would not want to go into details but again, when you talk of presidential system of government, its officials could be charged with certain responsibilities. One would not know what transpired between Dasuki and the Presidency that time to actually know if he was being asked to play certain roles and do certain things. But again, even as we are talking, under this government, there are certain key government officials by virtue of their postings or the trust the president has in them, the president may decide to assign certain responsibilities to them. It is normal in governance.
I am not saying that Dasuki was being sent. I am not confirming that but where it happened, I am saying that it is obtainable. So there is nothing spectacular about a certain key government official discharging a responsibility that is even beyond his sphere of jurisdiction if Mr. President asked him to do it. It is even happening now under Buhari administration. There are certain key officials maybe in Villa that play certain key roles on the basis of trust invested in them by the President. So it is allowed. At the state level, it happens and it is also allowed.
It is believed that Dasuki’s office was used by Jonathan as a conduit to steal from Nigerians.
The law court will handle that one. It is still an allegation. Dasuki is still a suspect and he is not yet convicted, so I cannot confirm that. I think we should allow the law court to handle it.
Nigerians are saying that Jonathan deliberately allowed the Boko Haram menace to fester by not buying the necessary arms and ammunition.
That is a very unpatriotic statement. Anybody that believed that Jonathan did not buy arms for the soldiers obviously is not fair. So were all the communities recovered done on account of carrots and stones the soldiers used? I think people should be fair to Jonathan for God’s sake. There cannot be any perfect government. Terrorism is a global phenomenon. It is not peculiar to Nigeria, even in advanced democracies. France and others are facing challenges. As long as Nigeria will not remain united, and will allow ethnicity, religion and some other issues to block our vision, democracy will not have all its benefits. We must confront terrorism totally. For people to say that Jonathan just sent soldiers to go and die is not fair. Jonathan swore to defend the Nigerian territory, and he did that to the best of his knowledge. So such a statement, to me, is unpatriotic. It is not a statement that should bind us together as a people. People should appreciate what Jonathan has done.
During the election, for the three weeks, we did not record one case of insurgency in the North East. Are you saying that Jonathan did not do anything in recovering so many villages? Even some of the villages and local governments that the APC are claiming now, were recovered under Jonathan. What are we saying for God’s sake? We should be fair enough.
Where a government did not do well, it should be constructively criticised but where it has done well, it should be appreciated for doing well.
If there is anybody that loves peace so much and wanted to restore peace to Nigeria, I think that person was Jonathan. It was on that basis that he handed over power to the present government.
Dasuki specifically asked for six weeks for the postponement of the general elections to fight Boko Haram and the impact within the period was tremendous. How do you explain that?
Yes, there were some issues. When you look at the conduct of elections, the postponement was justified. As at the time the election was postponed, almost 40 million Nigerians had not collected their permanent voter cards. So if the election had taken place without 40 million Nigerians voting, how do you explain that? Do you call that an election? So I think there was a plausible reason for that postponement.
Secondly, there were security issues. Mr. President insisted that he wanted people from Borno and Adamawa to cast their votes and he wanted the Internally Displaced Persons to also be covered. These people should be able to cast their votes in a simple manner. That was one of the reasons the elections were postponed.
When the election was postponed, many of the 40 million Nigerians that could not collect their PVCs were able to collect them. Also there were places where voting could not be done as at that time, but after the postponement, elections went on and there were no attacks on them. I think Dasuki’s advice at that time was justifiable and it worked. People were able to cast their votes and collect their PVCs and exercised their franchise and we had peace in the North East. So at the end of the day, the people in the IDPs were able to vote.
It is believed that Jonathan gave all his ministers money to spend on mobilisation and campaigns ahead of the elections. Don’t you think that you and other ministers could still be picked up to explain how you spent your own share?
Whose perception is that? If there was any prudent man in government, that man was Jonathan. To the best of my knowledge and I can swear with everything, Jonathan did not give ministers money for the elections. Quote me anywhere and at anytime. Jonathan did not give ministers money for the elections. As a matter of fact, before the elections, Jonathan stopped capital votes. Jonathan did not release any capital vote to any ministry. Jonathan stopped overhead releases to ministries close to the elections and after the elections. Jonathan did not release any overhead to anybody.
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