FROM NOAH EBIJE, KADUNA
Former Military Administrator of Gombe State, Group Captain Joe Orji (retd), has said that the Federal Government has little or no option but to pamper agitators of Biafra Republic because, according to him, they are like stubborn, but useful children of a parent who must be counselled to take the path of orderliness without using violence on them.
Speaking in an interview with NOAH EBIJE in his Kaduna residence, Group Captain Orji also said that the Federal Government should find a solution to the rampaging Boko Haram insurgency, pointing out that the insurgents have greatly caused the North-East underdevelopment.
The retired Airforce officer presided over the administration of Gombe State during the regime of the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha.
Excerpts:
We have Boko Haram, Biafra agitators, and now the Shi’ite group all over the country. Against such background, how would you appraise the security situation of the country?
It is not unusual when you have a recession, to have a lot of citizens who are feeling dissatisfied. Some of them think they have come to the end of their lives because they don’t see any way out. Some of them are poverty-stricken, so much so that they cannot even have one meal a day in the midst of plenty, and they are watching people who can have more than that to spare.
Quite a number of Nigerians now manage to go through tertiary institutions and a lot of graduates are coming out yearly without jobs and even without hope to get one. So, there is a build-up of armies of restive fellows in Nigeria, a development which breeds disgruntlement within the state arrangement. So, it is not unusual that in a setting like what we have, where even the welfare issues of a typical Nigerian had only been paid a lip-service, at the least, restiveness of threatening proportions would be the order of the day.
As it appears over the years, average Nigerian is merely on his own, except the civil servants and a few that are engaged in private enterprising. Majority of Nigerians who are so desperate don’t have hope and nobody also bothers about how they feed or whether they are under shelter or not; there is no stipend even to make them have hope for tomorrow and they continue to grow with responsibility. So, everybody appears to be on his own.
We are in a situation in our country where people appear to be on their own without any state input to either encourage or to provide some of what you call soft-landing facilities for humanity. We must be drawing references from civilized societies because we are not a primitive society. For instance, in the United Kingdom, there are council flats for people; there are food coupons for people and there are a lot of incentives that the government has already perfected.
With our population, 50 per cent of which are youths, if not more, we appear not to be doing a lot in terms of welfare, providing care for these people, in terms of basic amenities. Like in England, we have the NHIS equivalent here. It may take a long time for you to see doctor but you will still be seen and treated. But here, the scheme is still partial. There are a lot of things still wrong with the system.
If it is meant to take off a lot of pressure from those who don’t have so much so that their health situation can also be looked after, I don’t think we are succeeding so much because there are a lot of stories coming from those who are on that programme. It is either they are not being looked after well or it is very expensive.
The system is faced with our fundamental problems of dishonesty and fraud – the problems plaguing the entire country. The aggregation of this entire thing I am touching is that any nation that does not have plan for her citizens will expect this type of disgruntlement among the citizens, the growing of army of unemployed youths.
And since devil finds a job for the man who has not, they are easily drawn into other groups to vent out their situation. So, when you hear of militants, Boko Haram or agitation from the South-eEast recently, it only sends some signals that all is not well with the governance, the governance system is sick.
If you take sectorially from the militants of the South- South, they are trying to tell us what is wrong with them and why they were doing what they were doing and the entire nation also appears also to buy into it to see and agree that from where you take all the wealth of the nation, the petroleum products, the place is so devastated and the marine lives of the people had been destroyed, the habitat and eco-system had been destroyed. So, in return, the nation has a responsibility to the environment and the people. I think that centres around their own agitation.
Moving next to the South-East, it will appear that their own agitation also centres around what they call marginalization and despicable conditions of infrastructural developments, if at all they are there or the lack of. No road from Enugu to Onitsha, from Enugu to Port Harcourt, no road, from Onitsha to Owerri, no road among others. These things have been allowed to decay over several years. It is not the fault of this very government, we must admit. There are other things that made the people believe and said that there are quite discriminatory practices against them.
Then of course, they are heightening it with the current disposition of or appointment by the current government which they felt that they have been schemed or short-changed because of the fact that they voted for a party that was not the ruling party and they have to be punished for it.
Their logic is that it shouldn’t be so and that if you have to express democratically, your right, you have the freedom of choice, freedom of voting and everything that is not in consonance with the tenet of democracy.
Then they look at the political structures and also complained that of all the major speaking tribes, they (South East) have been shortchanged, that it has been the zone with the least number of states and that since the establishments in our political system, they keep on loosing and they have lost so much in the South-East.
With many other grievances which over the years have been building up, perhaps the youths now are taking a different dimension to it.
Coming over to the North, even though the Boko Haram issue is a purely different one, beside the fact that Boko Haram perpetuators have not been able to come and tell us what their problem is and what they want, it is evident that the North Eastern part of Nigeria is grossly under developed. Whoever is responsible for this is not a matter for this discourse but we have seen that they are living in abject poverty.
The place really yearns for development, federal influence and presence. If that is the reason for the staging of Boko Haram and also venting avenue, I don’t know because the Boko Haram insurgents have not counted that as they had not told Nigerians that this is why they are doing that but to what we have seen, the north east is grossly underdeveloped from all indices of development.
Whether the Federal Government, the state government or the local government is responsible, has not lived up to expectations, is a question of identifying who and at what stage of governance that the entire country should be held responsible.
So, if you take a look at all these I have tried to state from South-South to South-East to North-East in the North, the common denominator is expression of dissatisfaction, disgruntlement over the kind of governance in terms of provision of infrastructure, political structure and political patronage and so on and so forth.
When people feel that they are not getting as much as their neighbours, they complain. They have an alternative – either to keep quiet forever or to vent out. And in venting out, it is either you do it directly to the government and expect response, if at all or you do it in a manner that it appears will catch the attention of everybody so that they can look into your problem.
Personally, I believe, just like Nigerians tried to look at and understood the problems of the South-South militants. We were dragged into a war and patiently we were studying what could be the genesis of the uprising in the North and we are beginning to see the level of underdevelopment of north east for instance. We must be able to accord the South- East agitators such privilege.
Any part of Nigeria that is sick or that is not moving with the others, we must as Nigerians be concerned to listen, sit-down with them, hear them and dialogue with them.
There is nothing wrong but there will be everything wrong with somebody saying forgets them, they are nothing or that they are merely trying to attract attention for us to come and discuss with them, forget them. No. That is not the way. We must listen to all parts of the country when … and find out which ones are genuine complaints and attend to because this is the only way this country can grow and develop. We have been put together and I believe in one Nigeria, one united Nigeria and that one united Nigeria must be a very strong one united Nigeria with equal opportunity for everyone.
So, I think the issue of all these uprisings here and there can be looked at on the areas of the socio-political system, the governance system. Something is wrong with us and we get to get back to the drawing board very quickly.
What is the implication of government ignoring the agitators of Biafra?
It is just like your son drawing your attention to what he thinks is a major problem worrying him and you ignore him. When you ignore your child in a household, you may not be in his mind or heart to know what action he may take next.
As he is growing, he is already an adult, if you continue to ignore him and you don’t call him as a son, ask why are you behaving like this? What is the problem, to you how do you think we can solve your problem? Let it come from him before you start moderating. If you don’t do that, nobody knows, because it is like what they call a keg of gun powder. That is what we don’t want because I don’t know what is in the minds of the young ones.
You cannot discern what the young ones who are everwhere can do with their youthful exuberance. Their contacts are beyond the adults. And with the ICT technology, it is difficult for anybody to predict.
The best is to nip it in the bud by calling that your son, bring him in and work with him because he has to be an integral part of the family system just like the South-East people. They have continued to put a lot of efforts in the overall development of Nigeria. They are everywhere and they don’t discriminate where they come to.
They regard everywhere as home and try to develop the place, live as responsible citizens, paying their taxes and supporting all social, political and economic events in any area they are. So, they ought to be treated well like other Nigerians. So, if there is any reason there are signals coming from that area, I think the rest of the country will deserve to listen to them.
2016 budget had been presented and having listened to the proposals, what is your reaction?
The 2016 budget as presented to the National Assembly, to me, appears to be all-embracing in the sense that it has identified a lot of the focus of government for next year. For instance, security and education, as we know, are very paramount for national development anywhere. Likewise is looking for areas of alternative sources of revenue like the solid minerals and revamping moribund industries. Again, the budget appears to give a lot of rooms for the promises that have been made by the APC and meeting its obligation like the innovative school feeding and very encouraging giving scholarship to those who are going to read science course in tertiary institutions. To my mind, these are worthy steps.
For many years, we all agreed that education has suffered a great setback and for us to get it right, something radically must take place in terms of revamping the sector. For that you could see that there is provision for the employment of 500,000 graduates to teach in primary schools. In fact, the emphasis there – primary schools, personally I love that so much because for you to get Nigerian education right, the foundation must be properly laid. And to my mind, the foundation centres around what we are doing in the primary school education – how the pupils are being prepared for the secondary school.
If you have enough facility, enough well qualified teaching staff and a lot of incentives before them, there will be a lot of motivation. With the free school feeding which is an incentive to many families, it is likely that people would be attracted to send their children to school. The fact that a child will get at least one square meal free is a big incentive in the Nigerian setting.
I think since the budget covers all those things, plus the stipends the party had also during the campaign promised Nigerians, if all these things will be done, then there is no doubt that we are looking forward to a better 2016 in terms of restructuring the education system.
A lot of hopes within the budget had been given on the revamping of Ajaokuta Steel plant. It is very critical for national development. We have seen that in the past, so much has been put into that establishment. If we get it right in our iron and steel, we can easily take off industrially because we need that iron and steel to form the bedrock of our technological take off everywhere. There is no gainsaying about that. So, if the budget is looking at revamping and resuscitating the Ajaokuta steel plant, I think it will be a wonderful thing and a wonderful achievement for this government.
Aside, so much also has been talked about revamping a lot of the industries that have folded up especially in Kaduna – the textile mills with huge attendant workforce. If that also is attended to, there will be a lot of employment and many Nigerians will have places to work. And again, the issue of textile produce and textile products, both backward integration in terms of raw materials like cotton growing and so on would be revamped with all the cotton growers in Funtua, Gombe and other places returning to farm believing that their produce would be utilized in the textile industry.
Revamping the textile industry will have positive chain effects on the economy of the country particularly in Kaduna and northern states generally. I think the budget, to my mind, appears to be heading towards addressing a lot of issues because for the first time, we have also noticed that about 30 percent of the budget is going into education.
This is a very welcome development. But you see, instead of dwelling so much on the nitty-gritty and components of the budget, I will summarize here to say that it is a budget of hope and since it is a budget of hope, we will only pray that the implementation would be properly pursued.
All those who are vested with the responsibility of monitoring and ensuring that the budget is properly executed should assist the government to ensure that any money that is appropriated for anything should be judiciously applied in such areas and also accounted for, for the benefit of the people.
As I said, this is a budget of hope but the other side of it is how well we are going to implement the budget. That is another issue and worry for me personally.
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