Senator Datti Baba-Ahmed was the vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 elections. In this interview monitored on Channels Television by EVINCE UHUREBOR, he speaks on insecurity in the country and how they are being orchestrated by politicians

A former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir ElRufai, recently alleged that the government is paying bandits to deter them from killing Nigerians. He further alleged that the policy of negotiation and compensation of armed groups is a national directive championed by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA). What’s your view about that statement?

That statement is at the core of Nigeria having a government. Do we really have a government if somebody who sold Nigeria’s assets for four years at Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), served as minister of the Federal Capital territory for four years and served as governor, would say that there is a national policy of paying bandits?

Do we have a government? Am I a citizen? Are you a citizen? Does Nigeria exist or do a pack of people live in a certain territory with another group of people claiming to misrule them?

Do we have a nation? What are we doing? Are people understanding the gravity of this statement? Do we even have an office of a National Security Adviser?

A national policy is the official position of government; an official declaration that this is what we shall be constitutionally doing and what we shall be legally pursuing. That’s what we call a national policy. It is made public, it is celebrated, it is broadcast to the whole world. Was such a thing heard?

Why did El-Rufai say it? If the so-called office of National Security Adviser will take this statement with levity, then Nuhu Ribadu was never a policeman; he is not a qualified lawyer. He should not be in that office.

What would you say he should do because his office has reacted to the El-Rufai’s statement?

That is not a reaction.

If you were the NSA, what would you do different?

El-Rufai should be writing some statements to the police. But if the official position of the so-called APC government of Bola Tinubu is to be paying bandits, then we don’t have a nation.

So, your inference is that whatever El-Rufai said in that respect, if it’s not true, the government of the day should be taking it more seriously…

Yes, but so long as it passes by with what you call reaction of the NSA, then it is true and I tend to agree that it could be true. Before this one, another almost eight-year governor of Borno State said that there are informants of terrorists in the Nigerian military and among Nigerian politicians. Before then, there was another politician who said that bandits and terrorists were brought into Nigeria pre-2015 elections.

These are even small ones. Now, what I’m about to say and my arguments are that insecurity is part of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Insecurity has been APC’s way of getting power and insecurity has been part of APC’s way of staying in power.

Is that a fact or just your opinion?

That is my candid, firm opinion that is being strengthened by the kind of unfortunate comments like that of El-Rufai.

But there are no facts to what you are saying.

There are facts.

If there are opinions, how would you say a government of the day is part of insecurity?

I’m giving you the facts. I have clearly given you three statements of politicians and government functionaries that are undisputed. Go back in time; do you remember that a former Nigerian president was attacked by terrorists? Unprecedented! Never in the history of Nigeria did that happen.

So long as people will steal an election; so long as people will capture a nation, we will never have security

Do you also remember that I made a passing statement on that in 2022, which as usual, people didn’t take seriously? Why are some young men in the forest in the North-East? What business do they have? When Nigerian leaders leave, they are liked, they are loved, they are forgiven all their errors and everything. But this one, they followed and tried to kill him.

Why did that happen? What happened to all the donations leading up to 2015? Why decide to come back and run in 2015 after crying and telling the whole world that you are no longer a candidate? What was the link with North Africa? What was the link with Muammar Gaddafi?

He’s not alive, but others are alive. I’m in so much pain, believe me. Nigeria should be a great country but we have people destroying us by the hour. Insecurity has been part of APC’s game, and El-Rufai is saying it, and I think he’s right. The government has been paying them. I have facts.

The government has said that it is not paying them…

They are paying them, because the reaction of the NSA is not disputing what El-Rufai said.

You are inferring that the NSA should arrest El-Rufai over his statement, but if that happens, some will say they are going after opposition voices…

There are more ways to counter such opposition. I told you about 2015; going after a former Nigerian president, trying to kill him, what does that tell you? Before that, what had happened? After Goodluck Jonathan won in the Supreme Court, they called for dialogue, and those young men nominated a former Nigerian president, who took three days to repudiate.

After those three days, go and plot the graph, you will see that between 2012 to 2014, the spikes of attacks around those villages in the North-East skyrocketed because of hunger and lack of medicine.

Why so? Because somebody had stopped sending the recurrent expenses of those people who used to come all the way to Kaduna to collect and then go back, and that’s how the cycle went. In protest as to why did you call that name, they couldn’t bear it anymore, and felt by 2014, the best thing was to go and attack.

It failed; we’re lucky. They got Jonathan scared. He thought that if they kill this man, Nigeria will burn. They provided him with additional cars, more money, and it was all about money. It was all about collecting money. The truth is that somebody had gone to North Africa, negotiated with Gaddafi.

Gaddafi, who was an international terrorist, all over the world, from the far west to the far east, said, I will help you, like I’ve been doing. I heard there were some young men. Their plans were to kill Gaddafi, not in a palace coup but through uprising. If it fails and you become president, I will retire to your country if you become president. And if it doesn’t fail, right now, he wanted to create a buffer.

So, he sent Saif Ali Islam; go on YouTube and find out, to Niger with money, cash, millions of dollars in his boots, to recruit Tuaregs to go out and fight in Libya. Sent his former general to Mali, while you still have insecurity in Mali. In Nigeria, they gave a crazy amount of money to that gentleman to go and help these people, with the intention of bringing them to fight in Libya. When Gaddafi died, they sat on the money.

They kept on with the recurrence, until after mentioning the name, and then they stopped sending the money. Now all these things are linked. They wanted Nigeria to burn, if Buhari did not become president in 2015. I contested alongside Buhari for Senate in 2011.

You have it on YouTube, he said ‘soaked in blood’ and once he made that comment, I refused to campaign with Buhari. It didn’t matter if I lost the Senate seat but I won it eventually. How can a former president say ‘you soak in blood.’ Kaduna is my state; there was serious violence in Kaduna.

Many houses were burnt and all that simply because of a statement. They went and brought in people from those neighbouring places in readiness to remove Jonathan by all means. So, the desperation of people to get Jonathan out of power has built up and added to what we call insecurity in Nigeria today.

So, you’re inferring that all what we have seen over the last few years as insecurity is orchestrated and it’s political?

Of course, whatever I tell you, I’ll try to give you evidence. Last year; around this time, we were just negotiating the release of our nephew, and when he came out, what he said is not much different from what ElRufai is saying.

But my grudge with El-Rufai’s statements is that he was part and parcel of APC from 2013. Like he told you, he was one of the architects of it all but all of a sudden, he is absolving himself and calling out others.

So, El-Rufai is part and parcel of all that has been going on. We suffered; we are victims of El-Rufai’s misrule in Zaria. Go back to December 2015, when a war was supposed to have been won in the North-East. What military and strategic business did an army chief have to come to Zaria for a convocation, not of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), but graduation of recruits and choosing to follow the route where the Shiites were holding an event. All these things were orchestrated.

They knew the exact hour, the exact minute that he was coming to pass, because they had the technology, and 800 people were killed because they wanted to raze down the temple that was built. These things were carefully doctored and orchestrated.

These are heavy allegations that you are making, and one will imagine that someone of your status shouldn’t be saying this?

Does it amount to a political gimmick? What exactly are you up to with this? I’ve been saying it. I mentioned the link about North Africa. In your own programme, go back and check, play the archives and see.

Wherever I spoke, I linked political and electoral fraud with insecurity, corruption and insecurity. I have always done that.

Where do we go from here? If you say they are political in nature, for the sake of God, how do we stop this cycle of killings?

It is only when you have the right leaders, and you can only have the right leaders, when you have them truly elected. So long as people will steal an election; so long as people will capture a nation, you will never have security.

Most drastic, most horrific is when that group of people use the tools of insecurity like we have seen in 2015, and it worked, and they achieved what they wanted, and again they now use, for example, the tools of religion, ethnicity, division within political parties, heavy use of money, security, constitutional abuses and breaches.

The law means nothing. It is just what one individual decides irrespective of what the law says. You have to go and change the law to what suits that individual. There cannot be security. Not just peace. There cannot be security. Now let’s go back. The purpose of being together in a nation is that you must be secured by whoever is leading you.

If you are not secured, you are living in hell. You are not in a nation like we are almost there now if you have someone who served us eight years as a governor in one of the federating units, come out and say that it’s a policy of the government to reward, because pay is reward, to reward terrorists and criminals,

The history of these people who have been in power, including the governor who said it is consistent with what he claims now to be doing. And that government is still ongoing.

They still have another two years to go. We, the ordinary citizens have no option. The whole world will take it that the government has a policy of paying bandits and terrorists.

There can be no security for us ordinary citizens of Nigeria so long as you have electoral heists guaranteed by the kind of money and fraud that is taking place now. You and I as ordinary citizens will continue to live in a country that is close to hell because it is close to hell. Every day, villages and villagers are sacked, killed and their property carted away.

Human beings are traded as commodities and you have a so-called government that is basking in the fact that they stole 2023 elections, and that no one can stop them in 2027. So long as these people are worshipped and continued to be worshipped by sycophants, who are telling them that what they are doing is right, buying politicians who are jumping ship to join APC and giving them the falsehood that they are doing well, there will be no security.

The insecurity we are talking about is getting closer to Abuja. and so long as the president is aloof with the realities on ground and has a so-called vice president who has been reduced to just going for wedding and burial ceremonies, things will not change. The situation now is that it is easier for the Federal Government of Nigeria to send a whole vice president to go for condolence visits and wedding ceremonies than when 200 people are killed in the villages.