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Former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, finally takes the speculation off his rumoured ambition to run for the nation's top job come 2007.
Former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, finally takes the speculation off his rumoured ambition to run for the nation's top job come 2007.
'I am ready for 2007… if I get the nomination of my party, I will contest", the Minna General told a team of editors in a no holds barred interview during the week.
He also talks on the futility of third term for President Olusegun Obasanjo, relationship with Obasanjo, the Atiku bogey, the controversial constitution amendment, corruption in government and, of course, June 12. Excerpts:
Have you and your household been counted? Secondly, you had in the last part of your administration organised a census, which was as controversial as all the ones before it. Why is it so difficult a task to get the accurate figures of people in the country?
I have been counted. See my thumb nail.
To your second question, let me say that, first of all, I do not believe that the 1991 census was as controversial as 1953 and I am glad this morning, I think Mohammed Haruna on the back page of Daily Trust reluctantly admitted that 1991 (census) was not controversial like the other censuses. But coming back to your question, I believe it is so up till today; we have tended to politicise census because of our ethnic make-up or even religious make-up. We have not yet succeeded in educating the people that this is a normal thing and you can be asked for information. Some advanced countries do not even need to send in papers to obtain information because what you have are always updated through registration of birth, death and the rest of them.
Until we are able to get it out of our psyche that the whole purpose is to determine the figures for development planning and not for any other thing, if we do not succeed then, there will continue to be problem: people want to know how many Christians there are; people want to know how many Muslims there are…. I think by and large, we should emphasis a number of things. I am particularly happy that in this particular census, there is a lot of de-emphasis on ethnicity and religion, which I think is okay. It is a right step. It will take time I believe before people get to understand this is the whole fact about census.
The second aspect is, maybe the process, a lot of hitches here and there, which at the end of the day frustrate people…. In the process of planning, frustration gets in and it would not be surprising that somebody wakes up in the morning and now he starts complaining because he was not counted and a lot of other people were not.
Were you trying to be your own prophet in 1993 when you said you were stepping aside? The way we understand this is that you may step back and when will this stepping back be?
I was trying to do my professional duty, making a military terminology when you are marching in columns, everybody shoots either the right leg or the left leg and if you shoot the left while others are shooting the right, you will be asked to step aside so that you get yourself back into the column.
Figuratively, I used that phrase to say, you see, because a lot of people believed then that my intention was to perpetuate myself and maybe this was the best way to prove to you that my intention was not to perpetuate myself as the President of the Federal republic of Nigeria.
Talking about perpetuation in office, tenure elongation has become an African virus and it has crept into the country. How would you react to the on-going plan by President Obasanjo and some governors to stay beyond 2007 by re-writing the constitution to provide for third term agenda?
Well, having looked at the recommendations of the Constitution Review Committee; initially we were told and we thought that there were going to be 117 amendments to the 1999 constitution. My immediate reaction then was, forgive my language, ‘what the hell! Are we writing a new constitution if we have to make 117 amendments?' I do know that in 230 years, the US could only make 26 amendments to their constitution, but here there are bright Nigerians with 117 amendments in six years, that is 'remarkable".
So, when the review came up, they came up with 16 or 18 recommendations and as I am now talking to you, most of these I see in your reports. So, my reaction again, from 117 to 18 or 15, maybe we are getting sensible. But then if you look at the 15th, 16th and 17th recommendations, you will find that ever one of the recommendations is capable of polarizing our society. And every one of the recommendations is capable of bringing back issues that we had settled in our polity.
I will give you examples: if you take derivation, for example, it is on and it is going to be on for a long time; during the review, we had a walk-out by people who felt they were not going to take anything less that 50 per cent, but common sense prevailed, and an amicable figure was arrived at. Now, this has already reared its head again; so, the recommendation is 18 per cent, which is fair, but it is capable of heating up the political temperature in the country.
If you take the immunity clause for example, again, you can easily say the society is overwhelmingly in support of it and there are people who do not support it and it could also take a lot of time, talking pros and cons. And, one of the things I admire was the robustness of the discourse and quite frankly I must admit, I have read quite a number of submissions but a lot of them newspapers reports, columns and editorials and so on.
You do not see any bias in some of the things that have been written; it is very objective; it is very informative and it traces back the history of some of these things. So, when you sit down and say well, how come this thing is still on? Unless we make a conscious effort to look at issues we do not want to talk about. To me, it is a waste of time to begin to talk about whether we should not have a Federal Republic of Nigeria or whether it should be something else. It is also impractical not to consider the part of the country that, perhaps, is not on the same level of development with other parts of the country and try to see how best we can bring everybody up to certain developmental level. So, some of these settled issues are issues we should not even bother to talk about.
There are issues in the constitution, for example, that talk about the non-adoption of a religion by any state; so, you do not need to talk about it because it is already settled. But most of the recommendations that you see, that we talk about, are things that were said before and solutions, and I am sorry to say, continuation of agitations for one thing or the other, that makes me a little bit worried about what we are doing and why we should continue to keep on harping on certain areas. We could let them go and how do we dothat? Through conventions, court interpretations, Supreme Court for example, making interpretation about elections and you can take it from there and relate it to what the constitution says and try to determine what the original thoughts of the framers of that constitution was all about and then push ahead and subject it to people.
Today, if you take the US, you can divide that country into two once you introduce something to do with pro-life and pro-choice; that country will get divided into half because everybody has an opinion; everybody has a belief. I suppose so far, we have not been able to play conviction politics and as long as we have not started developing the culture of politics based on conviction, we will continue to have this problem. Generally, this is what I think about the whole thing.
It is taken for granted that Nigerians would like to know specifically where you stand on this issue…
(Cuts in). I said so before; that was about November last year. I was coming back from Ijebu-Ode. They asked me about it and my response was simply that, I had read through the process: constitutional amendment and the rest of them. It is not worth tinkering with what is available now; we allow it to develop. So, I said it is difficult and I still believe and hope that it is still difficult. There is nothing wrong with toying with the idea of constitution amendment, but it is a difficult thing to do.
It is not something that you can talk about in… I think frankly that if you want to do it well, it should take you about three years to settle maybe a case or an issue that touches on the life of this country. It is not something you could do in three months or six months. No! Somebody initiates it and it keeps going on and on until such a time when there is a general consensus in the country, among the people, because you try to sensitise them towards addressing these issues. There has not been maximum participation by people outside the system.
So, where do you stand: for third term (tenure extension) or anti-third term or are you undecided?
Those are media terminologies: for, against and undecided. You use that to assess people who make laws for you. I am an ordinary citizen and I am happy you determine those for or against. This is what it should be. I look forward to seeing the day when Senate or House of Representatives decides to talk about these. It is good for history, that they should allow everybody, singly, to stand and talk, so that we can note you down as being for this or that or against this or that and when you stand to contest as a governor or president, we take you on and you cannot deny it because we go back to your voting record and find out that you are pro-choice or you are pro-life.
Those who are pro-choice and you are pro-life; those who are pro-choice will not vote for you; they will run away from you because they will use their report and I hope that this time round, our legislative body will allow everybody and we should be able to know what our representatives are going to do. I want to know what my senator is going to do. I want to see my senator talking, trying to convince me on why I should adopt this stance. So, I must see that man who believes in the development of the future, taking up a position.
I hope one day my senator will walk in here and have a discussion with me and I have a discussion with him so that when he gets there, he talks, he represents my interest; it is a very, very important thing. Yes or No vote is not going to help us. We must know where everybody stands. I, Senator Ibrahim Babangida representing Niger East, should be able to stand up on the floor and talk extensively about why I support a particular provision of the constitution to be amended or not amended; and, this is what we should try to encourage.
Without sounding alarmist, the ship of the Nigerian state is adrift; people look up to people like you whether you are in government or out of government. What you say carries a lot of weight. In 1998, some 18 Nigerians (who later became G-34) handed the late Gen. Abacha a letter warning him on the dire consequences of transmuting into a civilian president. People want to hear from you whether you are for or against third term.
I will still come back to what I told you before and I repeated it and was quoted several times. I consider myself a very privileged person because of the position I occupy in this country. Now, that position bestows upon me certain behavioural honour that I should do.
There are things that I cannot do that you will do and get away with; I cannot. So, we devised a means of talking about it through channels and I told you last that I have been given the opportunity to voice my feelings not only on third term, but also on almost everything that has to do with the constitution and what I still insist is that I think it is uncivilized and uncultured to come out publicly and tell you that I had a chat with the president yesterday and this is what I told him.
Now, you stepped aside in 1993 because you did not want people to think you wanted to perpetuate yourself in office…
(Cuts in) That was Babangida taking a decision. I took a decision. There were military men who hailed me that I can hold the forte; that I can go ahead. But me, I said no! This is our country; I noted the consequences of doing that….But, I did not go out to say that A, B, C, advised me whether to go or not to go; neither to come out to say we told the president that we are behind him and we will make sure nothing happens.
That was my decision. How did I make that decision? I weighed it; I weighed the public response; what people were saying; I took time and I read virtually everything. Nothing escaped me about my government. I read it in the morning; I read with not high level of staff; my principal staff officers would sit down and talk about issues freely, just like we are doing now.
Given the role you played in the emergence of President Obasanjo, do you feel betrayed about his policy implementation and the constitution amendment to push through tenure extension that is capable of impeding the realisation of your presidential aspiration?
Feeling betrayed is too strong a phrase to use. But I felt at that time Obasanjo was the man who, as a result of his experience, training, patriotism, competence and knowledge, fit in and nobody can dispute this. If I tell you till today, no matter what happens, he does not want to see this country broken. He would act to make sure that this country does not break and this is what each one of us stands for and got shot at because I wanted this country to stay together and other people died on both sides.
So, people who knew what it is to keep this country could be an asset and generally, the president was one such person. He had experience because he was in that office before and he also knows how to handle you guys very well and he would not be intimidated out of office by the media and I added that as one of the good qualities he has and so on.
Do you still feel that way about him?
As a person, yes. In terms of government policies and the rest of them, those are completely different things. But as a person, as a Nigerian, he has, like I said, I am not sure he would listen to anybody who says: let Niger-Delta cut off, for example. He would say no, I am not going to allow this. I swore to protect and uphold this constitution and I am going to do that. He would not be carried away; he would not be dissuaded. On terms of policies and the rest of them, of course, it cannot be 100 per cent. There are areas of implementation which we would have agreed are policies which you would not agree with it and this is government, which will continue for the rest of the life of this country.
We take you back to the issue of third term. Whether you like it or not, you are very important to the nation's transition process and it would appear that virtually everybody who is supposed to say a thing on third term has spoken…
(Cuts in) I have spoken….
(Cuts in). Please sir, let me finish my question. It was authoritatively gathered that you have met with the president on a number of occasions during which he asked for your support for third term. What did you tell him?
This is where we should…. If he asked for support, I do not think and he did not say support third term. There is nothing like this. There is a burning issue in this country; there are, like we started talking earlier, there are about 18 issues. Maybe, the right phrase you would use is not support third term, but support the constitutional amendment.
Which includes third term…
(Cuts in) which includes tenure, derivation, independent candidature, direct funding to local government and removal of immunity and like I told you earlier, everyone of this can take one year, two years. You guys will be talking about it until you go crazy. It is important; people are interested in it, but I can understand that those of you, people from
Niger-Delta, if they can get 25 per cent or 50 per cent derivation, to hell with third term as far as they are concerned. What they want (is) 50-25, nothing else; there are others who would say, no, it is not fair, we should not give them because our states are going to lose certain amount of money. So, we should look at it collectively. If it is one item that was recommended in the constitution, okay. Let us take one item, say third term, that is a different thing altogether. Then the whole energy, the whole idea, everybody is going to concentrate, but now you have 17 and each one of them is capable of derailing governance. It could cause more problems even for the country.
Supposing we agree that the derivation should be 50 per cent. I saw when the South-South Peoples Assembly (SSPA) met; the communiqué said that Nigerians should not insult the intelligence of people of the South-South by recommending 18 per cent; nothing short of 25 per cent is acceptable. This is a hard, rigid statement. Now, what else could you do, but to dialogue? You cannot bulldoze your way through on that; the whole thing will stop you, especially now when the whole thing is fairly, very fragile. I believe that if I will talk, I will have something to say on the whole 17 issues.
What will happen to your ambition of becoming president if the third term clause as recommended is passed by the Legislature? Besides, before now, we heard that Gen. Babangida would declare in February and some of your political associates have also expressed reservation about the fact that you are not forthcoming on the issue. Is it because of the third term and having been in government and understood the powers of the president and the man in charge that have restrained you?
Having been born and bred in this country, I have a working knowledge of the Nigerian mind, what he thinks, how he thinks and what he is likely going to do; and I am fortunate, there is no doubt about it. So, I did mention again that I am in politics (and) that my mission in politics is not necessarily to go become the president. My mission in politics is to serve this country so that I will be able to influence events and decisions on anything that touches on the people of this country. In the process of doing that, you may end up a local government chairman, a senator, a governor, president or whatever, depending on the way people see you, people perceive you and so on.
That is number one. Number two, there is the tendency to believe again what is the Nigerian thing. If you look at the whole of this debate that is currently going on, it is only one party that people are looking at. We have 33 parties; we do not have other parties out of conviction who articulate any other thing. Most of the articulations are done by the media, not politicians and these politicians should be the people to whip up this feelings about how this country will be run come 2007, but I am sorry, if you look at the whole of the 33 parties today, only one.
Everybody thinks if you do not join the PDP, the world is coming to an end, that Nigeria is coming to an end. Nobody is trying to stand up to it, but again, this is the Nigerian; he is not resilient and the politician has not worked so hard to mobilise the ordinary people to understand what is going on about this country. What brought a lot of changes in the world before is because now ordinary man is getting interested in who runs the government, who becomes the president, governor and even the representative in the National Assembly.
There were elections both in western Europe and Africa where people's power played the decisive role. But we still talk about election rigging in this country, how you are going to manipulate the system and then the ordinary man still believes the winners-take-all-syndrome. I lose? fine, it is good politics, but I must maintain my beliefs and keep on preaching about it. But the Nigerian, the moment the elections are over, he abandons his party and goes to the winning party and for the next four years and by the time it is four years, he would not have the moral courage to contest certain things. I am trying to put across to you that there is something fundamentally missing in the way we play politics in this country; and, until we get it right, we will continue to be beating about, if I may use that phrase.
We had cases for example and if you take a state like Kano, fine, I saw it. Everybody swore that he or she was going to protect his or her vote and everybody did. This is fine. If we can have ten more (that is in ten more states) of the activities of the citizenry (electorate) of kano, they can pose a threat to would-be manipulators, to would-be riggers and to would-be whatever it is.
If you want to be a governor, one of the plans you can come up with apart from rigging the election, you want to make sure you budgeted for them and for this and if you take it up and look at it, you ask, where are we going? They say, okay, if you do not do it, no way. It is still only in this country that you get ballot boxes filled up before the actual election and somehow they get to be counted. So, I am trying to wake up the consciousness of people to understand that all they need is to be made to believe that the vote he has means something and he should protect it at all cost against manipulation, against rigging and so on. If I achieve that in politics, then I have achieved something for the growth of this country.
Have you revalidated your membership of the PDP? If not where do you want to contest?
Now, I hope you know that as at now, you do not have an Electoral Law. So, the basis for how long you have been there is not there yet. So, somebody should now begin to think: are we not getting our priority misplaced? The law is not even there yet.
If you read one or two judgements, quite rightly the judgement by the Court of Appeal seems to suggest that the security, the well-being of the country has taken priority over…, because there are certain judgements, if you give the judge the whole thing, it is going to go haywire; quite wisely the security of the nation prevailed over every other thing and this is because we operated a defective Electoral Law. This was one year ago and we are going to have an election maybe this year and that thing has not been done yet; so, where are we going? I think we should even put rushing to get the laws passed by the National Assembly and subsequently assented by the president.
Now, I would be surprised that maybe two weeks to election, the law could get passed. But this is long time thinking, long time planning. I do not understand it myself quite frankly. In this situation, whatever you plan, something will crop up that nullifies the original plan and then you have to start all over again. So, the best is wait a while, see how it goes, be convinced that this is the right thing; now I can conveniently get into the ring and fight.
Do we take it that all your original plans have been negated…
No, no, no! The original plans cannot be negated. But there is one aspect that would negate all the plans. The plans must continue; there is no doubt about it. But you have to get this at the back of your mind all the time.
Although, you have not publicly declared that you would contest the 2007 presidential election, yet your aspiration has largely teased the polity. When are you going to make a public declaration?
The Electoral Law gives you a time-table: when to start campaigning and to stop campaigning and so on.
But it does stop you from making a declaration…
(Cuts in) You cannot declare in vain. The law gives you the time when to start campaign and when to end campaign. The political party has a programme: when to start and the process that will lead to the national convention, which is a period that takes to elect the flag-bearer of the party.
It may interest you to know that some of your supporters who had waited anxiously for your declaration to no avail have begun to move into some new party, namely the ACD. Don't you think the continued delay by you to make a declaration could cause a collateral damage to your support base?
Okay, let me ask you: how many people have declared?
This is a very serious matter. You said the Electoral law has not been passed and the fact that people like you who should be speaking are not speaking at all tends to give credence to the fears that this administration wants to perpetuate itself in office, that people like you have been 'captured".
No! I can assure you, it is not capturing. I know who I am. I know my background. I know what I stand for. You cannot change it; it is late now. So, capturing, in the media sense is not there.
The third term in the media was something that was neither here nor there, but now it is a reality…
(cuts in) It is wrong even to conclude that it is a reality because I read your newspapers, when was it?…Yesterday, you came up with 40 for, 40 against and 15 or thereabout undecided. Now, as far as I am concerned, if those who fight against elongation are 40 in the senate, then the game is lost. You need two-thirds of 109 and if 40 said no, then it becomes no.
I am very well informed by what you are dishing out to us and I think it is very factual, from my interaction, trying to reconfirm some of these things; and, that makes it really beautiful. I think we unnecessarily get scared over some of these things.
Okay, let us assume that this third term, this is an assumption, why can't you also think that there can be a candidate belonging to another party who will defeat the candidate of the third term political party?
Why?
It has never happened before to beat an incumbent at the federal level. Do you think it can happen?
It has never happened, but it could happen.
In 2003, the elections were rigged, what makes you think that the elections would not be rigged again in favour of third term supporters?
No, but this time the Nigerian will be wiser. I gave you the example of Kano. I can assure you (that) other Kanos will spring up. Okay, tell me something: let us demonstrate it in practical terms: if my kid brother, Orji Kalu contests an election, he has said it before and he says it even now that they will protect every single vote, every ballot in the country and he tries to educate, to mobilise the people to say now, this time round, we are not going to have it! We just had an experience now: Ngige versus Obi. Now, what came out of that should now enlighten the people that, look, our mandate was robbed. This time around, we are not going to allow it; so, I expect Anambra to make sure that every bit and pieces… so that nobody gets disenfranchised in the whole process. This is the sort of thing I will honestly love to see and this is the sort of thing we should encourage.
When are you going to declare?
No, what I was pressing on is that I want to be a product of due process. Do not forget that in any electoral contest, there are two things: the party nomination, which is restricted to say today, maybe PDP 'the largest party in Africa", has a followership of say 3 million people countrywide, okay? So, they have to select you as the flag-bearer. But what is most important, in fact the two are very important - to get the party's nomination, but the most important thing is to go for a general election, where over 70 million people are going to vote. So, the party then sets its rules and regulations, saying, okay, before you get nominated, you have to go through the following processes.
You do not jump the gun; you wait for it; they give you time to start; then they give you time to get to the convention. You may end there maybe two, three or four of you; and then the convention makes the final decision. Thereafter, you go and sell yourself to the general public: the 70 million people out there are the people you need, not the 4,500 that showed up at the convention. But you need the 4,500 delegates to the convention to step out to the bigger world.
Now that you have explained to us, and we have deduced from your positions that this third term is not possible, will you, General Ibrahim Babangida, be contesting the 2007 presidential election, any time the whistle is blown, even if it is two weeks to the election?
(Laughs) Once the whistle is blown, I will do, depending on what the mood of the people is, I would not let them down.
Would you be specific, yes or no?
No is very dangerous politically, because I am a political animal.
Will you contest?
Okay, why don't I tell you this: if I get the nomination of my party, I will contest.
Which party?
Any.
Let us take you back to the earlier question on whether you revalidated your membership of the PDP. Did you?
I am a current card-carrying member of the PDP.
Are you one of the proponents of the emergence of a coalition of parties to defeat the PDP? People say that if Obasanjo who has got the PDP in his pocket gets the ticket, then whoever wants to run against him should do it on the platform of a coalition of parties…
(cuts in) if I do that, then that is anti-party activity. I want my party to win.
You gave us Shonekan when you left; you were also instrumental to the coming in of Obasanjo. Why do you keep giving us bad products?
When I left, I gave the Interim Government to you, the country. What I know I did and not many people knew because they were not interested and I can understand there were tempers and the rest of them, but we had a constitution for the Interim Government.
I left in August; that constitution allowed that Interim Government to be in place for six months. There ought to have been an election in February of 1994. The constitution was very specific. Thank God, there were a lot of very brilliant lawyers; this is not a military thing. I consulted the best brains as far as this thing was concerned and, so, we gave them six months.
Its primary responsibility would have been to use that period to organize the electoral body, to plan for election and by February 1994, there ought to have been a general election, which could be most acceptable to the Nigerians because the culprit is no longer there; so, it would not be manipulated or tampered with and so on and so forth. I expected the Nigerians to back him; the politicians said, no, their interest was somewhere else. You were living in this country then; there were pronouncements that it was elected; there were pronouncements by eminent citizens that it should be kicked out and so many other things.
Nobody was listening; and, this is the tragedy about us as a people. So, they quickly encouraged the military. Poor Shonekan! He got there in August 1993 and by November 1993, he was out. Now, if the public was serious at that time, somebody would have raised an alarm to say that, look, we were supposed to have an election in three months' time, why in the name of God is this coming to be this time? But, people hailed it in this country.
What they wanted then, I provided: get rid of this Minna-born general or whatever you called it. But I did my job; Nigerians ought to have done their job, but they did not allow it; they hailed the coming again (of the military); because we were smatter, when I say we, I mean those of us in uniform; I was out of uniform, thank God, at that time.
Maybe to give incentive for the support, those who were vehemently opposed were brought into government as ministers and this is how the thing went under our very eyes until the military decided that we could do away with this character; we got them to stabilize us; now, we are firmly on our feet. They were thrown out individually and they began to do, what we call in the military, a rear guard action.
Again, no commitment until later. The emergence of some very patriotic Nigerians, the G-18, bright people, bright young men, I have one of the brightest boys in that G-18. And then they set the machinery. I think there is something that we need to look at: how do we change some of these orientations?
Then talking about my support for the president, my support for the president is strongly rooted in my personal conviction that he believes in this country; so far forget about policies or whatever; so far, he has not given any one of us in this country to believe that he wants the dismemberment of the nation.
Unless you are a nation you cannot do anything and today, I can assure you, anybody who comes to him to say, look, this is what he wants, he will listen to you. So, at least we have somebody who now believes that this country must remain what it is. We have a platform now that we can call our own and that is Nigeria without fear of one side going. Any Nigerian will support him on this.
Was Nigeria not more cohesive in 1993 than now?
Then give me credit (laugh)