GENERAL IBRAHIM BABANGIDA @ 73 Why I chose to be called military president

Many Nigerians say that past leaders have not been really saying much or advising the present administration, especially on the problems of insecurity confronting the country, the impeachment processes in the states, kidnapping among many others. As a former head of state, how would you respond to this sentiment?First of all, I want to thank […]

Many Nigerians say that past leaders have not been really saying much or advising the present administration, especially on the problems of insecurity confronting the country, the impeachment processes in the states, kidnapping among many others. As a former head of state, how would you respond to this sentiment?
First of all, I want to thank you for finding time to be with me this afternoon and to commend you for being the first person to present me a greetings card on the occasion of my 73rd birthday in advance and I appreciates that very well. First, you raised a question about what we, the older generation are doing about the multifarious problems confronting the country and our advice to the leaders.
I can sincerely tell you that, we are doing a lot and if there are any set of Nigerians who understand the problems of this country, it’s those of us who were who had the opportunity to be at the helm of affairs at various times in the life of this country. We know what the problem is, we appreciate what the President is doing and the best we can do and we are always doing is to be of help or of assistance to him in forms of advice, meetings, interactions and so on. I think, this is one of the luckiest countries because it still has seven living heads of state including Interim Head of Government and we have always availed ourselves to the President.
We also appreciate the problems the President is facing and because, we were once there, we appreciate it more than any other persons in the country. So the best we could do is to always sit with him in an environment that is really conducive and then give him advice. And I think I am glad to say that we are doing the best we can to assist him, while we urge Nigerians to be patient with Mr. President.

For how long should the citizens continue to be patient and is the President making use of the piece of advice you were giving him and are you satisfied with the situation in the Power Sector?
Well, I have always said that there would be Nigeria in 1,000 years’ time and therefore everybody who has followed the history of this country would have observed that every administration from the late Tafawa Balewa period to the current situation, every administration faced one challenge or the other during the course of their time. And this one cannot be the end because the last administration had its own challenges too. The important thing is that we the people should strive hard to overcome the problem and then, move forward. I think what is happening to us is not new in any developing country. With regards to your second question about what the government or the ministry is doing about the Power sector, I must say they are not doing badly, they are doing well. Again it is a matter of patience on the part of the citizenry. We have all the machinery or the framework that have been set up and once it takes off, again the challenges we are facing now would be history.

It has been over 100 days since the incident of the kidnap of over 200 school children in Chibok by the Boko Haram sect and despite assurances by the Federal, state governments, the army as well as the international community, the Girls are still languishing in captivity. What is your take on this problem and when can we bring our girls back?
I am aware of what government is doing now and I know that there is a lot competing for government’s attention. It is no longer an issue that you could ask the military to move into the Sambisa forest and release these young Girls. I think what Nigerians want is the release of the girls. They want them released and brought back home alive and not dead. These are legitimate expectations. From my experience as a professional soldier, we need a lot of planning, a lot of cooperation, a lot of studies has to be done to achieve this objective. Whether 217 or 219 or whatever the number is, it is a large number of girls to lose just like that. But, I think the government is doing its best from what we got during our last briefing and I am quite satisfied that efforts are being made to get them released. You see the objective is to get them out of that place alive. The operative word is ‘alive’ hence, if we enforce any military operation, we can get them all killed. So, the objective can be defeated.

Your response seems to rule out military option in the rescue of the Chibok girls?
When I say military operation, I am saying we don’t need to get in there as if we are fighting a war, so you have to get the police, and military ready, as well as the intelligence gathering aspect. People have to be involved and so on, because people have to rescue them. But you will not ask them to go and flush them out.

Some people allege that the young Chibok girls could have been used for the  recent suicide bombings witnessed in the country. The worry for others is that if the girls come back, the nation might be sitting on a keg of gunpowder. What is your take on this?
No. Like I said before, these insurgents are out to create fears in people. I know it has been over a hundred days that the young girls were kidnapped and three months is not enough to train and indoctrinate them into their ideology.  It has to be from at least 2 years. The Chibok school girls are not the ones used in the bombings. So, let us do all we can to bring them back, they are our girls.

There are divergent views as to whether or not the government should open negotiations with the Boko Haram sect members. Do you support the idea of negotiating with this people?
But you need to go into negotiations with the people you know and people you can identify, but in the case of the Boko Haram sect, whom do you negotiate with. That is the problem. I do not believe that the Federal Government or Mr President should throw open his doors to continue to negotiate with people who have gone into hiding and have not identify themselves , so whom do you talk with? You can only negotiate with identified persons who for one reason or the other, everybody knows them and that they are fighting for a particular cause by saying this is what they are doing and I think that is fair enough. But we don’t know these guys, so we have to be fair to the Federal Government about this conflict Let them come out and say this is the leadership, this is the structure, this is our grievances, this is what we want and then, they can sit down and talk. But, so far, it has not happened.

How do you feel about the Americans and the Israelis coming to help with the rescue mission of the girls?
All this help, they are not going to rescue the girls or anything there. It is the Nigerian authority, the military that would eventually do that job. But to do that job, we need information, exact location, where they are. Perhaps, we don’t have the facilities to do the job and the Americans say, hay, we will help you, we will find out where they are and you will use the information to carry out the operation. So what they are doing is assisting with some aspects which we don’t have and I think all over the world, the information is important, for example information was used, when the British force went to war during the period of Margret Thatcher in the Falkland war.

How do you feel about Nigeria as a nation not having the facilities to track down these terrorists?
I believe we are learning, because now we lack certain things to carry out this operation. The next lesson will be we lack this ABCD, in terms of training, therefore, we will not be caught with our pants down next time there is a problem. When we talk about insurgence, we are only concerned with the Chibok Girls, while some parts of the north are being taking over by them.

As a military man, is the federal government doing enough to ensure Boko Haram does not take over Nigeria?
Let’s get one thing correct, the insurgency I know doesn’t have the strength and the power to confront a regular Army. That is why they engage themselves in those strikes, such as bombing. The whole idea is to create fear in the minds of the people and drive it to  such a point that the people will begin to doubt the capability of government. That is all the objective of the insurgency. And the fact that they resort to breaking and bombing of bridges, creating obstacles confirms that they are not capable, so they want to impede movement, they have to create a delay to be able to unleash terror on the people. And I believe once a bridge is broken, we have engineers who can build better ones; we have the Army, still doing their job. It’s just part of the insurgences’  war against a regular Army. I believe, they know what to do and they will win that war.

Last month the social media was awash with stories that the Boko Haram sect was going to attack some prominent leaders in the north, then they attacked General Muhammadu Buhari and your name was mentioned among them. Are you not afraid?
Like I said before, the whole idea is to create fear. That is the only tactics they have to use, but I am saying, it will not work! And all we need is to support the military, the government in all they are doing. They don’t have a 100 per cent support and that is why I am challenging those who are shouting their heads off to go up to the creeks or go back to the forest of the north. This thing has to stop and that is it.

With the challenges in the North and militants in the South-South, do you foresee a situation where this can drag the country into another civil war?
I did say that insurgency is the problem of this country, not the problem of any particular country and we should see it as a Nigerian problem and there has to be a Nigerian solution. Secondly, the ranting from the militants, I don’t see it as a threat; I don’t see it as a problem because, those who are ranting only do it in posh hotels in Abuja. You don’t see them with the people. I challenge any one of them to go there and take up uniform. They just rant and shout and you guys, the press, make big headlines, and it all stops there. I will be glad to see any one of those either in the creeks, or in the forest, telling the people to follow him, so that he can lead them. And you people give them cheap publicity and they enjoy it. I want to see them in uniform saying, look here we are. So, I think, the Nigerian public, all of us should just ignore them. It is not that we have never had history of real leaders that were very pragmatic persons, but now, these guys sit and say they want to try it. Let’s try it.  I will also put on uniform. I have a spare one.

It is the general view that the Nigerian political space has been so much militarized by the ruling party. How do you feel about this?
The militarization of the polity is your fault simply because, somehow there is this element in you. You seem to accept that whether consciously or unconsciously, you have compromised your police force. So the last one that has not been compromised, but that would soon be compromised, is the military. But I don’t believe that the military should supervise the elections because I don’t believe it should participate. A peep into the Nigeria Police Force, which is the closest to the people, is for the government to train them, and I believe they would be able to handle any situation. I was already an officer in the Nigerian Army in the 1960s and there were no military presence in those days, except the Nigeria Police and I think it is high time we restored the past glory of the force. But, I think, it is again what the developing countries are facing. But the time would come though, I am sure the military guys will not be involved in these civil duties. It cannot continue like this, you guys would shout your heads out, the public would shout and the administration would listen.

To be categorical, do you think the military should be used in the conduct of 2015 elections?
Up till date, there are places, where you need logistical support by the political leaders. Take,  for example, boats in the creeks of the Niger Delta region. The boats have the access to remote villages and townships in that region, not the road during the elections or whatever it is. So, I can see a government that would say okay, if you go to villages in the creeks and we have boats that can get in there, you can ask those people operating the boats to use their boats in ferrying ballot boxes to such places that cannot be easily accessed through the roads and that is perfectly okay. But pertinently, I don’t believe the military guys should be seen on the streets.

What is your view on the clamour for creation of more states especially by the delegates to the national conference?
Though there is an argument in some quarters that the agitators for the creation of additional states were not mindful of the fact that some of the new states may not be economically viable, I think the clamour for the creation of more states has something to do, not with the economics, but sentiments. Look at the example, during the last conference, the people of the South-East argued that the region is one state less than the South-West, so they see themselves as equals in population and even landmass. To me, all those feelings are unnecessary.
Let us go on with our normal lives in developing our economy as well as even building meaningful blocks and bridges in the country. I don’t think that creation of states would solve any problem. What is happening now is largely the problems of a developing nation with not so informed populace about what is happening. So, we need to sensitize the people on a long term cause. The blame game has always been there but, we have to do something about it. We need a lot of patience to educate the people.

All former military leaders were called heads of state, but when you came, you chose the title military president. What informed your decision to bear such title?
There was a clamour when I was in office, and I also knew that we were not going to jettison the presidential system of government in the country. Presidentialism, Federalism, name it anything, those are settled issues in the Nigerian political organization, so I didn’t want to change it. I was not democratically elected, but the country said, there must be a president and I wanted to maintain the status quo during our time. All the people knew I was a military president, not a civilian president.

But, people thought then that you people wanted to shift the goal post?
No. We didn’t shift the goal post, it was a learning process. But I wanted to prove that there are certain issues in Nigeria. How do you feel about Nigeria, the nation you people fought for and which you later led? Honestly, I feel great about Nigeria. Nigeria is a great nation. And if I have to come back to this world again, I will like to come back as a Nigerian and to Niger state.