Omoniyi Salaudeen
Mallam Abdulkarim Daiyabu is the national chairman of the defunct Alliance Democracy (AD) and president of the Movement for Justice in Nigeria.
In this interview, he described those who recently defected from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as crass opportunists whose interest is to loot public treasury. Excerpts:
You have been watching the wind of defection that has been blowing in the country in the last couple of weeks. How do you see the forward and backward movements of politicians in the guise of realignment of forces?
I don’t see real politicians among them. I am brought up by Mallam Aminu Kano. After his death, I followed Chief Obafemi Awolowo. I saw them play politics; none of them changed from one political party to the other.
So, if now some people are changing from one political party to the other, I can only describe them as opportunists. Most of them are undesirable elements who are being suspected of looting public treasury.
The way I know Mallam Aminu Kano, he was one of the cleanest people I know in the North politically and otherwise. So also was Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the West. But today, the story is not the same.
When EFCC was established, the first report that was given was how public treasury was looted. The then chairman, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, made a declaration that all the 774 local government chairmen and 36 state governors were looters of public treasury and that he had evidences of looting against them, but was only waiting for the right time to take them to court.
He even cited example of James Ibori who gave him a bribe of $15 million. If someone can give $15 million as a gift, how much money does he possess?
Yet, the Nigerian judiciary declared him not guilty until he was arrested in London and jailed for 13 years. You recall that under the Obasanjo administration, $16 billion went down the drain in the name of National Independent Power Project (NIPP) for which there is no electricity.
Under the same government, Chief Bola Ige, who was the then minister of power, was assassinated. It was also under him (Obasanjo) that the issue of Boko Haram started.
Till date, nobody knows how strong this Boko Haram insurgent is. Those who are defecting to PDP are doing so because they know that the court is ready to recover all the money they have looted from the public treasury and possibility imprison them.
They deliberately decided to change from the party in government to the opposition party to tell the world that it is because they have changed alliance that they are being charged for looting.
They are the people who looted this country dry, they are the people who destroyed the economy of this country.
Do you see them stopping the re-election of President Buhari?
They can’t. It is now left for the public to decide. As I said earlier, they are moving from the party in government to the opposition in order to attract the attention of the people that it is because of their defection that they are being harassed. We are only waiting for time for the government to disclose everything.
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What would you like to say about the invasion of the National Assembly by the DSS?
Many things are being said. Whether there was any connivance, nobody knows. It is left for the government to set up a judicial commission to investigate the matter to determine whether there was pre-arrangement between the security agencies and the Senate in order to foil the impeachment of Senate President Bukola Saraki. They should do a thorough investigation of it and come out with actual facts and also ensure that appropriate punishment is meted out to any individual found to be culpable in the matter.
The opposition PDP now has an array of big politicians from the North who want to take over from Buhari. Those as front-runners in the presidential race include Atiku Abubakar, Sule Lamido and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. Can these people actually stop Buhari?
Before Obasanjo was sworn-in as president, Olu Falae went to court to stop him from being sworn-in as Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because he was alleged to be a member of a secret cult. But they went ahead and swore him in to become a civilian elected president.
Within the eight years of his administration, we got what we now know as Boko Haram. Don’t forget, Sule Lamido was his Minister of Foreign Affairs. Kwankwaso too was also one of the governors in the administration before he was taken to Abuja to become Minister of Defence.
He (Kwankwaso) had to be stoned here in Kano. So also his father was stoned. Even Atiku Abukabar was stoned when he was vice president. Obasanjo himself was stoned here in Kano because of mismanagement of Kwankwaso.
Thereafter, they decided to take him to Abuja because Obasanjo didn’t want to lose him completely. Then, they brought Mallam Shekarau to take over from him on a platter of gold just as Obasanjo was brought back to power on a platter of gold. So, from Sule Lamido of Jigawa State to Rabiu Kwankwaso and Shekarau in Kano State and Atiku Abubakar, nobody is strong enough to stop Buhari.
Even Makarfi is one of the disciples of Obasanjo. Obasanjo dictates what they must do to them because he has got everything against them. So, they are all subjects of Obasanjo’s blackmail. He made them to mismanage and prepared evidence against them.
So, he dictates what they must do to, failure of which he will expose them to the public. President Buhari is completely a different soldier. He is not like Obasanjo or Babangida. You can compare him to the late General Murtala Muhammed.
How can we imagine that the same PDP that brought about Boko Haram will come back to take over again? What kind of human beings are we to consider that to happen? Where do we go from there? No, God forbids! Not any person of my own caliber will want that to happen.
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President Buhari is in London on vacation. Do you see a link between what happened in the National Assembly and his absence from home?
I cannot imagine Buhari being in London and his vice taking a decision without consulting him. I suppose Yemi Osinbajo must have contacted him and informed him about the situation which resulted in a decision to sack the Director-General of the DSS.
And only God knows who is to follow because so many things are going wrong. Some of these things must be disclosed now. Only God knows who is clean.
When Buhari came in, he didn’t bring anybody with him either from the sky or from the ground. It is the same people he found working in the ministries, including the Central Bank and NNPC that he engaged. By what Nuhu Ribadu had said, we can imagine that every aspect of the economy of this country is in the hand of public treasury looters.
The same set of people who are perpetrating Boko Haram and the ones looting the treasury. As they loot so they kill us. Why should we go back to them again? What kind of people are we?
There is this conspiracy theory that the cabal in the presidency may have a hand in what the DSS did in the National Assembly. Do you subscribe to that?
Yes, it is possible. But like I told you earlier, there must be a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate and expose all those involved in that invasion.
How can you imagine that someone will steal N200 million under Buhari? It happened because he was appointed by the cabal. The same cabal took advantage of his treatment abroad to do so many things.
Even I believe the fuel price increase and devaluation of naira was at the instance of the cabal. I can tell you without mincing words that Buhari did not do that in his true self. He must have been wrongly advised. The two measures are certainly not for the common man.
When Buhari agreed to see me, it was this same cabal in the presidency that prevented me from seeing him.
This is one of the reasons some people say that he is not in control of his government. Or is he?
When someone is sick there is little one can do.