October 31, (THEWILL) – Major-General Isola Williams (retd.) is a former Chief of Training, Operations and Plans of the Nigerian Army. In this interview with AYO ESAN, he speaks on issues as they affect the country. Excerpts:
Many Nigerians, including Governor Nasir el-rufai of Kaduna State, have called on the Federal Government to designate killer bandits operating in parts of the North as terrorists. What is your position on this?
You know it is super difficult for anybody else apart from the presidency to answer that question. This is because, for a long time everybody know that these sorts of people especially in Kaduna, Zamfara, now moving to Niger , they have gone beyond what you can call banditry . And therefore with what they are now doing also in Sokoto, it is beyond the understanding of anybody who would called them bandits. The second thing which is also very important, the security agencies for one reason or the other have not been able to deal with the problem or to deal with the challenge. Recently, Commissioner Frank Mba of the Nigerian Police did say that they are not overwhelmed by the lack of public safety. So if they are not overwhelmed, what is the problem? They have also push the military to act like a constabulary to try to support them on these bandits and kidnappers and so on which normally is not for the military who also have the problem in the north east with the insurgents . And they have not been able to do it.
Therefore it is only the presidency now, may be the Attorney General that can say okay, who is a terrorist? What is the condition they should attain to be able to call them terrorists? But everybody in Nigeria is convinced that these are not bandits anymore. For the past one or two years, these are terrorists’ period. And if you have somebody like Sheikh Gumi coming out to say that, if you call them terrorists, then you must be ready for the consequences. You know that gentleman called Sheikh Gumi is acting like the president of Nigeria. The sort of things that he says, is unbelievable. For a citizen of a country, that had the rule of law, and had law and order as a fundamental, I can’t believe it when I heard some of his pronouncements and he gets away with it. He doesn’t care. And he doesn’t give logical or good reasons for making such a statement. Which means that he is above the law in Nigeria. And secondly too, he must have a special relationship with the president. There is no doubt about that. Thirdly, he must have also special relationship with the DSS. That is indisputable because I don’t think any other Nigerian can make such statements and DSS will let him be. So what can one say? But it is clear to everybody that the bandits are now more of terrorists. If the Governor of Kaduna can say so and not only that, he said he has tried to convince the presidency. But the president does not want to own up. So what could common man like us do?
The National Assembly has made a U-turn on the issue of electronic voting and electronic transmission of results, approving instead of opposition it. How do you see its new position?
Anybody in a certain position looks at a situation and tries to manipulate the situation to suit his interest. For the members of the National Assembly, they have no limit unlike the President and governors who have two terms. A member of the National Assembly can continue to go there for the next 20 years. One member of the House of Representatives has just announced that he is collecting N88.5 million every month. If it were you, how do you want to leave that place?
It means that he has been using a method to go there and somebody wants to change that method to the one you cannot even manipulate. What would you do? You would just sit down there and say yes I agree. Of course you would not agree. It is just natural. It is only somebody with conscience that can do that, but politicians are not people with conscience anyway. That is why I call them politikians.
Everybody knows that what you are looking for is to have a system that cannot be easily manipulated for our elections. One thing that you people has forgotten is that up till today INEC has not brought out the electronic total number that was supposed to be out in 2019. I hope you remember that Atiku took them to court. The court threw out the case because INEC said it did not use electronic system to count the votes. But it was very clear that they used the electronic system. It is the same INEC that is now asking for e-voting.
If they bring out all the results of the 2019 election, you may discover that Atiku won the election. But they will not bring them out. They don’t have the courage to do so. So there must be something shady there. Now that the INEC supported e–voting under pressure from everybody, the National Assembly had to make that change.
In 2015 and 2019 when you saw the video of people voting in Kano, for example, these Almajiriis were voting. Till today, nobody knows the population of the core northern states. So every time they keep telling us that there are more people in the North than in the South. And they know that it is not true. It is not true and that is why they don’t like census. When you go there, they said they have their wives in purdah and nobody can see their faces. They never allow any results of census taking in Nigeria to come out. The day we get the true figure, that is the day things will change in Nigeria.
Let’s talk about 2023 general election. What are the qualities you expect from the next Nigerian President in 2023?
The same quality that you expect. First of all, we have to be serious because most of the voters are not really serious people. And it has to start from the political parties. The political parties are dominated by people who have stolen money and are using the money to gain power. That is what is happening. And these people with money dictate those to be elected and what they do is to do stomach adjustment programme like Fayose said. And what happen is that in some cases people don’t even go out to vote because they know the election will be rigged. Therefore, if we want to take it serious, it should start from the political parties.
It starts from the primary elections of political parties. They are going to hold their conventions now. PDP and the APC are the main political parties. We don’t hear anything about the other parties. Towards 2023 now, you will see some of them who are recongised by INEC trying to collect money from big parties and say our candidates will be dropped for you. In such situation, you can’t get good people to run.
Now they are talking about rotation, we need the two parties to rotate the presidency to the south. Now the southerners should now meet and rotate it to the South East. Then they should now look for somebody from either the North- Central or somebody from that area or North-East to be the Vice President. That will be for equity sake. If you don’t have that, then it means that there is a premeditation that somebody from the South and from the South-East will not become president. I do not support this idea of a Yoruba person becoming the next president. I will not support that, because I believe they have had their turn. Obasanjo served for two terms, Osinbajo as vice president for two terms. No, it will be unfair for a Yoruba man to be president in 2023.
Former Lagos state governor, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is seen to be interested in the 2023 presidency. Are you saying you don’t support his plan to contest in the 2023 presidential election?
I have said it that I won’t support any Yoruba person for 2023 presidency, whoever he is. Even if the name of the person is Areola Bello, I won’t support the person. I will support Ike Chukwuma or Ngozi or any person with such names. No matter what, I will support that person.
What is your advice to Nigerians as we move towards the 2023 election?
If it is possible that what I would have done is to create an Institute for Followership. That institute will first of all tell people the type of person it wants as your local government chairman. Two, governor before any other and then three, president. After that I would now ask them what type of Nigeria they want for their children and grandchildren. Then I will ask them that these criteria they have laid down for chairman, governor and president fit the Nigeria that they want. Can the chosen persons lead them to the type of Nigeria that they want? We now say okay in doing that which is important, choosing the right person or taking the sum of N5,000, which will finish in one or two days. Which one do you prefer? Therefore are you ready to vote for an honest person who will go there and serve you?
Then I will now ask them a very important question. After independence, during the time of Awolowo, Azikwe no matter how poor you are, if you join any of the political parties, you must pay membership dues. Can you go back to that? If they do that, they can now control the party. The people I am going to challenge are young men and women below the ages of 40 years. I would ask them at that level, can you make sure that the people you want are the people that get there with your votes? Then I will ask the people between the ages of 30 and 55 : Since they are the majority in political parties, why don’t they take over the political parties? Those are the sort of questions I will ask them at this institute and orientate their minds towards determining the type of person they want.
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
