Dr. Katch Onunuju is the Director-General of the Heritage Centre, Abuja, a think-tank dedicated to research into economics and politics. A member of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) in this chat looks at some political and other issues in the polity including the preparation for the 2023 elections

What do you make of the intractable security problem in his Kaduna? Why is it so?

We are not panicking here in Abuja unlike those Fulani panicking right now in Kaduna over land, and I know they won’t get the land and I believe when they started and I started speaking out against intentions over land many years ago, and we knew that this was how it will end.

The Kaduna crisis is simply strategy in telling the Army to stay armed and allow all those foreign Fulani from Mali to have their way. If not our military industrial capital which is Kaduna can’t just be overrun this way.

And don’t forget that Kaduna does not have the pushing of the South. So it is easy for any drone put upstairs to pinpoint and help you take out any of these people. But, President Muhammadu Buhari seems to want to use them.

He used them early as a reserve to do ethnic cleansing to gain ancestral land but they know that all those small things could not get them what they want, that’s why you see them telling him to come clean and keep his own part of the deal, which is the land. That’s not to say he has not tried for them. He tried with a lot of scams, pretending they procured policies for land to make a reserve, cow colony, National Livestock Promotion Programme and they made consultations with underground association of many places in the country.

All of that failed which made him to try to do Grazing Route; they tried to map out old grazing route of the 60s. The northern state governments told him that way the way to go if truly he was talking about the old grazing route. The northern regional government existed when we had three regions – that’s the North, East and the West, and then later on the Middle –West, making them four regions and the northern region.

Those regions have now gone from four to 36 states. Each of the states can make local laws when the local laws clash with the Constitution, the Constitution takes precedence because they reminded them and under the curing Constitution, the land under the Land User Act are in the hands of the governors. So that’s how you saw as that grazing route crashed.

Those kidnappers got panicky. You could see what they told him last week that they don’t want money but they want him to keep to the deal.

You also recall that these terrorists who attached the rail track are asking for the release of some of their commanders in exchange of 100 people in custody. How do you see that?

No, if terrorist killed some and then like the officers they killed at Command and Staff College, Jaji, in Kaduna State, the ones they kidnapped and you catch terrorist. You can go through the process.

They are not killing again because the government said ‘don’t kill them and reverse what you do with them.’ So, it’s not an issue of commander but an issue of lands given to them. They don’t care about the lives lost.

They believe that lives lost in their struggle would go straight to heaven in their own perception. So who knows that people of that land has finally and you know once he goes, the new government won’t even listen to any of their stories.

Don’t you think that this is going to pose a very serious issue for the incoming government? For example, 25 people were killed in Benue on Tuesday, 6000 displaced in Plateau a couple of days ago and the problem continues. Will it not pose a serious problem?

What poses a serious problem is the Commander- in-Chief not allowing the Army to react in line with their rules of engagement. That is what poses a serious problem. Once the Commander-in- Chief starts to give orders to the Army to act, the story will be difference.

Those 19 soldiers that were killed a week ago, he had said don’t do anything and if any bullet waste and shot towards any of the Malians machinery, he will deal with you. So that’s what poses a serious problem because the government has now started tearing away from Nigeria.

He now acting to a privileging way to the commander shall do anything to purposely waste lives of soldiers or waste lives of civilians and now we are having this particular thing where positions of President Buhari is the reason the Army has not been able to come back to action against these socalled bandits. When the train was bombed, when the Alpha Jet was shot down by these terrorists from Mali and other parts of Africa, what did the President do?

So, it is not proper because the Fulanis who are doing this are not the Fulanis of Nigeria. So, why is he keeping quiet while these foreigners do this against Nigeria? It is for only one reason. He is now using them to do ethnic cleansing to try to get land that he could not get legally as he was begging us. Lands suffocate into cleansing in places like Benue, Plateau.

When in Benue, we have more than 125 communities from Barikiladi to Ryom to Bassaland to Miagu including the North and South stretching to as far as Bauchi total roads can be safe and what we are saying is you can’t do these things and you expect those families in Basari, Safana, in Dutse, in Kankara, in Damusa, in Maru, in Anka, in Dangobe, in Dansarau, and those families will just fold their hands.

No, of course we saw what the Yoruba did. It was when Sunday Igboho and co came together against those people striving to take lands in the Yoruba areas that he saw the Federal Government began a manhunt for Sunday Igboho.

Let’s look at the march towards 2023. How prepared is your party, the PDP?

The PDP is fully prepared though it is currently having internal crisis because of the same Fulani problem. Some Fulani politicians formed nPDP and said it was the turn of the North in 2015 and made sure they brought in Buhari to power.

Buhari told them that he would do one term and then hand over to the rest of them and they agreed. After they saw that Buhari was making arrangement for second term, they left Buhari in the All Progressives Congress (APC), ran to the PDP insisting that the PDP must allow them to run again after Buhari must have completed his eight years.

So you can see that Nigeria does have a problem. So we need to sit as I have suggested at a workshop in Abuja on Wednesday, we need to get the Fulani together so we can talk to them. We cannot succeed now that we have national security challenge by just preventing ourselves from the real issue.

We need to talk to the Fulani leaders and ask them what the problem is. Fulani people are having this crisis everywhere.

They are fighting in Mali against the Duck , fighting Senegal with the Mali, here in Nigeria, you are fighting against the Hausa, In Dunsima, Kankara, Safana, Indamusa, Maru, Mugoro you and so on.

They are fighting against the Adara and Bangi in Kaduna State. In Plateau, more than 100 communities are sacked. In Benue, more than a million are in IDP camp crisis. In Taraba, you are fighting against the Gabi and what is the problem? We need to honestly start this process right now. We don’t need to run away from it.

Can the South produce the President in 2023, though APC has zoned it to the South?

The South has to produce the President for the unity of this experiment called Nigerian Project to continue. If you check in the last two years since we had self-rule, the North had ruled for close to 46 years. So, if 47 years of northern rule have brought us where we are and the South has not done up to 20 years, after eight years of Buhari’s rule, it should come over to the south.

I can see that the Fulani has acquired a lot of machineries from the South in order to move against this. I believe the Fulani leaders should respect our diversity. Stop calling it North and South, it is about Fulani against everyone. If we check the people from the North that want to rule after Buhari, they are all Fulani. The earlier we sit to look at it, the better for us. We can’t continue to postpone the doomsday.

How do you see the presidential aspirations of Peter Obi, Yemi Osinbajo, Bola Tinubu and the likes?

Osinbajo and Tinubu don’t belong to the contest at all. They entrance into the race is a fraudulent promotion themselves against the interest of the entire nation. If we have done this game in recent past, Osinbajo has done eight years on behalf of the Yoruba.

Don’t forget we want a representative democracy and Olusegun Obasanjo has done eight years on behalf of the Yoruba. There are other people involved. The same thing I talked about the Fulani allowing inclusion of all. The Yoruba also understands that.

Osinbajo’s ambition is the most fraudulent of them all. He is a pastor, lawyer, and a politician- the most potent dangerous mix in any human being.

Don’t forget that when I told him about the management of agencies under him sometimes ago, he threatened to remove his immunity and take me to court and I was waiting for him so that I can open the Chapter 2 of the facts I have about him and he ran away. He said he would remove his immunity and take me to court which I know he does not have the capacity to go to court against me. He will have to resign from the Office because the immunity is on the office, not on him. So, please don’t take Osinbajo seriously.

As for Tinubu, his age rules him out. Though there is nothing wrong with an old man wanting something but the problem is he does not have the physical strength to do the marathon. It was Tinubu that Amaechi making indirect reference to when he was running around the stadium penultimate Saturday. Though it’s not good we mock our elders.

We are told Tinubu’s daughter is 62 years old. How can you tell me you have a daughter of 62 years and you are just 70 years old? The people I am looking at are Chris Ngige, Peter Obi, Mazi Ohuabunwa and so on because it’s now the turn of the South-East to produce the President. I suggest that the Igbo should produce a president to boost the agitation of the youth. I don’t think separation is the best for this country.

I don’t think dividing Nigeria will work because we first had three people who came here, the first were the Portuguese followed by the British, the last to come were the Fulanis.

Then when we got independence, the Portuguese and the British left while the Fulani stayed behind and use that to stunt the progress of Nigeria. As I speak to you, no Hausa is an emir in the Hausa land. The Fulani have messed them up. It is time for us to wake up to beat against the Fulani menace that they have become in Nigeria. I believe their stunting of the progress of Hausa land, that they now want to exploit to the entire country.

That is why you see them promoting this cascade of violence. We should start dealing with it. The earlier we start, the better for us so that the war in Mali, Cote d’ Ivoire won’t come into Nigeria as they have taken as far as the Hausa land.

To the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) strike. How do you see the impact of the strike and what should be the way out?

The ASUU strike simply tells you that the abandonment of the education sector by our government progressively through the years is not in the best for the future of the country. If they insist that the government should not have anything to do with education, it’s a different thing.

Then they should privatize it. As for the members of ASUU, when they allowed themselves to be used as a criminal in rigging election, you don’t expect people from such things you do to respect you. Some of their members were compromised during the elections. ASUU should understand that they brought this upon themselves. Their own time they were given to contribute, they made criminals to rule over us.

Where are we in the area our fight against draft especially the President Buhari’s government corruption?

Forget it. Buhari’s government is the most corrupt in our country. It failed to take action during the killings of many Nigerians. There is no corruption worse than that. Then he uses fancy language to make it not take responsibility of what you should do as an elected government. (Sunday Telegraph)

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