I sincerely wanted Atiku to succeed me but…----Obasanjo
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| ExPresident Olusegun Obasanjo |
He equally spoke on the importance of continuity in government, saying that the inability of his successor to continue with the policies he put in place was to the detriment of the country. He equally highlighted the criticisms is part of the business of governance and a leader should not focus on those who ‘hate’ him, rather he should focus on the job at hand. Excerpts.
What is the importance of pressure
groups in the polity?
I have been involved with a few young people with the right ideas and getting themselves together to achieve a certain aim. And I like that a , that is why I encourage young people to be part of the system instead of acting as if they are foreigners. For example there is one group that calls itself "Africa 2.0", they have national chapters across the continent. There is another one called "young entrepreneurs” they get themselves together and their objectives are noble, but unless you have objectives, people won’t take you serious. It does not matter if you are small, but get the right ideas, work on it, and continue to believe in what is right.
Big things start in a small way; I still remember how the
Transparency International was birthed. Peter Eigen got in touch with me about
it and he convinced me on the need to have such a group, and we started going
round, we went all over the world, he had no money I didn't have money, so one
day I think it was in south Africa, we didn't have money to take separate rooms
in a hotel, so I said Peter "we will sleep in the same room, he said yes
sir but he was being hesitant, so when I
felt like sleeping I just entered into the room on one side of the bed and slept off, and I told him, when you are
ready, you can sleep, but if you don't want to sleep, that is your problem"
And as at today, I became the first Advisory Chairman of advisory
body and he became the first Chief Executive of Transparency International (TI),
but none of us is directly involved today in the running of the organization,
we have achieved the purpose of setting it up. The other day, Peter Eigen
called to inform me that the annual budget of Transparency International has
gone up to 56 million Euros .I'm happy that I was one of the initiators, that
is how organization come to be, have few people who are passionate about its
goals, and before you know it, it will have a life of its own.
What would you identify are the leadership
challenges facing Nigeria?
On this issue, I will share a very worthy experience I have been experiencing with so many fora with you. There has been countless writings, expositions and books by various authors pointing to the fact that there is nothing wrong with Africa, but there’s a lot wrong with our leadership. Will you say that God has not endowed us enough? Will you? Will you say God has not given us men and women who can stand on their own anywhere in the world? Will you? After I left government as military head of state in 1979, I realized that there are two areas of problems facing us in this area. One is what I call problems of mistake of omission, mistake of omission is what leaders in any works of life just didn't know any better either because of limitation of education, limitation of experience, limitation of training, limitation of knowledge...whatever. He just does not know any better and I always illustrate this with what I did when I was military Head of State.
I found out that the Nigerian airways was in a mess, whatever we tried to do we did not get it right, but I had the Presidential Pilot in a man called Paul Terha. Paul Terha was a first class man, decent, honest, and very well behaved. So one day I just got fed up with Nigerian Airways so I called Paul and said "Paul I want you take over the running of the affairs of the Nigerian Airways' and Paul agreed. Before now, Paul has never run an airline before, but he was a good pilot. Well I should have know that being a good pilot does not mean that you will be a good airline manager. So every other day I will phone him "Paul how are you getting on?" and he would say he is alright, one day I called him to know how he was getting on, and what I heard shocked me. He said “sir I feel like committing suicide", and I said "ok I will pull you out rather than allow you to commit suicide, what is the matter?" And he said there’s this foreign airline either Lufthansa or KLM, I can’t remember now.
They have an expert from them who used to visit Nigerian Airways for about a week, once in six months. So this man came and looked at the flight timetable that Paul had prepared, and when he looked at it he flung it away, and Paul was mad at such action, and told the man so, that it took him two nights working hard on this timetable, and the man said “it might have taken you 10 nights but what I see is that you go from Lagos to Kaduna everyday day. On Monday you take off at 8:30am, on Tuesday you take off at 7am, on Wednesday you take off at 8am. How much convenient would it have been for you and your customers to know that there is flight to Kaduna everyday and it takes off at 7am daily except Sunday, simple thing!”. And Paul laughed because it was so simple, and he has been toiling hard at it without realizing that there is a simple way. That is what I call mistake of omission.
The job was so simple but the fact that he did not know of it that way is a “mistake of omission”, it is because of the limitations of experience and training, but when you know that fraud is bad and you committed it that's what I call "mistake of commission". So talking about leadership we should always know that there are mistakes of omission but more importantly what we do is the mistake of commission. That's the one that is very very depilating, very destructive.
In most cases, you know it: corruption, nepotism, mediocrity they are all mistakes of commission, and lack of continuity I’d give you two examples in that case. When I was military head of state, we started something we call "Operation Feed the Nation" simply to popularize Agriculture and to make sure as many people participate in it, even at the back of your house you can grow vegetable, you can raise Rabbit, Grass Cutter or Poultry. It was a good idea and many Nigerians bought into it. But when my successor came in, they said they don't like this "Operation Feed the Nation" they will go for what they called “Green Revolution" so they ended up having no revolution and no green at all.
The same thing when I was leaving office as the elected president, I emphasize that transportation and infrastructure is a must in this country and roads cannot be the solution because of our population and the expanse of our land, we did everything to get the rails revamped again, same thing with power. Our successor came and said he won't continue with our rail and power projects, and of course he was the one there, so there is nothing anyone can do. Somebody who close to him and was there on the day he was going to cancel the railway projects went to him weeping and said "look Nigeria cannot move forward without railway and you are talking of Vision 2020", so please don’t do this thing. The man said to him that "look, as at today we have 7000 tankers on the road, if we are going to achieve our objective for Vision 2020, we would need to have 70,000 tankers, which road will take them? But he was not bulged; he went ahead and cancelled the projects. Does he think? Do they understand it?
How were you able to succeed in the telecoms sector but could not translate that to other critical sectors?
No! Let me give you this example again, I have an NGO called African Leadership
Forum, some years back, early 90s. My friend the then Prime Minister of
Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew was busy then organizing talk shows on leadership
challenges, so I called him and I said "Lee, I have about 40 African up
and coming leaders, I want you to come and speak with them, teach them from
your experiences under the auspices of my civil society organization African Leadership
Forum".
But he said no, that he won’t be able to make it to Nigeria because of his very tight schedules and also the time difference between the two countries, saying that “my friend once I go against my schedule, I am no use for the next 48 hours”. His handlers said I should bring the audience to them in Singapore, and I asked them “where will I get the kind of money needed to take all these people from Africa to Singapore”. They said they will fund it and they so under the auspices of one of their institute.
The question we asked Lee Kuan Yee was, what was the magic? By then he was yet to publish the book From the Third World to the First World. He said there is no magic “we got a few things right and we continue to do them right” he was with us for two days. The emphasis was, getting a few things right, and continue to get them right.
So I addressed the audience and told them that Singapore got a few things right and they continue to do it right, then I asked them, “what have you gotten right in your respective countries and have you continue to do it right”? Now coming back to Nigeria, there are few things we got right. We have gotten some things right in this country, we got Universal Basic Education (UBE) right, in agriculture we got Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) right but did we continue after we got these right?.
In the deregulation and privatisation exercise we got
the telecoms right, it was not a chance development as some people have been saying,
we planned and we went for auction, prior to my coming to power one of my
predecessors gave the telecommunication license to one of his friends charging
$3 million, and we through a transparent auction bid successfully got three
subscribers who paid $185 million for their licenses.
Privatisation is not a bad policy, agreed private
investor primary motive is profit, but they will deliver better service and
once they are not a monopoly, then it means the industry is open and safe.
While privatising the telecommunication sector one of
the participants, the promoter of Econet Wireless International, Mr Strive
Masiyiwa said he did not have confidence in the process initially, he said it
was when the process started that he became convinced, there was no need for lobby
as the process was open, fair and transparent.We establish the Nigeria
Communications Commission, (NCC), and I appointed a friend of mine Ahmed Joda
to be in charge because I know I can trust him, we got that right, and
continued on that path.
Power, an equally important sector
you did not do well in this area what went wrong?
Not me, not me, I got it right, for twenty years there
was no new investment in the sector, for a country that was on industrial
advancement path, you need an additional 1000mw of electricity every year, as a
military head of state I built Shiroro, Jebba and we planned Egbin Dam before I
left office. But 20 years after I left
power from 1979 to 1999 there was no new capacity addition except that Shiroro
was completed and commissioned, Egbin was completed and commissioned, no new
initiative.
The installed combined capacity was 5000mw when I
resumed in 1999 the output was less than 1500mw due to mismanagement. When I
resumed, we didn’t have money. People have forgotten that when I got to power
crude oil price was fluctuates between $8 and $9.
So we approached the oil companies and encouraged them to go into power generation. We approach Mobil first but it was only Agip that responded, so when we started having money we established the National Integrated Power Project, (NIPP), with seven stations; Afam and the rest
It started when I went to Omoku Power Plant in Rivers
State by then states have been constitutional allowed to go into power
generation. For a power station such as Afam, gas had to be piped to the
generating plant, but for Omoku power is being generate at the gas source.
So we called for bids to supply turbines and General
Electric had the best proposal, GE has the capacity to supply the turbines and
maintain them. Prior to this, if a turbine is faulty they have to removed and
sent abroad for repairs. They explained that with the 18 turbines we ordered
for and those on ground; they will come in and establish a maintenance facility
in Nigeria.
We had $18 billion in the Excess Crude Account (ECA), belonging to the three tiers of government to do the project. The plan was to do the project with this money and later privatise the project and get back the money and share it out to the owners, that is, the three tiers of government.
The project consist of one transmission company
belonging to the federal government we kept to that, eleven distribution
companies, (DISCO’s) were established we kept to that and seven generating
companies (GENCO’s) were established we kept to that.
The stage we haven’t gotten to is the privatisation
stage when I left office and this is what they haven’t kept to, privatising the
power companies the way it was done in the telecoms sector. But they did not
keep to how it should be acquired, that is where I have issues with them, it
became who you know, how you know and that is failure of government not mine.
Why then did it take you so long to
reform the power sector?
What you don’t understand is that even if you have all
the monies in the world, you cannot take your turbine overnight; it takes a
minimum of 24 months for a turbine to be built. It is not a bag of cement you
buy off the shelf. We have placed the orders, the turbines have arrived the
country. It also takes 30 months to build a power station.
Some said the power project was
incomplete…
…..cuts in.
We were building; to construct a power station is
tasking, have you seen the cement works required. We were on it, and then your
president came and stopped it for two years six months and once you do this the
cost doubles. If he had continued with what we did, there would have been much
improvement before now.
When it comes to continuity what do
you think Nigeria can do to…
…..cuts in.
It is not Nigeria joo, it is the leader, you people keep
talking about Nigerians, it is not Nigerians. The leader has what it takes to
ensure change, Nigerians cant on their own make a change without the input of
the leader at the helm of affairs.
The reason we don’t want to wait for
leaders again is that they have disappointed us…
…..cuts in.
You cannot do it yourself, don’t deceive yourself, in
all these things it is leadership that matters and if a leader hasn’t gotten it
he hasn’t gotten it. You may be worried and be doing whatever; it is the anger
of a cripple it amounts to nothing. Leadership is what matters.
Some allege that a cabal…
…..cuts in.
These are statements I don’t like, if leadership is
lacking, it is lacking and if a leader is there whether there is a cabal or
not, he will achieve what he sets out to achieve, stop talking about any cabal,
I don’t like it….
Some people told me Abdulsalam Abubakar deceived us
and I said if Abdulsalam deceived us, I will go back to my farm. Two times
after I resumed power Abdulsalam visited me and said “ he thanked God I came
out, else his political transition programme would have failed, some said you
will be the last president of Nigeria”, but see today, we are still at it.
Now to the security challenges
facing this country, what would you have done differently...
This is the kind of questions that get me really angry...are you a foreigner in this country, are you not a witness to what has been happening. Did Boko Haram start today, it was there during my tenure, but we took the leader, Mohammed Yusuf and locked him up because we know that he has the capacity to cause trouble. But what happened, my successor released him...how can you release a man like that and allow him freedom to organise...after they released him, what next? I travelled to Maiduguri over this Boko Haram issue, but I was not given the opportunity to see what I can do.
(Cuts in) On Chibok girls...
...In a case like that, what should have happened was in less than 24 hours when such news that over 200 girls have been abducted, the government should have swung into action, even less than that, they have the full compliments of information, why did they wait, that is the question I have been asking, why did they wait for days, even weeks, and they allowed themselves to be deceived by those saying that the abduction was stage managed, all sorts of stupid comments....
What are your some of your
achievements as president?
Well, I met $3.7 billion in reserve and $35 billion debt, we were servicing the debt with $3 billion yearly, by 2007 we have paid the debt; we had a $3 billion debt expended on Kainji Dam and the railway extension to Maiduguri which is highly commendable.
We had a national reserve of $45 billion and an Excess Crude Account of $25 billion; we have moved Cocoa production from 150 metric tonnes to 400,000 metric tonnes, Cassava production was raised from 30 million metric tonnes to 50 million metric tonnes we are the highest producer in the world.
Democracy was at work and nobody was talking about
leaving the country; if anything they want more out of the cake which is a good
thing.
On oil production, we are on a daily production level of 2.6 million barrels per day and there is the Agbami off shore production which adds 500, 000 barrel making it 3.1 million barrels per day. Today we barely have a daily production of 1.5 million barrels per day, you can compare for yourself.
Ok thank you
The issues you had with your then vice
president Atiku Abubakar and the…
…..cuts in.
No, no, no I don’t have issues, I didn’t have issues,
when you put it that way it annoys me, I don’t have personal issues with him,
don’t say what you don’t know. In fairness to him he didn’t say he wants to be
vice president, he wanted to be a governor he had contested and won the Adamawa
gubernatorial election.
I decided I needed someone to who work together with,
learn together with and after eight years for continuity sake I can say go on.
Prior to this Atiku did not have the experience of running a local government, I want him to come and learn.
He complained that I was overloading him with work I
said it was deliberate. In the first term I exposed and immersed him into Nigeria
domestic affairs and during the second term my plan was to expose him to
foreign affairs.
What is the place of a vice president or a deputy governor and how important is it given the fact that it took the All Progressive Congress (APC) time to get a vice presidential candidate.
It is as important as the president makes it. It is dependent on the principal. If the principal wants the vice to be attending funerals that is the way it will be.
I wanted a vice president that will learn and take over from me, before I picked Atiku some people advised that I should pick a vice presidential candidate of my age bracket someone who will not be digging holes around me. May be they were right at the end of the day, but it is alright.
What would you say are your leadership lessons?
You have to learn leadership, don’t blame what is not
to be blamed, em the advisers, em the cabal, em the opposition. No, leadership
is not that way.
I have never seen books written to bring any body down as they have written on Obama. Only recently, I got three all directed to pull him down, you may not agree entirely with him, but he shows leadership. In spite of the success of the republicans in the midterm election, he decided to do something about immigration he brought in 5 million people.
He decided to normalized relations with Cuba, he did it, President Carter said he is courageous others will say it is wrong step, I don’t agree with him on the Libya issue because part of the fall out is the Boko Haram insurgency we are contending with in Nigeria.
Obama is demonstrating leadership
How do one build relationships that endure , you seems to have more international friends than local friends
….cuts in
You are talking absolute nonsense; I am comfortable
anywhere, the first thing you must learn as a leader is not to do what you
cannot defend before God and man.
Don’t do anything of such, I laid it out in my book,
My Watch. And there should be none of the people working with you that you
can’t dismissed. If you find yourself in a position where you can’t sack
anybody working with you, you are finished.
For example,Sunday Afolabi....
(laughter) He was my senior in school I dismissed him
and still refer to him as my senior, the day I was relieving him of his duties,
I still addressed him as senior..
What is your relationship with Buruji
Kashamu?
Buruji Kashamu is a criminal through and through, our point of relation if any, bothers on the fact that as party members of the same party we were both against the then governor Gbenga Daniel imposing a gubernatorial candidate on the party in the state. That is all, but I see him as a criminal, and that is the way it is..
Many believe that under your
presidency, some economic fatcats emerged who fed fat on government patronage,
what is your take?
I will not go against Nigerians getting big in business in Nigeria, most of the billionaire entrepreneurs in Nigeria emerged under my watch, I encouraged Nigerians to create wealth. This is not a crime. I didn’t create monopolies I deregulated and privatised.
In the administration of waivers we looked at the
economy of scale.
We banned products we can produce in Nigeria, a case in point is a businesswoman brought to me by Muazu who was abusing me because I banned the importation of “Five Alive” fruit juice but when she was advised appropriately and she got Fumman Juice and Coca-Cola distributorships she was praising me. That is the way it is, when I banned those products, some people were busy abusing me, but after they have seen the positive impact of such decisions. A leader must be decisive and take action where necessary.
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