• Home
• Columnist
• Videos
• Artist
  • Musicians
  • Actors
  • Comedians
• Notable Nigerians
• Legend Dies
• Articles
  • Nigeria Articles
• Photos
• Submit Article

Jibril Aminu, former Senator for the Adamawa Central Constituency, former minister of Education,  Petroleum Resources and former Nigerian Ambassador to United States, didn’t get his party’s nomination for a third stint in the Senate in 2011, so he has been slowly exiting politics although he says he cannot completely remain apolitical. In this interview with Soji Akinrinade, Newswatch director and former editor-in-chief, Aminu, a professor of cardiology, reflects on his eight years in the Senate representing Adamawa State, and the state of the nation. Excerpts:

Newswatch:  How has it been since you left the Senate? What’s been your focus? Have you now left party politics and having a deserved rest?

Aminu: No, I have not been fully in party politics. I have attended exactly one of two meetings of the party and since then I haven’t done anything. So, for all intent you can say that I am almost out.

Newswatch: Retired from politics?

Aminu: No, I wouldn’t say so. It is difficult for you to say you are retired from politics. It would suggest something traumatic.  It is just that I was too hesitant to enter into the campaign for a third time. People were talking to me and asking: What are you waiting for? But somehow, I developed some kind of reluctance, inertia. Then when the thing came close, I was pushed to contest. But then I saw the kind of atmosphere it was going to be. I saw the way the party intended to conduct the election and to control the election. I decided it was not worth it.

Newswatch: In 2003, when I was talking to you in America (you were still our ambassador to the US at the time), I asked you why you wanted to go to the Senate at the time. Looking at the eight years you spent in the Senate, were they useful years and what would be the highlights of your time in the Senate

Aminu: Oh, I think the Senate was quite good and I don’t think I wasted my time. There are a few reasons for that. I discovered that if you go to the legislature, no matter who you are, you will learn a lot of things, no matter your background. Here was I, ostensibly having done the rounds in government, going into legislature and finding out that you learn quite a lot, particularly about procedure and also the importance of the legislature. With the benefit of hindsight, let me give you an example. The legislature always looks like a nuisance particularly when we discussed budgets or some laws, and in particular, constitutional issues governing sickness as it related sadly to that of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. In hindsight when you look at it, it was only the legislature that could have handled the matter a-traumatically and deal with the issue and as it happened in this case, everybody appeared to have accepted it.

Newswatch: The doctrine of necessity as it was called then. That was what you came up with at the time.

Aminu: (Laughter) But there was nothing else to come up with. There was nothing else you could use except that doctrine of necessity. These are things you learn and I learnt quite a lot during my eight years in the legislature. Two things I always told my media friends about the legislature. One, most Nigerians do not know the functions of the legislature. I remember when we went to draft the constitution in 1994, the first few sessions we had coincided with the time Abacha was having problems with the trade unions and there was incredible fuel scarcity. The newspapers came with ridiculous headlines including: Conference Assumes Duty but there is no solution to fuel scarcity. Of course, it was not our job as it would not be the job of the legislature. But everybody was saying that they were looking forward to our solving the problem. It was the responsibility of the executive, in particular. Even when things are the responsibility of even the local governments, some people still believe the legislature should be able to do something about it, which goes to show our people don’t understand the division of labour in governance. Two, many people do not understand the limits of the powers of the legislature. We cannot force the executive to do something. You can only threaten impeachment or things like that. You can see that even when ministers are asked to come, some of them refuse to come. There is always this thing about getting them arrested. But you have never seen any of them arrested have you? There is a limit to what the legislature can do. There is, however, something sad about the limit of legislative powers; the executive is always trying to use the party to intimidate the legislature. President Obasanjo used it a lot to the extent that eventually the legislature braved it and the House of Representatives said no and insisted it was going to elect its own speaker. I remember when Nwabara left, he (Obasanjo) tried to impose a president for the Senate. It got to a point we had to say no and that was how the Senate elected Senator Nnamani, probably, in my opinion, the best Senate president so far, in terms of legitimacy, democracy and understanding. These are some of the things you learn when you are there and I learnt. So, there is no doubt, going back to your question, how useful and important the eight years in the legislature were in my life.

Another thing about the legislature is that it is like a court of law. It is very boring. In fact, I read something someone said that it was boring watching Senator David Mark run the Senate. Of course, there was nothing that Mark could do. It is just boring, unless in particular you know what is going on and you know exactly what the contexts are and the importance of the words said. It is just a boring thing.

Newswatch: Would you then say that the fact that Nigerians don’t know the extent of the reach of legislative power is the reason why they believe the legislature does not add value to their lives; that it is too expensive and that we may as well do without it?

Aminu: All of the above. When you come to a place that is very boring and you don’t know what is happening and you don’t see immediate effect of their decisions, you are bound to have certain thoughts about it. But let me tell you, it is indispensable.

Newswatch: Why?

Aminu: Because of what it does, a central part of which is making laws.

Newswatch: Does it make laws? In eight years of the Senate, how many laws were made? And even those that were passed originated from the executive.

Aminu: It does not matter. When the executive brings a bill and it is people-oriented, the Senate and the House will pass it into law. It does not matter if they don’t have their own bill. But in reality, they do have their own bills. If you go there now, you will find that there is a huge backlog of bills, particularly those that have been passed but were not signed. I cannot remember more than two legislations on boards or commissions proposed by senators in the time of President Obasanjo that ever came to be anything. One of them was about anti-pollution committee. He just would not care about them. Why? Because he had his own grudge against the legislature. Secondly, he would say they didn’t do fiscal accompaniment for the bill, how much money was required and where to get the money. In the eyes of our people, the legislature is just there and I am sure if you had asked Obasanjo at the time, he would have said it wasn’t necessary. But it is necessary.

Newswatch: If it is necessary, is it value for money? In a supposedly rich country where people can barely afford a meal a day, must we continue to spend an excessive amount of money on our legislators?

Aminu: That ties in into this observed prejudice against the legislators. It may be so. What is voted may look like a lot, but let me say for the nineth time and I hope the last time, the salary of a senator or a member of the House is very small. I think as a senator, I was getting about a million Naira a month together with all the deductions. What you people see and think legislators are getting millions upon millions is the money they are giving to run their offices.

Newswatch: Money which no legislator accounts for.

Aminu: There is need, and I have said this many times, to enforce the accounting procedure all the time. But it doesn’t mean that all the money was spent just like that. I know that the kind of money I was spending on my senatorial office and my senatorial district didn’t allow me to save the kind of money you would expect I should save. You have to hire your staff; you have to take care of your travels; you have to honour your commitments in terms of consultants writing reports for you – all sorts of things. And everything comes from the amount of money given to a senator. Within the National Assembly, there is a great disparity also in payment – the amount that is given with the so-called leaders getting incredible amount of money and if you ask them, they also say they do everything they have to do with this money. That is running your office in your constituency. The second one is the constituency project. That is actually a very good thing if you could remove the controversy because if you had local government which were working and state government which were working very well, then the constituency projects of the senators and representatives would have been nothing to talk about. But these organs don’t work well and that is why constituency projects are good.

Newswatch: Isn’t constituency project what the Americans refer to as “pork barrel?”

Aminu: No, no, no. It is sort of pork barrel but pork barrel is, for example, I go into a committee and I begin to negotiate using pressure and probably subtle blackmail that we will not pass your bill or your budget unless you construct a road in my area. And the constituency project allowance is no more than about N50 million annually and they tell you what they can do for you, like drill a borehole for you, construct small dams or build classrooms or health centres. But it must be within the money allocated to you. How many boreholes can you drill with N50 million?

Newswatch: Does the money go directly to the senator?

Aminu: No, it doesn’t.

Newswatch: So, how does it work?

Aminu: What happens is you identify a project you want. I have never, ever awarded a contract on constituency project of any sort. I have never decided who will get it. I have never seen a kobo of it. I have never seen it. We have a committee which usually liaises with the MDGs. They are the ones who handle most of the projects. I can say I want a borehole, here, there and anywhere else and they can tell me you can’t have too many because your money is finished. A simple borehole costs about N10 million, so we never see the money; we don’t even know the names of those who get the contracts, well I didn’t anyway.

Newswatch: So, what and who created the impression that this money is given to you directly?

Aminu: It was Obasanjo and others who wanted to talk about it. They wanted to talk about the senators. We didn’t get the money. In fact, what happened was that every two or three months a report was sent to a Senate committee headed by Senator K Bello and he will send you a report telling you on this or that project this is how far they have gone. Anybody talking about us being given constituency project money and we are not accounting for it is irresponsible and a bit wicked. I never saw the money but you do get to nominate where the project is to be located. They award the contract and they tell you what happens. If you have a project that didn’t finish in a particular year and you are still in the senate, money will still be voted for it the following year to finish the project. That is all I know about this. What I think must be emphasised is accountability and the best ways the senators can do that is in how they run their office. It is not that money is embezzled, the problem is that nobody has the time to give full details of all expenditures, and say for example, on this day, I travelled to so and so and this is how much it cost me.

Newswatch: But you can see how this kind of problem over claims and travel got British parliamentarians into trouble.

Aminu: They got into trouble over claims. They got into trouble over retirements.

Newswatch: That’s what I was saying. Is there any difference with what is happening here?

Aminu: I am telling you the truth and anybody can confirm that over my eight years in the Senate, I always seized the opportunity to warn us that we should be very careful and not just about retirement but about money and that it is the easiest way to get people into trouble. But let me also say that this scrutiny everyone is talking about, they are not doing the same thing about the governors or the president.

Newswatch: They are not doing the same thing about the president and the governors?

Aminu: No, they are not. No one is asking about their accountability, about their security file or even their ordinary files. How much accountability goes on with the president or the governors? How much? They always tell you about security votes. They tell you about immunity. There is a Hausa saying that the small molehill is the easiest to climb on.

Newswatch: But isn’t it the role of the Senate and indeed the National Assembly to ask for that accountability? Isn’t it part of your role? You have oversight functions don’t you?

Aminu: They do that but if they spend their own little amount of money, they miss the big picture which is the amount budgeted and allocated to MDAs, ministries, departments and agencies to run. That’s how they catch things like money given for subsidy, etc. That is their job and they do it.

Newswatch: Going back to my earlier question, in your eight years, are there things you have done or that were done in your time that stick out in your mind in the area of legislation or anything at all? What are they?

Aminu: Yes there are. Number one is the amendment of the electoral law. By doing that, we tried everything to ensure that our elections are free and fair and if you do that in terms of elections, it works well for the nation. I think the last two Senate sessions in which I served have been very important in passing laws and setting up important ways of managing the economy of this country. So, in terms of the organisations that we set up, in terms of methods, in terms of laws for accountability, we have done well. People would just have to go and look to see what we did. We definitely passed many laws. Even the EFCC, its entire laws; the ICPC, their entire laws were passed by the Senate in which I served. We set up a number of courts, for example the industrial court. Let me start from my own beat. We approved a lot of laws which are very important in the conduct of international relations, like laws relating to the International Criminal Court. We set up treaties with a lot of different countries and we spent a lot of time making constitutional amendments which would improve the running of the country but we took the bits related to elections and to the crisis of succession that we had. In the area of education, and I am a member of the education committee, we passed a lot of laws to improve the system. We were also instrumental to ending the long face-off between government and ASUU. We also passed the new health policy bill into law. You move to roads also and we passed some laws.

Newswatch: Except we cannot see the roads.

Aminu: But that’s not our fault. We just pass the bills. You don’t see a senator by the roadside building a road. We make the laws and put the money in the appropriation. If you want to know what happens to it then you move one step ahead. Don’t just sit down blaming the legislature.

Newswatch: But what about oversight role? If you voted this money, shouldn’t you see if it has been spent and on what?

Aminu:  They do the oversight.

Newswatch: But if they don’t see the roads and we don’t see the roads, then what happens? The money is gone?

Aminu: I honestly think much of that probably, and I am not being unfair to my colleagues, would be more relevant to talk about if you talk about the third Senate. Generally, however, I think the National Assembly will have to develop some more and be given more time to develop. But a lot has been achieved and I think there should be some landmark decisions that should be kept in sight every time.

Newswatch: How do you see the state of the nation today? Are we moving in the right direction? Assess it for us.

Aminu: I will not be honest with you if I say we are moving well or in the correct direction, or that we know where we are going, or that we have to be optimistic. If you want to engage in the general, public relations atmosphere, then yes. After all, ministers talk and other officials say we are doing well or even sponsored journalists. But if you look at Nigeria as it is, it is a sad picture. The next thing that happens is that everybody starts pointing fingers at the president or people think they are pointing at him. I think I will be more generous. Although there are things that are seriously wrong and need to be corrected, we should be very careful in ascribing the problems to the activities or the shortcomings of any one individual, particularly the president. Things have been going on very wrongly for a very long time and they are now probably coming to a head. They are probably occasionally accelerated by acts of omission or commission on the part of the president and his people. I agree with that, but things have been going wrong in the country for a while and the one problem we have is that we do not attend to fundamentals which are insidious and which do not precipitate crisis immediately.  And because of that we ignore them and let them be. We try to concentrate on issues which on the whole do not determine where the country is going. For example, if today, you have this phenomenon of Boko Haram and you have an industrial action by the energy workers (NUPENG, PENGASSAN), the whole government concentrates on that. Even worse when there is party problem, everybody concentrates on that. We don’t concentrate on the important things if they don’t cause any problems in this county. Let me give you an example. We don’t seem to care about our population, yet it is one of the most serious problems that we have. It is increasing. Nobody knows how many we are. Everybody just gives the figure that will suit them for that particular occasion. And no one is doing anything about it. Yet, it is a very serious problem waiting for us. When we were planning the new universities of 1975 – Maiduguri, Jos, Calabar, Port Harcourt and Ilorin, all these universities were planned down to the student population, the classrooms, the books to be able to enrol 10,000 students maximum. What is happening now? Those universities actually in their first 10 years of existence reached about 25/30 thousand population without corresponding infrastructural development. Even some of them have not completed their original five-year master plan to enrol 10,000 students and yet they are now 40,000 or 50,000 student population. Nobody cares to look at these problems at all. And if you continue to do this, you’ll end up completely planless and you will not be able to control what happens. And a lot of that is happening in this country today.

Newswatch: Isn’t that a major failure of the PDP which has been in power for about 13 years?

Aminu: It is not PDP. It is a major failure of a total planning and governmental system.

Newswatch: But who leads the charge? Isn’t it the government in power?

Aminu: From 1999, it was the PDP but they were not there before then.

Newswatch: If you have been there for that long, why couldn’t there have been some change?

Aminu: It is planlessness. Do you know that since 1999, the Nigerian government hasn’t spent any of its money to fight HIV. It is only foreign organisations that are more worried about that. But to be fair to Obasanjo, he worried about it. Same thing with malaria; same thing with tuberculosis. How did we allow the Railway to degenerate into nothing? How did we allow unemployment to rise so high as it is now? How did we allow electricity generation to fall to almost nothing for decades? That’s the kind of thing I am talking about.

Newswatch: But we continue to vote billions of Naira to take care of some of these problems, and we can’t see where the money is going.

Aminu: Precisely.

Newswatch: So, who is at fault?

Aminu: Government. And that includes a lot of people – particularly civil servants and everybody. How did we allow insecurity to creep back into the country so much? Even when we finished the civil war in 1970, some 42 years ago, it wasn’t this bad. What happened? How come someone with a PhD is now going round the country and obviously you can see there are things to be done and nobody does them? And there are people with PhD who can do them. Somehow, you cannot bring back the need and the people together. So, things will go down. Did you even think that in your life Nigeria will go and stand for election to be chairman of AU and we are rebuffed and be trumped by a country like Benin Republic? Why did that happen?

Newswatch: Why?

Aminu: It is because of the state we have brought ourselves down to. It is not that Jonathan is not fit but we have just brought ourselves to that ridiculous state.

Newswatch: But if the president is running a transformational government, why are these things not changing?

Aminu: I never understood the meaning of transformation and I don’t think we are on the road to transformation even if we know that it is. But I can tell you that everybody now will tell you they are doing their best. How do you transform? There is no change. You are still running the same budgetary system – what they call shopping list of projects. That doesn’t transform anything. And you cannot transform when people behave as they wish. There is so much corruption, indolence and irresponsibility. How do you transform when people are still shamelessly tribalistic? How do you transform when you go round how Nigerians think about court verdicts? In a society that is transforming these things take shape naturally.

Newswatch: One area the government wants to focus its transformation idea is power supply. Do you believe in government’s promise that this issue would be tackled?

Aminu: Would you call that transformation? To transform a country is if somebody who was there before, comes back and looks at whatever sector they want and can hardly recognise it because it is better. That is transformation.

Newswatch: So, what is it now?

Aminu: I can’t see what is transformed. First time I went to Hajj in Saudi Arabia in 1972, they were doing well, but you could still see it was a thoroughly underdeveloped country. But from about the 1980s they began their transformation. If someone was in Saudi Arabia in 1970 and goes there now, he wouldn’t recognise it.

Newswatch: And somebody that travelled the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in more than a decade ago and travels on it now would not recognise it too?

Aminu: That is transformation the other way. How can you transform a place when you have no regular light now? Transformation as it is been said now is for nice politics. But I can tell you that the people who are saying it probably mean well. But if you want to transform, it is not a slogan.

Newswatch: Earlier on, in answer to another question you mentioned Boko Haram. What do you think about the Boko Haram phenomenon?

Aminu: The Boko Haram in my view was a very small issue, a small localised problem which was badly handled and which has now reached a tipping point.  And sadly it has spread all over. A small group of young people were making explosive sermons in the mosques, making noise about Islamising Nigeria, then the authorities decided to harass them in Maiduguri and the reaction of these people suddenly turned violent. And we forget that those people who were originally preaching and making only distasteful comments on our religiousness were provoked and their agenda changed because they had strong unhealthy feeling about how righteous they were. Then they began to take revenge and everything went out of control. It is not the only thing that is out of control. The same thing happened in the Niger Delta where originally some people in authority were using young people to drum up their case for greater return on what they call their oil. A strong handed response led to their own equally strong response which now spiralled to the problems we have in the Niger Delta. So, insecurity is something which can arise when you reach a tipping point of a relatively small insecurity issue which is poorly handled.

Newswatch:  How would the authorities have handled it if people were preaching incendiary sermons in mosques? How do you handle it?

Aminu: The so-called incendiary sermons they were preaching in the mosques were really not the business of a state government to prevent their religious view. Religion is a dialectic issue.

Newswatch: But these people were preaching that western education...(cuts in)

Aminu: I think we have interpreted it wrongly. How can they say that western education is Haram? Some of them were supposed to have been in the universities. That is not the true interpretation of what they are saying. Maybe later on when they became radicalised they began to say all sorts of things. The way I would have looked at it is Yamboko Haram. Boko can mean western education, but yamboko is people like you and me, particularly me a Muslim with western education, western values and lifestyle. So, what they are saying is that what I am doing is Haram.

Newswatch: But it has grown beyond that now, it has become a war on the nation.

Aminu: Yes, it has and that is because of the tipping point. And I am sorry to say, the media have worsened the situation. May I digress and give you an example. We had election or we said we had an election in April last year. Then crisis emerged, erupted after the election and there were some minor electoral officials who were killed in the riots that followed. Then politicians and the media took it and gave it a completely wrong, mischievous and wicked slant that the Christians were being killed; that the Igbo were being killed; that the youth corpers were being killed.

Newswatch: But there were youth corpers that were killed.

Aminu: That is precisely where I am going about this wicked slant. When the election came, the INEC, probably with the best of intention decided to recruit youth corpers to work as election and electoral officers. Straightway, that exposed them to the type of crisis that happens in politics. Somebody should have thought that our children who are posted to various places in order to promote national unity and let them grow along with their mates should not be exposed to this. And this thing degenerated in a way that made people lack complete confidence in the entire exercise. So, what would they do? They would be looking for INEC officials and if you were an INEC officials, no matter whether you were a corper or a nurse, you were a target. It doesn’t make it right though. But that was what happened. The papers knew this; the politicians knew this; every blighter who talked about it knew this. But it was convenient to accuse the North or whichever area it happened of murdering Christians and of murdering corpers and murdering southerners just to make some political capital out of it. But they knew that was false. And even those of us who are more experienced in the process did not help with charitable mind to say, No, that wasn’t the reason.

Newswatch: But today Boko Haram bomb churches and even attack schools now.

Aminu: I have talked about the problems in the Niger Delta and I have even told people about even the so-called cultism in the universities. The same origin. People start something which they think is useful. They become complicated through our actions and inactions and then become self perpetuating terror. The only thing we can do about Boko Haram is not to sit down pontificating but to do damage control.

Newswatch: How do we do that?

Aminu: Intelligence. We do damage control intelligently by talking to them. Nothing is more annoying than to have to talk and sit side by side with your enemies. But eventually, the Israelis will have to do it with the Palestinians whether they like it or not. Eventually, the Burmese dictators are now becoming reasonable and are talking to people they disagree with. Eventually, we have to talk to Boko Haram, just like Umaru Yar’Adua courageously talked to the Niger Delta militants.

Newswatch: The militants had and have a face but Boko Haram doesn’t seem to.

Aminu: No. They have no reason to have a face.

Newswatch: So, how do you reach them?

Aminu: You know the kinds of threats that are thrown at them, how would they want to come out and have a face if they know the moment they are out to negotiate they are arrested and charged with all sorts of things? Do you know the level of assurance that Umaru had to give to the Niger Delta militants before they could come out and talk? We have to give the Boko Haram people confidence too and find out who they are. I agree that the situation is nasty. It is not nice at all but we have to talk to them. And I am sure they know they have to talk too because they know there is nowhere in history where Islam is spread by the kind of things they are doing. If it is Islam they want to spread, that is not the way to do it.

Newswatch: Some Nigerians believe that Boko Haram is happening essentially because some power brokers in the North don’t have faith in the way Goodluck Jonathan has inherited the presidency and that this is the way to deal with him and make the place ungovernable.

Aminu: Unless people lose their heads nobody would think this has to do with northern leaders. The North will engage Boko Haram? Have you heard of Boko Haram going to Port Harcourt? No. It is in the North. Which politician who comes from the North and wants to lead the North and wants the North to have a leadership position will promote an organ like Boko Haram. Does it even want to talk to them? It doesn’t listen to them. How can they do that?

Newswatch: Why then do many Nigerians believe that the power base in the North has not come out frontally and squarely against Boko Haram?

Aminu: It is not true. It is only that in this country we are all very uncharitable to each other because if we weren’t, no one would think like that. But we should be. Unfortunately, those who have been to school, those who have been to Boko are the ones leading this kind of attitude. But if you go to Onitsha market or to Alaba Market in Lagos, you will find that the ordinary people are doing business with each other. We have not recently had any case where on an ordinary day somebody from the North went to buy something from the South and the southern market people say no or vice versa. Things always follow the crisis precipitated by the politicians and the media and so on.

Newswatch: You were minister of petroleum for some years, did you ever come across this subsidy palaver when you were there?

Aminu: It has always been there. But the government never took a decisive step to end subsidy. But we never really faced it this way. The problem we use to face was that of fuel scarcity. There is one subsidy issue which is rather hidden that caused riots in Agege and other areas in 1992. That was the problem of devaluation. Whenever the Naira is devalued because crude oil is quoted in dollar in the world market, the price of petrol in dollars becomes very high when converted to our Naira. One day, the Naira was devalued by 100 percent and the price of petrol rose the next day. And then the riots began. The rioters felt it was the Ministry of Petroleum that was responsible, but it was not. It was the devaluation that was responsible.

Newswatch: If it is a function of devaluation, why is it that we have been unable to make our refineries work at least to temper such dramatic price changes? Why for instance has Saudi Arabia been able to keep its petrol prices reasonable?

Aminu: I am very grateful to you for raising this issue. To talk about refinery when you are talking about the price of petrol is a myth. People are completely missing the point because the price of petrol you pay is not whether it comes from a refinery here or a refinery there. It comes because of the level of subsidy given or withdrawn. If you refine petroleum in Nigeria, it is okay and there would be a margin of improvement in the price because you save the cost of acquiring it from offshore and all the attendant costs –transportation, demurrage etc.

Newswatch: But this becomes huge in Nigeria.

Aminu: It is not really as huge as people think normally. Refining petroleum will not reduce the cost by 50 percent. What really is subsidy is the amount of money you would have got if you had sold the petroleum on the world market compared to what you are taking because you have given subsidy. If petrol is selling $100 a barrel and I decide to sell it to you at $20 a barrel that means for every one barrel, I have given you $80 free. That is the subsidy. So, it doesn’t matter if it is refined in Nigeria or in Texas in America. The only difference is the insurance, the demurrage and transportation that we talked about, which is not much. But I agree, refining in Nigeria is good. It would give more jobs to our people and we will not have to wait, sometimes a long time. But people should not think that we are having problems about subsidy and about scarcity because we don’t have refineries at home. Subsidy is a purely government decision and it must decide whether it is going to give it or it is not going to give it.

Newswatch:  But in the last few weeks, the revelations that have come out about subsidy are mind boggling. We have heard about people taking this so called subsidy money and not delivering.

Aminu: Exactly. It is has not got anything to do with refining. It is our behaviour.

Newswatch: This means that the subsidy they are talking about may not have been as big as they have made it.

Aminu: Probably not. But it is nothing to do with refining and all. It is our behaviour. I always give an example – the former President Obasanjo sent us a budget to say subsidy this year (at the time) will cost us N150 billion and that the federal government would pay 75 percent, while the state governments would pay 75 percent. Nothing could be cleared. Now when they are talking about the level of subsidy, how much are they talking about – N1.6 trillion? When did it rise from N150 billion? It has nothing to do with refining. This has to do with galloping kleptocracy, arbitrage, rent seeking.

Newswatch: As I asked you earlier, why are countries like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, even Algeria able to keep the prices of petroleum sold to their people at reasonable low rates?

Aminu: Because in Saudi Arabia, people follow the rule of law. They cut your hands when you mess up. Therefore, you leave your bag in the Kaaba and you go back the following day you find it there. Nobody takes it. They won’t steal because they know what it means and what the repercussions are. But what happen here? In this country, I am sorry to say, and I love it, theft and lying are just tools of the trade. They are not sins. Somebody steals billions and then goes to court and says he will plea bargain. How do you plea bargain with a barawo (thief in Hausa). That is why I admire Justice Dahiru Musdapher and his opinion about plea bargaining.

Newswatch: Let me get this right. You were in favour of the president removing the so-called subsidy when he did?

Aminu: I have no doubt that if we don’t remove subsidy, we cannot continue. It is impossible. How can government give N1.6 trillion Naira free to the people?

Newswatch: Is it giving it? Is it taking it out of its pocket to give it? It is the money it ought to make but which is lost through brigandage, collusion in high places and outright theft. So, how do you punish the people for that?

Aminu: But that is what the government says it is doing. It is giving the people N1.6 trillion free. This is what the Americans have said as a modification of what someone else said: The rule of law is the invisible architecture of economic growth. And if you don’t maintain or observe the rule of law, you cannot build economic growth, let alone economic development.

Newswatch: Do you really think we can get to the bottom of this fuel subsidy crisis, the core of it, the theft etc?

Aminu: Yes, we can. You have to punish people and you have to do it by blood initially. Why do you think the Chinese kill people who do this? If your governor does not spend the public money entrusted to him honestly all sorts of things should happen to him. But he can plead immunity. There are some people who are doing things that even 10 times worse. If you want to stop these kinds of things from happening you have to be prepared to prevent them. Punish those people who do it.

Newswatch: Can this government punish such people?

Aminu: No. Can this country even do it?

Newswatch: Then, who is to do it? Isn’t it the president and his people that should lead by example?

Aminu: People you elect in a doubtful elections and who are maintained by officialdom and cannot care too much about probity; where to gain public office by ways of giving favours are not the people to do that. They cannot do that. If you rig an election, how can you do that and lead by example? When you plea bargain with thieves, how can you do that?

Newswatch: Now that the “myth” of the North has been broken by the election of Goodluck Jonathan, how does the North look at 2015 particularly now that some people in the South-East are beginning to say power will remain in the south as it is their turn?

Aminu: I can answer your question by saying that all this hankering for power is a sign of a corrupt system, a corrupt system where power is equated with wealth; power is equated with privilege for your own people, for your own area. Therefore, in terms of honest statecraft, it means nothing. The prophet said that anybody who is asking for power, don’t give it to him because power is full of burden of sins and suffering. No good person would want it. Only give it to people of trust, give it to them. Jonathan is now president, why can’t they go back to where he comes from and see if the people there are materially better off. The truth about the North and power is this: I have my doubt about this last election because of the things that went on particularly cancelling election and deferring it by a week. But let’s say President Jonathan was there honestly and was voted for by everybody, so what. In what way has he broken the myth of the North? He could not have been president without the vote of the North.

Newswatch: The myth is in the sense that here is a man who signed a party agreement on rotation of presidency between the North and the South who conveniently forgot or had amnesia about the agreement and the North was unable to stop it despite all its so-called influence.

Aminu: No. People have come to accept in this country that political promise means nothing. Goodluck Jonathan made another promise but there are people already egging him on to break it. Promises and alliances are made to be broken. I don’t think Goodluck is going anywhere in 2015.

Newswatch: Would he run again?

Aminu: Yes. There will be some people who will find reasons why he should continue in power. There are some people who believe they will be cheated if he doesn’t run and return to Aso Rock. Can’t you see, the same people in the media are the same people in Aso Rock. No question about it. What about my Oga, I mean Obasanjo. Who would have ever thought he would come out to ask for a third term and think that now he will act as if he didn’t ask for anything? Political promises are meaningless in this country and God help any Nigerian who thinks he can depend on political promise.

Newswatch: Where do you see this country in 2015, particularly with the prediction about its disintegration at that time in mind?

Aminu: You mean Dancing on the Brink by Ambassador Campbell? Well, what would worry me more is if Nigeria continues the way we are now, full of lies and falsehood and theft; corrupt judicial and political decisions and people think that lying is being smart in negotiations and people think theft can always be negotiated, I will be dejected because then we would have so degenerated as I told you when this interview began. Nigeria moved a motion that we should recognise the Libyan Transitional Council and we were voted down. Why? Nigeria would never have moved such a motion before because we were number one in the protection of African dignity, particularly when Africans were being killed in Libya. That would not be the Nigeria that became a frontline nation for Zimbabwe, frontline for Angola, frontline for Mozambique and frontline for South Africa. We are going down the drain and we will go. But that is what I don’t want us to be. I hope by 2015 we will be showing a greater sense of seriousness, greater promise. We have a crisis of succession, but many countries have but the difference between them and Nigeria is that every time we have such a crisis some people will be talking about breaking up the country. That is what I don’t want us to have: succession crisis.