The Punch reports that Niger Delta activist, Ms. Annkio Briggs, tells Tobi Aworinde that probing former President Goodluck Jonathan for the alleged diversion of $2.1bn for arms procurement funds would be selective. Read excerpts from the interview below:
What are your thoughts on the ongoing corruption case over the alleged diversion of $2bn meant for arms procurement?
Unfortunately for us, Nigeria is that type of country where nothing surprises me in terms of how governance is carried out and the irresponsibility and recklessness of people that put themselves in power in our name and carry out things in the way and manner in which it shouldn’t be.
Recently, a judge in the United Kingdom questioned the integrity of former President Goodluck Jonathan in the contentious sale of an offshore oil block for $1.1bn in 2011. Coupled with his alleged role in the $2.1bn arms procurement fund, do you think he should be investigated?
I read it in the papers and, according to what was reported, they called him a nickname and they concluded that that nickname is Jonathan. Let us be careful; did they call Jonathan to the UK court? Somebody called his name there; did they call him to come and testify? Was (former President Olusegun) Obasanjo’s name not mentioned in America?
In America, someone is in jail right now over payments in the Halliburton (scandal). Was Obasanjo’s name not called? Was another party leader’s name not called? What has happened to them? We should now accept that, because his name was called, he is guilty? So if he is guilty, where is his punishment?
If Obasanjo was guilty, where is his own punishment? Or is it because Jonathan is from the South-South, so we have to accept everything they say about him? I think that we should stop deceiving ourselves, in terms of how Nigeria is governed. We should stop deceiving ourselves that we are fighting corruption.
We believe that we can live together; we should ask ourselves, ‘How can we live together?’ That is the question that we should ask ourselves. This country does not belong to only one people. I come from the Niger Delta and the Niger Delta belongs to me. The Niger Delta is in Nigeria, so I belong to Nigeria and Nigeria belongs to me.
I don’t have to accept every injustice that is meted out just because I am in Nigeria or just because I am in the Niger Delta. I think people should be fair in everything that is being done in this country. The British Empire amalgamated this country without the permission of the people that they put together and gave a name that they called Nigeria.
Nigeria is a name that somebody woke up and gave to a group of people. Nigeria was not created by God, nor was it created by Nigerians. The Ijaw, Yoruba, Hausa and Fulani people all existed before Nigeria existed. If they didn’t exist, nobody would have brought them together.
I think that if truly we want to be fair to this country that is called Nigeria, we should ask ourselves, ‘How do we live together?’
But the way things are being done right now is not going to keep Nigeria intact at all because the stress and the pressure that is being put on a particular section of Nigeria right now and that has been put on this section for a very long time has been going on for too long.
Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, and a human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), are among several who believe a second term Jonathan would have spelt doom for Nigeria. What do you think?
How can anybody in their right mind say that? Are they predicting? Is anybody able to predict? I cannot predict. I will not join people to make that type of prediction. How would I know what Jonathan’s second term would have been like? If they have become God and they have predicted it, we will never know now will we, because Jonathan didn’t have a second term?
Critics of the Muhammadu Buhari administration believe Jonathan is being singled out for probe. What do you think?
That just goes to prove that the attack right from the beginning is directed at somebody from the minority area, as far as I am concerned, because there have been many leaders before him. Nobody is calling for Obasanjo’s probe and there are so many questions that are left unanswered about his government.
Like I’ve said, when Jonathan’s former boss, Yar’Adua, was ill in Saudi Arabia, there is this acceptance that the signature that released the supplementary budget at the time was definitely not signed by (late ex-President Umaru) Yar’Adua; it could not have been signed by Yar’Adua and nobody is calling for a probe in that area. Like I have said, I am not against the fight against corruption.
All I am saying is that this corruption fight that looks so one-sided leaves a lot to be desired. But whatever it is they choose to do, they will do that and whatever reaction that people want to feel is the reaction that people would feel. A lot of things are being done and it seems like it is being targeted at a particular people from a particular place.
Are you saying the investigations should start with governments that preceded Jonathan?
Definitely, I think I have said that repeatedly to journalists on any occasion I have had to speak publicly. I have said corruption started a very long time ago. For instance, in December 2011, after winning the election, Jonathan said his government would remove fuel subsidy and we all saw what happened.
The marketers, the opposition and Nigerians who believed that the subsidy should not be removed brought Nigeria to a standstill. Jonathan was called all kinds of names for wanting to remove fuel subsidy, which has remained a high source of looting the resources of this country.
A group of people calling themselves oil marketers export crude oil, bring in finished products and sell them to us at a rate that we subsidise. It doesn’t make sense. Nigerians said, ‘No, subsidy should remain.’ Today, Jonathan is no longer the president.
The (then) opposition that was at the forefront of saying subsidy should remain has come back to say fuel subsidy should go. Why should it go? Why are people not saying fuel subsidy should stay? It makes me say people wanted fuel subsidy to stay because it was Jonathan that said fuel subsidy should not stay.
Now that Jonathan is no longer there, fuel subsidy can therefore go. Whoever thought that the price of oil would go down to where it is today? Yet, today, we have a government that told us that Boko Haram will be dealt with; now Boko Haram is stronger today than when Jonathan was there.
We have a government that told us that the Chibok girls would be found when they came in. Now, the Chibok girls are not found. We have a government that told us that the dollar would become N1. Now, it is N250 to the dollar.
We have a government that said it would feed primary school children free of charge, once a day. Even at the time it was making those promises, I didn’t see how they could achieve it while the price of oil was going down. We have a government that says it is going to pay unemployed graduates N5,000; how are they going to identify these undergraduates?
I think that any government, not just Buhari’s government, should tell Nigerians the truth. Nigerians deserve to be told the truth and not deceived, lied to and conned. I feel for Buhari because four years after, Nigerians will find fault with him.
He has a mandate of four years and between now and 2019, more things will emerge and Nigerians will have the opportunity to know whether the decision Nigerians made was the right decision or not.
Do you mean Jonathan is being subjected to a regional or ethnic-based witch-hunt?
If you say it is regional, Dasuki is not from the South; he is from the North. But again, Dasuki is somebody that was involved in a coup some time ago. If you look at it from that angle, Dasuki can look at what is happening to him as some kind of retaliation for roles that he may have played even before Jonathan appointed him the NSA.
You don’t have to come only from the Niger Delta for retaliation or political witch-hunting to affect you. If the aim is to eventually pull Jonathan down, then it doesn’t matter whether the NSA is an Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa man. What matters is that the NSA was used eventually to get at him.
Before Jonathan, (former petroleum minister) Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, (former Niger Delta minister, Godsday) Orubebe, (former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency) Patrick Akpobolokemi, there were people there. Are we saying those people were squeaky clean?
What does this government stand to gain by targeting Jonathan since it has succeeded in taking over power from him?
What were they aiming to gain by their desire to remove him? For me, as a Nigerian, having been around from independence, through the various coups, having seen so much, I am of the conviction that the government of Nigeria, people who call themselves power brokers, are people who feel that they must always control political and economic power in Nigeria.
And quite honestly, I believe that Nigeria is too big for a group of persons to want to control Nigeria as their personal property. Definitely, I think that, as someone who comes from a region that produces the wealth of this nation, I think that that kind of attitude has taken a lot for granted and one of those things they have taken for granted is the fact that we are the minority.
But whether we are small in number or not, nobody can take away the fact that the resources that come from our region is not small and whether it is right or not, we have reached the point where we are saying that if we are not good enough to govern Nigeria at any time or to be part of the governance of Nigeria — the South-East and the South-South — then how is it that the resources from our region is good enough for Nigeria?