That salvo from Hameed Ali

Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service Colonel Hameed Ibrahim Ali [rtd] accelerated the onset of the 2019 political season by launching a Buhari Support Organisation [BSO] in Abuja last Friday. My first appeal to the former Military Administrator and Army provost is that whenever he is about to mount the podium, he should sharpen […]

Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service Colonel Hameed Ibrahim Ali [rtd] accelerated the onset of the 2019 political season by launching a Buhari Support Organisation [BSO] in Abuja last Friday. My first appeal to the former Military Administrator and Army provost is that whenever he is about to mount the podium, he should sharpen his political statements in order not to cause confusion in newsrooms. This often causes painful misquote. Reporters at the event quoted Ali to have said, “Today, with all sense of responsibility, I want to say that we have 50 per cent of PDP in our government.” 

Obviously that cannot be true because there aren’t enough spaces in government to accommodate 1% of APC supporters, much less 50% of PDP members. Some editors therefore discerned that what Ali meant is that 50% of Buhari’s government is made up of PDP members. Even that claim needs further clarification. If “government” means the entire public service then that is possible, especially since PDP was in power at the federal level for 16 years and planted its supporters throughout the service. Buhari cannot uproot that legacy in two years. If however “Buhari’s government” means the personal staff, ministers, advisers, agency heads, service chiefs, ambassadors, board chairmen and members that he has so far appointed, then I cannot know better than Hameed Ali.

Launching a political support group for the president should ideally be a forum to showcase his achievements but the chief sponsor took a different tack. Ali said, “We have won one battle by taking over power. But what we make of this power is very essential to us and to humanity. We must agree that we cannot finish our four years without delivering and leaving something to be remembered for in this country for a long time to come.” In other words, the government may not have things to remember more than half way into its term.

Ali lamented that those who fought for the installation of the government are yet to be fully appreciated. This sounds familiar. It was exactly what First Lady Mrs Aisha Buhari said in her infamous BBC interview last year, which her husband publicly responded to in Germany with an even more infamous quote. The media advisers should therefore rush and urge the president not to respond to this charge by his former chief of staff, at least not publicly. The only difference between Mrs Buhari’s stance and Ali’s is that while Madam promised not to campaign for the president again, Ali decided instead to redouble efforts for him.

Colonel Ali’s seeming rebellion from within reminded many watchers of the salvo that Women Affairs Minister Mrs Aisha Alhassan fired weeks ago. Ali’s statement is the opposite of Mama Taraba’s but both of them crossed some political red lines. Mrs Alhassan did not say that Buhari’s government has derailed or that it was hijacked by anyone. She only said she will support someone else in 2019 whether or not Buhari is running. It was journalists’ fault that they did not ask her to say exactly why she made her 2019 choice well in advance.  

Many things can be said about Ali’s outburst. Ideally, the head of Customs should not be involved in political talk of this nature. Even if they are political appointees, holders of sensitive offices such as National Security Adviser, Director General of Department of State Security, Chairman of EFCC etc should not be directly involved in partisan politics because it will complicate their security duties. For another, the fact that Colonel Ali is sponsoring this pro-Buhari group will encourage, if not compel other top officials to also launch their own Buhari support groups. Such “support groups,” which were many in PDP days, seek to upstage the party and do its work of mobilisation and agenda setting. APC leaders should put ego aside and ask their PDP colleagues whether such groups helped or hampered Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.

There is also a problem with early start of campaigning. It is in an incumbent’s strategic interest to delay the onset of the campaign season for as long as possible since he is already on the saddle. A short campaign season is advantageous to an incumbent because he usually has more resources at his disposal and it also gives less time for opponents to politicise every issue, distract the ruler and steadily chip away at the incumbent’s standing with voters. 

Colonel Ali blamed the infusion of PDP members for what he said is the Buhari government’s inability to move forward and achieve its targets. He said, “How can we move forward with this load? How can we achieve our target with this load? Today, we have members of the PDP calling the shots. That is what we will begin to fight for. We will fight for our right position, our vision and our mission for this government.” The next time reporters see Ali at any function, they should ask him to name the PDP men who are calling the shots in Buhari’s government. The hint is too titillating to gloss over. 

Ali added, “We must do so because we want to save our name and the name of the president for what he is doing. Our president is on course and all we need is to ensure that we support him… The APC government has derailed halfway into the journey through the gradual loss of its core values, vision and mission.” This is a very stinging indictment from an insider. If a government has lost its core values, its vision and its mission, however gradually, then what is it still doing in power?

Ali also said, “We have no problem with our President because he is on course. But I must confess here that we have been infused by people who were not part of this journey and these people are the ones that call the shots today.” I am not sure that this attempt to separate the big boss from the stinging indictment of his government is very successful. How can the president be on course while the government he is heading has derailed? Let us make a simple analogy. If a senior official of the Nigeria Customs Service publicly states that NCS has derailed from its mandate because smugglers make up fifty percent of its men but he has no problem with the CG who is on course, will Ali describe him as a loyal officer?  

The CG also said, “It is my belief that those of us who have been in the trenches all these years to get good governance will surely be sleeping with belly ache every day, especially in the recent past. Every day when you wake up, there is a story that makes you cringe. We cannot sit back and allow things to happen the way they are happening.” I am surprised to hear that there are newspaper stories that make Colonel Ali to cringe and belly ache. Throughout his career as a public servant, he did not give us that impression. His entire speech last Friday was one that will make top administration officials to cringe. His confrontation with Senate earlier this year over the wearing of Customs’ uniform caused many belly aches throughout the government. However, the biggest cringes and belly aches were caused by his proposal to erect check points and demand Customs duty from vehicles that have been plying the road for many years. Millions of motorists had belly-ache when they heard that. Now we know that some things also give Colonel Hameed Ali belly-ache.