My last moments with Yar’adua, by the late president’s brother

You were in the military before the death of your brother, the former president; you joined politics after you left the army and you were even a running mate to the governorship candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in Katsina State, are you still in active politics? Well the answer is categorically yes. […]

You were in the military before the death of your brother, the former president; you joined politics after you left the army and you were even a running mate to the governorship candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in Katsina State, are you still in active politics?

Well the answer is categorically yes. I am still in active politics and still a member of the CPC. Like you know I left the military voluntarily after the death of the late president, having served for 29 years. Sometimes you have to look at events and also your future, it isn’t necessary for you to serve the mandatory 35 years; along the line you can render your service elsewhere, it is still service to the nation. The experience I got in the military was worthwhile. I joined the military as a young boy and for the better part of my life I lived a regimented life and I thank God for that experience because it is what I am using today to guide my life and I wish all Nigerians could get some form of military training, maybe then we will see some change in the country.

When I left, there were pressures but I joined politics to provide service to my state and the nation in general but fortunately I will say, we were able to deliver three senators and members of the House of Representatives but the internal crisis we had in the party took the better part of the struggle to see how the party can change how governance is given to the people. But Alhamdulillah, I am sure our party is making efforts to see how reconciliation can take place and how we can reposition the party towards the next general election; that is why you hear talks about either merger or alliance with other opposition parties because the Opposition has realized the need to come together and see how a stronger opposition can be built so that there will be an alternative to the present People’s Democratic Party (PDP)-led government.

Whenever a person chooses to take on a certain career especially the military, he aspires to reach the peak; why hadn’t you waited to become a General before your exit?

I thought about it but the most important thing is the experience and the service you render to the nation. Not everybody can be a General and not everybody gets to the top. There is the issue of destiny; you cannot stop whatever Allah has destined. I had that aspiration that one day I will be a General but like I said what is most important is the experience you gather and how you can use it positively when you get out of the military. For example, in the United States several people get into the Army for like three years, this is to allow them gather experience (discipline and professional training) before heading for another career. In Nigeria due to certain factors, especially unemployment, nobody wants to leave. It is not in the military alone, even in the civil service everybody wants to serve out his mandatory age of service. But things are changing. It is better for one to be dynamic and to look at things from the realistic point of view. When you look at your career and you think you have served the better part of your life in it and you feel you can render your service elsewhere, I think you can take a decision to change.

People assume that the death of your brother might have informed your decision to leave the military; did it play any role?

Partly yes, because one has to also consider the family; he was the head of the family and he is gone. I had to reconsider my stay in the military; we have an aged mother whom we have to take care of, and others too.  But I had wanted to leave the Army as a Major and my late brother (the president) was aware of it. I joined the Army at a young age, I went to the Military School Zaria and I was sponsored by the Army to the university. The orientation we had then was that you needed to have a degree. Although some of our colleagues went to the Academy to get regular combatant commission, most of us, based on that orientation, went to the university to obtain our degrees, and then got back through the short service commission.

There is a difference between being a regular combatant and a short service officer, even though you have the opportunity to convert, you will discover that your chances of becoming a General based on certain policies are very slim. In the Army, there is what we call age ceiling on the rank; if you get to a particular rank and you are not promoted and you get to that age ceiling, you would be retired. Based on such criteria, you have to calculate well and see whether age will catch up with you. So when I became a Major I did my calculation and I discovered that at best I will be a Colonel, since the age ceiling had not been changed then. I decided and discussed with the late president that there was need for me to get out so that I will be able to render service elsewhere using my active years. He was a governor then; I told him what I had decided. I had converted as a regular officer but, based on such terms and conditions, I looked at the fact that I could not get to the rank of General. But before I left there were efforts to increase the age (ceiling) but we are in a system whereby you cannot wait to see what will happen if you must take a decision. But I am rightly informed that the age system has been adjusted to at least favour some of the short service officers.

You were said to be the closest person to the late president in your family; can you tell us how you related with him?

My relationship with him was like that of a father and son. That is the best description I can give you because in 1976 when I joined the Nigerian Military School, he had just finished his National Youth Service in Lagos. He became a lecturer at the Katsina College of Arts, Science and Technology; and immediately he was told that I had been admitted into NMS, I barely spent three days when he came to see me at the school. Right from my primary school days, he always carried me along to see his friends any time he returned from college. Throughout my life, he had been interested in me and had taken care of me. I was with him from that time till his death; so you can imagine how close we were.

What did his death mean to your life?

As a Muslim, what can one do but to thank Allah. Of course, we all miss him so much, it cannot be taken away. But as Muslims, we must take solace in the Almighty Allah. He knows why He took him at the time He did.

Can you recall your last moments with him?

I was among those who nursed him throughout his sojourn in Saudi Arabia and even on the day he died I was with him. Our mother came to see him, so she left in the evening. Immediately she left, I went to see him, and returned to my house to observe my maghrib prayer. I was called after then to come to the villa (the Presidential Villa); the former First Lady wanted to see me. Before I got there he had already passed away. Knowing his condition, immediately I saw the call my mind told me that maybe we might have lost the president. When I got there, I went straight to his room and prayed for him. Then we began to call relations and friends to tell them that Allah in His infinite mercies had taken the life of the president. I never had the opportunity to discuss anything with him during his last moments.

Based on your closeness with the former president and with you being a military officer at the time, did you play any role in advising him on military strategies?

To be honest with you, I did not do such things. Even while he was governor for eight years I never interfered with his governance because I knew the kind of person he was. In our family we do not interfere like that. The same thing happened to him when the late General Yar’adua was the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters; he never interfered with his governance and I never did too when he was governor and president, even though at that time I was fortunate to be at the Army Headquarters. He is not the kind of person that gives you the room to interfere because he is a very careful person, he doesn’t want the family to be involved in governance.

There is what many observers perceive as the Yar’adua dynasty. You have lost three prominent people, who were known to have held key leadership positions; what is the dynasty like right now?

People call it dynasty but we are a simple family. Leadership is something that is destined by Allah; it isn’t something that you say a particular family controls. We are glad that God chose that family which produced such good people who served this nation very well. We do not know what next Allah will do, maybe He will look in the direction of the family again and maybe not but what we in the family usually do is to see how we can serve best in any capacity that we find ourselves.

We believe deeply in the fact that right from the day you were created Allah knows what you will be and there is no amount of manoeuvre that you do that will take you somewhere. If you have that belief, you will be at peace with yourself and that will give you the confidence to serve people because you do not take yourself as anything. A good example is the late president because he served as governor for eight years and initially when people were aspiring to be president he never did at that time because he was concerned about fulfilling his mandate to the best of his ability. Fortunately, destiny shined on him. That is why today I am surprised that Nigerians, especially in the North say that former president Olusegun Obasanjo imposed him on the northerners so that we would not have our two terms.

It is really surprising because as Muslims, we know that power belongs to God and He gives it to whosoever He wills, so if we believe in that then we should have known that Allah had destined that the late president would be a president and would serve for three years and then Goodluck Jonathan would take over. But for those who were shouting in the North that General Obasanjo knew that the late president was sick, are we saying that Obasanjo knows what will happen tomorrow? We are trying to arrogate the powers of Allah to General Obasanjo and it is not fair, especially as Muslims, because we know that no one knows what will happen in the next second. No matter what you plan, until Allah approves that plan, then it will succeed. You can control anything in this world if God wills; and if He doesn’t, you will not have that thing.  I am really surprised that Muslims will even think in this manner.

Obasanjo is known to be close to the Yar’adua family right from the time of General Shehu Yar’adua; what is the relationship like now?

It is a very cordial relationship. Just last week when he went for the Customs conference in Katsina, he paid our mother a visit. He has been close to the family right from when the lat General was alive. He has been a very close family friend.

When you joined the CPC many people thought you had left the political machinery of your brother.

I don’t think I have left the political machinery of my late brother, I am still together with them and most of them are in our party.

When you accepted to be running mate to Senator Lado, after losing out in the election he left the CPC for the PDP, did you feel betrayed?

To the best of my knowledge I do not know if he has left CPC. What I know is that he was given an appointment by the PDP-led government and he accepted. If he had decided to join PDP, I wouldn’t know what informed him to do that.

We are all mature people so I wouldn’t be in a position to take any decision for him. I feel he had done his homework and chosen what was best for him. I know that I am in CPC and I will remain in my party and we will do our best to see how we can provide an alternative (to the ruling PDP).

The events of 2011 are gone, what are you looking forward to in politics?

I am looking to see how political parties can get themselves together to understand that they have an important role to play in whatever Nigeria is going to be tomorrow and the earlier the elites of the country realize that the better. Today the challenges Nigeria has are so great that I think everybody must play politics if we want to get to where we aspire to be. We keep reciting this verse that we have a vision to become one of the 20 economies of the world. This has been on since the time of the late General Abacha. But the way we are going, we must reflect and change our attitude towards the way we perceive and look at this country.

The main challenge we have is purposeful leadership. If we look at the other challenges of corruption and insecurity; they are all manifestations of the lack of purposeful leadership. In this leadership, what we need is that we have to come together as a people to first of all love our country; there are some sayings that we do not take serious: they say love your neighbour as you love yourself. These are simple things but we take them for granted. That is why today ethnicity and religion are being used to divide the country. But thank God we are realizing that there are certain forces that are trying hard to ensure that Nigeria does not become great but it is left for us to fix this.

First of all we have to accept that we all need a change of attitude, we always look at the direction of our leaders but we tend to forget that we too are a problem. The way we play politics and run our lives both in and out of government, we are getting to a point where our own children will begin to assume that cheating, for instance, is the right thing to do; they will assume it is smartness. For instance, if you want to vote for a governor, if you are not careful, you will vote for somebody with the kind of attitude that you have so when he gets there obviously he will not do the right thing.

In the maiden edition of the Chemical Society of Nigeria where I received a post humous award on behalf of my brother I quoted a verse of the Quran, Allah says He does not change the situation of people until the people themselves change their situation. So you see, it is a collective thing. Look at the Middle East now, the people took it upon themselves to say enough is enough. When we do that, we can now task the leadership to do what we want and those things that are right. But when the commitment is not there, when people have refused to change their attitude there is no way you can achieve anything.

So are you likely to participate in 2015 elections?

Like I told you, power belongs to Allah. Only Him knows what will happen between now and 2015.

How do you look at the politics in Katsina, are you comfortable with the governance?

If I was comfortable with the style of governance, I wouldn’t have joined CPC. We are trying as much as possible to provide an alternative because we feel what the government is doing presently is not enough. The government is not focused on projects that will impact positively on the people.

For example, the government is building a new government house at the cost of about 5 to 6 billion naira.  According to recent statistics on poverty, 70 percent of the citizens in Katsina are living in abject poverty.  It does not make economic sense to build a house for one individual and his family at the cost of more than 6 billion at the expense of over 5 million people, (when) the former government house is befitting. Furthermore, moving the government house from its original location destroys over 100 years of the city’s history.

Secondly, the government is building a new stadium which is costing about 3 to 4 billion naira with a capacity of 35,000 — the second largest stadium in Nigeria. This is being built at a time when the people of Katsina are saddled with perennial shortage of water. A low income earner spends about one thousand naira daily to buy water. Besides, the highest crowd that is attracted to our local league competition is not more than 5,000.  Maintenance therefore would be a problem.

The resources are meagre, so as a governor or president you must look at how well you can utilize the resources you have and how you can generate revenue so that gradually you make your state to become self-reliant.

If you look at Europe and America, their economies are struggling today, you can imagine if that happens to us. It did but we got lucky. If we are a manufacturing company, we would have paid for it dearly because a lot of workers would have been sacked just to meet up. In Europe, even private companies are cutting down their workforce in order to survive. So the first priority of any government should be to find ways of becoming self-reliant so that enough money can be generated to ensure that the future generation is not endangered. We should always consider the future generation by ensuring we build a strong economy so that by the time they come, they will have a sustainable life.

When President Yar’adua was ill, there were so many insinuations and publications that said he even died in December 2009 but it was being kept away from the public; how did the family take all these?

This country, Nigeria, is a place where rumours thrive and people like sensationalise. We lack respect for our leaders. Yes, it is a democracy but there is a limit as to how far you can go in criticising your leaders. What I know is that what is important for any citizen of the country is to first criticise constructively and then most importantly to always pray for our leaders because when you go overboard in your criticism and you abuse your leaders, you are endangering yourself because if for any reason God answers your prayers of abusing your leaders, he will take the wrong steps and you will be the one to suffer.

We heard some of those things that were said but we knew they were true; he never died until May 5, 2010. The same thing happened to the current president when his wife was ill.  I think the most important thing is that we should realize we are all human and anyone can fall sick. But when it happens to our leaders, people get interested. Our democracy is growing gradually and if we are able to build a strong system, it will take care of all these.

You will notice that our leaders…when they are sick…people tend to go overboard. The moment they get certain information, they twist it negatively and that is why when such persons are sick, there is a limit to the information they divulge. Like the current First Lady, there were all kinds of things being said. Instead of the nation to pray for her to get well, people wanted to know if she was dead; what ailment she was suffering from. This only shows that we are gradually losing our value system and it is time to do something about it rather than play blame games. We have our own shortcomings (but if we) start positive things, you will discover that things will change.