From Okey Sampson, Aba
Chief Madukwe Ukaegbu has been in the nation’s political turf since 1999 when he returned from the United States of America where he studied Criminology. He served Abia State both as deputy chief of staff, Government House and Special Adviser on projects before he resigned on personal grounds. In this interview, he spoke on the vexed issue of Ohafia/Arochukwu federal road and why Nigerians should commend President Mohammadu Buhari after one year in office.
Excerpts:
President Buhari’s has clocked one year in office, what’s your assessment of his administration?
My assessment of Buhari’s administration is, I would say so far, so good and the reason I am using that word is that when certain things happen in a nation which most of us witnessed, I need to be very careful so that I can present the facts accurately. In a nation where each time we hear $2.1billion missing, and other mind boggling amounts missing here and there, it’s very, very difficult for anybody to do something meaningful. If there is nothing Buhari’s administration has done in one year, it is to expose what has been happening that many Nigerians did not know; that few individuals have been carting away the resources of this nation, that is what this administration has been able to expose and we must vehemently give it that credit. This administration has been able to let Nigerians know that those they entrusted with their money, those they entrusted with the inheritance of Nigeria, were carting them away; making our money become their private and family money. So, if nothing, we need to give kudos to the Buhari administration for being able to expose that. You and I did not know that there were problems with all these monies; we were being told that we’re the biggest and largest economy, but we were suffering. Nigerians were asking daily, ‘we are the largest economy, why are we suffering? And we were told it would improve, but we’ve now known why we are suffering.
We were informed that the total amount that was squandered in the arms deal alone was about $15bn. I have done my own calculations of how much each Nigerian would get if that amount was shared to 170m people; that is our population. Somebody like me would have received nothing less than $1m; do you know what I can do with that amount of money? But very few individuals in the country shared it among themselves without using it to provide just the basic things of life for the people. So, if nothing, we really need to commend Mr. President for exposing the decay that Nigeria was going through.
We also need to commend him that he is moving around to see how we can synergize economically with other nations because our country really needs help. But what I will only tell Mr. President is that as he is doing so, we have so many engineers in Nigeria and other intelligent people in the country, let him also look inward. Nigerians are holding very good jobs overseas, the same intellectual gift that God has given to this country can also be harnessed within, and that’s what I’m asking Mr. President to look at.
What’s your reaction to what is happening between the Federal Government and IPOB’s Nnamdi Kanu?
The issue is enshrined in the constitution I must say so. The issue of agitation is there unless the constitution I have read is not true. You have the right to agitate for creation of Local Government, and what not. It is only how you go about it that is the problem and the reason is that I have always believed in Nigeria. I was about seven years old when the war started and I knew what we went through. What I will tell my brothers and sisters who are agitating for Biafra is that they have the right to agitate; they need to channel it rightly. What they were saying from the beginning was that they were doing it without violence, what Martin Luther King junior did, they can protest without violence. So, if there are some bad eggs amongst them, they should be able to sort it out. I don’t know how to advise them in the real sense of it but they know as I have read that the leaders of IPOB are educated; they should go about what they are doing in civilized manner. They should present their case properly in other that will not trample on other peoples’ freedom just as they don’t want their freedom to be trampled upon and if they do that, I don’t see anything wrong with the agitation.
What do you have to say about the recent menace of Fulani herdsmen particularly in the South East?
The problem we have in Nigeria is that people have continuously buried their heads in the sand when it comes to security; people should not bury their heads in the sand when it comes to security. This should not be so, the issue of herdsmen, Boko Haram, kidnapping and all sorts of vices have become a very big problem for Nigeria. I cannot use that word to say this is a wakeup call because we had already been woken. I was watching television the other day and I saw a senator who was kidnapped in Oyo State or something like that being welcomed by a governor; that is not what we should be doing in Nigeria. The security agencies must and should if they don’t have, reopen their intelligence unit; we are willing to help. I am a Criminologist by training. The problem we have is that they are not utilizing the people who should assist them, that is the biggest problem we have; they are not utilizing the security experts. If they invite us, we will come and give them advice on what to do if they don’t know what to do. They should be reacting before the event, not the other way round, they should be proactive as it is said.
Of course, I must also tell you that it takes a lot of training and understanding to fight crime. I have been privileged to teach community policing, so, I know what I’m talking about. When I was in the United States, in John J. College of Criminal Justice, I was privileged to teach some of the top brass of police here in Nigeria and some military people that came, I taught them in 1990 what is called “Community Policing”. When I was teaching them, they said ‘this small boy’, they were calling me small boy, but that was what we were taught in Criminal Justice. There are certain things you need to know for you to be able to help the situation of whether its Fulani herdsmen, whether it is kidnappers or whether it is Boko Haram. So, we need to give Mr. President all the support that he needs.
What we are asking him to do is sometimes to use his executive powers to say I need these young men that would be able to come in, in a panel quietly and tell us what to do with this security situation and we are willing to volunteer because without security, there will be no progress. All these economic summit here, economic summit there, you can do it as you want, but at the end of the day, people will be afraid to invest if the ground they are investing is not safe because nobody swims in a treacherous water.
The president had directed security agencies to deal decisively with the Fulani herdsmen; do you think that will solve the problem?
Dealing decisively how? Rearing of cattle is a private enterprise, persons taking cows from one place to another are doing business; somebody sent them to take these cows from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. I’m not sure that those people who are controlling these cows in these areas in question are doing it by themselves, somebody is giving instructions. They have been rearing these cows over the years and suddenly something changed. So, something is wrong somewhere. Dealing with them decisively is good, but you need to know what you are dealing with decisively. We must have to do intelligence work to know the root cause of this problem, to know the root cause of why somebody will come into another person’s village and destroy everything in it, kill human beings; that’s no longer grazing. So, we need to be very careful how we instruct people to react to this without first knowing the genesis of the problem.