2015: The North ready to take over from Jonathan — Coomassie, ACF Chairman

 

Alhaji Ibrahim Coomassie is a former Inspector General of Police. He became the Chairman of  Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) some seven months back. In this interview,Coomassie says President Goodluck Jonathan would have been a hero if he had stepped down in 2011 after completing the term of his former boss, the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, but insists that the 2015 presidential election, if free and fair, will return power to the North. He also berates the Federal Government for the insecurity in the North.

 

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If you say the ACF represents the interests of the North, why do you still have splinter groups here and there taking care of the interests of some political office holders of northern extraction?

When I was asking your question earlier, I didn’t say non-political. I said we are a partisan forum. I said earlier that the responsibility of producing any candidate for any office is solely that of the party. But what we did was to help by saying that if you want quality leadership, these are the things you should look out for. We are political because our politics is northern Nigeria, no doubt about it. Anything about the North, we are there to advance it, but within the context of one Nigeria. Concerning the splinter groups you are talking about, everybody has freedom of expression, association. You cannot stop people from having an idea of their own. But all these splinter groups you are talking about, if you ask them, they will say they are members of ACF even if they are pursuing some other interests.

We cannot, right from the beginning, when the whistle is blown for politics, to say we are supporting Olalekan. But at the end of the day, we have seen three or four aspirants vying for the presidency, all coming from the North. I think that is where we can now intervene because if we allow them to go the whole hog, we may lose it. So we can say ‘why can’t all of you concede it to one person so that the best among you to go for it and you can’t support him when he gets there’.  If all of them vie for the position, there is the danger of losing the office. So what we are saying particularly to the northern delegates is to vote for whoever they consider the best among the aspirants and then the ACF will cast its vote for such candidate. These are some of the roles  ACF plays.Others think, right from the beginning, we should align ourselves with a candidate, no, we would rather allow the due process to take its course. The party comes out with their candidates, then we support. I think that is why we have splinter groups and we have been working together. Only recently, the ACF  issued an open letter to Mr President over insurgency in the North, particularly in the North-East, in which we asked all the northern NGOs interested in advocating for a better northern Nigeria to come together and   let us face the current issue which is lack of security. All we want is peace, unity and development of northern Nigeria. So it is better we put our hands together and see how best we can achieve this. We learnt two or three times that the leader was killed. But it was either Shekau was dead or later to say he was not. At a point they said the name was just a myth, that whoever assumes leadership of the sect automatically takes up the name Shekau but it is neither here nor there. Things of international dimension like this, if indeed there was ceasefire, there must be an international person in it. Who are these people, are they Nigerians? Is it a regional thing that we can easily see ECOWAS in it?

Or is it continental that AU is part of? Or even international that UN can be part of? Who is brokering the ceasefire? The only evidence we saw again was when our President visited President Derby in Niger Republic with somebody accused of connivance with the sect but there was nothing tangible official coming out from government regarding the peace deal; so the insurgency continued ferociously as it were. And, suddenly, Boko Haram came out to say there was nothing of such, that it never had any ceasefire with government. Why are we fooling ourselves? Are we not ridiculing ourselves? So our earlier suspicion is coming out to be correct.

Which is?
That there was no ceasefire in the first place. It was bunkum. Somebody was just trying to bring it out, for whatever reason I don’t know. But what has Nigerians gained from it?

A prominent  son of the North, Junaid Mohammed, said the Federal Government was playing political football with the lives of the Chibok girls. Do you agree?
Of course. I have said it too. It is in the open letter. But they don’t seem to be doing anything. Should we allow people to be continued to be killed? Seven to nine traditional title holders, emirs and chiefs in the North-east who abandoned their domains are now hiding somewhere in Abuja. Emir of Gwoza was killed by these people. His successor was pursued, he had to go into hiding. The late emir of Kano was attacked. Shehu of Borno was attacked. Should we continue to watch? Can’t we do something? What are the agencies responsible for internal security doing? What is the government doing? There is more to it than meets the eye. The whole scenario seems to suggest there is a hidden agenda.

Which is?
I can’t say. I am not in government. All we want is restoration of peace. And elections are coming. Can we hold elections where there is no security? Can we ignore some parts of the country in the elections and think they will be credible? Or is it a ploy so that the elections will not hold and government can continue indefinitely; after all, there is provision in the Constitution to that effect. There are more questions than answers regarding this insurgency issue. You know some countries offered to assist us in this matter but nobody knows the outcome. Have we seen the impact? Instead we have read reports in the media, saying the visitors were not getting cooperation from Nigerians. Is that not what happened? This is what I read in the papers and the reality is that things have not improved.

How true is the claim that the insurgency is a self-inflicted northern problem, after all some northern politicians allegedly said they will make the country ungovernable for the Jonathan administration?

That cannot be because at the time the President took over, the North supported him 100%. He was a Vice President. His President died. The Constitution says for one reason or another, if the President cannot perform, his vice should take over. You can’t fault that. So the question of a ploy to make the country ungovernable because he is in the saddle is false. I think the question we should ask is why should the North make the country ungovernable?

Again, I think at that stage when he completed the first tenure of the Umaru Yar’Adua-Jonathan ticket, what some stakeholders in the North thought he would do was to step aside and allow another northerner to come and complete the two terms of the presidency, because that was an agreement, whether written or not written, to concede power to the South and, eight years later, the North will also get it. Obasanjo got it. Umaru later got it but he didn’t finish the eight years; so why not allow him  and the North to complete the eight years? If Jonathan had stepped down, he would have become a hero in this country. Again, even in his government, they are saying he agreed to serve for just one term, or you are not aware of it? Didn’t you read it? Then you are not in this country.

Is that not why the North is perceived to be doing everything to make his government ungovernable?

But is it true? Who in particular is doing something to make his government impossible? You tell us. There must be an example. These insurgents are killing northerners, Muslims and Christians alike. There are more Muslim victims than Christians.

With the perceived non- chalant attitude of government to ending insurgency, is it still possible for the North to vote for the Jonathan administration in the coming elections?

If you go back to history and use it as a guide, I will say every Nigerian, irrespective of where he comes from, is entitled to contest for the office of the President; it is the electorate that will decide who they want. The North is saying it is their own time now for the presidency to shift. We in the ACF want the next President to come from the North.

In 2015?

Of course. There is no question about it. And that is because of the arrangement laid down.

You see that happening?

Why not? Once the election is transparent and fair, they allow the electorate to exercise their voting right, it is very possible. That is what some of the leading politicians are saying, ‘cast your vote and protect it’. Let me tell you. The polling units never favored us because we discovered that the so-called units are more favorable to other states than us even though we are more in number than the South.

How did you arrived at that?

It is the statistics.

Statistics that cannot be substantiated?

Why can’t it be substantiated? How did they compile the statistics?

Culled from VANGUARD