Abdulraheem Aodu
4 January 2009
Malam Abdulkareem Albishir, a veteran journalist and commentator on public issues, in this interview with our Kaduna correspondents, traces the cause of the recurring crisis in Jos to leadership at national and party levels. He also proffers solutions to the recurring crisis. Excerpts:
To what would you ascribe the recurrent crisis in Jos?
The crisis in Jos has persisted over the years and there has been a tendency to see it from the point of view of indigene-ship. But that is unfortunate because our society should have overgrown that. Some of the people we call Igbo, Hausa or Yoruba today are actually not 100 percent from those tribes. If you go to the Niger Delta, for instance, a lot of people there have Igbo blood in them. If you go to Benin, a lot of people have Igbo blood in them. Coming up here (the North), of course, not all of us are Hausas. I'm not a Hausa man.
I'm an Igi man from Adamawa State. But you see there is a kind of cultural fusion which has taken place among the people of Nigeria. In fact, this development goes beyond the cultural realm to politics. There was a time when one Alhaji Imam, a Kanuri man from Maiduguri, contested election in Gboko (Benue State) and won. We also have a lot of Igbos and other tribes who won elections in areas other than their states, but within Nigeria. For instance, it is known to many that one of the former elected governors of Sokoto State is a Yoruba man by origin.
There was one Abdulraheem, a Yoruba man who grew up in Kano, who became the secretary to the Kano State government, and later, the Managing Director of the New Nigerian Development Company. As far as the people of Kano State are concerned, he is a Kano man and he can contest election in Kano and become anything. Alhaji Sabo Bakinzuwo (Second Republic governor of Kano State) is a Nupe man who migrated to Kano, but he won election as governor.
Also, the present governor of Kano State (Ibrahim Shekarau) is known to be a Babur man from Borno State and part of his family is still there, yet he won election as governor of Kano State. A lady from my own local government in Adamawa State, Honourable Binta Koje also won election into the House of Representatives twice, here in Kaduna State. She left in 2007 and contested election in Tudun Wada (Adamawa State), an area where we have the largest concentration of Muslims. But she is a Christian.
I am giving you these examples because we have gone beyond this idea of thinking that you have to be in your place of origin before you can contest election in Nigeria. If that is the thinking of the people there, it is very, very unfortunate. Look at me for instance; I have never lived anywhere except Kaduna and my wife comes from here. Now, how can someone tell me that I cannot contest election here simply because my origin is in Adamawa State?
I do not think Nigeria can progress if we begin to see ourselves in terms of Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba or in terms of the enclaves we come from. We have to see ourselves as Nigerians who are free to live anywhere within the country and aspire to any position. I recently read a piece which says that one quarter of the Igbos don't live in Igbo land. Does it mean they cannot exercise their franchise outside the Igbo land? Secondly, look at the security implication of what is happening; everybody in Kano is jittery; everybody in the South West is jittery because of the fear of the possibility of reprisals. But one thing certain is that there is serious failure of leadership in Nigeria and that is part of the problem.
How do you mean sir?
Generally speaking, the leaders do not care about what is happening. This is probably because their sons and daughters are not involved in all this kind of things. I have the conviction that our leaders use unemployment as a tool for their selfish goals. I believe so because the unemployment market is where they get thugs to help them rig elections. The other point that can be drawn out of the Jos issue has to do with the system within the ruling party. Experience has shown that you cannot win election unless the governor wants you to win. They do everything possible, by hook or crook, to win all the available seats since they control the electoral bodies, yet they call themselves democrats.
But more seriously, when you have an army or police force that begins to take side in communal crisis rather than try to secure and keep the peace, we are in for some big trouble. When the army is divided on religious, ethnic or any ground, then the right thing will not be done in terms of bringing the crisis under control.
Sir do you see the crisis as religious?
It was purely a political business before some people masqueraded with religion. People went to the polls and voted, according to reports. Then the counting became a problem because it was not transparently done as it should. So where is the religious issue there? But because our leaders are absolutely lazy, they use this kind of silly excuses, including religion and ethnicity, in order to inflame the polity. I have sisters and cousins, some of whom are Christians while others are neither Christians nor Muslims. Now such leaders want to create a kind of disharmony among the people. Everyone knows that what happened in Jos is not as a result of religion.
How do you think future occurrences can be forestalled?
There is no way we can forestall crises in the future so long as we have greedy, selfish and corrupt leaders. Unless the Nigerian people are allowed to exercise their franchise and their choices are respected, we cannot have the peaceful political atmosphere that we desire. Today, Nigerians do not reap their wish from the polls. We will recall that democracy was ruined during former president Olusegun Obasanjo's tenure. We expected Obasanjo to have strengthened the institutions of democracy on coming to power, unfortunately he weakened all the institutions and therefore those coming after him are taking his footsteps. None of them wants free and fair election, let us be frank about it.
They just sit down in one corner and allocate votes and watch innocent people kill themselves in the street. This is the most painful aspect of it. Some of our leaders are no less than sadists. They do not care about what is happing to the people. All they care about is to win elections by any means. Surprisingly, this was not happening in elections during military government. Everybody participated in elections with nobody asking why a Muslim from Sokoto was winning election in Enugu for instance.
The Electoral Reforms Committee has submitted its report to the president. Do you see its recommendations as capable of resolving the political logjam?
The members of the committee are very credible gentlemen. I have tremendous respect for virtually all of them. The question now is whether their recommendation would be implemented by the government. I pray that they will accept and implement the recommendations, but with the kind of things happening in this country, I doubt it very much. Let me tell you, in 2003, 574 cases were taken to the various tribunals across the country. I cannot give the exact figure for 2007 but I think it is about1, 726. That is about three times the number of cases in 2003.
What does that tell you? It speaks of a declining democracy. Our democracy has been retrogressing. The more we claim to be educated, the more we become ignorant of how to organize simple elections. Go to Ghana; go to Liberia, countries that we helped to solve their problems and see the progress they have made in democracy. Go to Sierra Leone and see how they conduct credible elections.
As small as the countries are, they are in the forefront of building virile democracy. But here we are, the giant of Africa, lagging behind because of some selfish leaders who call themselves democrats while they are not. They do not allow us to vote candidates of our choice. Look at what the ANPP did recently. We were told a former governor nominated his wife for appointment as a minister under the Government of National Unity; the chairman of ANPP brought his son for appointment as a special adviser; the National Secretary of ANPP nominated himself for appointment as special adviser. They have now resorted to allocating positions to themselves and their families alone.
If Yar'adua asked them to make nominations, is it proper for them to nominate their spouses, their brothers and themselves? I am not saying there is anything illegal in it but morality sometimes can be more powerful than issues of legality. Is it right, for instance, that the chairman of ANPP should bring his son? They acted as if the party is their personal fiefdom. And some of us do not even have the guts to question these people. But your light will shine brightly anytime you say the truth. We have to tell our leaders the truth because this country belongs to all of us. The mere fact that they are in leadership position does not mean the country belongs to them alone.
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