Politics can’t be played on air (I)
By ABUBAKAR G. YA’U and
MUH’D HAMISU ABDULLAHI
Hon. Sani Saleh Minjibir is an ANPP member representing Kano’s Ungogo/Minjibir federal constituency in the House of Representatives. He joined the House in the year 2003. In this interview, he bares his mind on issues of interest at national, state and local levels such as the voters register, post Obasanjo Nigeria, the EFCC and good policies of Shekarau administration and offering himself to the people of his constituency for any assignment. His approach to such issues has qualified him an intellectual figure whose vision and foresight have made him to be such a desirous personality well prepared to pursue the interest of people with vigour all in an effort towards bringing succour to them. The excerpt:
Daily Triumph: Sir, can you give a brief biography of yourself?
Hon. Minjibir: Thank you so much for this opportunity. First of all, I was born on 7th of January, 1966 and I had my primary education initially at Unguwa Uku Primary School and then on to ‘Yan Sanda Primary School here in Kano. I got into Saint Thomas Secondary School in 1977 from where I finished as the best over all student in the whole state in 1982. I moved to Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, where I did my ‘A’ Level under the former structure of the School for Basic Studies. God willing, I was successful from where I moved on to study Architecture. I finished ABU, Zaria with the Masters Degree in Architecture. I worked briefly for a private firm called New Method Design Associate in Kaduna before setting up my own private practice in the year 1992. I have been practicing as an architect for all these years until 2003 when politics came calling and I contested and by the grace of God, I was successful. I won a seat in the Federal House of Representatives under our great party-All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).
Sir, currently there is voters registration going on in the country, with a lot of complaints, especially on the part of the officials. One of the complaints is shortage of working materials, especially the computer machine as many people speculated. What is your reaction to the voters registration exercise?
Well, first of all, we have to admit that there have been serious complaints from all over the federation. So, this issue about the non-performance of the voter registration machine is not localized to one part of the country. And, I am of the firm belief that the whole system was designed to fail. I believe that it is some kind of conspiracy entered into by those in position of authority to sabotage the electoral process with a view to creating some kind of chaos in the country with the view to attaining some pre-determined agenda. I am of the opinion that we should just revert back to the old system and later on we can introduce this electronic registration on an experimental pilot level where we will now have ample time to be able to experiment and correct the mistakes.
It will be of interest to note that Ghana tried a similar experiment, and Ghana is just a nation of ten million people and they had 14 months to fine tune and get this system ready and acceptable to the people.
At the end, it failed and they had to revert back to what they were used to before. Now, I am not averse to a situation where we should try and improve on the current practices, but what I am desperately trying to make the government understand is, now we do not have so much time to experiment. A situation where people will queue up for 14 hours and you just find 20 people being registered, is quite insensitive and we should be looking to have an efficient system of doing this without all these hassles and uncertainties.
All these, I have not even gone to the extent of addressing the problems presented by the machines themselves because sometime the date captured might have certain problems in which you need to make correction, like a colleague of mine told me that he gave his correct date of birth only for the registration to come out with a different date of birth. And when he inquired about it, he was told that it could be corrected, but the correction is going to take ten days. So, you can just imagine if 30 people were to present with a similar problem, what will happen?
Sir, some members of the National Assembly are looked at as seat warmers, while some are very active. How will you distinguish yourself from such members who have not contributed to the proceedings in the Assembly and how were you able to bring pride to your constituency?
Thank you so much. You see, in the National Assembly as law making body, the first impression you create among your colleagues that will put you in good state to handle all these issues, is your presentation. I believe that we have done quite well in the way we have been able to come across in parliament and I have been involved in the passage and sponsoring of so many bills, which have now become laws. There are at least about seven to eight bills in which I have been actively involved in sponsoring. And apart from that it shows the respect with which my constituency is held in the parliament in the sense that I am one of the 18 members of the House of Representatives that were selected to represent Nigeria in the ECOWAS parliament, which is a sub-regional body. Having said that, there are also other areas where I have been mandated to head. Presently, I am heading a committee on military pension, which has been source of irritation to all of us. And we symphasise with these military pensioners and for the past three years, we have been working very hard to get their case put across to the relevant authorities. And thankfully, the president of the country has decided to give us a listening ear to present their case before him and by God’s grace the parliament appointed me to head the special Ad-hoc committee that will investigate this issue of military pension and come up with the position that we will; present to the president who will hopefully look into the case with a view to ameliorating the situation. After that, I have been involved in other adhoc committees as a very active member.
Sir, having seen how the journey has fared since 1999, what is your perception of post Obasanjo Nigeria, especially, taking cognizance of the economic stagnation in the country vis-à-vis the tense politicking which characterized the nation- believed to be a country of suffering amids of abundance?
Well, I believe that post Obasanjo Nigeria will witness certain changes which will bring to the fore the concerns for attending to the basic material needs of people. I have said severally that governance is about attending to the basic material needs of the people. And whenever the president or any of his economic think-tank group are addressing the nation, they always make big capital out of the reforms that are going on. And I always tell them that competitive free market economic reforms can go hand in hand with a system that ensures that you pay adequate attention to basic material needs of people. You adopt some kind of welfarism in such a way that it will reduce the suffering of the people. And if you are talking about reforms, reforms, reforms … how about making reforms that will address the suffering, the disease, the poverty and the ignorance that are manifest clearly in the people down there.
I believe that a lot of reforms will also be done to address these issues. Granted that like the reforms in the pension industry, the pension sector, they are very good because they will remove a sore that has hitherto defied all solutions and I also believe that the reforms in the banking industry were most welcome even though, having these mega banks should not exclude the right to have smaller banks to also participate in the process. I believe, it is not democratic to just put a ceiling and say okay any bank that does not have capitalization of up to N25 billion should be out. That is the way I perceive these things. So I really believe that post Obasanjo Nigeria will see a lot of reforms that are directed to addressing the basic material needs of the people because that is why you have a government. Our constitution clearly states that.
Sir, looking at the political jingoism in Nigeria vis-à-vis the impeachment saga and threat in some states of the federation, it was sometime believed that these were aimed at destabilizing the whole country before this year. With all these, what has just come into your mind as to whether the transition will be a reality or otherwise?
By the grace of God Almighty, nothing will truncate our democracy. We believe fervently that the president is paying lip service to the issue of observance of the rule of law because the president has been the biggest law breaker in this country since he assumed office. And in a lot of instances, all these happenings in the states have his covert backing because you cannot justify a situation where law makers will go at 5:30 am under full police cover to impeach a sitting chief executive of a state. The impeachment process as defined in the constitution is supposed to be a transparently done process. Where law makers will now go and converge somewhere like coup plotters or some what like armed robbers under the active protection of law enforcement agencies, you got to smell a rat. This is because the governor of the state is not in control of the police. The Inspector General of Police, who is in direct control of the president is the person who should be held responsible and by extension, it means the president must have been in the know that these things are going on. But all these things insha Allah will not truncate our democracy because Nigerians are fully aware that democracy is the only way forward for the country.