Against run of play an time and
considering the crises occasioned by the clandestine activities of an infamous
religious goons, known as Boko Haram in the recent time, including the
abduction of over 234 students of Government Secondary School, Chibouk, Borno
State, two months ago and the intractable search to rescue the students with
foreign network of intelligence security experts, an interest group of social-cultural organization in Lagos State, has
called for President Goodluck Jonathan to declare for his 2015 ambition before
the end of June. Honourable Charles A
We just celebrated Democracy day few
days ago, would you say that we have achieved anything under this dispensation
of our political life as a nation?
Our democracy is moving forward. The people
saying that Nigeria has not ripped for democracy are speaking out of ignorance.
Other democracies in the world, even in the so-called advanced democracies,
most of the people there do not know how it emerged. They don’t know how they
managed to come to the level they are today. Nigeria democracy is quite a young
one. How many years ago? To me, we have achieved a lot, I know we are yet to
get there but we are making a great move towards that. All these other
distractions are not ruled out in other countries of the world. If you like, go
and read the history of America and how they emerged. They fought so many wars,
so many political crises, corruption and others before they become the great
country that everybody is making reference to them, today. So, nobody can just wake
up one morning and be saying Nigeria democracy is not working or that we are
not ripped for it.
What are those things you are looking
at presently to believe that we are practicing democracy?
There are
many pillars of democracy in Nigeria today that weren’t there some years back.
Today, people can express their minds on national issues. You can see people
protesting on the missing ‘Chibouk girls’ unmolested. You criticized the
president; call him all sorts of names and abuse him and nobody attacks you. No
policeman arresting you for molesting the president. That People are
challenging authorities today without attacks from the government is enough evidence
of democracy in Nigeria. There are some infrastructural developments which were
not there during the military junta and dictatorship in this country. Our
economy is not faring bad.
How do you say that the economy is
not bad when people are suffering, no employment and social infrastructure is
none existence?
Look, let me
tell you, all over the world, there is no country that has robust economy;
there is no country that you don’t witness unemployment. In every society, you
must see the poor and the rich. In the US, there are people without jobs, in
Britain, there are people without jobs but I don’t know why people in Nigeria
would continue to look on the negative side of Nigeria without looking at the
positive side of it.
Democracy without security, how do
you look at that?
The issue of
insecurity in Nigeria is not peculiar to Nigeria alone. Terrorism is rocking
all over the world. Why it’s like this in this country is that we didn’t
prepare for it. It’s just that it’s new to us. As country is developing in
technology, science, social, democratically, economically, politically and
otherwise, there tends to be visible threats to these developments. All the
vices-kidnapping, insurgency, robbery, assassinations, protests, riots are
expected in a viable economy. These things are associated to
industrializations, because it’s an evolving nation. So it’s not peculiar to
Nigeria, it’s a sociological problem that comes with the development of a
nation. Terrorism is not a Nigeria issue alone, it’s a global problem. The only
reason we are crying and blaming the President is because we haven’t experience
it before. We don’t know anything about terrorism. We read it in foreign
newspapers, watch it on both international and local cables, we hear about it
but we had never experienced it, so when it came to our part of the world, we
started blaming the president, as if he
was the person behind it.
Would you blame the insurgency on
democracy because throughout the military era, we never had this kind of
uprising and unwarranted attacks on Nigerians by any group?
I don’t
think so because, during the military era that were in place all those years,
created the avenue for insurgency. Look at the young man that was caught in
Sudan, his father was a military man. So, it’s not democracy. Democracy has
been the best form of governance. Democracy may have allowed people to form one
organizations or the other but it hasn’t given anybody power to kill or destroy
properties. It’s not democracy that brought about Boko Haram or other
challenges that we are facing today as a country. The military are to blame for
insurgency in Nigeria. Is military itself not an insurgence? What is the
difference between the activities of Boko Haram and the activities of the
military governments that we had in this country? The proliferation of arms and
ammunition were caused by the military governments. Boko Haram is like other
clandestine groups existing in Nigeria borne out of envy, greed and others. Boko
Haram didn’t start with the emergence of President Goodluck Jonathan as
president of Nigeria. Boko Haram started before Jonathan’s administration and
if somebody is saying that it’s because of ‘power –balance- equation’ that gave
rise to it, who was in power when it started? If the PDP agreed to rotate power does it
translate to the national agreement; involving every Nigeria?
A lot of people have come up with one reason
or the other. Some said its religious, some said its power-rotation, and some
said its foreign countries who want Nigeria to disintegrate the country but in
all these claims, I said they have their opinions to express but I just believe
that it’s a gang-up within and outside this country against the nation of
Nigerian.
Nigerians
may not even understand, I see it as not a Nigerian made but a lot of Nigerians
have keyed into it and embrace it. It could be foreign forces engineering it. To
me, there are lots of factors. When we had boundary dispute with Cameroon, we
know a lot of country that supported Cameroon against Nigeria. People don’t want
this country to get united because of what they have seen about the country.
They saw that the unity of the country could be their disadvantage and they
resort in destabilizing it. Some have gone as far as making predictions and
this is why I intend to buy the opinion of those who are fingering foreign
countries. But Nigerian people haven’t come to their senses to realize this;
instead they are blaming it on the president. No Nigerian man would go all out
to kill his or her fellow man or somebody he share the same faith with for no
just cause.
What is your view on the solution to
the insurgence?
I would
rather say that now that the foreign countries have come to solve the problem,
let’s see what they can do and at the same time; glory to them but I don’t see
the reason for their coming. I see it as an internal problem we can solve for
ourselves by refusing to be used by the merchants of this war. All hands must
be on deck for us to resolve this insurgence or terrorism. If we Nigerians
corporate and resolve within ourselves that we are going to fight it, we are
going to do it but when we have saboteurs helping those who are carrying out
the actions, it shows our failure to understand our problems. Do you know that
those carrying out these actions aren’t Nigerians? There is a serious gang up
even with those who have been in power before but failed but because they
failed, they refused to work with the government in fighting the insurgence,
leaving to the president alone to deal with because they want him to fail as
well. The elites, past leaders and to some extent, elders of this country are
not working in tandem with the present government to solve the Boko Haram
insurgence because of their political interest, business and selfish interest
in the insurgence.
Don’t you think, that rather than the
party oppositions against the ruling party, that Boko Haram is another form of
opposition against the government in trying to seek attention to power shift?
It is a
fight against Nigerian. Isn’t a fight against PDP or Jonathan? It’s a fight
against the Nigerian nation. Boko Haram is killing the innocent people. If they
are fighting the government have you heard them say anything against Jonathan?
The goons are part of a clandestine gang op by some foreign countries that are
envious of the blessing of God upon Nigerian and their fears for the strategic
roles Nigeria is destined play in world politics. So they ganged up with some
devious and disgruntled elements in the country, who wasted their own chances
in governance but still are greedy for power to terrorise and destabilize the
country
2015 is around the corner, how is
your organization preparing for the election?
The Easter
Union, EU, is ready for the election and we are giving our support to the
President to contest that election and conclude his transformation Agenda,
which he has started on a good note. We will soon launch our book which we have
written on the president concerning his achievements so far. We resolve that
the president has a divine mission to rescue Nigeria nation from intractable
political and economic problems that have held the nation down. Some of the
biblical leaders God raised didn’t find it easy leading their people. There
were lots of challenges, attacks and problems on their way. Remember the time
of David and how he suffered as a leader but at the end, he surmounts his challenges;
that is how the people with God’s divine mission go through. So, he is going to
overcome his challenges. Jonathan is divinely appointed to be where he is today
and that is why we want him to go for 2015. The EU is calling on President
Jonathan to take the bull by the horn and declare for 2015, as we are solidly behind
him. President Jonathan should down play all the distractions and declare his
intention before the end of June, we are behind him.
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