You’ll mistake Bama for Saudi Arabia, Algeria or Tunisia today – Lai Mohammed

T he Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed is going round the newsrooms to interact with the media. On Tuesday, he was our guest at Canal Road, Apapa, Lagos where he spoke extensively on a number of issues. Excerps:

The President’s deadline to the Military on Boko Haram

                     

This has been largely misunderstood by the people. I think that we have met the deadline.

This is because the understanding of our December deadline was that by the end of December 31, we would have reclaimed from Boko Haram the areas that were in their control, and we would have decimated their capacities and that they will not have a unified force. I want to say that, to a large extent, we have met that deadline. I have also said that meeting the deadline will not be the same as that there will no longer be any attack on the soft targets, or it will mean the end of suicide bombing or any surprise attack from the insurgents.

The nature of insurgency, the world over is that it is not a conventional war. It is an asymmetrical war in which there are no rules of engagement. But we will continue to mop-up and increase our surveillance and intelligence gathering, so also with the attack on soft targets. There is no where in the world where anyone can secure soft targets like markets, mosques, churches, cinema houses, restaurants. Again, what is missing in this fight is civilian complements.

For a very long time, many of us saw Boko Haram as an alien war. For some people, it was a war that concerned only the Northern part of the country and to others, it was a war between the military and the insurgents. We have never treated it the same way we treated the civil war. As a child in those days, we were thought how to detect saboteurs, how we should not lurk around after darkness, we came to know about the curfew among other things.

Then, every Nigerian had a role to play. For us as kids, it was a war that must be won by Nigeria. Contrastingly, for more than five years, the Boko Haram was politicised to the extent that whether it was APC or PDP, we saw it more as the race for 2015 and because of that we never saw it as a war that concerned all of us. We as civilians must own it now. We have started the security awareness campaign. We also need a lot of de-radicalisation. Islam which has been used as a vehicle to perpetrate this evil has been bastardized. Islam does not stand for violence. Anybody who reads the Holy Quran knows that if you kill one person unjustly, it is as though you have killed a whole nation.

Again, nobody will get away with unjust killing in Islam. Unfortunately, what has been lacking is that there is no counter narrative. We have allowed the radical ones to have the upper hand. We have not even sufficiently protected the moderate clerics. At the beginning of the Boko Haram, there were attempts by the moderate clerics to actually tell people that it was not about Islam, but again, a couple of them were assassinated.

They were not protected and others just went underground. Unfortunately, many of the young boys and girls being used do not know what they are fighting for. Many of them used for suicide bombing did not know they were carrying bombs. They would simply tell them to go and deliver a parcel which is usually detonated remotely far away from where they are. The  modus operandi  is that they are always three in number. There is the guard who will take the innocent boy or girl through the route and will tell him or her: ‘tomorrow you are going to this market’ they will take him or her through that road, two or three times in order to be familiar with the route.

The guard will be in front, he will follow and there is a third person behind who makes sure the bomber does not develop a cold feet. This is the kind of thing we are trying to highlight in our awareness campaign. The truth is that the army has met the deadline. Yes, there were some deadly attacks in Borno a few days ago, and in line with our warnings, the insurgents will spike up their attacks on soft targets just to prove a point that they are still relevant or that the Nigeria Military has not met the deadline. We have met the deadline because they are so decimated that they can not, as a force, attack a village or a town and sack the whole place like they did before. What we cannot rule out now are some of these attacks on soft targets.

. I was in Bama, Kauri, Konduga some weeks ago, and I can tell you that the entire 89 kilometers between Maiduguri and Bama is secured. Before now, Boko Haram controlled 20 out of 27 local governments in Borno State, six local governments in Yobe and four in Adamawa. Today, I believe they are lurking in just one or two local governments which border around Sambisa. So, the army has really met the deadline.

For anybody who understands Sambisa Forest, it is not a football field. It has a stretch of over 300 kilometers of road from Gombe through Bauchi, Adamawa, Taraba up to Cameroun Republic. It is not a district, that is why it is a bit difficult to completely take over Sambisa forest. Even when we were there we saw them still bombarding the place. We believe the Chibok girls are still there. We can’t take the approach some of our neighbours are taking because, the collateral damage could be more.

One of our neighbours has started setting fire along that area but if we do that, the collateral damage will be more than what we want to achieve. These are some of the constrains the Military is facing. But apart from that, we must start thinking about reconstruction, rehabilitation and settlement of the people. In Bama, there were about 6000 houses, but none is standing today. That means we need a lot of resources to plough in the area.

If you go to Bama today, you will not believe you are in Nigeria. Every signboard and notice is in Arabic, you will think you are in Saudi Arabia, Algeria or Tunisia. There is no single notice in English left. There, we have Morrocans, Tunisians, Malians living there and they turned that place into an Arabic town. That convinces me more that this is not just a local war. Just some months ago, Boko Haram was using Bama as headquarters of their caliphate, appointing emirs from there, and collecting taxes. They had their own government. It is from this perspective I want you to appreciate what this government has achieved.

What do you think of the position of Femi Fani Kayode and Aribisala who have taken you on, alleging that you have misled this government?

I read them, they are shallow. Whatever they are saying, is from their arm-chairs. I have been to Bama, Kauri, Konduga, I have held meetings with the chief of Defence staff, I have held meetings with the commander of war front. With all sense of modesty, I am better equipped to understand Boko Haram than they are. Now, how have I misled the country? I have said that the Army has largely met the deadline. And I talk with facts and figures. I said, this time last year, 20 out of 27 local governments were in the hands of Boko Haram and today as we are speaking only one or two are in their control; and you say I am misleading the country.

I asked the question when we got to Bama that when was this place liberated and they told me only four months ago. The world is watching what is happening. If I said this has happened, the US and others have their own teams. Whatever that is happening today, is not only being covered by Nigerian media, other world bodies are also there. It is not true that only a few local governments were left when Jonathan handed over government. Bama itself was still in the hands of Boko Haram.

I am not here to say this is what Jonathan did wrong, we have passed that stage. Everything I have said on Boko Haram is either what I have seen first hand, what I have been briefed by the Military or what is actually going on. They can sit in Lagos or Abuja and write their columns.

The government is planning to pay N5000 to poor and vulnerable Nigerians as indicated in the budget presentation, how do you intend to sustain this unproductive programme?

What we want to achieve by our social intervention is to move out millions of Nigerians from poverty.

Part of what we intend to do with the half a trillion naira is to train market women, artisans and unemployed graduates in the art of management and also give them loans to start their own businesses. Part of our social intervention also includes this conditional transfer of N5,000 to the most vulnerable people. And we are being partnered in this by the World Bank and other multilateral organisations. It has been done in many countries before and we believe that it can be done here. Many people have written ridiculously about the N5,000 and claimed that it is not up to what they spend on recharge cards. And we said yes, those who are writing such things are not the average Nigerians we are seeking to help.

If you look at the lady who is selling water melon or pawpaw, she does not have up to N5,000 capital. People don’t know that N5,000 can be meaningful for many Nigerians because they are too comfortable in their corners. They do not know that N5,000 can make the difference between life and death for 50 million Nigerians. Many people have died because they could not afford transportation to the health centres. We are grappling with the reality on ground and we know that this conditional cash transfer is working in some states and it is being piloted by DIFID.

In Jigawa, Yobe, and Kano, a British group is trying the conditional N5,000 transfer on a pilot scheme. When we say conditional transfer, it means that you must show evidence that you have enrolled your children in school and immunised them. It is not just that we are giving you money free, you must also show evidence that you have complied with some obligations. We know it works because it has increased school enrollment, led to a drop in mortality rate and decline in stunted growth.

As to where we want to get the money from, I was involved in the planning of the budget and we came to the conclusion that apart from blockages and savings, there are many government institutions today, who ought to be returning certain money to the treasury but they are not doing so. We know that some organisations made over N20 billion profit last year but returned less than N100 million to the treasury.

This is why the idea of the Treasury Single Account is so important to us. We are going back to the basics. We believe that the money for this project will come from savings, budget and prudent management. Also, we are going to have support from multilateral organisations, especially in the area of cash transfer.

Again some of these projects are not just recurrent, they are also capital in a way. You can imagine what is going to happen if we start by just giving one egg a day to every primary school student. You need an extra one million eggs a day. That will boost poultry farming. But we are not too ambitious in our plans but we are very focused.

There is a report that Chibok local government is still under the control of the insurgents, why didn’t you go to Chibok?

No, it is not true. There is a lot of ignorance about Chibok. If you are talking about Chibok town or local government, it is not under the control of the insurgents.

The feeling by some people is that this government has not done enough since it assumed power, how will you react to this?

With all sense of modesty, if we have not been doing something today, this country would have gone down. There is no way you meet the kind of rot we met and think you can turn things around overnight. We had petrol shortage a few weeks ago, we went to National Assembly to ask for supplementary budget of N674billion. N522billion out of it was for back payment of subsidy. Marketers stopped importing fuel since September because they said we were owing a backlog of N522billion and they would not bring fuel. We did not say we are not going to pay, and the refineries are not working.

We have 445,000 barrel of crude dedicated to local refineries but we could not refine 1000. I say if we have not been doing anything, there would be no single fuel in Nigeria today. What did we do? Before, the marketers used to import about 70 percent of the refined product, today we have 5,120kilometers of pipelines, we have 24 depots and 21 pump stations. With these alone, the amount of refined product in the country should not create scarcity.

But because the pipelines have been vandalised, the Atlas Cove- Mosinmi pipeline which is responsible for depots in Satellite Mosinmi, Ibadan, Ore and Ilorin have been vandalised. So the trucks which ought to stay in those areas are here in Apapa. Now, we have worked assiduously with Army Corps of Engineers to secure that line and that is why we have some improvement. Again, it is bad time for us because it is winter period and most refineries in Europe are not refining PMS, they are refining FPFO even with the unreliable statistics of what they say we consume daily. If we had not been working round the clock, it would have been worse than this.

This is a non-oil budget and you have said there is going to be a lot of borrowing, what is the implication of that for inflation?

There is no implication for inflation whatsoever. During planning, many options were examined, we invited experts to air their views. But essentially about N90billion will be sourced locally through bonds while the other will come from international bodies. Our budget has encouraged most of international bodies for the fact that we are not borrowing for re-current but mostly for capital expenditure.

What are the challenges this government is facing in the area of security, power generation and socio-economic development?

On the economy, yes we have challenges and it is a worldwide thing. There is global decline in the cost of commodity and as long as you rely on one product, there will be problem. When you have a mono-economy like ours and you do not add value to it, when there is volatility like it happened, you are going to suffer. That is the bane of our problem today. While we use $53 as a benchmark for 2015 budget, we used $63 for 2014 and sold at $114 for part of the year.

Today, we are using $38 as benchmark and we will be lucky if we can have it between $40 – $45 for the next two years. What that means is that if you are making $100 and hour before, now you are making $38 and cost of production remains the same, that remains a challenge to us. So, our economy is one we have not diversified; we have suffered from the crash in crude prices; thirdly,our buyers have now become our competitors. US can now sell its oil, Iran has now been re-admitted and we have to diversify which is what the budget seeks to do – focus on infrastructure, stimulate the economy and encourage diversification.

I have spent time to explain the challenges on security. It is also a global thing. Insecurity and terrorism are not local. But what the government had done was to relocate the command and control to Maiduguri, there were regional meetings and of course we have really improved on the morale of the Army.

What have we gained from these regional meetings in terms of hardware, intelligence gathering?

We have gained a lot. For the visits, Buhari is held in high regards today. This has translated to the way Nigeria is being held in the comity of nations. We have not been getting any support from any country. We were reduced to buying arms from roads in South Africa and others. Some of these achievements are so subtle but we would not have been where we are today. So, in concrete terms, those visits have really paid off. If we had remained a pariah nation, it would have degenerated more than where we are today.

Have we deregulated, have we removed subsidy and what is the basis of saying fuel will sell at N86 per liter?

NNPC is exchanging the 445,000 barrels of crude meant for local consumption for refined products at no fuel exchange cost. But whether we have removed subsidy or not is a tricky question. Tricky in the sense that with the price of crude today, there is no subsidy element at all. Actually, the landing cost even by PPRA template is N81. So, with all the bridging cost, Petroleum Equalisation Fund and others, we can still afford to sell petroleum at N87 or less. That is what informed the Minister to say by January, he would have cleaned up the template further and sell fuel at N85 or N86.