National Secretary of the opposition Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) Buba Galadima is an engineer and one of the key voices that moved for actualisation of the Jonathan Presidency through the Save Nigeria Group (SNG). However, in this interview with SONI DANIEL and RUTH CHOJI, Galadima bemoans Jonathan’s ascendency to the highest office in the land at a time of great national crisis and alleges the president is incapacitated because of surrounding himself with his kinsmen and sycophants who are confused about the governance of Nigeria.
What is the grouse of those making trouble in the north against the government of President Jonathan?
That is part of the misinformation the Jonathan people do dish out from time to time. I have never seen any president, anywhere in the world apart from Rwanda that consciously and deliberately wants to preside over a dismembered country, apart from Jonathan.
What do you mean by that?
Jonathan has done that through his utterances and actions and Balkanised us into ‘we and them’. Through his actions and those of his aides, they want to tell people that, these ones are Christians and these ones are Muslims, these ones are northerners and these ones are southerners.
What has he actually said that has made you to think like this; can you be specific?
Do you want me to go into the archives? Let me tell you something practical, Jonathan has been sending people from the Niger Delta and the South-South in their thousands overseas for training since he came on board. How many people has he sent from the north or other parts of the country? Do we all have to be militants before we are recognised and given attention by his administration?
But you are confusing people trained under the Amnesty programme with another thing entirely
If he can do that to the ones they called militants, then it means he can do the same to Boko Haram members who have also become militants. They should send them to Egypt or the Emirates to go and learn trade so that you and I can have peace and sleep with our eyes closed.
So now that I am speaking against Jonathan, does it mean that I don’t like him or I should sacrifice my friend of 43 years for him? Let me tell you that it was Wole Soyinka, Tunde Bakare, I and many others who formed the ‘Save Nigerian Group’, whose relentless protests led to the proclamation of Jonathan as President.
It was not his latter day supporters and friends who fought for him. Do you think that we did that because we did not like him? Who were those in the forefront for Jonathan for presidency? Are they not the northerners? If now we have turned the other way, it means Jonathan himself must have turned the other way.
And what is wrong if you hate somebody who wants to destroy your country?? We have no other country to go to.? Let me tell you, today apart from a few of us, in fact apart from Buhari who is holding the north because the elites don’t matter if votes do count. Majority of the people from the north want the country to be divided because they believe that when their people were in power, they were not discriminating against Nigerians openly.
I also know as a fact that if you become president, the ordinary Ibibio man will have the feeling of fulfillment and in one or two things you do, you must favor your people. But that is the problem with Jonathan, he ethnicises government and it is wrong.
Now, Jonathan only listens to Oritsejafor. Is it good for him to align with religion in the open? Has he ever heard any Nigerian starting from Balewa, Murtala, Shagari, Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalam publicly aligning themselves with religion?
You mentioned the point that majority of the people in the north want the country to be divided. Can you be quoted on that?
Yes I can be quoted. Many northerners believe that we should divide, but we don’t believe so. We still believe that Jonathan is just a passing phase; that what he and his godfather, Obasanjo doesn’t like to happen will happen. Because the issue is not religion, it is not ethnicity, it is whether you have all the good things of life that a government should provide for the citizens given our enormous wealth.
It is only in Nigeria that a gang of people will steal N1.067 trillion and nothing happens because they are from a certain tribe or they belong to a certain party. The money doesn’t belong to the Niger Delta; it belongs to all of us because you cannot be at peace when one part of the country is at war. Is it not insulting that somebody can claim to be making a pillow with N2 billion and another claiming to be doing privatisation with our common wealth??
Look at Transcorp that makes about N100 million daily and someone just paid N1 billion under the guise of privatization and takes over the empire and we allowed them to go with our wealth because he belongs to a cult called PDP.? That is why I support General Buhari. He was accosted sometime ago by some of his supporters and asked why he supports the probe currently going on in the country when the reports are not being implemented by the government.
He said it was good for the reports to be coming out so that it would enter into the history book of Nigeria that there was a time a particular government was in power and did nothing about the high level of corruption in the system even though the legislators uncovered the billions stolen.
Buhari said that if those who steal money become judges at their time and they look through the papers, they will not do justice to it; they will just brush it and keep it aside. But let them keep it on the shelf, one day their enemy will come and pick up the report, dust it and prosecute them.
But the president is saying that he has not seen the Farouk Lawan report on subsidy. What do you want him to do if the lawmakers have not sent it to him via the appropriate channel?
I pray he doesn’t see it so that after him somebody will see it. Then he will be invited from where he is enjoying what he collected from us to come and explain himself. I want to assure you that he will come and explain one day. Don’t worry whether we are alive or dead by the time he will be made to account for his deeds.
Would you support Jonathan to run for 2015 after he had said he would run for only one term?
I want Jonathan to run. For me I want Jonathan to be engaged on the politics of transition for 2015. I want Jonathan to succeed in the seven or six- year term he wants to get from the National Assembly. By the time he gets that, we will now come back to what my leader has said in Hausa ’Jiki Magayi??
By that time, the evil the PDP and Jonathan have visited on every home in Nigeria would be so biting that Nigerians would be unanimous in throwing him and the PDP out of power. All those accumulated probe matters and stealing will be exposed and dealt with appropriately.
I was very sad when I heard that Jonathan should be counted out of 2015; that he is engaging himself in fulfilling the promises he made to the electorate. By so doing he wants to douse the tension in the country so that we do not discuss the issues related to the election and the way he has handled the country.?
Are you afraid like others who have predicted Nigeria’s disintegration given the level of insurgency in the country?
I am an optimist and I believe we shall get out of this phase even though a lot of people feel we should go our separate ways. If you listened to Ango Abdullahi, the other day, you would have heard him say clearly that it was a mistake to have amalgamated the country in 1914.
The fear that Nigeria is going to disintegrate is an expression of frustration brought about by the present level of poverty and insecurity in the country. But I am an optimistic person and not part of those elites; I am on the side of the people.
The ordinary man in Maiduguri, Uyo, Jos or Sokoto does not have any problems with one another.
What would you want President Goodluck Jonathan to do in order to move the country forward?
Unfortunately Jonathan is beyond advice, because he is surrounded by the same people like him- inexperienced Nigerians. Jonathan should learn from the history of other people; he should open up, Nigeria is a plural society. He must accept that and you know, there is no section of the country that you can’t find a good man that can be minister for now.
He should also use other people, even if to do the dirty job for him. Once people see some of their own participating, they will be comfortable; this is how to run a plural society. Not an ethnic government.
The idea that the national security adviser must be from my tribe because I am afraid, the commander of the brigade of guards in Abuja must be from my tribe, this one must be from my state; that one must be from my tribe. Jonathan has ethnicised the government and he must diversify it to be a plural society.