The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), speaks to Al Jazeera about the election postponement and other issues. The interview was monitored by ENIOLA AKINKUOTU
What is your reaction to the postponement of the elections by six weeks?
My reaction is that of extreme disappointment because at the meeting of the National Council of State, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, gave a detailed briefing of their activities from 2011 when the last general elections were held to now and he stated clearly that they are ready to hold the elections.
You have described the postponement as provocative. What do you mean?
I described it as such because there is no need for it. If the same military cannot secure 14 local governments out of 774 in six years, how can we be sure that they can secure those 14 local governments in six weeks?
What effect will this postponement have on your campaign? Can you afford an extra six weeks?
We have to afford it because the appropriate constitutional authority says that up to 30 days to the elections, the dates can be adjusted so that gives whatever plausible credibility that INEC needs. So, we are going to appeal to our supporters to give INEC a chance and allow it to reach the maximum number of days by the constitution that elections must hold not later than 30 days to the inauguration of a new government. So, there is no more room for manoeuvre as far as we are concerned.
You seem sceptical as to the reasons given by INEC for the delay. What do you think is the real reason for the postponement?
Since the constitutional provision has been met, we cannot fight with it but I hope the military, INEC and the ruling party will accept that this is the limit. We do not expect INEC to say they cannot conduct the election after six weeks. In any case, the documents provided during the briefing at the council of state were that they were ready to conduct the elections. But if they are now forced by the military for whatever reason to consider an additional six weeks before the elections start, that has also been accommodated by the constitution as explained and we are going to abide by that and we will ask our supporters to remain calm and be prepared to participate in the elections on March 28, and April 11 respectively.
With 132, 000 security personnel active in the fight against insurgency, why can’t the military defeat Boko Haram?
Well, the Federal Government is not prepared to fight Boko Haram. I made a statement early on which some Nigerian media reported. The troops deployed in Ekiti State where we (APC) believe we were rigged out, if they were deployed in the North-East, they would have been able to rescue our over 220 girls that were abducted by Boko Haram. They know where the girls are and know whether they have the capacity to rescue them or not. They still cannot give a cohesive reason why the government has been unable to rescue these children from the hands of the insurgents.
Are you suggesting that the state of insecurity in the troubled North-East where many of your supporters come from is being fuelled by the Federal Government?
I have no firm evidence that the government is encouraging it but the government has failed to do its principal duty of protecting life and property of all beings within its territory. And as I said the elections in Ekiti and Osun states the number of soldiers, policemen and other security agencies deployed to rig elections in favour of the ruling party; if those were effectively used in the North-East, the end of the insurgency could have been met. In essence, the government is not serious about curbing the insurgency in the North-East
You have vowed to make security one of your first priorities should you come into office. How would you go about it?
The first thing is to understand why the military is like this. From Bama in 1945, to the year democracy came into the Congo in 1960, to Liberia, to Sierra Leone, to Dafur, the Nigerian military earned the respect of the international community. But here they are and cannot secure 14 local governments in their own territory. People can hardly comprehend this slide, how we deteriorated. Our neighbours that we are superior to are now the ones now fighting these insurgents for us. It is extremely embarrassing.
We know that the Chibok girls are in the Sambisa Forest which borders Cameroun. As a military man, if you were to become President, what would you do to get those girls back and assure other young women in the North-East that they can resume their studies in safety?
I don’t know what effort the government has made so far but whatever effort was made was not good enough. This new cooperation started when neighbouring countries were affected and started even coming into our own territory to fight Boko Haram to secure their own territories. This insurgency has been on for more than five years and what I expected from the government was for them to initiate high security coordinated meetings and actions with Cameroun, Niger and Chad. Instead, the rebels were allowed to operate freely. And by starving the military of weapons and leadership, the insurgency has now assumed international proportions.
In Africa Nigeria has the largest economy as well as a high rate of corruption. Nigeria’s name is now synonymous with corruption. What is the first thing you intend to do to stop this?
What we could do without rocking the boat further is just to draw a line. Whatever cases are with the judiciary and law enforcement agencies, we will allow them to proceed and we will move forward from May 30 this year, but anybody in a position to be in charge of public funds must be held accountable immediately anything goes wrong. There is a system in place in terms of accountability in every ministry and parastatal but the importance thing is just as the saying goes, ‘If the head is rotten, the rest of the body will go rotten as well.’
Will you be ready to prosecute perpetrators?
Like I said, whatever case is in court, we will allow the court to continue and then we shall draw a line but from that date on, anybody responsible for public funds will have to submit to the proper accountability procedures of the government which exists.
Your 18 months in office was described as a brutal military dictatorship that violated the human rights of many Nigerians. What assurances can you give now that Nigeria will not return to that regime?
I think to hold that view is to undermine the efforts that we have made so far to stabilise this multi-party democratic system. If you say that I was a military dictator then, I wouldn’t mind because I was indeed a military leader and Head of State and even then, those who wanted to be fair to the military ought to have looked into which part of the constitution we suspended in order to have the opportunity to see that some sense of discipline and accountability was brought into the Nigerian system.
People accused your government at that time of cracking down on civil rights and using secret tribunals and executing people who had not committed capital offences
We said we suspended a part of the constitution and we made laws before we sent people on trial. So, we accepted responsibility for whatever opinion that was expressed. The question of executing people was for drug-related offences. We said cocaine and other hard drugs were not developed or produced in Nigeria. People, who wanted to make money at the expense of health and the lives of others, go to the countries that produced these substances and made Nigeria a transit camp for drugs. They destroyed Nigerian communities and extended the destruction to even developed countries just to make money and we were concerned as nationalists that if people wanted to make money, they should go out and sweat to make money and not to go and import drugs, sell it and destroy the lives of our youths and then sell it to other countries just to make money. And we made the law that whoever did that should be executed; let him go and spend the money elsewhere and not Nigeria. The second accusation of human rights abuse was in relation to the Nigerian press. We said we could not stop the press from criticising our administration and institutions but let the news be products of investigative journalism. We said let them try to verify facts before they accuse government officials and institutions of misdemeanour and spoil their names and reputations. We never held any secret tribunals. In the six tribunals that were held across the country, we published the names of those heading them and we got intelligence agencies: the Navy, Army, Air Force, the police, national security organisations to form the investigative panels and based on the recommendations, people were charged and tried. There was nothing secret about it.
You have been described as only being popular in the North and that your popularity does not extend to the South. You have also been accused of not respecting the diversity of Nigeria.
I think the party merger that has been able to consolidate the All Progressives Congress ought to change the minds of those skeptics because the APC comprises all the main opposition parties from all over the country and which has succeeded in being recognised here and abroad that it is a real counter-force to the ruling party. So, the question of I not being accepted in some parts of the country has been disproved by how I emerged as my party’s presidential candidate. It was transparently conducted and most of the delegates from across the country chose me over those who I competed against.
At 72 you are by far the oldest presidential candidate and if you were to win, you would become Nigeria’s oldest head of state. How prepared are you to face the immense challenges of Africa’s largest economy and Africa’s most populous nation with a myriad of problems?
As you said, I was a military Head of State and I rose from a Second Lieutenant to a General and did virtually all the command and staff appointments along the line and then became the Head of State. I was a governor heading what is now six states. I was in the petroleum ministry for three and a quarter years and there was a massive initiative taken by a former Head of State, Sani Abacha, where the money (Petroleum Trust Fund) received from the increase in petroleum products was put in my charge and we judiciously used it. My countrymen remember me for the proper utilisation of those resources in education, infrastructure, roads, social services, healthcare, etc and these are still there to be seen by a lot of Nigerians.
