There’s dictatorship in our present democracy – Useni

Lieutenant General Jeremiah Useni,(rtd), a bosom friend and contemporary of late General Sani Abacha says the late head of state never died of any poison but that his demise  came naturally. The former FCT minister who is currently a delegate at the ongoing national conference, tells EMEKA NZE his relationship with the late Nigerian leader, his impression of the confab and  also draws a comparison between corruption under the military and civilian  regimes

Would the conference have been better if sovereign?
No, no, no.  There was a lot  interpretations to the whole thing. There are those who called it “sovereign”, those who called it “national conference”, all sort of thing. We are told that “Sovereign” is to discuss the unity of this country-how it will be broken down. When it is the talk of the breaking of this country, definitely, I will not support it. Then if it is national conference then we discuss generally- what is wrong since we have been together and the way forward. Eventually, national conference came to be and that’s we are here. So, I am happy that national conference is not sovereign which could have meant something else.

My impression of the conference
Let me start from the leadership. The leadership is okay, it is a selection of highly experienced people. The chairman, for instance, he was a judge under me when I was minister of FCT and I know him very, very well. The deputy was my colleague in the federal cabinet under Babangida administration. He was minister of Foreign Affairs when I was minister of transport and aviation. So these are people I know very well as highly principled persons. Majority  of delegates have seen that when things were trying to get out of hand, people felt that he should try and apply some sticks and when he did that, things started moving but he is also a very amiable person and I’m happy over it; people are satisfied.

Comparing this with the 2005 conference
The 2005 conference which I was a member, in fact I was a committee chairman. I think it was more orderly. The participants were more orderly than the one we have now. You hardly see anybody calling somebody by name and the rest of it and that is why the Rule of Procedure did stipulate that you should not call somebody by name is good. We didn’t have to go through all that in 2005 because everybody believes in himself or herself very very well. Chairmanship of committees for instance was chosen by members of a particular committee. We were allowed to choose chairmen from among ourselves. So the chairmanship of committees was not enforced on us, it was not dictated by anybody, we chose by ourselves. It’s like internal democracy, so to speak and we finished on time. We used 15 minutes to present our reports. When it got to my turn, I used only 12-13 minutes to present my report.

Is our democracy on track?
Well, democracy is good. Nobody is against democracy. Even as a military man, I like democracy if it is followed in the real sense of democracy. We say we are following the American model of democracy, but are we really doing what the Americans do where the President and Governors use government machinery to campaign for elections? You can’t see that in America or the United Kingdom. In fact I remember that when the Prime Minister of the UK uses an official aircraft for a private trip, he was asked to pay. But here it is not so. We misuse everything. Over there, when you go for elections everything is free and fair. But here, if you are in the opposition, you are on the losers’ side from day one. So, while you use your hard earned money to campaign, those in government are using government money. Even if you go to the tribunal, they use government money. You use your own money and at the end, you are suppressed and so on and so forth. So that is what is bad about this democracy. We are not following what democracy should be. Democracy is to allow everybody to do what he or she likes within the law and we are to respect everybody’s idea. We are to fear God and not to dislike God and say to hell with everybody. It shouldn’t be so.

Comparing your administration as FCT minister with successive ones
Well, a lot of differences and a lot of reasons also. For instance, development in the capital city is much, much more now because there is more money. In our days where barrel of oil was 11 dollars, we are talking about in 1980 to 1999. Those days too only four states Rivers, Lagos, Kano and FCT could make budgets up to 1billion naira but today even the local governments have budgets of billions. So you can see the difference, a lot of money and may be because of a lot of money too, a lot of corruption, because the more you have money the more you are corrupt. Corruption is high at the federal level, when you come to state; it reduces at the state level and when it comes to local government, there is also corruption at the local level. That’s why I said there are different reasons.

Are you saying civilians are more corrupt than military regime?
I don’t want to say yes or no. I have no instrument for measuring corruption but what I can say for real is that the military has the guts to deal with corrupt people. We dealt with them instantly, locked them up, removed them from office; there is nothing like “this is my supporter, I need him for future election or this is my brother.” No, we will deal with it; those who are not innocent we remove them. There was a case of a military administrator who was removed because he took N2 million to go on a small trip; N2 million from the treasury, to go and do what? He said he was going on a small trip and the people there reported that they were suffering and this man took N2 million to go to his home town. Is it because it is not his state? You know in the military, they don’t post you to your state and it was found to be true and he was removed instantly. The same thing we did to Col Ochefu. There was a case reported against him that he did this and this and that before he was appointed a military governor of Anambra state that time, but he committed the offence, so to say, before the appointment. The government felt embarrassed and removed him. So that is the difference with the military administration.

If we didn’t know, we didn’t know but where we knew, we took action immediately. I was the military governor of the then Bendel State under Gen Buhari-Idiagbon, Honestly, we were allowed N1000 for a one day conference. You were coming to spend one night; we didn’t know anything like security votes. We were allowed only N1000, just to help the boys who were helping, maybe, they have worked very hard and you say okay, take N100, N200 and so forth. Every governor has a liaison in Lagos, there’s a place to stay, you can eat, then what do you take N10, 000 for, not to talk of the millions they take and now they move around with dollars. We were not even allowed to open accounts and because of that I have no account now in overseas.

There was nothing that Obasanjo didn’t do thinking I was close to Abacha and also involved in operating overseas accounts and checked everything. I had no account overseas. At the time I was appointed military governor, I had only £150 (pounds). But the situation is different today. I will say there is complete breakdown of law and order and we need this strong political will to move things forward. We need very courageous not only those at the helm of affairs but the advisers too because the advisers are weakening those at the head. They can’t do anything because they are shaping them, shaping them and when they want to be strong they are shaping them. So the foundation must be strong before the head will know what to do.

Reason for high level corruption  
When people begin to talk about military dictatorship, you start wondering whether the military will see you and kill you, but also those  saying so felt that the military could not allow them do certain things and so they want the so-called democracy as if there is no dictatorship going on now. There is dictatorship going on, a lot of things have been left undone, we haven’t upheld the constitution which we swore to upheld; the governors among us don’t follow the constitution they swore to uphold. So which is which? So I will say things started going bad as the civilians took over. Some of the things civilians are complaining of now have been on for 10 or 15 years. Look at the zoning  thing now. They said zone is a military thing, it is not good, it is not good but they are using it for a political allocation of votes, they haven’t dispensed of it. I know some zones at this conference that are saying that it should be turned to regional government that we used to have those days and some of us said we can’t go back there again because there were reasons to decentralise , we can’t go there again. So there are some laxities in the so-called democracy they think the thing is a licence to do what you like, which is not. That is the bane of the whole thing.

How do we come out of it?
The leadership must be strong at every level whether at the local government level, whether you are the director general of a company, the minister, you must be straight forward, you must be upright and you must deal with everybody equally, no matter whether that person took you singularly and made you a minister, singularly and made you a governor. Once you have sworn to oath of office, you must abide by it and you must fear God. Most of us have forgotten that God made us.

Your perceived power under late Abacha
(Laughs)I didn’t know whether it was true, you know. No. You see, first, as far as military was concerned, I was the most senior army officer to Gen Abacha. Brigadier Gen Diya, first of all, he was senior to me because he was chief of staff. We put him there for political balancing because Abacha came from the North and I also come from the north, not that militarily he was senior to me, he wasn’t. That is one, after Abacha, it’s me. Secondly, as the minister of the federal capital territory, once you see Abacha for anything, the next person to pay courtesy call on is me as the minister of the capital territory and by constitution, I also act as a state. When you go to a state you call on the governor there, so when you come to Federal Capital to see the Head of State, you see me. Sometimes, if the Head of state is not there you see me and in most cases, I represented the Head of State to go to some of these places. So, I was all over the place because of the position I held. I was cool headed too, I didn’t misuse my position.

Did you misuse your position?
If I was not cool-headed, I would have been removed; I never misused my position. I never reported any officer or minister to Abacha. I normally went to Abacha in the morning if I had any official thing to discuss. I did not have to stab anybody before him. Any minister that had any problem came  to me and I would tell them how to answer him and when they got to Abacha, he would tell them the same thing.  When we were lieutenants, we knew each other in and out and that’s how we developed our friendship.

As the most senior, why did you not become the head of state when Abacha died?
We had two methods. One was to use protocol or go by seniority. If we had voted to go by seniority, I would have been the one to take over from him. But we voted to go by protocol and Abdulsalami was next as far as protocol was concerned. Since Diya had already been removed, the Chief of Defence Staff was next in hierarchy as far as protocol was concerned. So that was what happened and there are no hard feelings about it.

But many thought  Al-Mustapha chose Abdulsalami
No. It was not Mustapha. He didn’t know anything. I was a minister and member of the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC) so what else? But sometimes, people talk about Mustapha as if he was God. It was not like that.
So he wasn’t wielding the kind of powers that people thought he wielded
No, as a security officer that had the power to lock you up; he has the power to investigate you, he had powers. Don’t you fear the police? When you sit in your house and police knocks at your door, what will be your reaction? “What have I done?” That is it.

You were alleged to have wept upon being allegedly swept aside for Abdulsalami to emerge
No. No. No. I did not weep because I was not the one to take over. I wept over  the death of my friend, Abacha. I did not weep for leadership. Leadership comes from God. God knows why it turned out that way. Today, I am a free man; I walk through the streets nobody abuses me. I feel happy. So how can I weep for being sidelined when I know the system? It is either this way or that way. So why should I weep? If they had brought a new system that was unknown to us, that would have been different. Those are two systems – protocol or seniority.

What really happened to your friend, Abacha? There were so many stories at that time and one account said he died after an encounter with some Indian prostitutes. What exactly happened to him?
He died of natural causes. People think he was killed by a woman or that he was poisoned but there is nothing like that. There is a report, a copy of which I have in my possession. The wife sent part of his body to Germany for analysis to find out whether he was killed by poison but there was nothing like that. She was not satisfied. They said she should go to London. She also took it to London and London gave the same report. So the story about some Indian girls having a party with him at the Villa was not true.

But was he sick or having symptoms of any disease before he died?
Yes, he was sick. Even if you noticed at that time, his lips were like almost peeling.

Did he smoke?
No. He didn’t smoke. It was his kidney.