Strategic security expert, Mr Max Gbanite, has issued a boatload of reasons, admonishing Nigerians to reject the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the presidential election rescheduled for March 28. In this interview with INNOCENT ODOH, he described those who surround the APC presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, as crooks and corrupted men whose only ambition is to use the integrity of Buhari to capture power for their selfish interests, calling on Nigerians to stop them.
Do you think that six weeks are enough to crush the Boko Haram?
Six years ago, Boko Haram never had any territory in Nigeria, they were operating like ghosts. They were heavily relying on asymmetric warfare, hit and run, hit and hide; therefore you could not pinpoint them. It is only in 2014 when al-Qaeda discredited Boko Haram in April, for the abduction of the Chibok girl that Boko Haram decided to refranchise themselves with ISIS and started taking grounds and keeping same.
So, the perception that “it took six years and the military did nothing” is because people have a very low mentality and knowledge of the architecture of the war. You could not stop asymmetric war like that but the security agencies have been able to downgrade the number of bombs going off in various parts of the country, which means they are monitoring the cells rapidly. So when Boko Haram changed the architecture of war and decided to maintain grounds, the military decided to prepare for a heavy offensive that is now turning into conventional war.
The displacement of citizens that we now call Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) is because Boko Haram sacked the communities that did not have proper governance and that is not the fault of the federal government, it is the fault of the state governors who refused to build their local governments and put local government infrastructures. So the war of today is a different war before April 2014. What the security agencies want to do in essence is to remove Boko Haram from any territory in Nigeria to enable the IDPs to return to their natural abode.
There is some gratification that you are participating in an election in your own locality than in an IDP camp or in someone else’s local government, therefore the security and the military are very correct in what they said. What do they aim to achieve in six week that they could not achieve in six years? In six weeks with the current joint effort between Nigeria, Cameroun, Chad and Niger backed by the African Union and United Nations support, with Nigeria leading the forces, it means that at the end of it the United Nations and African Union can raise money to support the Lake Chad Basin forces.
So in these six weeks, Nigeria military hoped to be on heavy bombardment of these areas and be able to reduce the capability and capacity of Boko Haram and therefore we must support them.
Having said that, we as a people should also prepare that if after six weeks and the much desired objectives are not met I make an organic recommendation, which is simple. If political parties should have agents in every polling units, let us galvanise the support of the citizenry and make the Nigerian citizens partners in democratic infrastructure by getting every party involved in the election to produce a minimum of ten persons in that locality as a vigilante security force. So if there are ten political parties, each producing ten people, you have 100 men that are vigilante that have agreed to preserve the democratic infrastructure to make sure that people will come and vote peacefully, and that means no political thugs can have their way because there is a synergy between these vigilante forces.
Those in APC in the vigilante force will not allow the PDP to oppress the polling unit; those in PDP will not allow APC to oppress the unit and the other supporting units will work with the police who are the armed agency of the government to preserve peace, allowing the military to continue doing their work. It now means that every politician has a stake since in the collection of polling materials from CBN, every political party is present to supervise the election materials. So in moving those materials, every political party should provide the vigilante security that will accompany the Nigerian police to the various destinations. It becomes a win- win situation for the country.
It now means that Nigerians in totality have embraced democracy and are willing to do the needful to make sure that democracy is entrenched this country.
So why should people feel threatened during elections? Does it have anything to do with the political economy of the nation where politics is the winner-takes-all and the loser losing all?
General Buhari and President Jonathan have signed a non-violence pact which was supervised by Kofi Anan, United Nations representatives and some elder statesmen in the country.
Tell me why such message is not being announced every four hours by every media broadcast in the nation. We could have taken that message if the National Orientation Agency were funded properly to do the needful. It means that at ward level, people are hearing Buhari’s voice asking them to eschew violence; people are hearing President Jonathan’s voice. It will now sink into the people’s minds that nobody should die for anyone to be elected and Jonathan has been saying this.
Up till today, it is befuddling that 80 % voter cards are distributed in Borno state. Under which circumstance did it happen? And then there are children based on what I read on the newspapers that were allowed to pick the PVC to vote. Those who gave PVC to children should be arrested if they are INEC staff, and the authenticity of the ID that enabled a child who is under 18 years to vote has to be investigated.
Then you now question the issue of the burning of voter’s card in Lagos state especially those who are considered non indigenes. Why is this happening? Why is that in states where APC wants to dominate, certain funny things are happening there? So these are the questions that I would have liked Prof Jega to answer. They are not sentimental matters, these are authentic issues.
But that does not mean that the Edwin Clark- led South-south/South east group have the right to call for Jega to be sacked. What they have a right to do is to point out the anomalies and encourage Jega to correct it. If you sack Jega now and bring in a new person, the presidency will be accused of colluding to rig elections. This is a nation that dwells on conspiracy theory.
We need to free our minds of these conspiratorial issues. The Commander -in Chief has a right to appoint his NSA, if Gen. Buhari becomes President, he will appoint his NSA. We want to believe that the NSA he will appoint will not be a partisan NSA, so one cannot conclude that Col Sambo Dasuki, who is the NSA is partisan.
That is very unfortunate and wrong comment. Clearly the APC presidential candidate is surrounded by clowns and gold-diggers.
Are you implying that they are holding the APC candidate hostage?
They are crooked men, I repeat, they are crooked men. Let Bola Tinubu explain his wealth, let Abubakar Atiku explain his wealth, let Rotimi Amaechi explain his wealth. The only good man in their group is Aliyu Wammakko of Sokoto state; it is unfortunate PDP allowed him to defect.
Wammakko is the only person that I can point at and say this is a good man. The rest are bunch of kleptomaniacs who took advantage of an innocent man (Buhari) and want to use him to capture Nigeria.
This nation was built on balance and it was that balance that enabled Gen Ibrahim Babangida, Gen TY Danjuma, Gen Aliyu Gusau and Gen Abdullahi to impose Olusegun Obasanjo on democratic infrastructure, telling the then PDP that the Southwest was disenfranchised because of the annulment of June 12. Instead of asking the PDP then to produce a candidate from the Southwest who is democratic, they imposed Obasanjo and the same Obasanjo is going internationally to ridicule a system that is built on the charter of equity.
So when you see Tinubu and their marriage of convenience with Buhari trying to change that structure, you can only feel sympathy with a small nation like Ijaw people.
Let them finish their tenure and power goes back to the north since that is the structure as faulty as it was. If in 1999 they had allowed the best man win, we would not be where we are today.
But that does not mean that rats like militants would threaten that if Jonathan loses they will go to war, but Jonathan has said that if he loses he will hand over, so if they go to war they will be crushed.