APC Government Will End Insurgency By 2015 – Sen. Ibrahim

APC Government Will End Insurgency By 2015 – Sen. Ibrahim

Sen. Bukar Abba Ibrahim represents Yobe East senatorial district in the National Assembly. The former governor, who spoke exclusively to RUTH CHOJI, says the APC will end the insurgency by the first quarter of 2015, if the party wins the presidential election 

As a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, how would you rate the just concluded convention?

It went very well, it was transparent and well organized. It is the kind of election everybody would love to participate in.at the end of the day, everybody was happy with the way it was organized.it was the most perfectly organize primary elections done so far in Nigeria.

Some are of the fears that, some of those who lost out might defect from the party to achieve their ambition

No, none of the five aspirant will defect, they signed an agreement that irrespective of who wins, they will rally around him for the purpose of winning the general elections. Our candidates are progressives and you know they have never won any elections in Nigeria. Anything close to that was during Abiola. But forces clipped us from being a government

 

Coming back to you, how was your own primaries election considering the insecurity in Yobe State?

My primaries went fine, nobody contested against me. My wife initially had one contestant but the man withdraw for her and so she got an automatic ticket. Most other candidates in House of Representatives, Senate and the state won. Except for one that voluntarily left after two terms for the other local government to get their opportunity and the other one, there was opposition to his candidature and from all indication, that man has lost, it is another man that is coming. The candidate from my local government also left us to join PDP.

Yobe is one of the states effected by insurgency, how is the situation on the ground now?

Except for two local government which are under Boko Haram control, and I believe that they will soon be liberated now that the military has taken the initiative to liberate Adamawa. I believe they will soon liberate those two local government from the senseless killing by Boko Haram. I believe if you asked them why they are killing, they won’t be able to tell you. They just go about killing people, local people coming out of the mosque, people coming out of the church just like that, it is a senseless thing and I am sure it is going to be a thing of the past. Even if Jonathan refused to do anything about it, we are coming to sort it out by be first quarter of 2015. By the end of 2015, there will be no Boko Haram.

When you say Jonathan has refused to do anything about it, are you saying the government has not done enough?

What have they done since the beginning of Boko Haram? What is Boko Haram to a government that has a hugh military at its disposal, over one hundred thousand trained soldiers and yet cannot battle an insurgency of not more than ten thousand people? How can you say they have done enough? It is a total failure and Nigeria cannot afford to go on like that for too long.

But don’t you think the state government should share in the blame?

What can the state government do? They don’t have the police or army, the only thing they have is the people and vigilante and those are the ones assisting the military to regain some of the recaptured local government in places like Adamawa and Yobe.so what has the federal government done? States government are continuously losing their classrooms, schools are closing down, children are being shot dead in their schools, the Chibok girls are still missing for almost a year and Jonathan has no clue what to do.

 

What has happened to internally displaced persons in your state?

I have over two hundred and twenty people in my house in Damaturu, fifty five of them are primary school children, fifteen are secondary school children, fortunately it is a big compound and my wives have been assisting, that is how we are managing for now

But has the state and federal government done anything in terms of taking care of their welfare?

There are just some slight periodic assistant so far, nothing permanent. Of course we are not praying that the crises should be a permanent thing, but that it will soon be over so that they can all go back to their lives. The federal government has not been doing much. The state government has been spending a Hugh colossal amount of money for the internally displaced persons and state of emergency.

 

With the current state of insecurity in Yobe state, do you think elections can hold there?

Of course elections will hold after all we are only having problems in two local government and anytime from now, the military can take over. But even if the two local government don’t come back to Nigeria, we can still hold elections in the remaining fifteen local government of Nigeria, which will not stop us from having elections.

Coming back to your committee, national housing, there have been reports that the federal government is planning to privatize the Nigerian housing authority, what is your take on this

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the privatization of any government parastal. If it is handled properly or if the handlers manage it well, it can to development

But has the FHA been working?

I understand that since it was established about ten years ago, it has only built about thirty three thousand houses across the nation, which is a dismal performance. But again it is just like the other federal parastals, it is a failure of successive regime including Jonathan, but recently they introduce mortgage recapitalization, that will accelerate the construction of houses and recently Dangote has reduced the prices of cement, if a similar things is done in other building materials, then cost of building will go down and Many more will built houses and then more mortgage be made available for people at reasonable rate, Nigerians will want built their houses.

 

How does the national housing policy benefit the common man on the street because most Nigerian don’t know anything about it?

The national housing policy is all about maximizing the construction of houses for the benefit of the masses, particularly the unemployment and even the middle class.it is to increase the construction of houses so that the about seventeen million people or ore that are homeless will have shelter.

What will it take to provide housing for every Nigeria?

I would say it is the political will.

Do we have the resources?

Of course we do. Look at banks with billions and trillion of naira looking for customers. If they can maximize these monies and put them into the construction of houses for the masses. After all America and other developed countries have succeeded in developing their housing sectors, when there was crises in the housing sector of America, America was almost brought down to its knees before they were able to recover. We have the resources, it is just harnessing it that is our problem. Our problem is just leadership that will change things for the betters.

 

What has happened to public, private partnership (PPP)?

They are there, they have been doing a few things here and there, but it has not been very effective either. They are building some houses in Abuja and may be Lagos, but it is enough, we need this things on a ground scale because we have a Hugh population. To solve any problem in Nigeria, you need to do it at a Hugh scale because we have a heterogeneous society, different tribes, and different religion and believes.

As a senator, how will assess the Goodluck Jonathan administration so far

Well I wouldn’t say it has been a total failure, they have their good side and bad side but by and large, if you take the whole situation, I will give them a pass mark. What we need is something as big as a revolutionary because what they are doing now will not solve our problem. I just hope and pray that we will get a revolutionary, down to earth leadership with the political will to change things for the better.

What will APC do that will be different from what the PDP is doing now

APC will do better than the current administration, after we have declare free and compulsory education at least at the primary level, we will move to the secondary level before we get to the tertiary. Education is the key solution to our problems.

Source: Leadership News