Senator Abdullahi Adamu is a first-time member? of the National Assembly. He was, however, a two-term governor of Nasarawa State. He spoke to ABDULMUMIN BALOGUN on the salaries of legislators, Boko Haram, and his relationship with his successors, Ex-Gov Aliyu Akwe Doma and Governor Tanko Al-Makura.
Boko-Haram’s thirst for blood has been difficult to curtail by the elite in the north. Has the leadership of Northern Nigeria lost the confidence northerners used to have in it?
I do not believe that the northern leadership has lost the confidence of northerners. The issue that you are bringing up is a test case for northern leadership, but not an issue hinged on the success or failure of the northern leadership.
Up until today, those organs of government or the actors of government have not been able to put their fingers on them; so the question is, what is Boko Haram? You must know the problem you want to address; you must know from what angle anybody is coming to constitute a problem to your daily life or to your authority before you can chart a strategy for dealing with that person.
I believe that it is not a matter of northern leadership. I prefer to say (that) this generation of Nigerian leaders have failed to identify and know what Boko Haram is.
Who has asked the question: what are they up to and what brought about Boko Haram? What we have been doing over time is reacting. We need to know if Boko Haram is a religious group, who their leaders are, before even talk about dialogue with them. When there is an action, we just react. I sympathise with those people that lost their life and property? and the maiming of innocent fellow countrymen and women.
With these incidences we have been witnessing destruction and killing but we should ask ourselves: was it Boko Haram that attacked Abuja on Independence Day? – a day our president was undertaking one of the most important events in the calendar of this country at the national parade ground, was it Boko Haram? When people came all the way from very far places to display their capacity for violence on Abuja streets, was it Boko Haram?
It is easy to say that what has happened in the Niger Delta, starting with President Obasanjo, President Yar’adua, has been able to take control of the situation. That is because, in the case of the Niger Delta militants, you know who you are dealing with and you will be able to put on the issues on the table.
When this thing (Boko Haram) started, different people from different leanings did suggest that we should get to this group and see how we can talk to them, but they (those in charge) did not react early enough. They are human beings like us.
They live in our midst. If the leader is in Maiduguri, he is not alone in Maiduguri; he mixes up with people.? If he is in Kano, he is not alone; if he is in Onitsha, he is not alone.? They are not spirits. These calls to know the leadership and to engage them in dialogue have been ignored over time. I am happy that I have started hearing organs of government and public officers, who are involved in the issues of security in this country, accepting the fact that there is a need now to talk to these people.
This should have been before today. The other day, I was reading in the papers and one of the leaders of the First Republic was saying that if you want to talk to these people, they are there, you can talk to them. I have always believed this is possible, but somehow the problem of Boko Haram was not given the attention it deserved when it started. The problem would have been nipped in the bud before now.
The way it was handled, when they were identified, unfortunately aggravated the situation. The people who are responsible for nipping it in the bud were more interested in shouting about crushing them and finishing them. Where are we today?
Have we crushed them? Look at the havoc we witnessed in Kano recently? Even during the Nigerian Civil War, I don’t remember any event (because I was old enough to read the papers and listen to radio and I had left secondary school and was already working) in the history of this country where we lost over 200 people in one day in just one operation. I don’t believe that it can be tied to northern leadership per se.
I don’t believe it is just a simple northern problem. I think now that the people who are involved with the official responsibility of tackling the menace are alive to the situation, it is my hope that the leadership of this group will start coming out to engage with the people in government – who their normal schedule of duty is reaching out to them for dialogue – so that we can know the reasons behind their actions.
I have read papers, I have read commentaries and I have also heard commentaries on the electronic media that try to associate the problem with the economic situation in the country. The desperate state of affairs, the fact that there is high rate of unemployment.
If you see the kind of boys that are being paraded in the newspapers for the arrest, you will shed tears. When you see a teenager being paraded for such a heinous crime, you will know that there is something wrong. It is a matter of us getting together and identifying the thing that is wrong.
We must spare effort to identify what exactly brought about this whole thing. Nigeria has been living with the different religions before its emergence. There have been Muslims and Christians living together. So, why is this happening? And there are people who are shouting from the rooftop that they know who they are, and nobody has said anything.?
I don’t believe it is a northern problem; I believe it is a national problem. It is an issue that pertains to governance and to the lot of Nigerians in the street. I think we are on the verge unless we do something about the economy. For me, it is economical: they are just looking for a platform. But it will be good for the country to identify who these people are.
The other day, I heard they are Chadians and Nigeriens. What is it the government will do that will stop these travails? We shouldn’t be ashamed of approaching them. Even though the problem with the Niger Delta militants did not quite go this far, there were cases of kidnapping and killings, but not mass murder. The truth of the matter is that the government of the federation should engage them.
We knew how the Niger Delta Militants were given the presidential fleet to move them from place to place for the dialogue and take them back. I thought when this thing started, if we had identified people who are in connection with the problem, who will accept the fact that they are the perpetrators of the crime, then we will ask them what is this all about; what is the problem and what is it the government should do to make things work. Probably, we could have done better with the control.
Nigerians really want to know the salaries and allowances of their legislators at the federal level. None of you is talking about this.
My salary is not more than N620, 000. Of course, there are allowances for housing. There were hues and cries about allowances and these allowances were slashed by almost about 50 percent. We get these allowances on a quarterly basis. I think the last time I received any kobo was on October 13, 2011.
Since then, I have not received one kobo of allowance from anybody. There has been a lot of noise about the salaries of Nigerian legislators. They are comparing us with the president of the United States of America, and they even compared us with the Indian legislators.? One thing which is lost to us, from the little I have seen of the parliamentarians’ life and expectations by the electorate, is that the parliamentarian has unfortunately become a victim of the failure of the executive.
The average member of the House of Representatives or the Senate in this country takes upon himself responsibilities that are not his own, and he has to. Unfortunately, from what we have seen people don’t get elected because of how many bills they have passed but because of how many projects they have carried out from their pocket. I challenge you to find time, or send any of your boys to go to my residence. Once we are not in plenary session I try to go home.
If you visit my house for the first time you will think I am running a mini-market because of the number of people you will see coming in and going out. The average American Senator sees very few people in one month.?
They are so few.? He organises consultations, briefings and interactions in his constituency for a given period of time. He can even make his contributions and play his part as a senator through the internet or through some close circuit television system.
Here you have to go home and meet the people directly because of the failure of the system: the person in the hospital comes to you; the person whose child has been sent out of school because he can’t pay fees comes to you; the person whose car has broken down somewhere and he needs tyres comes to you; the one who wants to get married comes to you; the one who wants to give his daughter out (in marriage) comes to you. If the people want a borehole they come to you because the government has not provided any borehole. If the roof of their clinic is blown away, they come to you. Point at any country in the industrialised Europe that you know, and the United States of America, that they ask these from their legislators.
This is not to talk about what they request from you when you are contesting an election. So, all these comparative analyses, as to what we receive or do not receive, is not right because we are in a different world. I do believe that what we are being paid should be commensurate to what we do.? The kind of kite they fly about the salaries we receive is unfortunate. What stops anyone from going to the Public Affairs office for information?
In the National Assembly there is the freedom of information law; so, what stops anyone from going to the National Assembly to find out what exactly we receive instead of resorting to speculation. There some aspects of the legislator’s life that has been monetised but you look at that and say these are the direct benefits. Since I have been in the Senate, I pay for medication from my pocket.
I have never sent any expenditure bills to the National Assembly.? I don’t know if any senator has done it, but I don’t. If the National Assembly will take responsibility for some special kind of medical attention, then I am not aware of it.
Look at the kind of figures that are coming from the issues like fuel subsidies and tax waivers.? Where is the media? Why don’t they go after these guys? You see individuals who win contracts which are not completed, they are arrested and taken all over the place, paraded as corrupt people, yet people take billions and billions and hundreds of billions and nobody does anything to them.
All we do is to give them all kinds of names, like cabal. Look at the kind of money we are talking about.? I am astonished hearing the kind of billions people talk about . One person has benefitted from tax waivers or has been involved in this fuel subsidy largesse, round tripping supplies and what have you. We are talking about things you read in the papers every day. If these figures are inflated, nobody is denying them.
The other day, the former chairman of Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) was talking about figures, about stabilisation and the Sovereign Wealth Fund and nobody said anything. What people are busy saying is that every governor in Nigeria is a thief. Just recently the Supreme Court took a decision against some governors.? The papers also reported that the EFCC is already at the door of the governors.
The Farin-Ruwa hydroelectric project is the brainchild of your administration and it came as a surprise that you did not complete the project and hand it over before you left government. It is still surprising that the project does not seem to be nearing completion. Your administration was also accused of using it as a conduit pipe.
It is a pity. When I became the governor, or prior to my being governor, I was able to take a critical look at the situation of energy and water in Nasarawa State and I tried to relate our position in terms of the availability of these amenities with the national state of affairs with regard to these issues, and I concluded that there was a need for us to play a part in generating power somewhere in the state. We had options.
At a point, we thought about wind, we also thought about water and we thought about thermal, but because we had no access to gas for thermal we discarded the idea.
There was a plan to get gas down to Abuja and for us to take to Nasarawa but we began to imagine when the pipes will be laid before we become a beneficiary of it; so, we thought it was not a good option. As for wind, we did not have sufficient statistics about how much wind we had, the speed of wind and what is the season and the fluctuation in the wind condition; so, we discontinued with wind electricity generation.
We had hydro as the last option and we had Farin Ruwa waterfalls which we thought we could use for dual purposes: first to develop tourism and to dam the water to somewhere. So, we set out to develop a dam. We finished constructing the dam, we constructed the gate, we constructed the thermals and the length was about 2.5 metres and about four meters wide and it went for about a distance 400 metres – all completed and lined up, and we started the foundation.
We delivered the thermals; we had them delivered on site. That was the last bit of the work done before my tenure was up. The handover notes are still there.? Unfortunately, the administration that succeeded our administration did not have that on its priority list, and because they did not have it in their priority list, they did not add one little value to the project.
From my understanding, when we left, the ICPC and EFCC were all there to see what we did and what we didn’t do.? Nobody could believe the extent of work. Why they did not continue the project is not for me to say, because I did my bit.
And you did not step into the matter at any point in time? What is your relationship with former governor, Akwe Doma, and the present governor of Nasarawa State, Alhaji Tanko Al-Makura?
You should realise that once your administration is over as governor, you must give the new man on the saddle space to do his job. He should be the one seeking you out on the issue of continuity and focus of projects you initiated in the interest of the state.
We support people into leadership positions, but how they turn out could be very unfortunate. It is also ironical that a man that led the EFCC to you is also a visitor, now, to the same EFCC.? I pray that the new administration will look at the fact that the equipment we delivered for the Farin Ruwa project are rotting away and revive the project.
On my relationship with Aliyu Akwe Doma I must say clearly that he is older than I am and a brother. I do not begrudge him. I was governor before him and every time he invited me to go anywhere with him when he was governor, I did so gladly. I made myself and my experience available to him as a former governor and senior PDP personality.
It is unfortunate that PDP lost the governorship seat to CPC in Nasarawa State due to the deliberate neglect of the party leadership in the state. In fact, you must know that Al-Makura and many other people that are in CPC in Nasarawa State today left PDP in protest.
They were dissatisfied with the high handedness and lack of consultation of the leaders of the party in the state. It came as a surprise that, during the campaigns, the people rejected the idea of returning Akwe Doma as governor despite all my efforts for him and the party. The people did not dislike the PDP though. This is obvious when you look at the seats occupied by the party in the state.
I have a good relationship with Governor Al-Makura. He is the governor of my state and as a former governor I must make myself available for the development of the state. He is my brother, as far as I am concerned, though he belongs to another party.
We are now trying to reorganise the PDP in Nasarawa State and in a short while we will return all the aggrieved members back to PDP. Nasarawa State is actually a PDP state.??