Former Education/Petroleum Minister, Professor Jubril Aminu spoke to selected journalists in Abuja recently on sundry issues including Boko Haram and the proposal to withdraw petroleum subsidy. Leon Usigbe brings the excerpts.On security challenges I will say that countries do have security problems. Look at some of the places that you feel are the most secured, look at what happened in Britain, Norway and places like France. These things do happen. If there are security challenges, then there will be security apparatus. In other words, security apparatus exist because it is envisaged that there would be security challenges.What becomes most disturbing is if the security challenges become too many and they come to take over the worry and the concerns of the country and also when it does not look like we are on top of it. Even if you are fighting a war, you have hopethat one day you will win and you know where you are going.But what is disturbing now in this country is that the security situation is very uncertain, in my view, and you do not know what will happen next.And I, for one, have not seen the strategy put in place for containing the security challenges. You see a lot of wild fire approach to it; a lot of security personnel on the road and everywhere and you see what looks like emergency reaction to a developing situation. To me, that is not containing the issue. That is what is worrying me. Where are we going' What is going to happen next' Whenever we get a small matter, we forget everythingelse and we concentrate on that one like this issue of Boko Haram.We have got a lot of security challenges and we know the problem of insecurity on the roads. Anybody who has travelled knows the problem of kidnapping, robbery and these are all major security problems. Even during the civil war, there was more security than we have now. These things are all over the country and the only thing I can see is that the law enforcementagencies are just trying to catch up with them. It does not look to me that they have a strategy for dealing with the situation.I am not blaming the security agencies or government or whatever, but inthe final analysis, the responsibility is their own. The responsibility is with each one of us, all of us. But if things remain as they are, what will Nigeria be like in the next five years' Will you feel comfortable in your house like you are sitting now' Is that the kind of world we want to leave for our children' Things were not like this before.Boko HaramThen of course the situation of people they call Boko Haram; I think everybody is aggrieved now. There was a very serious mistake in handling them in the first time. This business of killing by security agents, I was reading a paper yesterday, avery senior military officer said that they handed over the leader of the Boko Haram, Yusuf, healthy to the Police.Shortly after, he was dead. I know there was a mistake. They have almost acknowledged their mistake. Even former President Obasanjo visited their family, even though the results were not very pleasing; it is an acknowledgement that this thing could have been handled differently and I hope we have learnt a lesson from there. It was the same thing with the Niger Delta until the late President Umaru Yar'Adua came. We have to learn to talk with people because the citizens are not just trash; they are not just rubbish. They are human beings, they have their views; they have their brains. I think the law enforcement agencies must learn to deal respectfully with our citizens. When you see them on the road, they are always frightening people. Our people are not disorderly; why should they be frightened, threatening them with the guns' What for' I am not saying that they are responsible for the crises, but I am I am saying that if we are going to solve the problem, we must find a way to ensure that we do it very well.We have to educate them. It is wrong to see everybody and brand them as undisciplined, rogue, evil, etc, that must be handled with iron fist. We must begin by looking at that aspect.Love for the countrySecondly, there is no alternative to getting the citizens to participate in maintaining security and law enforcement. But the citizens can only do it if they feel they are appreciatedand that their roles are recognised. Citizens will take up law enforcement if they love their country. Love for this country is just not there. People love their religion more than their country. I am from the North; people from the North are mad about the North but our leaders did not advise us to be as mad about our country. It is the same thing with the West and the East; their leaders did not advise them to be mad about Nigeria too. The people from the West love the West, but they were not thought to love their country, Nigeria. They were told to antagonise the federal government, because of the opposition stance. In my view, everything necessary should be done to get the people to love their country, Nigeria. Not in the fashion of what we see on the television every day,'We are Nigeria, we are one''.etc. Even children laugh at it. Invent real ways of making the people love Nigeria. We must do the actual thing.People complain about the Federal Character, but it is very important because everybody must be made to feel they belong wherever they go. These are some of the things we need for people to believe that they are protected in their country and of course leadership should be by example. People should not see their leaders squandering money and you expect them to respect such a leader, respect the system and love the country.No! I wish the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will look at these things seriously and address them. Not just by talking, but by looking at them properly.We have to also look at how you can make Nigerians love their country more. It is difficult. No one says it will be easy, but if we succeed in this, we can address most of the other challenges we have. When you want to change, you do not dwell so much on the past. The most serious error,in my view,was during the First Republic, wherethe leaders of those days were forced to divide the country;this division persists. Even today, the mentality of the people is still the First Republic mentality. Somebody from your area gets a job and which does not in any way help to change yourfortune, but you are happy. What for' It adds nothing. In some cases, your life is even worseoff, yet you are happy. I have seen it; we have all witnessed it. That is ridiculous. Because somebody comes from your area and gets a job you are happy. Who says you will never have differences and that he will always agree with you. No. Everyone of you knows that you have a court in your area. Why' You think thatcourt was built because your people will have disagreement with people from outside your area'No. It was conceived because they knew that disagreement will occur among you, even to the point of murder, or even a point of war. So, drop this obsession about this man has come from my place, therefore, he will protect me. I have always craved that we should give everybody an opportunity.Do not allow anyone to feel locked out.But for you to say that this man has got to come from your area for you to feel comfortable, if we believed in it before, by now, we have seen that it is not important. But the only way to balance that is to say that if you are given a job, you must be fair to every Nigerian and you must demonstrate your love for the country by the way you behave while in the office. You must behave very well. I believe talking like this is not just the answer. The country must approach these issues practically.Nigeria is being treated just like a market. Whether you talk about the economy, civil service or politics everybody treat the country like a market. We must get our own. This thing has got to stop. We have been demoted as a country.On LibyaIn the case of Libya for example, when this unfortunate thing was happening to Moammar Ghadafi and the Libyan people revolted and took over the leadership of their country, there were allegations that they were killing black Africans. Then came the question of will you recognise this interim government or not andNigeria hurriedly acted to recognise that regime. I think that was not right. We have always made Africa the centre piece of our foreign policy. We should not have allowed other people to poke on this. We must defend Africans whereever they are and I think we lost out on that one and some other countries gained some progress very cheaply by saying that 'no we are not going to recognise them'. This type of thing must not be allowed to happen with a country like Nigeria. We must not start what we cannot carry through.Petroleum subsidy removalThe British say that 'it is not what you do but how you do it. It is not what you say but how you say it'. I am convinced that with the way things are going now in this country, we cannot continue with this oil subsidy indefinitely. It is impossible considering the amount we are spending. Look at the figures. We all must have done some science while in school. How much is it costing the country'When I was the Petroleum Minister longtime ago, it used to cost about N100 million to convey the subsidy, not even the subsidy itself, but to deliver it. When you look at it, it is not something that we can sustainand I believe that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has a responsibility to bring the figures out now and let Nigerians knowwhat we are losing by way of this subsidy;show our people what is happening.I remember that during the time of former President Obasanjo,they had thought that N150 billion would do. N150 billion is a lot of money as subsidy. They thought that would do and that is; Federal Government will pay half, and state governments would pay half. Now, I hear people dangling figures like N1trillion per annum. This is money which I know is said to be going to Nigerians, I believe, in the downstream. This money could have been used to develop the educational system, the roads, agriculture, etc., now going to one sector only.If this energy was used 100 per cent for the benefit of Nigerians, that would have been okay.But we all know what happens that a lot of Nigerian neighbours depend on the Nigerian subsidy and a lot of very important people participate in smuggling and this is what they call arbitrage,which is where people get free money and develop their racket. My own honest opinion is that we cannot continue with the implementationof subsidy, but, like I said, it is not what you do but how you do it. We must develop a policy to gradually remove the subsidy but most importantly, we have to raise the sensitivity and awareness of the people to this problem. The people also must see that we are living by what we preach. I am not going to mince words; honestly speaking, subsidy is too much.Subsidy is just being used to convey these petroleum products to our neigbhouringcountries. Before I am misunderstood as man who does not have sympathy for the common man, I believe that in the General Sani Abacha days, they found some answers to this problem by withdrawing the subsidy, taking the money therein saved but were using it on things; developmental activities which people could see.That was the different that the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) made. They were making roads, building hospitals, buying drugs; things that states and local governments could have been doing were being done by the PTF. So, in my opinion, there are ways we can remove the subsidy and not make people feel bad about it.Single tenure proposalI completely agree with the one tenure system. I completely agree with it because it is the most potent cause of political misbehaviour in governors in particular. If a governor goes in, he spends all his time in trying to secure a second term. What they used to say of Nixon 'the governor is elected for the sole purpose of being re-elected.' He has noother job than fighting for re-election and once he secured the second term, he tries to ensure that he plants his stooge there.This (single tenure) will reducethe problem of somebody doing nothing while in office but fighting for a second term. I think we should not give only four years but if you give five or six years it will be better.Once it is entrenched in the Constitution, there is no way they can maneuver to change it. One term for president and governors but not for legislators; they will not steal once the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is there.On PDPThe Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is a party that has been fortunate to command support all over Nigeria. No other party has done that before in the history of Nigeria. You have the party being supported by people not on the ground of geography, ethnicity or people. The nearest we had gone was in the days of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN), but they did not quite reach there. But I do not think the PDP can sustain this for too long. In a peaceful Nigeria, what is going on cannot continue; open and brazen mismanagement of political processes. Unfortunately, they tend to get support from the judiciary and that is terrible because we are putting the country in danger, yet failing to look at what is happening around us; what is called the Arab spring. How long do you think that Nigerian will continue to tolerate these things when the political process is brazenly ignored for no good reason'What is happening around us is simple. PDP is my party, but the problem with it is that it is the pre-primary and primary stages that are handled in the most shoddy andundemocratic manner and sometimes very shamefully too and in this,you find that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is not blameless. The national secretariat (of PDP) is culpable. It is a simple matter; we have the law so follow it. They kept us in the National Assembly amending the Electoral Act; correcting this and correcting that. We argued to make sure that we came out with the current law yet they cannot follow the laws. We cannot sustain theconfidence and respect of the people if the party does not respect the democratic process and whathappensto the party will happen to the country.
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