Nigeria’s oil sector was developed with money from the North –Ango Abdullahi
In this interview with JOHN ALECHENU,
the spokesperson for the Northern Elders Forum, Professor Ango
Abdullahi, speaks about the Almajiri phenomenon, Boko Haram insurgency,
and the 2015 elections among other issues
The way you talk about the North, some people tend to see you as someone who hates the rest of the country…
This is certainly an unfair assessment.
If you look at my pedigree and my background, I come from Zaria; I went
to a mixed school. Virtually all my classmates in elementary school and
senior primary school came from the southern part of the country. They
were non-Hausa, non-Fulani and we remained together, we went to school
and finished together and this continued throughout to my secondary
education in Barewa College. And you know, Barewa College was a mixture
of people from all the Northern provinces and a few from the southern
part of the country. I went to the Nigerian College of Arts, Sciences
and Technology, Zaria. Nigerian College as the name implies, brings in
all Nigerians irrespective of tribe and geographical location. I did not
study at the Ahmadu Bello University, I went to the University College,
Ibadan. The North in Ibadan was a minority. When I finished, I worked
in an institution that was not only national but international, the
Ahmadu Bello University, where I worked throughout my academic career.
There is no way anyone can look at my background and say I dislike a
Nigerian based on his tribe, or based on his religion, or where he comes
from.
My present state of mind has to do with
what we have suffered coming from where you least expect. If you look at
the present position of the Northern Elders Forum, it was given birth
to by the attitude of our brothers and sisters who, either within the
North or from outside the North, seem to have acquired some virus of
either dislike-I don’t want to use the word -hatred for a section of the
country or a particular group within a section of the country and this
is what is happening to us in this country. Unless we want to be
dishonest about it, this is why my recent position is that yes, if you
don’t think that Nigerians deserve peace in terms of co-existence and
you think that some other way is to be employed, so be it. What about
those people who talk in the same tone like I talk? Why are they not
being accused of being sectional? All this recent turmoil about North
and South was created by the South, not by the North. The position we
have taken has nothing to do with it. Some of us have done far more for
the unity of Nigeria than many who are professing to be nationalists
now.
You recently accused former President Olusegun Obasanjo of under-developing the North, how do you mean?
I don’t know the context in which you
recorded that because what I remember saying was that Obasanjo gave the
North a raw deal. That one, I am prepared to repeat. If that one means
under-developing the North, it depends on your interpretation. What we
said was that Obasanjo was a beneficiary of the benevolence of the
North, at least politically. When he became head of state, a Northerner
could have been the head of state if he wanted at the time Obasanjo was
offered the responsibility. I was very close to him; I sat with him when
he declared for the Presidency of Nigeria. I was the one who took him
to most parts of the North but we saw what he did or did not do for the
North. Of course, I disagreed with him, especially on the subject of
agriculture; this is my profession. He invited me to be his adviser in
that field and he did virtually nothing for agricultural development.
The number of years that the North has ruled Nigeria is more than other parts of the country, why did you blame Obasanjo?
The number of years of rulership doesn’t
make so much sense; it all depends on the attitude of the leader.
General Gowon spent more money in Lagos than what has been spent in
Abuja, today. Gowon, a Northerner ruled the country for nine years and
expended Nigerian money more in Lagos than is being expended here in
Abuja. Let’s even go back to the beginning. It is the North that
developed the present day oil industry in this country. It is Northern
money; it is the Northern leadership that developed the oil industry.
Check the statistics, the years and the people who ran the ministry of
oil, energy or petroleum during the Tafawa Balewa administration. In
fact, one of the oil companies raised the question, is the money coming
from the North to be an investment or a loan? And I can quote Ribadu on
this, he retorted by saying, ‘this money is Nigerian money and this oil,
when it develops is Nigerian oil, so it doesn’t matter where the
initial money comes from.’ People are either myopic or so biased that
they don’t care about history. In recent history, take the time of
President Shehu Shagari for example, he was the first executive
president of this country. You can’t accuse Shagari of being pro-North.
Go to his village, go to his house in Shagari and see what it looks
like. It was a leadership of sacrifice most of the time. It was do unto
others as you would want them to do unto you. For the period we led this
country, we did more for others than we did for ourselves. This is why
we are being referred to as foolish.
In the run-up to the election,
some Northerners threatened to make the country ungovernable for
President Goodluck Jonathan, people see what is happening in the North
as the result of the threat. Do you agree?
No. I don’t. I don’t know what Northerners have done to make the country ungovernable for Jonathan. Can you be more specific?
Some people see Boko Haram as the creation of the North to tackle the government of Jonathan.
What about the Niger Delta militants,
who created them? Was it Northerners that created them? I think this is a
false accusation and it’s a product of the usual bias and myopic,
holier than thou attitude that is causing all these. Jonathan is a
product of the North, whether he likes it or not. If the North didn’t
want Jonathan to be President, he wouldn’t have been. Go to the
statistics, he would not have been President without Northern votes.
Why did you say Boko Haram is not the problem of the North alone?
Just like the Niger Delta militancy is
not a problem of the Niger Delta alone, it is the problem of Nigeria. It
is the same thing. Any insurgency anywhere in Nigeria should not be the
problem of that section alone; it should be the problem of the entire
country.
Are you not even worried that the North has turned into a pariah as far as economic development is concerned?
Well, there is no development anywhere
in the country. Look at your records, look at your statistics; look at
your 2013 verdict of Nigerians about the progress their country has
made. If there is development, there should be power supply, there
should be water supply, there would be road transport, and there would
be every relevant service that Nigerians require. There isn’t any
development, not only in the North-East, but there isn’t in Lagos, there
isn’t in Port-Harcourt, all over the whole country. I have just done
an exercise on the 2014 budget presentation in some states of the
federation. States in the South-South zone have a budget of N2.4 trn. It
includes the provisions of the NDDC and the Ministry for Niger Delta
Affairs. The entire 19 northern states with 74m people compared to the
21m in the South-South, have the same budget combined. You can see if
there is any accusation of injustice; these figures will explain it. A
part of the country that has less than a quarter of the population of
the North has the same budget. You see, when you are talking about
development, it depends on what type of development we are talking
about. In terms of general development, where we are is certainly not
the best. The poor man in Zaria suffering from lack of water, lack of
hospital services, lack of schooling is the same with the ordinary man
in Lagos, Port-Harcourt, Kano, or wherever you choose to go in the
country. There is nothing in terms of development to distinguish between
sections of the country. If you talk about parts of the country that
are industrialised, you can say yes, the South-West, more specifically,
Lagos and Ogun states. That is where about 70 per cent of the
industries are located. But where is the development in the rest of the
country? What we have which of course nobody is happy about is this
restlessness and insecurity due to anger, frustration and so on, that we
saw in the Niger Delta. That is what we are now seeing in the
North-East.
You said Boko Haram should have been nipped in the bud, how?
Boko Haram was in existence about 10
years before the insurgency. It did not just erupt like that. It had
been on ground for a long time and what flared it was the way it was
handled by authorities and also by rival Islamic groups that saw it as a
threat to them and they used the political leadership to see whether
they could bring it down. That’s why they were in a hurry to bring down
the leader by eliminating him. They thought that by eliminating him,
everything would come down, but it is the opposite now. This is
unfortunately a mistake that was made. The police killed some of them
who were arrested by soldiers and handed them over like rats. If we
reflect very well, we will realise that mistakes have been made and
politicians cashed in on these mistakes. If we had done what was
supposed to be done, we would not have been talking about Boko Haram
now. Since we have made the mistake, Boko Haram continued and expanded,
acquiring more strength, more courage to challenge the authorities and
some people advised government to use force. This is the tool that has
been used for months but has failed. That is why we raised the issue
almost two years ago that brute force alone would not solve the problem.
Why do you say so?
Simple, it has to be a combination of
stick and carrot. This is still our position. This is perhaps what gave
birth to the Turaki-led Presidential Committee set up to dialogue with
the group. The committee was not allowed to go to the full extent of its
work. It was in the course of its work that the state of emergency was
declared and the group (Boko Haram) was banned. If you ban a group, why
talk to it? These are series of mistakes that complicated the effort to
control or contain the insurgency.
Are you saying that the state of emergency has not been effective?
Has it been?
You tell me.
The answer is obvious; people live in these places. Go there and see things for yourself.
Most people believe that the Boko Haram insurgency is triggered by the attitude of opinion leaders in the North like you.
This again is another lie. Boko Haram
was a localised Islamic group mainly in Maiduguri. Most of them are
Kanuri and so on. It couldn’t have been one group of Northern
intelligentsia or political group that created it. It’s a local problem
just like the Niger Delta militants were created by politicians seeking
elections. This is what has almost replicated itself in the North-East,
particularly in Borno and Yobe states. This is what gave rise to this
group and when the politicians eventually concluded the elections, some
lost, some gained and then they used the group against each other. Go
back to your records and check. A lot of politicians were attacked by
the opposition camp; some in PDP, some in ANPP and so on. It was highly
localised before the politicians acquired it at the national level.
Why did you accuse the former
chief of army staff, an Igbo man, General Azubuike Ihejirika, of mass
killing the way he handled Boko Haram?
Was he the army chief because he was an
Igbo man? I should ask you. Was he made Chief of Army Staff because he
was Igbo? I am asking you? I don’t care where he comes from, we are not
accusing him because of where he comes from because that does not
matter. He could have been a Hausa Man, a Kanuri or anybody. We are
accusing him because of the atrocities his commanders committed in
various parts of the country, particularly the North. We have collected
sufficient data and information about the atrocities that his boys in
various commands committed. It’s not a matter for debate, it is a matter
of presentation in the appropriate courts. It’s not a matter for
speculation, it’s a matter of evidence. You don’t go to court based on
speculations; you go to court with evidence and this is what hopefully
we want to do.
The man said the Northern elders are ungrateful to blame him, what is your take on this?
Ungrateful to him? What for? Be
grateful to him for doing what? He chose to be in the army, I wanted to
be an agronomist; that was why I studied agriculture and became a
professor of agronomy. I don’t have to thank him for joining the army to
perform the functions of a professional soldier if he is one. He
doesn’t have to thank me for being an agronomist. It is his choice to be
a soldier, why should I thank him for being paid for a job he has
chosen to do? One mistake he seems to be making is that he is saying the
life of a soldier is far more precious than the lives of other people
that are not soldiers. I think this is totally the reverse. The soldier
has enlisted in the army and has agreed that whatever it takes, he is
going to be a soldier, he is going to live and die a soldier and the
rules of engagement are there in carrying out his duties. He can’t on
account of anger that his comrade by his side has died, go and take
revenge on innocent civilians. That is not the way to go. If somebody
commits an offence, it’s left for the courts to try such an individual
and deal with him/her. The soldiers can only fish such people out and
let the law take care of the rest. It is not for you to go on a spree or
taking it out on innocent civilians because of what happened to your
comrades. There is nothing to thank him for; it is his choice to be in
the army, just like it is the choice of everyone to choose what
profession they want for themselves.
Some people believe that there is nothing like a united North again, do you agree?
Those who argue like that should wait
and see whether there is a united North or not. They should wait for a
demonstration of whether or not we are united when the time comes.
Looking at the history of Nigeria
when we had three regions, the North was considered as the least
developed. So, why blaming others for what is happening now?
That is not true, it is totally false. I
just finished telling you that from 1914 up till the 1950s, money had
to be brought from the Northern region for the Western and Eastern
regions to balance their budgets. Go and check the records, it is there.
There is no way anybody will make that claim; we would have been better
off as we were than we are now.
Can the North afford to be on its own?
We had been on our own before the
British came here. We are on our own now that the British have left and
we will be on our own if Nigeria ceases to exist. That’s it.
Some people say the North has slowed the country down in terms of development, do you agree?
It is stupidity, does it make sense? Why
should we slow you down and you agree? You should disagree so that you
can move fast and leave us behind.
Why is the North so desperate to be in power by 2015?
We are not desperate. There is nothing
desperate about our demand. Our demand is based on fairness and equity.
We gave birth to zoning; the North gave birth to zoning. If we didn’t
want it, other parts of the country would not be in power. If there was
no zoning, Jonathan would not have become President. We are saying that
this zoning should be respected. This is what we are insisting that
should be done. If there is going to be zoning, it has to be respected
and if zoning is going to be disbanded, so be it so that the person who
has the largest number of votes should have it.
Some people believe that the energy you are putting into criticising the government is enough to end Boko Haram insurgency.
It is not our job. The security of the
country is in the hands of government, not in the hands of the Northern
Elders Forum or any other body for that matter. But we have been trying,
we’ve gone out of our way to advise and help government in terms of how
to cope with this problem. Thank God our documented reports are in the
office of the President suggesting ways and means of dealing with this
matter. We have been very helpful to this government in terms of how it
should handle this matter. No one can accuse the Northern Elders Forum
or northerners of not helping to end this. In fact, it is because people
are not listening to advice, that’s why these things continue to
persist. You can’t treat these things in isolation. Take for example, if
you leave the people of the North-East,I, as a northerner, cannot tell
you I can deal with the customs of the Kanuri or other tribes where the
insurgency is raging now. I have to align myself with those who are
familiar with them and find out what really gave birth to this and how
to go about solving it. But all these were not done, they were ignored.
People who preached force succeeded, thinking it is the only weapon at
the disposal of government. Government is being assisted through
constructive criticisms. Go and read any of our criticisms, they have
always been constructive. It is only when people interpret criticisms as
criticisms for its sake that they see things the other way. There is
nothing antagonistic about our position; whatever position we have taken
can be explained in terms of its history, fairness and equity.
While Jonathan is doing everything
possible to establish almajiri schools, a governor in Kaduna is
supplying more wheel barrows for the citizens as a form of empowerment;
do you still blame the Federal Government?
If you read your papers today, the
governor has denied this. He has denied ever buying 500,000 wheelbarrows
for anyone. On the Almajiri schools, the approach that has been taken
is totally political and we don’t think it is the solution to that
problem. The Almajiri problem cannot be solved by anybody from any other
part of the country. It can only be solved by those of us in the areas
where these Almajiri problems are. Even in the North here, it is only in
the Hausa-Fulani dominated areas that we have the Almajiri phenomenon.
It has nothing to do with Islam, it is un-Islamic to beg. There are as
many Muslims in North-Western Nigeria as there are in other parts of the
North but you don’t see that kind of begging like you see in the
North-East. There are Muslims in Kwara, you have the Nupes, the Igalas,
you don’t see people begging there. It is a problem that is localised in
the Hausa-Fulani areas. We do criticise ourselves for allowing it to
continue this long. We don’t think it should be politicised because this
is what they are trying to do. We have 15 million children out of
school; what is 250 Almajiri in one school got to do with solving the
problem?
Despite the fact that most
Northern states are practising Shariah, proceeds from VAT are taken to
the North, why don’t the Northern governments reject such?
Nigeria is not an Islamic State or is
it? We cannot stop government from collecting taxes. Government has
every right to collect taxes, especially when it is a government that is
not an Islamic government. It can collect taxes from all known sources,
including sources that perhaps Islam may not approve. If I take my
money to the bank as a Muslim, I don’t want interest. The little amount I
have in the bank, I never wrote the bank to ask for interest. I don’t
think it is an issue.
Is it fair for Boko Haram to demand Islamisation of Nigeria?
These questions, with due respect are
prejudiced questions. The constitution of the country gives everyone the
right to think and act within the law, you can express your views about
how you want things done and so on. Your views don’t have to agree with
the views of everyone; it does not represent the views of everyone.
That a few persons have expressed such views, it does not translate into
the views of everyone. Somebody else may have a different idea. Let us
live as a multi-religious country. In fact, some people wanted to say
that Nigeria is a secular country but most Nigerians in the three
(national) conferences I have attended said no. Nigerians are generally
religious people: Christians, Muslims and worshippers of our traditional
religions and so on. That’s why it was put in the constitution that
Nigeria is a multi-religious country. Some people are saying there is a
set of laws to guide their conducts, that is why we have the customary
courts, the Sharia Courts, up to appeal and the normal courts. If
somebody says he wants an Islamic state, he is free to think that way
but it doesn’t translate into you using it to ask me. The person is
using his right to freedom of speech
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