My advice to Buhari –Tsav
From ROSE EJEMBI, MAkurdi
Former Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to keep to his promise to give the country, the desired change and not allow vision killers to give him wrong advice. Tsav who was newly appointed Commissioner, Public Complaints Commission spoke on other salient national issues. Excerpts:
Do you think President Muhamadu Buhari can succeed with his vision, looking at the crop of people around him in the APC?
I think of all these political parties, if you are talking about somebody who is genuinely consistent, it’s Buhari and perhaps a few other persons. Buhari is one of the very few persons who have been consistent. Most of those who are in the APC today are defectors from the PDP. And they have carried their behavior, their ideologies and attitude to the APC. And that is why the APC is going the way it is going. If only the APC can toe the line of Buhari, show honesty, confess their previous acts of criminality and follow the good example of Buhari, then I think this country will be good. Sadly, a lot of them who are struggling to get one position or another are doing so because they want money by all means. The truth is that nobody will die and go with this money. Nobody really has the interest of this country at heart in that party apart from Buhari. And that is why some of us are afraid that they may try to frustrate him or force him to abandon some of his good ways to dance to their tune.
Because they can conspire against him and if they want to frustrate him, they will do it. Let us wait first and see the calibre of people he is going to appoint as ministers. It is only then that we can determine whether he will succeed or not.
On the issue of election at the National Assembly, there were some people from the North Central who were jostling for the position of the Senate President but they could not get it because of the politics that played out. But what is your take on the sharing of the Senate President’s position and his deputy respectively between the APC and the PDP?
All we need to do is to develop the spirit of cooperation among ourselves and it would work. First I want to speak as a Nigerian before any other thing. As far as I am concerned, I see myself as a Nigerian. I am not tribalistic and I will never be a tribalist. I do things that will help my people, my children, grand children and future generation to come. I will never align myself with a tribe.
What do you have to say about the jumbo allowances of politicians?
This is outrageous. That is why I said these people are not thinking about the ordinary people, they are just thinking about themselves and how much they can earn. President Buhari for instance, is geared to serve the nation. Why can’t other people emulate him. After all, a lot of them won their election under the platform of Buhari. It was through Buhari that they won their elections; if not, they wouldn’t have won. It was because people were fed up with Jonathan and they wanted Buhari to come in for a change. That is why some of them won their elections. In essence, I am saying that the jumbo pay of National Assembly members is too much. The truth is that some of these so-called legislators were customers to the police. When I was serving, I knew a lot of them that had cases with us but because our top officers were corrupt, they did not prosecute these people. And that is why they are here today leading us. If not, why should they be earning so much when the ordinary Nigerian is not earning a salary. These people who are denied salary have wives and children who are going to school and attending the same market. Some pensioners who have been waiting to receive their pension have died. The moment you retire from service, they regard you as an outcast. Nobody bothers or thinks about you. So, these pensioners are suffering and then, here we are with a few people trying to go and earn a lot of money as allowances. It’s too much and outrageous. We thought Buhari will be able to talk to them so that they will reduce these allowances or the Revenue and Fiscal Revenue Mobilization Commission will do something about it.
Now, over a month that Buhari has come on board, a lot of Nigerians are beginning to express worry that things are not happening the way they had thought. What is your take on this?
What Nigerians want essentially is that as soon as Buhari took over, he should have been sacking people and appointing new ones. But he is not doing that. He is studying the situation. He has not sacked anybody including people that were appointed in the last minute of Jonathan’s administration. He has not sacked anybody but interacting with them and studying the situation. This is unlike what is happening in Benue State. Buhari is a trained military officer who has received expert training and fought many wars. He knows exactly what he is doing. He is not rushing. He is not excited being a president. He is president because he wants to serve this country. That is why he is taking his time. But some people are excited because they did not expect that they would be in the position where they are today. Remember, during Jonathan’s time, there was a lot of stealing and massive corruption and the money they used for this election was too much. Luckily, some people did not even use the money but sat on it and that was why the man lost his election. So, if we have such money, why can’t they use it to pay workers and pensioners who are suffering? Yet we have people who say they like this country. They don’t like this country, they like their pockets.
If you were in the position of the APC, what would you do?
I will give in and accept the leadership because I think it is high time we started talking about the good of this country and not about individuals. Some people who wanted to be Senate president, we know them. We know they are non performers and yet they wanted to be senate president. What have they achieved by being whatever they were before? Nothing. Yet people were supporting them.
There is this debate now as to whether the new government should remove subsidy or not. What is your take on that?
Well, if they remove subsidy now, we shall have sufficient fuel but it will be very expensive. What I would have expected is that they should have put our refineries into shape before removing subsidy so that we can drill the oil here, refine it here and use it here. But when you take your crude outside to refine and bring it in, it costs so much money. To me, removing subsidy will be good but it will be expensive.
On the issue of our roads in this country, we see that FERMA is covering potholes here and there. What would you advise the President to do to improve on the condition of Nigerian roads?
The president is facing the security situation in this country and we want to know who he is going to appoint as minister of works. Our leaders now do not care about the welfare of other persons because most of them have private jets and so they don’t travel by road. If he appoints his ministers and we know who they are, if they are men of integrity, he may decide to devise a way of fixing our highways too. Otherwise, the situation now is very bad. Look at the road between here and Gboko. We were told that somebody from Bayelsa got the contract to fix that road. He has not done it and they said he was paid up front. The road is still very bad. You are driving on the road and you find some little boys stopping you on the road and trying to fill the potholes and they ask you to give them money. Each time they ask me for money, I usually tell them to go and ask minister of works.
Would you now suggest that the SURE-P money be plunged into road maintenance?
Well, you see, initially when Obasanjo started, we had these toll gates and the money realized from these toll gates was used to maintain our roads. But the government itself gave out contracts to some people who started making money for themselves and were not maintaining the roads. So, if SURE-P cannot serve any useful purpose, that fund should be diverted to road construction because we need a lot of road construction. We need to maintain those in existence and we need to construct new ones. Even Abuja has not got sufficient roads yet. The roads getting into Abuja are very few. If you are coming through Nasarawa or Benue, you have to pass through Nyanyan, only one road. And that is not enough. We need to create many inlets into Abuja and we need money to do that. The road being constructed between Akwanga and Lafia is abandoned. They started this road during Yar’Adua’s time but it is now abandoned.
What should we expect from you in your new appointment as Commissioner, Public Complaints Commission?
Initially, when I was offered this appointment, I wasn’t happy about it but when I got there and I saw section 2, paragraph 1 which says only people with proven integrity will be given that job, I became excited. And I thank God because somebody somewhere appreciated me by giving me this job. I did not lobby for it. Somebody just informed me that this is what is given to me and I said okay. And their law is very tiny but powerful. We have a lot of powers to deal with administrative injustices and so on. I am sure we are going to make a lot of difference. We are supposed to have a person like that in Benue state but for the past 13 years, there has been no single commissioner to head this unit here. I am excited because first of all they have appreciated who I am, they have appreciated my integrity and I cannot afford to let anybody down. I will do my best to retain my integrity and to make people who work with me to learn from me.
Public officers are supposed to declare their assets on assumption of office and as soon as they complete their tenure. Most of the times, they only declare at the beginning or don’t declare at all. How would you ensure that this crop of people does not escape your hammer?
What is bothering us in this country is dishonesty and majority have no integrity. When you are coming in, you declare your assets but when you are going out, you don’t want to declare. And sometimes you acquire a lot of things through fraudulent means and you acquire them through your wife’s name, or your children’s names and so on. That is not good. In my own case, I want to work in accordance with the rules. At anytime I’m doing my job and I feel somebody is trying to circumvent it, I will resign. I assure you that.
But can you prosecute?
No, we cannot prosecute but we can recommend prosecution and things that don’t relate to us, we can refer to appropriate agencies.
But Ortom is saying he had to reverse these appointments and employments because there is no money….
If there was no money, is he going to pay them from his pocket? He is not paying them from his pocket. Did Buhari sack anybody? Jonathan made many appointments before he left and Buhari also knew that they stole a lot of money including the $20 billion before the 2015 elections. Yet he didn’t sack anybody. So, why is Ortom hurrying to sack people?
Ortom said he met an empty treasury.
Is he the only person who met that type of situation? Many states of the federation met the same situation on ground. In Kano for instance, they are saying Kwankwoso left a liability of N30billion. So, is the new Kano Governor going to sack everybody because of that? What I see is that the governor is over-excited and I think he is being led by the nose. I am waiting to see the calibre of people he is going to appoint as commissioners. That is when I will attack.
What is your take on the relocation of Army command centre to Maiduguri by the President?
What was happening is that the senior Military officers were in Abuja, directing the operation and they did not know what was happening with the fighting soldiers in the North-east. But now that they have moved them, they will be in the center of the whole thing. If Boko Haram is going to bomb everybody, they would also be involved. So, they would be more serious and their presence there will be reassuring to the fighting soldiers. They will feel that they now have a sense of belonging and if they have any complaint, they will know where to channel their complaints
What are your comments about the removal of former IGP Abbas and the appointment of Arase by the Jonathan’s administration?
We don’t know why the former IGP was removed up till now. Some people said he was removed because he was more loyal to Buhari. We don’t know because nobody has told us anything about why he was removed. As far as I am concerned, the former IGP did very well but the action he took in attacking the National Assembly by preventing Tambuwal from entering was wrong. Withdrawing his security details was also wrong. Arase is also a seasoned police officer and the reforms he has started in the police is highly welcome because he has said it clearly that he will fight corruption and he has started this by removing police roadblocks. In the past, you would give police N500 and they would give you change. They did that in my very presence on my way to Gboko sometime ago and I cautioned them. Shamelessly, they collected the money from the man and gave him change. I think Arase would have to do something fast to redeem the image of the Nigeria Police.
What is your advice to Buhari?
My advice to Buhari is that he should keep to his word that he belongs to all and he belongs to none. He should choose people with integrity to form his cabinet and he should not allow anybody to give him wrong advice. Because if he fails, it is he (Buhari) that would be held responsible and not those people.
I think of all these political parties, if you are talking about somebody who is genuinely consistent, it’s Buhari and perhaps a few other persons. Buhari is one of the very few persons who have been consistent. Most of those who are in the APC today are defectors from the PDP. And they have carried their behavior, their ideologies and attitude to the APC. And that is why the APC is going the way it is going. If only the APC can toe the line of Buhari, show honesty, confess their previous acts of criminality and follow the good example of Buhari, then I think this country will be good. Sadly, a lot of them who are struggling to get one position or another are doing so because they want money by all means. The truth is that nobody will die and go with this money. Nobody really has the interest of this country at heart in that party apart from Buhari. And that is why some of us are afraid that they may try to frustrate him or force him to abandon some of his good ways to dance to their tune.
Because they can conspire against him and if they want to frustrate him, they will do it. Let us wait first and see the calibre of people he is going to appoint as ministers. It is only then that we can determine whether he will succeed or not.
On the issue of election at the National Assembly, there were some people from the North Central who were jostling for the position of the Senate President but they could not get it because of the politics that played out. But what is your take on the sharing of the Senate President’s position and his deputy respectively between the APC and the PDP?
All we need to do is to develop the spirit of cooperation among ourselves and it would work. First I want to speak as a Nigerian before any other thing. As far as I am concerned, I see myself as a Nigerian. I am not tribalistic and I will never be a tribalist. I do things that will help my people, my children, grand children and future generation to come. I will never align myself with a tribe.
What do you have to say about the jumbo allowances of politicians?
This is outrageous. That is why I said these people are not thinking about the ordinary people, they are just thinking about themselves and how much they can earn. President Buhari for instance, is geared to serve the nation. Why can’t other people emulate him. After all, a lot of them won their election under the platform of Buhari. It was through Buhari that they won their elections; if not, they wouldn’t have won. It was because people were fed up with Jonathan and they wanted Buhari to come in for a change. That is why some of them won their elections. In essence, I am saying that the jumbo pay of National Assembly members is too much. The truth is that some of these so-called legislators were customers to the police. When I was serving, I knew a lot of them that had cases with us but because our top officers were corrupt, they did not prosecute these people. And that is why they are here today leading us. If not, why should they be earning so much when the ordinary Nigerian is not earning a salary. These people who are denied salary have wives and children who are going to school and attending the same market. Some pensioners who have been waiting to receive their pension have died. The moment you retire from service, they regard you as an outcast. Nobody bothers or thinks about you. So, these pensioners are suffering and then, here we are with a few people trying to go and earn a lot of money as allowances. It’s too much and outrageous. We thought Buhari will be able to talk to them so that they will reduce these allowances or the Revenue and Fiscal Revenue Mobilization Commission will do something about it.
Now, over a month that Buhari has come on board, a lot of Nigerians are beginning to express worry that things are not happening the way they had thought. What is your take on this?
What Nigerians want essentially is that as soon as Buhari took over, he should have been sacking people and appointing new ones. But he is not doing that. He is studying the situation. He has not sacked anybody including people that were appointed in the last minute of Jonathan’s administration. He has not sacked anybody but interacting with them and studying the situation. This is unlike what is happening in Benue State. Buhari is a trained military officer who has received expert training and fought many wars. He knows exactly what he is doing. He is not rushing. He is not excited being a president. He is president because he wants to serve this country. That is why he is taking his time. But some people are excited because they did not expect that they would be in the position where they are today. Remember, during Jonathan’s time, there was a lot of stealing and massive corruption and the money they used for this election was too much. Luckily, some people did not even use the money but sat on it and that was why the man lost his election. So, if we have such money, why can’t they use it to pay workers and pensioners who are suffering? Yet we have people who say they like this country. They don’t like this country, they like their pockets.
If you were in the position of the APC, what would you do?
I will give in and accept the leadership because I think it is high time we started talking about the good of this country and not about individuals. Some people who wanted to be Senate president, we know them. We know they are non performers and yet they wanted to be senate president. What have they achieved by being whatever they were before? Nothing. Yet people were supporting them.
There is this debate now as to whether the new government should remove subsidy or not. What is your take on that?
Well, if they remove subsidy now, we shall have sufficient fuel but it will be very expensive. What I would have expected is that they should have put our refineries into shape before removing subsidy so that we can drill the oil here, refine it here and use it here. But when you take your crude outside to refine and bring it in, it costs so much money. To me, removing subsidy will be good but it will be expensive.
On the issue of our roads in this country, we see that FERMA is covering potholes here and there. What would you advise the President to do to improve on the condition of Nigerian roads?
The president is facing the security situation in this country and we want to know who he is going to appoint as minister of works. Our leaders now do not care about the welfare of other persons because most of them have private jets and so they don’t travel by road. If he appoints his ministers and we know who they are, if they are men of integrity, he may decide to devise a way of fixing our highways too. Otherwise, the situation now is very bad. Look at the road between here and Gboko. We were told that somebody from Bayelsa got the contract to fix that road. He has not done it and they said he was paid up front. The road is still very bad. You are driving on the road and you find some little boys stopping you on the road and trying to fill the potholes and they ask you to give them money. Each time they ask me for money, I usually tell them to go and ask minister of works.
Would you now suggest that the SURE-P money be plunged into road maintenance?
Well, you see, initially when Obasanjo started, we had these toll gates and the money realized from these toll gates was used to maintain our roads. But the government itself gave out contracts to some people who started making money for themselves and were not maintaining the roads. So, if SURE-P cannot serve any useful purpose, that fund should be diverted to road construction because we need a lot of road construction. We need to maintain those in existence and we need to construct new ones. Even Abuja has not got sufficient roads yet. The roads getting into Abuja are very few. If you are coming through Nasarawa or Benue, you have to pass through Nyanyan, only one road. And that is not enough. We need to create many inlets into Abuja and we need money to do that. The road being constructed between Akwanga and Lafia is abandoned. They started this road during Yar’Adua’s time but it is now abandoned.
What should we expect from you in your new appointment as Commissioner, Public Complaints Commission?
Initially, when I was offered this appointment, I wasn’t happy about it but when I got there and I saw section 2, paragraph 1 which says only people with proven integrity will be given that job, I became excited. And I thank God because somebody somewhere appreciated me by giving me this job. I did not lobby for it. Somebody just informed me that this is what is given to me and I said okay. And their law is very tiny but powerful. We have a lot of powers to deal with administrative injustices and so on. I am sure we are going to make a lot of difference. We are supposed to have a person like that in Benue state but for the past 13 years, there has been no single commissioner to head this unit here. I am excited because first of all they have appreciated who I am, they have appreciated my integrity and I cannot afford to let anybody down. I will do my best to retain my integrity and to make people who work with me to learn from me.
Public officers are supposed to declare their assets on assumption of office and as soon as they complete their tenure. Most of the times, they only declare at the beginning or don’t declare at all. How would you ensure that this crop of people does not escape your hammer?
What is bothering us in this country is dishonesty and majority have no integrity. When you are coming in, you declare your assets but when you are going out, you don’t want to declare. And sometimes you acquire a lot of things through fraudulent means and you acquire them through your wife’s name, or your children’s names and so on. That is not good. In my own case, I want to work in accordance with the rules. At anytime I’m doing my job and I feel somebody is trying to circumvent it, I will resign. I assure you that.
But can you prosecute?
No, we cannot prosecute but we can recommend prosecution and things that don’t relate to us, we can refer to appropriate agencies.
But Ortom is saying he had to reverse these appointments and employments because there is no money….
If there was no money, is he going to pay them from his pocket? He is not paying them from his pocket. Did Buhari sack anybody? Jonathan made many appointments before he left and Buhari also knew that they stole a lot of money including the $20 billion before the 2015 elections. Yet he didn’t sack anybody. So, why is Ortom hurrying to sack people?
Ortom said he met an empty treasury.
Is he the only person who met that type of situation? Many states of the federation met the same situation on ground. In Kano for instance, they are saying Kwankwoso left a liability of N30billion. So, is the new Kano Governor going to sack everybody because of that? What I see is that the governor is over-excited and I think he is being led by the nose. I am waiting to see the calibre of people he is going to appoint as commissioners. That is when I will attack.
What is your take on the relocation of Army command centre to Maiduguri by the President?
What was happening is that the senior Military officers were in Abuja, directing the operation and they did not know what was happening with the fighting soldiers in the North-east. But now that they have moved them, they will be in the center of the whole thing. If Boko Haram is going to bomb everybody, they would also be involved. So, they would be more serious and their presence there will be reassuring to the fighting soldiers. They will feel that they now have a sense of belonging and if they have any complaint, they will know where to channel their complaints
What are your comments about the removal of former IGP Abbas and the appointment of Arase by the Jonathan’s administration?
We don’t know why the former IGP was removed up till now. Some people said he was removed because he was more loyal to Buhari. We don’t know because nobody has told us anything about why he was removed. As far as I am concerned, the former IGP did very well but the action he took in attacking the National Assembly by preventing Tambuwal from entering was wrong. Withdrawing his security details was also wrong. Arase is also a seasoned police officer and the reforms he has started in the police is highly welcome because he has said it clearly that he will fight corruption and he has started this by removing police roadblocks. In the past, you would give police N500 and they would give you change. They did that in my very presence on my way to Gboko sometime ago and I cautioned them. Shamelessly, they collected the money from the man and gave him change. I think Arase would have to do something fast to redeem the image of the Nigeria Police.
What is your advice to Buhari?
My advice to Buhari is that he should keep to his word that he belongs to all and he belongs to none. He should choose people with integrity to form his cabinet and he should not allow anybody to give him wrong advice. Because if he fails, it is he (Buhari) that would be held responsible and not those people.
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