* Says they’re political dwarfs
As the organisers get set for the epoch presidential debate
today, Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against
Corruption, Prof Itse Sagay, has given reasons why President
Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate
will not participate in the debate.
Speaking
with VINCENT
KALU, the erudite Law Professor, said,
the president is far ahead of all other candidates, he described as
‘political dwarfs’, and as such, appearing with them in a debate is
just to give relevance to people who have no hope. Sagay’s position
on the debate was confirmed from multiple sources in the
presidency, who told Saturday Sun that President
Buhari won’t participate in today’s debate because he had attended
one on Wednesday along with his deputy, Vice President Yemi
Osibajo, tagged ‘The Candidates’ anchored by Kadaria Ahmed and
wouldn’t want to give his opponents the platform to embarrass
him.
In this interview, Sagay also said
that Aisha Buhari enjoys his sympathy in her fight to cut down the
influence of the cabal in the presidency.
Barely four weeks to the
election, how do you see the atmosphere?
I welcome the calmness; four years
ago, the frenzy was all over the place, over heating the polity.
There was too much activity. I remember few days to the election
that Jonathan was all over the West carrying money from one person
to the other.
There were all sorts of things; of
course before the election, there was attempt to disqualify Buhari
before he could even start campaigning.
Luckily, we don’t have that now;
there is quietness as people are campaigning with their posters,
and going from home to home.
We have campaign rallies, not as we
had before. I welcome it because it introduces some calmness in
society. That is one aspect, but the other aspect, which has
retained rather unfortunately is diversionary things instead of
going to the issues, like when former Chief of Defence Staff, Badeh
was killed, the opposition queried President Buhari’s absence at
his funeral. Some thing was decided recently and the PDP decided to
go to the European Union. I think we are too matured now for this
type of thing; why should the European Union be our arbiter. There
are still some evidence of childishness and immaturity particularly
coming from the PDP, which should not be, otherwise, I prefer the
present atmosphere, it is cooler, and it is calmer.
What could be the reason for
this?
I suspect the Central Bank of
Nigeria and the Economic and Financial and Crimes Commission (EFCC)
have restricted the availability of money, very seriously on this
occasion. You can’t bring in money; you can’t withdraw money unless
you explain precisely what you need it for.
So, there is money restriction. The
Bureau de change has also been warned about changing money for
people. So, people are being careful as nobody wants to be arrested
and charged for breaching financial regulations.
That constraint has limited the
capacity of our people to be boisterous, noisy and behave in a way
that can create anarchy and upheaval.
Boko Haram is waxing stronger,
then there is the banditry going on in Zamfara; the other day,
Katsina governor cried out that the bandits were in his state and
El- Rufai also raised the alarm that it is spilling over to Kaduna.
Don’t you think that this may imperil the general
elections?
It may have a limited effect, but
not serious, because elections took place in 2015 when Boko Haram
was holding sway. I think there is a way the INEC wanted to manage
it.
In this country, we suspect each
other so much; they wanted to have some special centres for the
IDPs , but all the other parties said over their dead bodies, so
that has to be scraped. We will go on and do the best we can in
this situation. Yes, there are limitations, but we can still manage
to hold elections.
You mentioned that in 2015, Boko
Haram was all over the places in Borno State, it hoisted its flags,
but elections were held. Who then did the voting, who were the
brave INEC officials to go to those council areas to conduct
elections, and the PDP said the figures that came out from those
places for Buhari were mindboggling?
No, it wasn’t mindboggling. I can
still remember, but I can’t give the exact figure. I downloaded it
and I kept it somewhere. It was relatively small, well below a
million. It was relatively small given the size of Borno. It was
low; the security situation affected it.
Lets come back to the campaigns,
are you satisfied with the way the campaigns are
going?
On the part of the opposition,
particularly the PDP, there is not enough concentration on issues.
When you want to attack, attack on issues so that the other person
has to respond by defending himself.
If you make accusation of, ‘oh, he
is going to rig’ that has been said over 20 times; every day, ‘oh,
they have perfected plans on how to rig.’ I don’t think that helps
because there is nothing to discuss; it renders the whole campaign
poorer in quality; in terms of ideas and thoughts. We should go on
issues; take on the government on issues, force them to defend
themselves that is what they should do.
Coming close to this is the issue
of presidential debates, which almost all the presidential
aspirants are eager to feature, but the feelers we are getting is
that Buhari is not going to participate. What is your view on
this?
One really has to look at this thing
from the point of what favours you. From the little information I
have, opinion polls and so, Buhari appears to be far ahead from the
other credible party’s candidate, that is, Alhaji Atiku. Buhari is
far ahead, and when you have that, you then calculate, if I take
part in the debate, I don’t have anything to gain but they may have
something to gain, so, I’m not going to give them that advantage.
It is a calculation anybody can make. This is not the first time,
Goodluck Jonathan did it, Obasanjo did it, and Yar’Adua did
it.
If you are far ahead, you may just
say what do I stand to gain by going to debate and give them an
opportunity of talking to me shoulder to shoulder as if we are
equal when I’m far ahead. So, I will not go.
It then means that there are many
opinion polls, the two I have seen say that Atiku is far ahead of
Buhari?
Well, just for weeks away. At nine
months, the secret between a man and a woman will come out; we are
going to see it. It can never happen, it is going to be a
landslide.
Is the presidential debate not an
open cheque to market yourself and tell Nigerians your plans for
them?
The president has been telling
Nigerians things they need to know, it doesn’t have to be on that
debate alone. That is what the campaign is all about, there are
releases on televisions, and so many things are going on. I have
seen a lot of information, so the debate is not a crucial platform
for giving information out. It is more an opportunity to give
everybody an attempt to be shoulder to shoulder with each other.
The person who is leading doesn’t want to give them that
opportunity.
Unfortunately, there is no law that
is binding about participating in a debate. It is ideal for
everybody to appear for the debate, but if you have nothing to lose
by not debating, you may decide not to do so. It is a calculation.
We cannot blame any candidate who, like someone who is playing
chess, knows that my best move is to ignore the debate and carry on
and let them debate among themselves.
Won’t it be interpreted that he
doesn’t know what to say?
Obviously, he knows what to say. He
is the head of government, even if he is not initiating everything
that the government is doing, he is approving them; he is reading,
he is signing. That can’t be true.
You know many of these people,
particularly the motivational speakers, that is their life; they
have nothing else doing. It doesn’t even make sense for somebody
who is deeply involved in government about development and
improving the lots of his people to say that you are going to
compete with people like that. All that they are going to do is to
ramble on and on before you know what is happening.
He knows what to say. It is not in
his interest to go and debate with those people. Let us be
practical and sensible about a situation. You go on areas, which
you have your strength and concentrate on that. He has nothing to
gain by debate. If he goes to debate, he is just going to help
people who have no hope, and I call them, Buhari and the political
dwarfs; he is only going to give relevance to the political dwarfs;
he is already far ahead of all of them. He doesn’t want to go there
and make them taller than they are; so, let them remain like that –
political dwarfs. In four weeks time, we will know them.
Some people are expressing the
fears that Buhari may not agree to handover if he
loses?
There is no problem there at all.
Buhari is just there to serve; he is making a great sacrifice,
working day and night for the people of this country.
If in our own consideration and we
are not happy, and we want to change and we vote for any other
persons who wins, Buhari will gladly go. He would do what Jonathan
did, congratulate the person and he would quietly go back to Kaduna
and Katsina. I assure you about that, there will be no resistance
if that happens.
However, I know from the facts I
have seen that it is the most unlikely thing; be rest assured, if
he loses, he will handover, congratulate the man and happily
retire.
The problem may not be with
Buhari, but the cabal, which his wife, Aisha has cried out, is
hindering the president from working?
Well, the wife has made some
statements to the effect of the existence of a cabal. I have been
critical of some of these people close to him because they are not
progressive enough as the president himself.
Even though Oshiomhole has done so
many things that I’m critical of, but he is an enlightened man, and
he would say, yes, and congratulate his counterpart in the other
party and let them take over.
Of course, think of Vice President
Osinbajo, a fine gentleman, a cultured person, he will not allow
that.
But these people you are
mentioning are not among the cabals?
Yes, they are not part of the
cabals; they are very fine people. We are all critical of those
people (cabal); they are not progressive people, and they do not
belong to the level of enlightenment that Buhari is in, and to the
level of enlightenment and progressive thinking that most of us who
support him are in.
It is true, one or two of them don’t
deserve to be there, and their impact has not been
helpful.
I agree with Mrs. Buhari in that
regard.
We have the names of the cabals, but
of course I can’t say that; we all know the names, they are
reoccurring decimal, two, three people being mentioned
regularly.
Why is Buhari allowing some
people to drag him behind?
It is a difficult
question.
Like I said, I agree entirely with
the wife of the president in that regard; I just hope that she will
prevail in her insistence that the influence of such people be cut
down.
Nigerians are crying over the
hardship in the land. Why?
The truth is that the government is
trying, when they came in there was no money; to even start a
government, there was hardly anything, it resorted to borrowing,
that is why there is a lot of debts, borrowing to finance budget.
Because of the concern they have over the plight of the vulnerable
Nigerians, they introduced a lot of projects.
There is this Conditional Transfer
Programme, under which poorest families are getting N5, 000 a month
all over the country. We have another project for people whose
business is very small; they are given between N100, 000 and N500,
000 automatic loans without interest, just pay back, that is all.
We have young people who are out of jobs; over 500,000 of them are
being paid monthly to learn skills.
The government is really trying,
things are difficult, we have to be patient and give time for
things to turn around. Over a trillion Naira has been recovered
from looters, and the subsidy scam has stopped. These people who
pretended that they were supplying fuel were making a lot of money,
and stole almost N400 billion Naira a year, whereas they never
brought anything into Nigeria, but had all the paper works done.
All that has stopped. There is a lot of improvement, I agree with
you, but it is going to take time to trickle down to improve the
standard of living of everybody, but there is hard work going
on.
We have about N1.3 trillion or
more in the budget for fuel subsidy; this can build a refinery in
15 months, why are we still talking about subsidy on
petrol?
You are theoretically right, in
practice, it is not possible for a government in Nigeria to remove
fuel subsidy. Our prayer is that Dangote’s refinery and other
refineries will come on stream and we will stop importing
fuel.
Importation is the reason for the
high cost. For a government to say that it is removing subsidy, it
can’t survive.
Diesel subsidy has been removed, but
no government will remove subsidy of petrol and survive. Subsidy is
like social welfare grant from government to the ordinary person in
this country.
No government can remove it, we have
to bear until those refineries come on board, especially Dangote,
then we can stop importing petrol and the price will go down as low
as N45, N30 a litre. It will happen, at least in the next one
year.
Culled from Sun
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