Congressman Bimbo Daramola belongs to the emergent group of dynamic leaders with transnational contacts. In the 7th Assembly of Nigeria’s House of Representatives (2011-2015), he holds the enviable record of having moved the first motion in the life of that historic Assembly. Gifted with a quick sense of repartee and immense power of the garb, he spent an entire hour last week, in this two-part interview, with 365Daily’s Victor Afam Ogene and Adesuwa Tsan, dissecting diverse issues, especially, the country’s lingering security challenges.
Life and living in Nigeria at this time has never been this precarious. From what we know, not even during the Nigeria Civil War days did we experience such level of despondency. How do we get out of this quagmire?
I woke up this morning and I began to think… well, not just this morning. I’ve been thinking and brooding about how foreboding the environment has become. All of a sudden, I guess the guys who scientifically introduced indices to calculate life expectancy did not factor the realities of today’s Nigeria. Today, anybody who tells you life expectancy in Nigeria is 50 plus or 55, he or she does not have the details right.
Take away the natural stuffs, like COVID and others, life is the cheapest thing to take in Nigeria today. And you will begin to imagine, like you used the very right word, very precarious. Uncertainty now dogs our steps every day, death stalks the land and the environment has become so gloomy. A friend of mine’s father said his son was coming to see him. The guy said, I will be coming to see you in the southern part of Nigeria and his father told him, do not bother because two days ago, that same road that you want to come through to see me, 25 people got kidnapped. Yesterday, a public bus, NSTA, Niger State Transport Authority, an entire bus-load of people, 27 of them, were kidnapped.
Now, if you leave that, you go to the hospitals, I am told that virtually all our hospitals, our doctors are overwhelmed. You go to private clinics, you cannot afford them and it looks like, it would have made a different sense to me if there was a conscious, concerted effort in place that recognises that we cannot go on like this for too long.
Look at what happened in Shasha. So, we have left kidnapping to health sector and everywhere you turn, the ring of sanctity around life is totally broken, taken away. I am greatly disturbed.
How do we get out of this? I think it is going to demand a whole lot more from the political elite. I honestly do not think, for somebody who got into secondary school in 1978, I left in 1983, we did not have all these dimensions of threats that we see, and in a nation where, enshrined in our Constitution, Section 14 (2)a is that clear mandate: “Security of lives and properties shall be the primary purpose of Government.”
Expressly so. Now, if that section was justiciable, or is justiciable, this Government and this administration will be totally liable. It worries me and I am hesitant to say that the bulk stops at the(President’s) table, no. There are sub-national governments that should also realise the enormity of responsibility on their shoulders to also keep their states and environments very safe; but we do not get that. It is the aggregate structure of that that President Buhari inherits. If there is security and safety in Anambra, if there is security and safety in Ekiti and all of those states, the aggregate picture of that is what Buhari inherits. But if there are failures that people have noticeably seen over time and all of that, I mean, the consciousness of knowing that if there is any time that there is a call for extreme sobriety and sober reflection, there is no better time than now.
If you were the President today, what practical steps would you take?
The very first thing is, I am going to be very draconian within my authority. After all, we are seeing Executive Orders here and there. There are things I can do. Number 1: With due respect, the agitation for change of guards, security architecture and all of that is tokenism. There is a system that eventually ends at the level of Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Air Staff, Chief of Defence Staff. Now, the truth of the matter is that you find a system that, on top of it, looks like people are happy but beneath it, people are not happy. Those boys are not happy. The prosecution of, it is not only one threat now, let’s isolate one, the Boko Haram insurgency going on, let us look at it. You honestly think that it is Buratai that is the cause of the perpetuation, no. Or Olonisakin or the other chiefs? No.
The truth of the matter is that Yorubas have a saying that you see a man with a hunch back carrying a load and say, ‘This man, see this load you are carrying, it is bent.’ The man would simply ask, ‘Is it the load that I am carrying that you are saying is bent? How about me? Am I not bent by reason of this hunch-back that I am carrying?’
So, it logically follows that if we do not get the philosophy to permeate all the way down, we will continue to have to deal with this threat, it will continue to seem intractable.
What will I do? I will clean up the first 3 layers and as Commander-in-Chief, lead from the front. Be more visible, with due respect, go to the theatre of war, re-energise the people, give them confidence, make them see what I am doing. In a situation where people are fighting war and they do not have night goggles, in a situation where people are fighting wars and rations are not delivered? That they also have to try to look for food by themselves; some of them have to call their relatives to send money to them? It cannot work!
This is an asymmetric war. The three layers will be in the hierarchy of the military: Air Force, Army and Navy. I will take off the top three because there is a disconnect between the people in the that layer and the people directly under them. Those guys are angry and it’s been bottled up, they are disenchanted. How do you expect a man who believes that his bosses are creaming off money at his own expense to fight a war and expose himself?
Only yesterday, I posted: ‘’Just want to express my personal gratitude to men and women in any of the security organisations in Nigeria and medical personnel for putting your lives in harm’s way to save others. Thank you so very much.’’
We owe them that obligation, our own lives are not more superior to theirs. Yes, they opted for a career in the military but the truth of the matter is, have we, as a very grateful nation, done everything to also secure them even when they have chosen to put themselves in harm’s way?
Talking about the three things I will do, first and foremost, I will look at the psychology of the forces, from the police to the others. We interact with them every day, some of them feel that the guys who are dead, have they done the audit? Have they done the audit of some of them posted to the war front to ensure that the salaries budgeted since 10 years ago is not the same when many people have died? Some of them are disenchanted because some of their colleagues who fell in the war front, their families have not been taken care of; they have been chased out of the barracks. Some of them feel that the Boko Haram that they are fighting are the same one being rehabilitated and sent abroad. Come on, let’s look at this, we are all human beings. And then, we put them right at the arid desert and do not ensure that they even get minimum protection. Helmets are not available, sometimes, food is not available, rations not coming in good time and all that.
Secondly, I will go ahead to start a process that is composite in nature, which is to get the people to begin to understand that we cannot self-destruct. We must recognise who the enemies are. As we speak today, we do not know who the enemies are. We must understand how to fight a war that we want to succeed in. If the enemy becomes a moving target, either by philosophy, structure or by any form in its nature, then it is going to take a long time to wear it thin. There is a pool of people that they keep recruiting, from where? If after all these pounding, aerial strikes, clearance by ground troops, ask yourself, over the past 15 years at the minimum, where are they getting regular supply of people from? I do not want to believe that all these people are coming from Niger, Mali and all of those places they are talking about. Some of them are here. How come they have been – and that is the asymmetric nature of this war – constantly securing the confidence of people in harm’s way too, to keep fighting a nation.
I cannot believe you can raise 20,000 mercenaries or 30,000 mercenaries. We see some of them are kid soldiers. The system and structure that allows Boko Haram to have ready recruits is also an integral part of the component of this war that must be addressed. If we do not do that, we are wasting our time. You recall that when we came into the House(of Representatives) in 2011, I moved a motion on the ‘’Need to step up a Department of Homeland Security’’. That was the first motion in the 7th Assembly. I did not know that this situation would degenerate but I warned that day; I told Speaker Tambuwal, after we had gone into executive session and they wanted me to withdraw the motion. I said I will not withdraw this motion but I will stand it down because a time will come, if we do not prune the branches of the Iroko tree, that Iroko tree will demand obeisance and libation from us. See how we are helpless now.
Now, counting the cost of prosecuting this war, I wrote an article and I said, let us even imagine the cost of prosecuting this war. Trillions. It is like pouring water into an empty basket. Why did I digress, it is because I wanted us to see the cost implication of prosecuting this war and why we must do it here and now. It is going to take a long time, it is going to be very difficult and I hope I will be proved wrong, if the change of guards will instantaneously translate to winning over terrorism.
Few weeks back, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi went to see the bandits in their different enclaves in at least two states and he has come up with the notion of amnesty for the bandits. Some people are talking about the victims, that nothing is ever done. When they go to Southern Kaduna and wipe out an entire village, when they kidnap people in Niger, when they kidnap across all the federal roads connecting this country. Where do you locate Sheikh Gumi’s intervention?
Honestly, there are two sides to it. First and foremost, who initiated it? Who initiated that encounter? Who brokered it? Whoever brokered it has an understanding of the extent and how many people are still there and the capacity of those guys to continue and probably understands it to be audacious to say this is their demands, because it does not look as if they have any demands. To the best of my knowledge, it does not seem as if they have any clear-cut demands. But for someone to have brokered that, maybe not wrong, but government should be able to step up a little bit. When President Yar’Adua had issues with the Niger Delta boys, The Avengers, we had a semblance of their demands. They had a ranking structure; They had the Tompolos, Boyloaf and all of those guys and they put faces to their struggle. But we have a Boko Haram situation here that we cannot even put faces to. Who did Sheikh Gumi meet?
From what I read, the Sheikh said the average Fulani, who is a herdsman, has been denied certain basic amenity over the years. He talks about their cattle being rustled by bandits, lack of water for their cattle, lack of clinics, schools and for him, that is their grievance with the Nigerian state. To go further, the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, appears to be in tune with his approach by saying that government sometimes uses back channels to get things done.
Well, like I said, it may well be so but the whole essence of that encounter, we need to dissect it so that we can get, if we mean well, maximum value for it. Back channels may not be wrong but demands should be clear. Did you hear about what happened in Katsina? Where the guy who took away over 300 people said somebody said they got N30 million, and the person said it was N800 million. You see the danger in back channel approach now? When they put the thing on paper, they said they collected N800 million, when they guy eventually talked, he said, no, it was N30 million they gave to us. What did that engender? So, we have crisis and the people who will pay for that break of agreement, so to speak, will be the innocent people again, because those guys will come back and then, be more vicious.
Now, let’s go back to Sheikh Gumi, who are we negotiating with? Is it Shekau? Now, No 2: The bandits, do they have that agitation of struggle that the Niger Delta boys had that time? They spoke about despoliation, they spoke about being unfairly treated by oil majors and all of those things. It was clear. I will need somebody to share with me, what their agitation is. Those are platitudes. People have said, and I believe, that when you choose to raise cattle, and you are a herdsman or whatever you call it, it is your personal business. We cannot nationalise it. It compares differently to the struggle of the Niger Delta boys. Their environment where they live directly is the place where we get 70-80 percent of our revenue from and that environment where the black gold is being taken from even as we speak, runs so contrary to what you would expect from an environment that is giving so much to us. And that is the question. Those people are saying if you take so much from us, the Bible says to whom much is given, much is expected. If you keep exploring and exploiting all of these resources and then, leave our environment where we cannot fish, we cannot even drink our water again because of your production activities, fumes are coming into the air, the environment badly despoiled, how does Fulani raising cattle despoil the environment?
This is why I totally subscribe to the idea of having ranches, I do not know of anywhere in the world, let me even say in the southern Sahara, grazing is outdated. Okay, you graze in Ado-Ekiti. You finish grazing in Ado-Ekiti, you go to Ire-Ekiti. Okay, when all the grasses are gone, where will they graze? As against an organised system that ensures that feedstock constantly gets to them. The water that Sheikh Gumi alluded to, what does it take to make boreholes available and dams and things like that.
I posted on Facebook this morning, I said: ‘’With more sincerity to serve, selflessness over selfishness, true concern over carelessness, an untainted determination to have a great nation, we will easily overcome today’s politically induced and growing manifest fault lines of social inequality, religious bigotry and injustice. I swear we can.’’
But the truth of the matter is that I have not seen anything that the political elite has consciously done, I’ve not seen the internalisation of all of these things that we have to do to move forward. How can we, for instance, in the South west, all of a sudden, the poster boy of the South west now is Sunday Igboho. In a region reputed for learned people; people who have exposure, who are connected, who are powerful and all of those things and a Sunday Igboho slithered those all of those things and today, the elite may not embrace him, but the downtrodden have and that is where the real power is.
Today, people are deliberately contributing money to the struggle of Sunday Igboho.
That takes me to the next question. While we sit in Abuja and other major cities and talk about these issues, the South west that you are from and that you mentioned now, you can see pockets of crisis almost taking an ethnic dimension. Don’t you fear this might snowball into something bigger?
I think so. These tiny, tiny sparks that we are talking about may eventually become a consuming inferno. About two months ago, when this started, I remember I said Governor Makinde should be careful with the way he manages this. By the time this becomes a currency, and it is already becoming one now, the consequences will be so huge that he will be chasing that problem for the rest of his tenure. As we speak today, I almost can say without let that that guy securing a second term will be a tough challenge. So, I believe very strongly that what our region should do is to go back to ourselves with a clear understanding of what the issues are. We have an Amotekun that our government and governors should have been able to think through before going to launch it. I am not sure that was done.
I grew up knowing Hausas living in Ekiti, but how come over that period of time – I am over 50 now – there was no crisis. We did not have any crisis then. Why now? The expanse of land called Ekiti has not expanded the more, we have not changed, nothing. How come a group of people who hitherto could live together without crisis are all of a sudden at daggers drawn? I am told that one Hausa man emerged as councillor in Enugu. A Hausa/Fulani man from Sokoto emerged a councillor in 1952 in Enugu. There is nothing wrong with the regular people, it is the political elite that has mismanaged either relationships, communication, engagements or other things and the aggregate of the mismanagement of all of those factors is what has led us here. Make no mistakes about it. Whoever thinks that war cannot break is joking ; they just have to remember Rwanda – the Tutsis and the Hutus.
Let me take you to a tweet you posted yesterday. You said, “If this brewing crisis snowballs out of control, there won’t be APC or PDP members, there won’t be the rich or poor, Christian of Muslim, no Sorosoke or Gbenudake generation, no parties, no twerking, no selfies, it will be blood and carcasses with vultures prowling the skies. We can still halt the drift if we act responsibly now.” Who were you referring to?
I am referring to the guys in government. From state governors to the president to the ministers to National Assembly. Particularly, National Assembly. In all of these things, tell me what the National Assembly has done.
Were you to still be in the National Assembly, what is the path you would have charted?
I would have charted a more engaging path which will be that our executive sessions should not be about remuneration and things like that, no. It should be about a point where people can talk about, do we really need the country or not? And that baseline, that is the grundnorm. Listen, if war breaks today, one person, they will not be one soul in the National Assembly. The whole of that edifice will go down. In what Americans call enlightened self-interest, how can you have 469 people who honestly cannot be true to themselves to say guys, we may not be within the reach of the social inequalities of food, shelter, of means of transportation but the truth of the matter is that we function in an ecosystem. We are in an environment. It is like an island where people are surrounded by threats and dangers everyday and those threats, when the pockets of discontent get strung together, there will be an implosion. There will be no Gbajabiamila, there will be no Lawan. Some of them cannot go to their constituencies now. One senator wanted to go and settle quarrel in Ibarapa, in Ogun State, they chased him away.
I have said this severally and I stand by it, every time the president brings that Appropriation Bill and lays it on the table, on that table, he does this (bows his head), it is not bowing down to the presiding officers. The president symbolically bows down to the powers of that institution, that arm of government. You only bow to your superior, you don’t bow to your subordinates. It is not just genuflecting. The president, as soon as he leaves the National Assembly, can be anything but that one day that he brings his budget and lays it on the table, and he bows…even Obasanjo, as arrogant and boastful as he is, still bowed to Na’Abba and Okadigbo and Enwerem. The president was not bowing to the presiding officers and legitimately so, the leadership of the National Assembly should internalise that responsibility. It is not just for photo speak, it is to say that I respect this institution, you are the heart of democracy.
I expect an agenda, an action plan from the National Assembly. Appropriation is part of their responsibility but the greatest responsibility of the National Assembly is representation. So, if representation is the ultimate mandate, primary mandate, are we representing well? Can you be representing a constituency where people are being killed? Some of them have policemen but when they leave National Assembly, the policemen will reduce. So, why don’t we internalise what the challenges are today and let that be the prime motive to influence and guide our actions.
They can say they have been talking to the president behind closed doors, but that is a convenient exit route. The truth of the matter is, Mr. President, we will also like to see the constituent’s wellbeing. There can be a National Assembly action plan on security for the country and that is what the committees are for. Okay, you appropriate the money, what is the action plan? You don’t get an action plan with Service Chiefs coming to sit comfortably before you and then you talk and talk and they say we are doing something, we are trying… No.
We need timelines and actions. Ask questions. The procurements you are doing, have you audited it? is this war being fought in a contemporary manner? Why do we appropriate so much and what we have is still death? You leave that and come to kidnapping and banditry. Whoever tells you it is not the role of the National Assembly does not know what he is saying, let him go and read the constitution and he will know that everything that affects every constituent, one constituent, is on the head of the person sitting there. From education to health, that is why you are there. Whatever makes your constituency unsafe, you are as guilty as anybody else. I expect that the National Assembly should come forth with alternatives or suggestions and a lot of options are available to do that. They don’t have to be military people. The people presiding over United States Congress are not military people, Nancy Pelosi is not a military officer but engaged President Trump on everything. She engaged him clearly on issues.
One time I had an issue with Emeka Ihedioha, my brother and friend of 25 years now. He presided over plenary one day and he allowed Sanusi Lamido to come and bamboozle us and he said there would not be questions and I said no, you have deprived this nation, apart from the fact that this hallowed chamber gave him the rare privilege to come and talk to us, we should also lend him the benefit of… he is not an all knowing god, we should tell this man what 359 persons have to say. If you don’t have anything to say, that’s okay but you cannot say 359 others sitting here will not have anything to say. Buhari is one man. There must be an articulate plan.