We should not discard what Nyako said on insecurity - Col Bawa

Col. Mohammed Inuwa Bawa

                                                                                                                                                          Former military governor of Ekiti and Gombe States, Col. Mohammed Inuwa Bawa (rtd), a chieftain of All Progressives Congress (APC) and Kebbi State governorship hopeful, speaks on the insecurity in the country and why Nyako’s comment should not be discarded. Excerpts:

APC is frequently engulfed in internal conflicts across the states. Are you disturbed?
What you hear happening in APC, particularly around the congresses we’ve been having, are transient conflicts resulting from struggle for power and influence in the expanding political family at the different levels across the country. Importantly, you should note that you only fight over something you value. If people don’t value APC as an important vehicle for emancipation of the people as we approach

2015, they won’t bother to join it and struggle for relevance in it.
There is much talk about General Buhari becoming APC’s presidential candidate with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as his running mate. How do you see the combination?
A Buhari-Tinubu ticket is not as unusual as some people are making it sound. The question should be how competent will they be? And are they both tested and trusted to be able to lead this country to where we want it to be. Yes, they are both Muslims but religion shouldn’t be such a big issue in politics, otherwise we are in trouble. Religion should be purely personal. Me and my God, and my dealings with other people should be on a broader term than whether you are a Muslim or Christian. It’s still mere speculation, but to me, Buhari and Tinubu will make a very good match.
People talk about ideological differences between them. Would the differences not make it difficult for them to be effective?
It won’t be about personal ideologies but APC’s manifesto and the manifesto is very clear about how the party wants to rescue this country from the bad leadership at the centre that we’ve been saddled with since the beginning of this dispensation in 1999. It will be about how we will bring corruption down because corruption is the big issue. And Buhari’s reputation will work wonders. If General Buhari becomes president, even without raising a finger, corruption will come tumbling down. I mean, looking at the head and knowing where he stands will automatically reflect downwards. You won’t do it because you know very well that he won’t tolerate it.
How are you going to feature in the politics of your home state?
Kebbi State politics had its own hiccups during the congresses. I’ve just come from the state. While there, I held several meetings with prominent politicians in my area to make us understand what APC really stands for and to come to consensus so it would not be such that everybody would say I must be this or that. Some of the meetings were successful, some were not. Politics can be frustrating. You sit down for hours to take a decision and just when you think everything has been resolved, you find that all of your effort has come to naught. That has been part of my experience and I feel discouraged at times, but it’s the way of politics and things will take shape. Talking about my ambition, as I’ve said, I had frustrating experience during the last month that I was at home. I felt this was not the way we can emancipate our state from the stranglehold of PDP. Everybody knows that Kebbi State is very, very backward compared with even some of the newly created states, two of which I happen to have governed. I was in Gombe recently and the rapid development there is huge. It’s the same with Ekiti. But Kebbi which happens to be an older state has been saddled with leadership that has no focus and has kept us backwards, which I feel strongly, should be all the reason to make us sit up and cause a change by electing people who have the required focus and determination to make a far-reaching difference. I have not shelved my ambition, but I leave it to God and to the people to decide, because I have proven record. If the people feel that this is the time for somebody with my experience, I’m around and I remain a strong member of APC. But I’m not making it a point of priority that I must be governor or whatever. I will just focus on ensuring that the party is entrenched in the state.
How do you feel about the rate of insecurity in the country?
When you hear of the trillions of naira going for security and then hear of these deadly security breaches, you wonder what is going on. Something is wrong somewhere. Fighting insurgency is a specialist military operation. It depends purely on intelligence, not about deploying troops everywhere. If you have no intelligence reports to work with, even if you move all the armed forces of Nigeria to the North East, you will not be successful, and the insurgents will always surprise you. It’s not road blocks that will stop insurgents from what they set out to do. The military that I know does not mount roadblocks for more than 24 hours. We call it snap roadblock. You put it up for a certain purpose and then you dismantle it. If you have a permanent road block, who are you deceiving? Will I be foolish to carry what a roadblock is in place to check and pass through the roadblock? There will always be ways to circumvent your roadblock if I have come to know it to be there. With roadblocks everywhere, I have not heard of any major seizure in this country since this insurgency started. They only hold traffic up and make people spend much more time to get to their destination.
With such helplessness in a country that has specialist intelligence big names such as the minister of defense, do you not think that there would be much more to the insurgency thing?
Perhaps, but unless you are in government, you cannot understand; because, yes, we have all the institutions, which is why we should not completely discard what Governor Murtala Nyako said. I do not support him entirely, but we are in a situation which makes it necessary to look at all suggestions objectively and see what may help. What Nyako said is no more outlandish than what some other people have said. What has Edwin Clark not said? What has Soyinka not said? They said Boko Haram is the creation of northern establishment to bring down President Goodluck Jonathan; but is the North not the major victim of Boko Haram? So, we should not dismiss what Nyako said completely. After all, he rose to be admiral and even deputy chief of defense staff, and he is the governor of Adamawa, one of the affected states, and has seen what is happening. As for the missing Chibok school girls, I have watched the grandstanding of the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan. She says she is going to lead a protest to Borno State and to ask the governor, where are the girls? And I watched the stage-managed melodrama, the weeping and all that. One can easily see that all she was doing was tailored towards blaming the Borno State governor for all that is happening. All energies should be invested in trying to get these girls back, not trying to shift blame. And, another aspect that pained me was the northern Christian elders chairman coming out to cry that of the missing girls, over one hundred and fifty are Christians and only fifteen or so are Muslims. Please, for goodness sake, Christians and Muslims, are they not all Nigerians? This is how we miss the point and misdirect our efforts.
The North-central recently has been noted for cattle rustling and bloody attacks often attributed to cattle breeders. How do you feel about them?
The Fulani man that you and I know, the Fulani tending his cows with a stick in the hand, do you mean that it is the same Fulani man that is so sophisticated, armed with AK 47 and machine guns and even chemical weapons? Come on, give me a break. This is not possible. Let our intelligence institutions really go to work and unravel these things. There must be hidden hands bent on destabilizing this country. Clashes have often happened in the past between farmers and herdsmen, but herders would bring out their sticks or at worst machetes. Now, you are talking about AK 47 and machine guns and it has even been said that chemical weapons have been used and you believe that it is the same Fulani man that we know? No, something we don’t know of is wrong and it is up to government to find what it is. All these things: cattle rustling and related attacks, Boko Haram and the rest of it: government owes it to us to use its intelligence services to determine what is going on. The government has all the institutions: it has the NIA, the SSS, DIA, DMI. Let them pull their resources and get to the bottom of these things.