Former candidate in the 2019 Katsina state governorship race, Surveyor Shehu Abubakar Jikamshi, said increasing insecurity across the world is occasioned by agitations for an emerging new world order and until nations succumb to this new order, governments and nations will remain destabilized. He spoke to PATRICK ANDREW.
Excerpts:
What was your experience in the last election?
I contested election for the governorship of Katsina state but because of the way politics was played electoral laws were breached. The INEC gave guidelines on expenditures among others but neither the ruling party nor the main opposition party adhered to these guidelines. In fact, we, the so-called small parties, had no chance so we just played it at “sit-don look”,
Our people are still docile, we don’t know what is good for us. I don’t believe at this stage that people will just sit down and look at a governor who deeps hands into government treasury and takes out public money to run his election and yet people applaud him.
It is a tragedy because if they are working for the people, they wouldn’t have such money to use for their personal election. What that means is that the election is still for the people with access to government funds. You have to have a colossal sum of money before you aspire for the position of governor, run for the Senate or House of Representatives. I don’t know when we shall get out of this quagmire.
Should the president give assent to the Electoral Bill 2019, will the lapses in the electoral processes be corrected?
I think it can improve, but the implementation will be the problem. There are so many good things that are on paper but the implementation has always been the issue. In fact, where attempts were made to implement some of them, it was never done in the proper manner. What often happens is Mr President allows his people to do whatever they want, there are no checks and balances and until we stop trampling on checks and balances, we won’t get things right.
Besides, the INEC is composed of Nigerians, and it is not an island. Not until we collectively from the political parties, government organs and down to the general public resolve to change our attitude, we will never get things right.
Recently, the security architecture was changed but it seems insecurity has remained unabated?
Well, don’t you think the changing of the security guards is too little too late? They ought to have been changed long ago. Had they been changed long ago when there were public outcries for them to be removed, they would have been a better approach in the security performance by now. Nigerians, when it was time for the security chiefs to go, had rang the bell for them to go but the president felt otherwise and allowed them to remain in office.
What happened subsequently? They felt relaxed and the security situation in the country generally deteriorated. At first when they came, they worked but gradually there was decline and things began to get out of hand such that there were daily doses of killings. With the present change of guards there may be some changes in the security situation.
Besides, the way we are handling insecurity is a problem. Recall that at the onset we were giving it tribal and religious colourations: The allegation was Hausa/Fulani were killing Christians bla, bla, bla, but we knew those doing the killings were neither real Christian nor Muslims or even Hausa/Fulani because these people are peace loving.
There are outside forces financing this insecurity. There is a new world order now and there are organs that want to dominate nations and until you fit into their ways they make every effort to destabilize countries and governments. Just ask yourself these bandits and Boko Haram from where do they get their finance and armaments to run their affairs? So the raging insecurity is neither a religious nor tribal issue, but it is a set up.
Sadly, the government is not ready to look at it that way. For instance, how many politicians, businessmen have you heard have been charged to court, convicted and punished for sponsoring Boko Haram? So far, not a single one. How can that be? We know how it started and the governor that started this criminal act is running all over the country and he is very influential. So one is justified to blame the government because the government is not being serious in tackling the problem. As far as I am concerned, more efforts are needed. We have the means to track these culprits and arrest them but we are not doing much of that, until lately.
Actually, I am in support of what Governor Ahmed El-Rufai said that he is not ready to negotiate with any bandit not like the governor of Katsina state that is spending colossal amount of money in the name of negotiating with bandits. These bandits usually ransack villages, kill people and take away some for ransom; depriving families of husbands, wives, children and parents and the survivors have to run for their dear lives often to primary schools to squat with no means of livelihood, only dependent on the goodwill of Good Samaritans. Yet you say the right thing to do is negotiate with the culprits that perpetrated this heinous crime? So what are you doing to these criminals? What is the fault of the victims that they have to suffer for life? The criminals deprived them of their families, the future of their children, and yet you are negotiating with the bandits and even give them money.
How then should Nigerians reposition for 2023?
The drum has started beating, so people of integrity, known by the people who are ready to sacrifice and to serve the people who have integrity and names to protect, those are the type of people they should bring and they can even invite them to come and contest election. No, it should be the people themselves begging persons of integrity to contest not the aspirants telling the people they want to contest election to serve them.
What should the people do to isolate and involve persons of character in the coming process?
The people know who has contributed meaningfully to the development of their town and they can assess the person and be sure if they were to support him for an elective position they can expect 70 percent delivery of dividends of democracy. It should not be the person that comes only during elections to make donations, the people should know the donor during election is investing and would want to recoup his investment, if elected.
There are politicians of goodwill, who have character and purpose, who have made it in business and have resources and want to participate in leadership to render services. In the present government, there are some politicians that were wretched before they came into office, they had contributed nothing to the emergence of the government but they are now at the helm of affairs. So their interest is not in the welfare of the people.
There are ongoing realignments of forces; either to form new political parties or strengthen the ones on ground, what’s your take on that?
In the USA, where Nigeria borrowed its democracy from, democrats remain democrats and Republicans remain the same no matter what unlike Nigeria where the APC and PDP are the same people who have merely recycled themselves without ideologies and therefore have no new ideas.
We should have new ideas, a new brand of politics either through the promotion of other associations or parties but definitely not the APC and PDP but other smaller parties with ideas that the new breed of politicians can embrace. We had hoped when we started the National Rescue Movement (NRM) not to be a money spinning party but nobody listened to us. In the whole country we have only a seat in the Zamfara state House of Assembly and even that was circumstantial because of the tussle in court between the APC and the PDP. There is the PRP, and others like ours with ideas and ideologies, some intellectuals like Moghalu, Ezekwesili (she has ideas and her faults as well) were all these to combine, we can form a formidable party.
What is your concrete expectation in 2023?
For sure, there will be a change of leadership at the centre. The party in power may not win. I foresee the emergence of another strong political party in 2023 though some former members of the PDP and APC as part of the new group.
I am convinced the APC is doomed because they have failed in so many ways and because the people are groaning under its rule. They promised a vibrant economy, to end insecurity and corruption, but corruption is still very much present with us. You only need to do something in government offices to realize the depth of corruption in the country. If the top doesn’t have the will and there are no checks and balances, the fight against corruption will be futile.
Even the retention of those Service Chiefs after they were due for retirement is a form of corruption because it generated some ill-feelings within the rank and file in the military. The president as a former military officer ought to have known this. Everybody wants progression but when you don’t want to support career progression, of course, there will be disenchantment. Though the president is trying his best but it’s not enough. So to speak though he got the greater number of his votes from the North but most in the north are not happy with him.
