Group CaptainJoseph Orji (NDA Regular course 11) was appointed the first Military Governor of Gombe State after it was formed in October 1996 from part of Bauchi State during the military regime of General Sani Abacha. He held office until August 1998.
In an interview with select Journalists in his Kaduna residence, Group Captain Orji (rtd), noted that Nigeria’s delay to sort out some diplomatic barriers between countries that have boundaries with Nigeria was responsible for the prolonged fight with the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East of the country. He also spoke on his faith in Buhari to reduce corruption to the bearest minimum.
Excerpts below:
You have been in support of General Muhammadu Buhari's presidential ambition since 2003, he finally made it in 2015, but since then, you have been so quiet, what is happening?
Well, it is true because the press, I know, had always been the domain that we had shared a lot of common interest in Kaduna here, particularly when I was actively involved in politics. I know we had always had a lot of interactions with the media people, so I think you are justified to feel that I have been silent, but not really so. General Buhari, the President of Nigeria, as you know, has been somebody, as you rightly observed, that I have known for several years.
The upbeat of this was when I was the military administrator of Gombe State, and then he was the Chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF). He was extremely instrumental in stabilizing my administration in Gombe throughout my tenure. Why because as you may recall, there was no take-off grant for the six newly created states then. That was an avowed position of the then head of state, the late General Abacha. There were a lot of expectations in Gombe when I took over. With the newly acquired status of the state, expectations were very high from the people to look like others that were already established, not minding whether we had the wherewithal or not. So, I should say that I enjoyed a lot of succour from the chairman of PTF then, Gen. Buhari and now the president of Nigeria because there were lot of projects that were hitherto abandoned by Bauchi State from where Gombe State was created.
Those projects were domiciled in Gombe and environs majorly like the medical centre which had the capacity of 300 beds and being constructed by GCAPA but abandoned for lack of funds and continuous funding by Bauchi State government then. Then we had also the Dadinkowa Dam which was not completed. The dam was then designed to provide irrigation water for farmers all through the year, hydro electric power source and also to provide source of water to Gombe and most of the local government areas.
As I said, these projects were abandoned and when I went with the checklist of my problems including the physical development of Gombe to make it look like a state capital, to the then PTF chairman, General Buhari, I was lucky to get his attention. Through his intervention, the PTF rescued us by doing a lot of projects like township roads in Gombe, provision of boreholes among other things which the new administration under me was unable to do including discussing with the earlier contractors that were involved with Dadinkowa Dam with a view of looking into the indebtedness, reviving and reactivating the dam project which he did. The PTF under General Buhari’s chairmanship also intervened in the medical centre. So, I could beat my chest to say that our relationship dates back very closely to the days of my administration in Gombe State.
On what may have gone down then as a historical visitation mark to the Hills in Minna, for the first time in 25 years for the two leaders, himself and the former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, to meet face to face and talk for about 30 minutes, I had the privilege to be with him. To say that it is easy to also forget all these periods and hard times and to be quite, it cannot be true and possible because time will call upon me to say something about the person that I knew for a long time and give testimonies that I know are rare of him. I rejoice with him that after all the travails, he has finally made it. I still believe that he is a true leader and that so much will be awaiting Nigerians on the positive side having him on board as our president. I am not silent. You know we have to also study the ground and atmosphere because as you well know, Nigerian setting is quite a complex one, therefore, before you leap, you must look. As I said, I am not silent. Perhaps, it is because I had spent a lot of time in the East, otherwise I would have had some round tables with the media as we used to in the past.
But it appears that since he assumed power, the security challenge in the North-East has been on the increase, because on a daily basis, Boko Haram insurgents have continued to bomb and kill. As a former military man, how do you react to this?
First of all, I believe that the period of transition has with it some apparent loopholes. Why I stated apparent is this, since we are not on the steering, you don’t know how the steering feels. A lot must have been happening at the background in terms of planning, in terms of strategizing on how you are to take off, which may be the same but you are expanded from the old way you are inheriting. As a military officer, it is not an easy thing to properly plan a kind of war situation because this is like one going on. The first effort which I see was the departure of what …, call it diplomatic movement to our neighbouring countries that are sharing common borders with us to ensure that those diplomatic barriers that were affecting the success of the campaigns against Boko Haram were sorted out, because as we used to know, if you hit them hard here they will run across the border. If they run across the border to the next country, internationally, you don’t chase the enemy into another country’s border. It is a violation. Those things were there and they were inhibiting the success of the campaigns and war against Boko Haram. So going round to tie up with all these neighbours into the war effects, is a major milestone. At the end of the day, the international perception and opinion over Boko Haram will transcend our local environment because in the past I didn’t think the international community, particularly the United States, saw it in the magnitude that they are seeing now and so they are willing to do a lot of things in support of liquidating Boko Haram. So, I believe those diplomatic shuttles in tying these border countries into the process is part of the serious planning. Of course, you know that there has been establishment of a joint force by the EU to which all the countries within are signatories.
Our President was quoted as making move to dialogue with Boko Haram but the President from the Republic of Chad was quoted as saying categorically that Buhari should not negotiate with Boko Haram. What is your reaction to this?
Before rushing into commenting here, note that this is an independent country. The President of that country has every right to say what he thinks just like our President had stated. While it is not supporting going into dialogue with Boko Haram or not, remember that all wars normally end up with dialogue on the table to discuss, no matter how. You can name a lot of wars like that. The 30-month civil war in Nigeria ended up in dialogue. Isn’t it? So, if a leader through his foresight has not closed that permanently, I don’t think it is a bad statement that he stated look we will prosecute this war and liquidate these insurgents, however, if there is any implication that there is seriousness in that group to dialogue with us for peace, that may be considered. It is a very good statement from a leader that has also had ideas of war. You don’t close any chapter like this. It doesn’t stop them or stop Mr. President from also planning hard militarily and also going with economic empowerment and social reengineering of the entire place to ensure that with a combination of all, we will achieve result. As I was listening to him when he was decorating the Service Chiefs, he gave to them mandate to liquidate and defeat insurgency in three months. So, that statement is not made out of the point of view of a weakling because he knows but he has his stock. For our brother from the Republic of Chad who has made such a statement, he is right but he is not going to be acting in isolation. This thing is almost a consortium kind of. You need to hear also from Niger, Cameroun and others. I still believe that whichever way they want to go, it will be generally accepted.
You believe that the president’s performance in about three months in office is impressive?
Yes, because in my personal view, he is looking at issues and tackling them with focus and dedication. The issue of rushing should be out of it. I don’t believe in rushing into doing this or that without properly assessing and weighing the implications. I believe that for a focused leadership and somebody who has an end, he does not want to go half way to discover that he has rotten apples or he has made steps in wrong directions because he wants to impress people. So, I believe some of these moves like directing the CBN to stop e-commercial banks from accepting foreign currency into domiciliary accounts is a pragmatic step which I have personally seen will help to shore up the value of Naira as the ilicit transactions going on in the foreign exchange activities would be curtailed, there is no doubt. If you look at the rate Naira is faring now against the United States currency is part of the contributory factors to our problem. Quite a few things that are noble that he has started tackling, I believe, are the core issues because what do we do to revamp our economy, what do we do to retrieve money that have been taken away illicitly, what do we do to make sure that the welfare and wellbeing of Nigerians are taken care of, beside the major issue of security threats in the north east.
This anti-corruption war of Buhari is like a persecution drive targeted only at former President Jonathan’s government?
It is my view that I think what we should blame is the circumstances in the sense that he is inheriting a government from Jonathan and the dossiers of quite a number of Nigerians who perhaps served in that government or outside that government. If he was privy to their dossiers and materially as a lot of evidences, of course, you know the renewed relationship with the western world and the United States had helped a lot because where our intelligence network stops, their own extends more than that. And it is also rumoured that quite a number of Nigerians either head to Europe or United States and of late to Asia they see as dump sites for illicit money. These countries have information networks everywhere and they are willing, from what I read, to assist the government under President Muhammadu Buhari to expose these people in their net and also to help to recover the funds that have been illicitly taken out of the country. If that is happening now, I don’t think it is somehow a persecution drive. It will be unfortunate if those in the net belong to a certain group of people who have served in a certain government. You know of these actions usually continuous. Some you may know that may be outliving even the Jonathan’s administration.
So, we should be playing careful. The tendency is that they are trying to create problem for Jonathan and his administration but we should not throw away the main substance. If out of sentiment one says you are pursuing me because of this, because of that sentiment then you leave the main issue which is tracking down those who have taken a lot of money out of this country that is meant for all of us here and for development of the country, then we start going with sentimental aspect of, he is pursuing a set, or he is wish hunting a set of people and all that. In the past, that had always beclouded the leaders from doing the proper thing.
You know we are a people with a lot of sentiments and emotions, and when we whip up sentiments and emotions, then the main thing will not be done. We abandon it. I pray for him that he should outgrow that and do the right thing because since there have been revelations of a lot of money that has been taken away from this country, he will do the right thing by identifying those who did it, bringing the money back and also allowing the people be taken up by the judicial processes at the end of it. So, I don’t personally feel that there is witch-hunting. It is just a circumstance, a coincidence that the people you are taking over from, perhaps, because we have not seen the list, the suspected people who made up that list were from the Jonathan administration.
It may not be so but speculative until we see it and the strength. And even when we see it and the strength, we must also not all beclouded sentimentally and emotionally because we need to survive. My country needs to be good. In a country that has so many endowments like Nigeria, we should not almost be running to zero. From what we are seeing and reading in newspapers, we are almost at ground zero. And practically when the states are unable now to perform their responsibilities, there is problem.
In some countries, solution to corruption is capital punishment. Will you subscribe to that in our country?
I know the country you are looking at is China. Look, our historical antecedents with that of China are not the same. The poverty levels in these two countries are not the same. Again, you should remember that we don’t have a lot of inbuilt socio-safety nets in this country also to encourage people and make sure that they face their jobs or tasks given to them without putting their fingers here and there. I don’t think what the president may be combing for is a total eradication of corruption. I don’t think so. I know, no nation, even the United States and all these western countries can achieve that but to reduce it to the nearest minimum. If it is done that in this country, you and I will be as happy as the people of Kuwait and other countries of the world that are well-to-do. I don’t suggest capital punishment which is death. The democratic tenet provides for democratic treatments of all cases, no matter how bad and we have elaborate establishments that can take care of that. We don’t pray for that because it will be an easy way of allowing critics to say ah! He did worse thing when he was a military head of state and now he wants to kill everybody. No, we don’t go that way. I think he should handle these matters using judicial due process to right the wrong.