Nigeria Content Online

Junaid Mohammed,
national chairman of the People Salvation Party (PSP) , speaks on
Nigerian leaders, next year’s elections, and the possible candidature
of Aliyu Gusau and Ibrahim Babangida. Excerpts:

On Ibrahim Babangida

Sincerely
speaking, I don’t have a view and this is quite unlike me. This is
because I have not been able to hear from him the reasons he wanted to
come into electoral contest, and why now? If, for whatever reason, IBB
decides that the country now needs him, or is it the usual empty
rhetoric of ‘my people asked me to come and contest and I’m merely
answering the call of my people?’

I think it will be
very disingenuous for a man who was out of power under the
circumstances he left to now come back and say ‘my people want me to
come back.’ Where were his people when he was forced to leave in 1992?
I’m concerned about the number of retired military officers who believe
they have a divine right to come and govern Nigeria. I know Olusegun
Obasanjo believed in that and that belief was encouraged in a very
substantial way by IBB himself.

I want IBB to
speak for himself, which will justify his coming to be the president of
Nigeria. I would now ask the question, what is it he left behind that
he wants to come back to? That is not to say I believe the nation
should do to him what he did to us, the first and second republic
politicians, when he banned us from participating in political
activities without anything against us.

Now is the time
for him to realise what it meant to have dealt with people in a very
shabby manner. But beside that, I believe he should be allowed to
contest and let the people of this country decide whether he is going
to be a worthy successor to the likes of Obasanjo, Yakubu Gowon,
Murtala Mohammed, and others.

What he is saying
about the youth is also an indictment about what he has said before. He
unilaterally disqualified most of the qualified politicians in this
country. The fact of the matter was that when he banned the old breed,
he did not do it in the interest of the nation, and when he is now
calling the new breed names, people are bound to suspect if there is
anything new he learnt. Even though he was unjust, I don’t believe we
should met out injustice to him because two wrongs don’t make a right.

On Aliyu Gusau

I want you to
quote me, he is barely literate. If he likes, he can sue me because I
can bring out his record from primary to secondary school and to
Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA). The Emir of Gwandu, Mustapha Jokolo, who
grew up in the same household with Aliyu Gusau, has said in an
interview with a Lagos newspaper that the man was never trained as an
intelligence officer; he was just put there by late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua.

I’m not aware whether Aliyu Gusau or anybody else has come out to deny that this is a matter of record.

If these are the
kinds of characters who come out and believe they have the right to
govern alongside IBB or Muhammadu Buhari, then there is a danger to
Nigerian democracy and that danger cannot be wished away by either IBB,
Buhari, T.Y Danjuma, Obasanjo, or Aliyu Gusau. It has to be addressed
by Nigerians themselves.

On Obasanjo and corrupt leadership

On the issue of
corruption, again I want us to be very cautious. Unless you have a
determinant measure that can practically measure the level of
corruption under Obasanjo, Yar’Adua/Goodluck, and level of corruption
under IBB or others. I’m not in a position to say corruption was less
or more or otherwise. Because frankly speaking, this concept of
corruption is quite intimately related to the issue of the resources
available to the country. Such as the issue of Gulf war windfall, which
is yet to be resolved; and I want IBB as a friend to come and address
this issue. As far as I’m concerned, you can only measure corruption by
the measure of affluence or wealth of those who have gone into
government and come out. If you look at the problem we had, the
constitutional crisis and the June 12 debacle, I’m not aware that IBB
has come clean with the matter. But I can say with due humility he has
come clean to me. He has told me about three times how he regretted the
turn of events over the two party systems, and over the issue of Abiola
and the crisis which affected the country. In assessing a government,
you have to assess it at various levels. Corruption then and now have
become institutionalised. Now that Obasanjo is out of office, everybody
knows that he is the most corrupt leader Nigeria ever had. Obasanjo was
a lot more corrupt than IBB.

Role of military in politics

The state of
things now is more of an indictment on the military than the political
elite. Whenever a soldier stages a coup in this country, they always
claim civilians were corrupt, irresponsible, or not patriotic. The fact
that money is, today, the sole determinant of public office and the
soldiers see themselves as the only people who have the money,
indicates that soldiers stage coups because of money, and not for any
patriotic reason. When they went out to bring Obasanjo out of prison,
the first thing they did was to get billions for him, from both local
and foreign sources, for them to oil the machinery that is called the
PDP, and that is how they won the election. So, the only reason why
they are in politics today is because they have the money in abundance
that they can use to buy votes and create confusion in the country.
Tell me one soldier who can say he has anything to offer above any
civilian.

On the political situation

No, it is not a
helpless situation. It is just the political class that is helpless and
hopeless. They were accused of playing monetised politics now that the
soldiers are ahead with that game. Why is the political class not
coming out to say we are not corrupt, these are the people who are
corrupt? In a nation which, since independence in 1960, have had over
30 years of military rule. If the country is in a mess, who are you
going to blame proportionately? But I agree with you, the civilian
political class is hopeless.

The leader Nigeria needs

We need a tough
son, who would make sure that the country’s laws are obeyed and who
will make sure we have a revenue allocation formula, which is realistic
and gives every Nigerian a fighting chance to get education, and to be
competitive in the labour market. We need someone who can make sure
that some of the ills of the society, such as illiteracy, corruption,
diseases, and poverty are eliminated.

The leader we need
must be the kind of leader who will have confidence in the Nigerian
state. He must be the kind of leader who will say there are certain
things to be done, but cannot be done by the system of capitalism which
we operate. And people who are in leadership positions must not use it
to enrich themselves, and I believe that is not too much to ask from a
Nigerian leader.

On rotational presidency

I don’t believe in
rotational presidency. I have been a critic of it since 1978. Because
it is not democratic, it is nonsensical, and is always subjected to
intervention by forces over and above the political system or the
political class. For example, when they had the system under National
Party of Nigeria (NPN), which delivered Shehu Shagari as president,
they didn’t envisage the termination of his presidency unceremoniously
in 1984. Which means that the system simply disappeared. What we have
now in Umaru Musa Yar’Adua is an invalid president who is incompetent,
lazy, and indolent – who cannot do anything and who has been pretending
to be governing Nigeria for the last three years. If what we had in
1984 was a military intervention, what we now have with Yar’Adua is a
divine intervention. Since they don’t have control over military and
divine intervention, what is the need of deceiving ourselves that
zoning and rotation works. Who is fooling who? It does not work and it
has created crisis anywhere it was tried.

And people who are in support of it cited the example of
Switzerland. Switzerland is not a federation. It is a very small
country, less than the population of Kano. So I don’t know the reason
for it. To pretend that Goodluck Jonathan is going to pretend that he
is not going to be interested in the presidency is to delude oneself. I
don’t believe in deluding myself in politics or in public life.