Former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Prof. Usman Yusuf, tells DANIEL AYANTOYE about insecurity in the North, his stance on government negotiating with bandits, among other issues

You are always attacking the government of the day. Why is this so?

Some people don’t know me. I spoke up during the time of the late former President Muhammadu Buhari, when many northern men and women kept quiet. Muhammadu Buhari was from Katsina State, where I come from.

So, criticising the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu is just a continuation of standing for what is right by speaking up against injustice. I am doing it not because of Tinubu or any other government, but because I love this country.

This country has given my generation more than we can ever give back. So, we cannot sit down, fold our hands, and allow anybody from whatever part of the country to mess this motherland up like this government of President Bola Tinubu is doing. We speak up because we love this country and because of our children and grandchildren.

You recently said President Bola Tinubu is committing political suicide by alienating the North. How is this so?

He is from Lagos; he ruled there, and he is still ruling them. Nobody becomes governor of Lagos until they get his stamp of approval. This doesn’t happen in any part of this country, yet he lost Lagos. So, you guys knew something that we did not know.

The North gave him 62 per cent of his votes, predominantly from the North-West. The South-West did not vote for him. It’s the North that brought President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to government. But what has he been doing? He’s been alienating the North.

Over 70 per cent of his appointments are from the South-West. His kinsmen are from Lagos. What have they done to deserve that electorally? So, it’s political suicide for any politician to alienate his electoral base and expect us to vote for him again. He should come and tell us why he’s taken everything to the South-West, to Lagos.

We (North) have no reason to vote for him again. We voted for him when his people did not. Katsina, where I come from, gave him more votes than his state of Lagos. So, his people did not vote for him. We sheltered him politically, and now he alienates us and wants to come back again.

It’s political suicide that he’s committing, and he’s doing that knowingly because he doesn’t know politics. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s politics is South-West-based. He doesn’t know Nigerian politics at all, and that’s why he’s committing this political blunder all over the place.

While you criticised the Tinubu-led government on insecurity, supporters of this government have also argued that they have done better than the previous administration. What is your take on that?

They have done better in propaganda. I have never seen a government that thrives on propaganda like that of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but that is their modus operandi. Recently, Boko Haram killed close to 90 people in Bawa Local Government.

In my home state, Katsina, bandits killed 32 people praying in the mosque. They went into town and killed over 20 more people, bringing the death toll to over 50. They carted many more into the forest. I want the National Security Adviser or any of his advisers to come to these places and tell them that security is better.

In my paper, I said it clearly, and I will repeat it again and again: the North sees President Bola Tinubu as the first Commander-in-Chief who is hands-off on security, which is the major issue bedevilling our region. All that the people he has handed over security to are doing is propaganda, making the president unpopular in the region.

Security is not better in the North. If they want to say it is better, let them go to Borno State or Katsina State, where 24 out of 34 local governments are under siege. Seventy per cent of Katsina State is under siege. I want any of his security advisers to go and tell them in these places that security is better.

The President doesn’t talk about anything concerning security that bedevils us in the North. He’s only interested in collecting taxes all over. So, he’s done nothing. Under him, insecurity has worsened.

Our land in the North is drenched in blood. We are burying our dead every day in the hundreds. So, he shouldn’t come and tell us that security is better.

You said in an interview that you have invested six years of your life to understand the security issues, going into the forests of nine frontline states with Sheikh Ahmad Gumi and his team to meet with the leaders of these bandits, many of whom have now been killed by the military. With your understanding, who are those behind the killings and kidnappings in the country?

Whoever is behind the insecurity, this is a country where we have standing armed forces, an intelligence service, and the police. In the last 12 years, we’ve been talking about this; they have not been able to find whoever is behind It.

Whoever is behind Boko Haram will just come out and say, ‘We know who is behind it.’ For goodness’ sake, stop talking nonsense. Tell us who they are and go after them. Isn’t that why you are a government? The purpose of a government is to protect people, their lives, their property, and their welfare.

This government has failed—woefully, too. So, we don’t want anybody annoying us with propaganda and saying. We know who is doing this. For goodness’ sake, go after them and prosecute them. Why are you allowing them, whoever they are, to continue shedding the blood of innocent citizens?

Senator Adams Oshiomhole, in a viral video, revealed that the insecurity in the North was tied to the activities of illegal mining in the region and that top personnel were using choppers to carry out gold from the area. With your understanding of the security situation in the region, what can you say about this?

Adams Oshiomhole doesn’t know anything about the level of insecurity in the North, and he is part of the problem in Nigeria. The 10th National Assembly is a do-nothing National Assembly. They have allowed the President free rein without checking him.

He gets loans from all over the place, and this is going to cripple the lives of our grandchildren. They never checkmated him. If Senator Adams Oshiomhole wants to grandstand and be in the newspapers, he is welcome. But he is as much a problem for this country as the President is.

The 10th National Assembly is the most docile National Assembly we’ve had since the beginning of democratic rule. They never stopped anything, and all they are interested in is seeing an alert and doing nothing. They don’t ask the questions on behalf of the constituents who elected them. The whole 10th National Assembly is a failure.

They have failed Nigerians because they are not checkmating this President. He is doing whatever he likes, violating the constitution in his appointments. Section 14(3) and 14(4) of the Constitution call for the President to ensure that whatever he does reflects the federal character. This is not what the President is doing, and nobody is asking him.

He is getting loans all over the world, approved by them (the National Assembly), with nothing to show for it. People are suffering every day; people are hungry all across the land. You don’t hear any senator, including Senator Adams, telling the President that his government is cruel. He is not running this nation with the milk of human kindness.

People who were profiled as terrorists and surrendered are reintegrated into society, but some have criticised this process. What is your take on it?

We have had in this country a history under a president who was from Katsina State, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, where he reintegrated the Niger Delta militants. Today, they are multi-billionaires; they are given contracts to protect our coastlines. The president from my state listened to the grievances of a people whose land had been pillaged for centuries. He listened to them, incorporated them, gave them more allocation, and sent them to school.

Their leaders are now multi-billionaires who own ships and yachts. Nobody said a word. In the North, banditry is the issue. I invested six years of my life to understand it. We went into the forests of nine frontline states to understand why. If we don’t understand it, nobody from the South-West will come and fix our problem. We must understand the problem, sit down, and fix it. We are all Nigerians.

These people are not from Mali or Burkina Faso, as some people are saying. They are all Fulani. Why are we fighting? Where are our elders? Where are our traditional rulers? Where are our clerics? What do we have now? That’s why we went in there at a time when the government of President Muhammadu Buhari and its military and security intelligence services were against us going.

We went at great risk to our lives to understand. Now, we understand, and as I have said consistently, there is not going to be a military solution to fighting banditry.

Banditry can never be won, and will never be won, on the battlefield. All the problems are local. The solutions must be found locally, and it is only if you sit down and understand them. But our government and the military don’t want to understand this local issue. That’s why big solutions from Abuja without consulting locally have never worked and will never work.

The government Is denying, and the military is denying. Insecurity is fuelled by poverty, illiteracy, out-of-school children and drugs all over the place, guns, and youth unemployment. If you don’t solve these problems, there is not going to be security in any nation.

Our idea of security is to give trillions of naira to the military to buy bombs and drones and drop them on hungry people. We have been investing so much in kinetic for 12 years. Where has that got us? Isn’t it time to think differently? We are not going to win this on the battlefield.

We need to invest 90 per cent of the money in solving the social issues instead of buying drones and two kinds of jets like we’ve been doing. People have been made rich by our kinetic approach. The President doesn’t care to sit down and even understand.

He Is outsourcing to his people, who are lying to him and to the country, that all is well. All is not well. We are saying this because we love this country, we love our land, we love our people, and we understand this problem. We will continue to speak up.

You share the same ideology with Sheikh Gumi on negotiating with bandits, but some have argued that the more you negotiate, the more another group crops up, making insecurity an unending battle. What do you make of that?

Alright, so when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua negotiated with the Niger Delta militants at the height of insecurity in the Niger Delta, what happened? Did things get worse? Those people who are saying ‘no negotiation’—villagers have been negotiating with these people who are fighting each other and have continued to see good results.

All these people saying no negotiation are either in Abuja or elsewhere and don’t know what the daily sufferings of our people are like. If I were the Commander-in-Chief, I would demilitarise this war. This is not a military problem. I would invest a lot more in the social issues, involving everybody, and solve the problems locally.

Where are the traditional rulers? Where are the clerics? Where are the elders? Where are the community leaders? Do we need somebody from Abuja to come and solve our problems in Katsina? Invest in social problems, empower the clerics and traditional rulers to get involved. The governors know nothing.

They came yesterday, and they think they know everything. The better way is for us to dialogue. As we speak, Israel is dropping bombs on Gaza, but they are talking to Hamas.

America had to sit down and talk with the Taliban after so many years of senseless fighting. This senseless bloodshed in the North has to come to an end, and only we can do it, not Abuja.

It appears that the renowned Islamic scholar, Sheikh Gumi, has been profiled because of his views on politics, having been deported from Saudi Arabia after being denied entry into Medina. What is your take on it?

Yes, it is world politics, and I visited him. He is my friend. We went to medical school together, and I said, ‘You should wear that as a sign of honour and speak up. You speak up against the injustice that has been done here, or you speak up against the injustice that has been done in Palestine, and nobody is talking, yet you are speaking up.

‘When you went, the Saudi government didn’t let you in. So what? Allah knows you did the right thing. Continue to do the right thing and wear that as a badge of honour.’ In addition to speaking up about what is happening in Palestine, I strengthened him and asked him to continue to speak about the injustice in the land.

Nigeria is our land of plenty, where the President is going on vacation all over the world, buying billions of dollars’ worth of planes. That is what God has enjoined on all men of God: if you truly are a man of God, speak when there is injustice. Do not keep quiet because your kinsman is now president.

The big churches in the South-West and the big scholars, big academicians in the South-West, used to go after Buhari like there was no tomorrow—Islamisation, colonisation. But now, when President Bola Tinubu is “Yorubanising” the government, we don’t hear a word from them. The South-West is quiet. I call on all men and women of conscience to speak up against injustice wherever it happens. Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.

You were arrested by the EFCC, and during that time, a youth group said it was politically motivated. How true is that?

I am having my day in court, and it’s beautiful. The guys don’t know what they are doing. They are just attack dogs of the government. They don’t know what they are doing. Let them prove their case in court. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is using government agencies as a Gestapo to go after people that speak up.

You cannot silence the truth. We will continue to speak up. Even when they put me in Kuje (prison), I spoke up, I wrote. I will continue to do that. They are just weak men. You cannot go after those who speak up. You cannot make democracy silent.

What is your take on the new political coalition around the ADC?

It is dictatorship, and that is what President Bola Tinubu wants this country to be: a one-party state. They have sown the seed of discord in the Labour Party and the PDP.

If you have democracy without opposition, there is no democracy. Now, people are getting together to form a coalition, and they are trying to cause discord. In this country, we will resist it with all we’ve got. We will resist any attempt by him to run this country like he is running Lagos. (Sunday PUNCH)