Dr. Junaid Muhammad is a trained medical doctor, former member of the National Assembly as PFP Minority Leader, former Commissioner in Kano State, first Chairmanof the National Orientation Agency, former delegate to the United Nations and member of the last Constitutional Conference. In this interview with Time Nigeria Correspondent, Aliyu Mudi Sulaiman, he x-rays the 100 days in office of President Muhammadu Buhari while reacting to other national issues. Excerpts:
What is your take on the recent appointment of Chief of Staff and others which generated a lot of criticisms from Nigerians?
I disagree with you that the criticisms came from Nigerians but you can be specific to say from the Igbos. Ordinarily I wouldn’t want to comment on it but now that you have requested it I will give you an answer. In a democratic system of government, the president has what is called personal staff, these staff are his to appoint depending on who he is comfortable with and how well he knows them and how trust worthy they are on the assigned functions. If you are talking of Chief of Staff you are talking about the person who knows you best, the person who knows your dos and don’ts. I don’t know why some people would like to impose these kinds of people on President Buhari and I think it is ridiculous, it is counterproductive, and it doesn’t work that way anywhere in the world.
Also, the Igbos imagined that Nigeria must be ethnically structured so that every time we have somebody who’s not an Igbo man, the Igbos have the right to chose and pick the position they want to hold in government. They also have a primordial idea about politics and consequences of election; elections do have consequences. If you elect the winning side you should expect something and if you go and vote comprehensively against the winning side you should expect the consequences.
Regarding the asset declaration by President Muhammadu Buhari, what is you view?
I am a democrat and firm believer in the rule of law. What Buhari did was of his own making because the law doesn’t require you to make your assets public but he challenged Nigerian leaders to declare their assets. The man who held many positions and came out unspoiled and he was not messed up by corruption. I can say he is bonus for Nigeria and Nigerians. We decided to believe in him, have faith in him and make him our leader. Compare him with people like Babangida, Babangida doesn’t know the houses he has both within and outside Nigeria. And they came from the same part of the country. So it is our luck that we have Buhari when the country was in a deep mess and he can hold a candle and say, “ I challenge you to challenge my integrity.’’
What of declaring assets by other political office holders?
In my personal opinion they should emulate President Buhari. If they do, they have first confirmed what their positions are with regards to Buhari. Secondly, they will be encouraging the younger generations and thirdly, they have to be accountable to Almighty Allah first and to public opinion. Therefore, I challenge them to make their assets public. When I was in parliament I made my assets public.
Can you give us a general assessment of President Buhari’s administration?
First, I would like to make a correction here. The idea of assessing a government after 100 days is not in our culture and is not part of the British or American system of governance. You assess a government after a certain reasonable measure of time; if it has performed then you say it has performed; if it has not performed then you say it has not performed. And I know, no government, especially in a country which has over 170 million people with new set of political elite; one can not pass judgment on it in one month. I never heard of this, and I regard this as an invention by the media who are ignorant of the political history of the United States of America which we are copying. I don’t know why you people in the media are so hooked to the idea of assessing a government after one month or after 100 days. What is the basis for it? Besides, it has nothing to do with the constitution. As I am talking to you now, we do not have a properly constituted National Assembly and we do not have a cabinet. Is it fair to assess the Buhari administration now?
And some people are also complaining about the delay in the appointment of ministers?
I am sure you will appreciate the fact that the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria vests in the president the power to appoint Ministers and nobody else and has no time limit or ultimatum within which he must appoint ministers. So it’s up to the president to decide what time he gives himself within which to run security checks, to consult with his party, to consult with people and to select the right people to be ministers. If he has not completed the process I see no reason why we should rush him.
The country itself must realize that this is the first time a new party has taken over government from another party. This is a monumental experience in Political Science. Once you have an entirely new party taking over from another party you have to go deep and investigate, to find out the status of national security, the national finances, the national affairs and none of these has been done and in addition to the confusion within the APC and the sabotage from the Peoples Democratic Party.
Again, we went on to over reach ourselves by appointing what they called transition committee which does not amount to anything and it is unconstitutional. The transition committee of Buhari did not get cooperation from the so called transition committee of the outgoing government of Jonathan. In fact, the report of the transition committee was only handed over to Buhari on the day he was sworn-in. What happened was that Jonathan instructed his ministers not to cooperate with the transition committee of Buhari. They went and wrote their own report and hid most of the facts. While it was happening, Ahmed Joda was busy writing his own report based on nothing. As far as I am concern both the transition reports were rubbished.
What is your take on the recent shake up in NNPC?
You see, government is not a traditional title, when your father dies you inherit his position. Government is a serious business. If for any reason, there is a change of government it means you have to change everything (roots and branches) so that you make way for new policies in the new administration. The PDP had never imagined that it could lose an election. For 16 years, the party has been managing the resources of this country, the policies of this country and the security of this country and their party men have been stealing the country blind and in their arrogance, believing that they were indispensable and nobody could do anything about it. God in his wisdom decided to effect the change. The way they have been rigging elections in the past, they couldn’t do it this time around because people were alert and fed up with them. We all see change completely.
What do you think brought about the change?
People! That was a different story but first and foremost people voted out PDP, they voted in Buhari and his APC. There are a number of reasons: first, corruption was obvious and Nigerians were fed-up. Two, the economy has been very badly mismanaged. Three, the arrogance and the personal negative attitude of all the people in the Niger Delta and of course there was the issue of insecurity. Everybody knew that when PDP took over power in 1999 and when they handed over power in 2015 they left the country worse than they found it. And we never had government so bad, so corrupt, so insensitive, and so immoral. This was a country whose moral fibre had torn.
What would you say about the steps taken so far on security?
The first step I consider important was the sack of all the service chiefs because all of them have been compromised.
We have had a tradition but since PDP came into power; people were appointed not because they are competent, not because they are respected and not because they are loyal to the country. They were appointed for their contribution to the rigging of the election of the governing party. So, they didn’t consider it important to go and fight Boko Haram and tackle other security challenges, they were simply loyal to lips service and eye service to the person who appointed them. And that was why they have failed woefully to contain Boko Haram.
Some Nigerians are saying the appointment of the Service Chiefs by Buhari was lop sided. How do you react to this?
Some Nigerians, mostly from the South – South and South East and because an Igbo man was not appointed as service chief… they are complaining but when they had more than one Igbo man as service chief they didn’t complain. So are we saying we are appointing these service chiefs on merit or based on where they came from?
What about the steps taken on corruption?
The steps taken on corruption are minimal because essentially the EFCC and ICPC which are the main organs of tracking corruption and making sure that the corrupt people are taken to court were appointed not by Buhari but by Obasanjo. And Obasanjo decided that; you are corrupt only when he doesn’t like you, if you are his personal enemy or you are his political opponent. And that was no way to fight corruption and that was why nobody was sent to jail under Obasanjo. Those who are now being prosecuted under Buhari, their investigation did not start under Buhari, it started long before Buhari and those who did the investigation did not imagine there was going to be change of government.
And unfortunately for the people involved and for the EFCC and ICPC, Buhari won the election and the much order Buhari gave them was that I am not going to witch-hunt anybody but all the cases which have been investigated must be prosecuted. If you found someone guilty you take him to court because I don’t want to waste my four years prosecuting criminals. Yes if it happens under my own watch I will prosecute them. For that, I will give him credit for insisting that EFCC, ICPC and the police to do their work. I am happy for the progress reported so far because he has not singled out anybody for witch hunting. For example, look at the case of Sambo Dasuki through whom billions were said to have been stolen and misused. Sambo Dasuki’s sister is married to Mamman Daura and Mamman Daura is a nephew of Muhammadu Buhari and this will give you an indication of the person you are dealing with. If he wouldn’t spare the brother-in-law of Mamman Daura, then you can see no one will be spared. Nobody is above the law and that is the essence of governance.
In what way will Buhari’s visit to the G7 meeting and the United States benefit his government?
First and foremost, the last regime of Goodluck Jonathan was the most irresponsible government in the conduct of international affairs of this country. They believed because Nigeria has oil it can go and trample on the rights and legitimate interest of other countries. No nation is an island and Nigeria is not an island. We have to relate with other countries, we have to trade with other countries if we want them to respect our interest; for example on the issue of Boko Haram, we must listen and respect their own interest too.
In the case of the past administration, they believed because they have oil and the thugs in the Niger Delta, MEND, they can intimidate the nuclear power like the United States and Britain or France. And the only problem they have with these countries was because they told them people with attitude like yours don’t succeed and the kind of corruption they institutionalized in Nigeria. They became angry, they didn’t like it.
So the benefits of Buhari’s visit to the US and G7 meetings are many. The whole basis of international relations was built on inter states relations; that includes trade, cooperation in the field of education and information technology, fight against terrorism and so many other things. If in any of these areas America commits to help Nigeria defeat Boko Haram, commits to buy more of our oil to enhance our treasury situation because we are in a mess – our money has been stolen. These are the kind of benefits we get and the kind of insult we get if we go to America or Europe. If a Nigerian is seen, he is automatically regarded as a crook. So if we can tackle this, it’s a great benefit to all of us.
What is your reaction on the leadership tussle in the National Assembly?
The blame has to go round: the National Chairman of the APC, John Oyegun, who was my friend is not a politician but a civil servant; he was handpicked by Babangida for governance. He has not been the sincere leader of the party; he wanted to be an errand boy to Tinubu and he wants to be an errand boy to forces and factors outside the leadership of the party but he doesn’t have the brain for that. Number two, I believe the blank cheque given by Buhari in his speech that he was prepared to work with anybody who’s been appointed was rather too liberal because any president who can be impeached by National Assembly must have a legitimate interest in who becomes the leader of the house. Thirdly, most of the members of the APC, especially in the Senate, defected from the PDP and came with their terrible culture of corruption and the sabotage of the government and whatever you get in the Senate you have to pay for it. The President couldn’t afford to tell the nation and the National Assembly that he doesn’t care who becomes President of the Senate.It has happened and we are now seeing the consequences of it.
But some people are commending him for that courage?
Please go to those people, they can justify what they say but in my view, Buhari was never in the National Assembly, I was there. None of those who were in parliament can tell you what Buhari did was right. As far as I am concerned, it was not in the interest of his administration and sooner or later he would have to come to terms with that.
In what way could that affects the executive?
There are certain things the President can do without consulting the National Assembly and there are certain things he can’t do without the ratification of the National Assembly. Therefore, he has to be very careful about some kind of things he does.