Nigerians went to
the streets to celebrate the victory of the incumbent President Muhammadu
Buhari at the polls early in the year, and about six months down the line, many
people still feel that the government of the man we now regard as PMB is still
on the right path.
For the Special
Adviser (Media) to PMB, Mr. Femi Adeshina, Nigerians would enjoy best moments
under the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government of which President
Buhari is on the driver's seat.
He strongly believes
that President Buhari is sincere in his determination to put things right in
the country within four years. In this interview he granted a monthly
publication, 'The Interview, ' Femi speaks on several issues that would
definitely make your day.
Recent
figures from the national bureau of statistics indicate that the economy has
contracted from 6.5% in the first quarter to 2.4% now. What is going on?
There is a problem
with figures. I am not saying they are fabricated. At times. figures are not
reality. Sometimes, they can also be a work in progress. Figures at any given
time should not be alarming. Because if it is work in progress, it can read
something today and in another three months, it will change and read something
else. Do not also forget. particularly under the last administration. we had a
lot of figures that told us of how the economy was. We even had the rebasing
but did that touch the ordinary man? What I am suggesting is that we should not
be bothered by the figures but to believe in the person steering ship and
believe that he will steer it to a safe harbour.
The
economy does not seem to matter so far to this government. That is the
impression everybody is getting. There appears to be only one voice on the
economy and that is the voice of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN), why is that?
An economic team has
not been put in place. Soon, that will emerge. But do not also forget that the
Vice President is the Head of the Economic Council. So you can't say it is only
the CB governor that we have as the economic voice. Don't also forget that when
the first Buhari administration (a military one) came in December 1983, things
were that bad. But before he left involuntarily 20 months later, things were a
lot better.
In
response to criticisms regarding how he chose his personal staff, the president
inferred he did so partly to reward their loyalty. Some have read this to mean
that he is running a government of cronyism. Do you agree?
Rewarding loyalty is
not the same thing as cronyism.
Cronyism is relating
with only those who salute you; those who say you are the next thing to God.
But rewarding loyalty is different. If somebody has been loyal to you, loyalty
begets loyalty. If there are opportunities to reward that person, you do. Like
they say; one good turn deserves another. That is rewarding loyalty. Cronyism
is pandering to all sorts of praises, adulation, praise-singing and all that.
When they tell you that you are the best thing that has ever happened to
Nigeria; that after God you are the next person. In fact, that you and God are
on the same pedestal! That is not what is happening there.
In terms of personal
staff, you start from the known to the unknown. When US President, Barack Obama
first emerged as president, who constituted his personal staff? Mostly, his
school mates and the personal aides he had before he became President because
those were the ones he knew. The same thing with the president's staff. He has
to appoint people he knows and can trust.
The
Senate President, Bukola Saraki, recently said some powerful people outside the
senate were after him. He's the third most powerful man in the country. Was he
referring to the Vice President or the President, who are considered the first
two most powerful personalities in the country?
He would be the one
to answer that question because he was the one who said it. I wouldn't know
what was on his mind when he said it. And power is not about the number of the
position. There are people in society who do not come within the Precedential
List but are very powerful.
Are
you suggesting there might be godfathers who are above government officials?
You know there is no
godfather. You know the president you have. How can there be a godfather? But I
can say confidently that neither the president nor the vice president has
anything to do with whatever are the travails of the Senate President.
What
really happened last June 9 when the National Assembly elected its principal
officers? While the statement you issued then said the President did not know
anything about the meeting, which held at the International Conference Centre
(ICC), your deputy's statement said he knew. Was the president aware? Did he
authorize the meeting?
Let me tell you what
happened with that meeting. The president came in from Germany that very
morning. There was a meeting called by the party leadership so that they could
iron out the party's position on who would be Senate President and Speaker of
the House of Representatives. Now, the president still lived at Defence House
then. The meeting was scheduled for, I think 9:30a.m. Asa party man, he was in
the picture. He was invited. Remember he just came into the country so he
couldn't have called the meeting. The party hierarchy called the meeting.
Naturally, when a meeting is holding, you wouldn't expect the president to be
there before a quorum is formed. They will form a quorum and then signal for
him to come. He was in the house waiting for a signal to come and then suddenly
he saw on television that the election was already holding. One thing I want to
add is that Nigerians have been lied to so much they find it hard to accept the
truth. What I said and what Garba Shehu said were not radically different. It
is just the choice of words.
The
opposition has described the government's anticorruption campaign as a
witch-hunt, citing the investigation of ministers in the previous government.
What Do you think?
If the opposition
had been applauding the anti-corruption battle, begin to suspect that something
is wrong. Anyone that has no skeleton in his cupboard has nothing to fear.
Those that have skeletons in their cupboard have every reason to fear.
There
are allegations of corruption hanging over the heads of some All Progressives
Congress (APC) members. Yet the government appears to be ignoring the
allegations?
Where is the charge?
You don't just slap someone with a label of "corrupt" when there is
no charge against him or her. We live in a decent society, where the Rule of
Law reigns supreme. They say English law is primarily the law of evidence;
bring the evidence of the corruption. Let there be a charge. With no charges
filed against a person, it will not be fair to call such a person corrupt.
Some
APC members have actually been charged to court by the Economic And Financial
Crimes Commission (EFCC). One of them even recently won the APC governorship
ticket for Kogi State. Is the ruling party or government oblivious of all this?
Have they been given
appointments? That is democracy. It is his democratic right to run. Nothing
precludes him from running. If party members have elected him, it is his
democratic right. Is it government that has done anything with Abubakar Audu?
He went through the party process and he won. You would be abridging his
democratic rights by shutting him out of the race, since no court order or judgment
precludes him from running.
It
is estimated that close to 1800 people have been killed by Boko Haram since
Buhari came to power. Yet the government has vowed to defeat the insurgents by
December. Only recently, insurgents attacked Abuja with multiple blasts. The
first in months. Is this a battle government is winning?
1800 people
reportedly killed since he became President? Did you know that over 20,000
people had been killed before he became president?
Is
that your defence?
No. What I am
telling you is that if you want to base the insurgency on those figures, you
are not being fair to the president. More than 20,000 people were killed during
the previous administration.
People
in the North East, particularly those from Maiduguri have lost someone to Boko
Haram attacks or, at the very least know someone who has been killed in the
insurgency. That is why they wanted Jonathan voted out. Has this government
proven to be a viable replacement in this regard?
Your reading of the
polity is faulty. If your reading is correct, you will see the President is
doing everything to end the insurgency. If people are dying, does it mean the
President is not doing anything about it? Does it mean the insurgents are
winning? The President is winning. By all standards, he is winning. Before he
came, Boko Haram was seizing territory and planting their flags. Since he came,
they have not seized a single territory. Before he came, Boko Haram was in
pitched battle with the military; face-to-face combat. That has stopped. What
they are doing now is the one they call asymmetric war, bombing soft targets.
They have been virtually degraded and almost decapitated in terms of physical
combat. Can they face the military like they used to do? Under the previous
administration like we heard, some soldiers would even flee the battlefront.
Even the territories they had held during the previous administration have been
liberated from them. And then you want to say the war is not being won. Then
you need to redefine what winning a war is. I am not a security person but the
military have said they stand by the December deadline given by the president
and that they will rout the insurgents by then.
Does
this government know those funding Boko Haram?
Check the statement
the president personally issued and signed on Saturday. He said he would go
after the sponsors of this Boko Haram monstrosity. I do not know them. I am not
a security man. But the president is the Commander-in-Chief He has access to
information that you and I do not have. But knowing the nature of this
administration and the will of this president, if he knows them, whoever they
are, they will answer for it.
The
president and his deputy have declared their assets publicly. Will the
president insist on the same for his ministers?
It depends on what
the law says. What does the law say? We stand by the law. The law does not say
ministers must declare their assets publicly. The president and vice president
doing it were just instances of moral persuasion. They were persuaded to do it
by their sense of moral fairness and the strength of moral suasion. It is not
law. The president just went the extra mile by declaring his assets publicly.
The
public has a right to know about their public officials. It is even enshrined In
the Freedom of Information Act. Why would public officials make access to such
records difficult?
The president has
even challenged the media on it. He said he has always declared his assets
since 1975. Four times he has declared his assets. Now you have the Freedom of
Information Act. Why don't you invoke that law and find out what he has
declared since 1975? When the ministers declare their assets and report to the
Code of Conduct Bureau, individuals and members of the press should invoke the
law and go and ask the Bureau what each minister declared.
There
have been concerns that the CBN's policy of defending the naira will only
increase the gap between the official and black market rates, especially since
oil revenues are unlikely to go up in the near future. How long will the CBN
continue? Do you think the hands of the CBN governor are tied because President
Buhari appears to have the impression that currency devaluation is bad economic
management?
Defending the naira
is good economic policy. When this government came, the naira exchange rate to
the dollar was in the 265/270 range. Today it is around 220. Defending the
naira, is it working? Yes. And it will get better. The CB governor; has he been
forced to do that? Did he complain? The CBN governor himself came out to say
there will be no further devaluation of the naira.
A
number of international financial and ratings agencies have been critical of
the alleged lack of transparency and interventions in the currency trading
market. Is the president influencing the CBN to intervene?
If they work
together, which they do, one person will influence the other. That is the
meaning of teamwork. It is either the governor will be the one to influence the
president or the other way round.
Let
me come to the bailout. Constitutionally, money that does not appear in the
budget is illegally spent. This caused a lot of friction between the previous
CBN Governor and the national assembly. With this bailout to the states, where
did the CBN Governor and the President gets the powers to spend the money used
in the bailout?
I will say two things.
What has happened is not a bailout. It is a welfare package. In that welfare
package, there are three components. One was the NLNG accrual $2.1bn that came.
It was shared between the states and the federal government according to
laid-down procedures. That is one component. Two, the CBN opened a window of between
N250 billion and 300 billion for states to draw from, so they could meet some
of their immediate needs. The third one was, their debts were rescheduled for
the next 20 or 30 years, so that if their allocations came in today, instead of
paying debts immediately and they have nothing else to run their states, those
have been rescheduled re-payment over 30 years. Those are the three components
of that welfare package. To call it a bailout would be wrong. It is he media
that calls it a bailout, which is a wrong term.
What
does the government plan to do with the report of the National Conference?
It has not been
discussed. If it had been discussed and I was privy to the discussion, I would
tell you. If the President had told me anything about it, I would tell you. He
has not mentioned it.
Right
from the very beginning, the APC had been against the conference. But the
report is already there. Where does it
stand now?
Lai Mohammed has
been appointed as a minister but he is still APC spokesman till a successor is
announced. So, you ask him.
In
some states like Kogi, some members of the public have asked the Federal
Government not to release the salary bailout funds until after the election. Is
there a way to monitor and ensure states use the funds to pay salaries?
No, in a true
federalism, the centre does not begin to monitor the states. When the latter
get any money, it is their responsibility to use it. In one breath, we like
true federalism, in another breathe, we want the federal government to begin to
supervise the states.
Based
on your answer, I want to take you back to the President's inaugural speech.
Even though he admitted he is somewhat constrained by the constitution, he did
say he will do what he could to monitor how resources are managed, even at the
state level. Isn't that enough justification?
No. The president
will do whatever the constitution allows him to do. When he said "even at
the state level", he was talking about the relationship between the states
I and the local government.
The
president and former president Olusegun Obasanjo seem to enjoy a special
relationship. Obasanjo has visited the presidentially villa at least three or
four times since Buhari took over in May more than any other former president.
Some say he's lobbying for his candidates to become ministers. Is there
something the public should know about obasanjo's frequent visits?
You should know that
the two of them were in the military. And you have espirit de corps in the
military. Obasanjo was the senior, Buhari was the junior. In the military, a
junior will always respect the senior. Buhari will always respect Obasanjo.
Don't forget that Obasanjo supported Buhari during the election. He even
campaigned for him in the market in Abeokuta. It is part of loyalty too.
How
did you receive the message inviting you to join this government?
I will go back in
time a little bit. I had always been a Buhari person. When he was a military
head of state, I was a third year student in the university. The day he was
overthrown, I think I was then in the final year. It was one of the worst days
in my life because I knew that Nigeria had just made a mistake. I believed he
was leading the country in the right direction. It just needed patience and
Nigeria would have never been the same. So, when he was overthrown, I was quite
sad. When he came into partisan politics in 2002, by then I was editor of a
national newspaper. I used to write a column; I began to write, pointing
Nigerians in his direction, that this man can make a big difference in our
country. I believe after some time, he began to read me and, curiously, one day
he just phoned me. He phoned me to say he read my article; he said 'thank you
for your support' and all that. In 2003, I supported him. In 2007, I supported
him and in 2011, I supported him. Before 2015, when the debate came on whether
he should run or not came up, I weighed in and said you can run; he can change
his mind if he wanted to. That was my position.
He did change his
mind, he ran and he won. All through the campaign, I supported him In my
column. The first inkling I had was from Thisday Newspaper, which published
that I might be appointed. I remember the day, it was precisely May 20; the
report said I was going to be named Special Adviser for Media and Publicity. I
didn't know anything about it until that report came. But since I had not been
contacted officially, I kept my cool. Then on May 31, it was a Sunday, about
5pm, and someone called me. He said; 'you have been pencilled down for this
position; will you take it because we want to announce tonight.' Because
Thisday had given me some notice, I also had been able to consider if I would I
take it or not. It was a very difficult decision for me to make. I was Managing
Director/Editor-in-Chief of Sun Newspaper. I was president of the Nigerian
Guild of Editors. I just enjoyed what I was doing. And going to serve in
government was just not on the radar for me at all. I had never believed in
serving in a government. I didn't want to serve in government. If you still ask
me, if it were not for the president, I didn't want to serve in government. But
when it was him and that call came asking, "we are announcing tonight,
should we go ahead?" I said "go ahead". That was how it was
announced on May 31 on the network news. The next day, I came to Ahuja to meet
the President and I accepted the offer.
Did
you know he was going to win?
I was an optimist.
In 2011, I canvassed for a coalition. I wrote then that if we were going to get
rid of the PDP in Nigeria, there must be a coalition. So, in 2011, I wrote and
argued for that coalition and we know that the coalition almost worked. ACN and
CPC almost had one but it didn't work until they went to the election. When APC
came, I knew it was a strong possibility that he could win and he won. Moreso,
Nigerians had become dissatisfied. And because he contested on a stronger
platform, he was favoured to win.
Your
predecessor, Dr. Reuben Abati, wrote a piece after he left office, saying his
phone had stopped ringing. Do you think you might suffer the same fate after
office?
No, I will not. I
have been asked this question on television before, I quoted a scripture. That
scripture will quote again. The bible says when some people say there is a
casting down; other people will say it is a lifting up. So what some other
people went through and they were cast down, other people will go through it
and they will be lifted up. I will be lifted up.
How
has your former position as Managing Director of a major media house and
president of the Guild of Editors helped you in your new job?
Tremendously, I
would say. Because I had contacts, I had good will, which I still use on this
job. I spent 29 years in active media practice. Over that period, I have built
a network. I have friends and colleagues. Anybody that is somebody in the media
now, I would know somehow, particularly at the top echelon. Now that I hold this
position, they will also say he is our man.
You
admired the president from afar, but never worked up close with him. What major
surprises have you noticed seeing him and working with him daily?
Well, what I have
seen in him now is that he is a temperate person. The Buhari of1983 is
different from the Buhari of 2015. Now he is all about maturity. He told a
story one day when the Peace Committee came to meet him and they were appealing
that he should follow due process in the anti-corruption war. The Sultan of
Sokoto was there. The president told the story about a German sentry. He said,
in the military they used to have a joke that was known by everyone. He said
the Sultan would remember the joke because the Sultan is a soldier. He said
when a sentry is on duty in the evening and the sentry hears some noise, he
carries his gun and says, "who goes there'? Advance to be
recognized". When that person comes forward and identifies himself and the
sentry is satisfied, he tells him to pass. But with the German sentry, the joke
they used to have is when the German sentry hears some noise, he fires and
immediately after he fires, he says, "who went there?" He knows he
has killed the person.
When he first came
as a military leader, he was like that German sentry. He packed everybody,
politicians and locked them up. And then he began to look for evidence to try
them. He said this time he will not do that. Anybody that has stolen the
country's money will tried, but they will not be arrested until evidence has
been secured.
Everybody will have
his day in court. But the evidence will be solid before they are arrested. That
shows you the difference between Buhari of 1983 and Buhari of now. Remember the
day he was inaugurated, some Jonathan ministers wanted to travel and some
people were stopping them at the airport. He said "no, let them go".
Because he knows the world is like a village. There is nowhere they will hide.
If it was the 1983 Buhari, he would pack them and lock them up immediately.
There is a lot of difference between the two Buharis. But there are some things
that are still the same, like discipline, integrity and accountability.
I remember one day,
we were at a meeting and some people opened another meeting within that
meeting. They were distracting that meeting. He kept quiet and told them,
"when you finish your meeting, let me know". And immediately, they
kept quiet. He is a very disciplined man When you give him an appointment, he
is always on time. You had better be ready for him when you give him time. That
is the time he will come.
The
president is 72. Do you think he'll have a go at a second term?
It will be his
democratic right and it will be his decision. Nothing like that has come up but
if he wants it, it will be his democratic right. The president of Senegal left
office at 84. Mugabe is still there at 91 Tunisia elected an 88-year-old man
last year. Mandela was there till eighty something.
You
were Buhari's first appointee. Does that come with any special privileges?
No exactly. But
Senator Hadi Sirika calls me the most senior. What he means is the most senior
adviser to the president. It is because others are coming in four months after.
I have been there for four months. It does not confer any special privileges,
but it feels good that he considered me for an appointment at the time he
appointed me.
Given
what appears to be coming out about the Jonathan administration, are you
surprised that he lost the election?
I am not. I had
always wanted him to lose. Three or four weeks ago, I was talking with a
staunch Jonathan supporter. He told me that it was good that Jonathan lost the
election. He said the truth is that if Jonathan had won the election, at a
point, Nigeria would have shut down. It is good for our country.
Looking
at the press from the "outside," do you feel sorry for the previous
occupants of your office - or you feel that editors are not sufficiently
demanding?
Nigerian editors are
perhaps the most vibrant set of professionals we have in this country. They are
alive to their duties and responsibilities. The Nigerian press is very vibrant.
I do not believe there are any sets of shortcomings in this area. On the
previous occupant of this office, the eras differ. What obtained in the last
administration may not be what is obtaining now? The atmosphere in which they
operated is different from the one in which I am operating. You will find that
when Jonathan was there, for instance. he initially had about 80 per cent
support or goodwill. By the time he left, he had frittered it to perhaps 20 per
cent. That means at the beginning of that assignment, Reuben Abati had an
easier work than he had towards the end. Now, this is a government that has a
70-80 per cent approval rating. If that approval rating continues to go up, my job
is easier.
President
Buhari appears to have greater confidence speaking with foreign journalists.
Why is this so?
It is so easy for
media people to agree that the world is now a global village. But when it comes
to where the president says something, they say he has gone to say it abroad.
The simple explanation is that when he is travelling we have what we call a
trip-planning meeting. In that trip-planning meeting, we usually reserve a
minimum of one hour for engagement with foreign media. Every trip, before he
goes. he knows that session will be there. So that is why it seems he speaks
more abroad than he does here. When he is here, he's so busy very busy but I am
sure we will get to a point where we can engage the local media.
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