Olawepo-Hashim: Nigerian Govt is on Defensive, Not Ready to Fight Terrorism

A People’s Democratic Party’s presidential apirant, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, in this interview talks about the security challenges facing the nation saying the government at the centre has not shown any commitment to address the problem. He also speaks about the recent Area Council poll held in the Federal Capital Territory and how it could affect the 2027 general election. Chuks Okocha brings excerpts.

The country is being held down by insecurity. We must first have a country before election.  So where do we go from here because it’s like the terrorists are getting closer to Abuja?

Well, I’m from the North Central zone. And the issues are even personal to me because when they kill people in those communities, they attack communities where I have personal relationships, you know, like family, you know, all the way from Kebbi.

When they went to an area close to Shanga, you know, the district head of Shanga is my paternal uncle, you know. My paternal grandmother comes from Shanga, that place. So it’s my relation. You know, I get reports from there. You know, when they went to Woro in Kwara, I grew up in New Bussa.

You know, the people in that community are people that have briefed me about these incidents before. I’ve shared some of this information with the higher authority some three years ago. So the issue of insecurity and stopping the killing is an issue for now. It’s not issue for 2027. You know, we have 200 people killed in Woro. That same week, about 300 people were killed in Taraba. You know, every day there are killings about 15, 17, even yesterday.

Well, it looks like the 15, 17 are looking like small numbers. Nobody talks about them again. Do you understand? Now, the truth of it is that the magnitude of killing going on in Nigeria, if one tenth of it had happened in Europe, there would have been a UN Security Council meeting specifically to discuss it.

So we have to take the issues more seriously. But I see that the APC people are more interested, you know, in managing the information and managing the diplomatise to create an impression that they are doing something, whereas they are doing nothing to stop the killing.

So we have to put this issue in the front burner for national and international discourse. You can’t wait until 2027. I agree with you. It’s something we have to solve right away. And we are doing everything possible. I mean, somebody like me, I’m doing everything possible to put the pressure to make sure that we find some solution.

Yes, it has been internationalized, the crisis. The Americans are involved. Where then is the sovereignty of Nigeria if Americans are coming at this stage ?

You know, after 9-11, the issue of fighting international terror is no longer a domestic affair of any country. You have non-state actors creating safe havens for themselves to attack nations. And so there have been many international instruments that empowers international cooperation in this regard. The funding for the terrorists is international. The arm flow to them is international. So there must be international cooperation. What we will talk about is having concrete agreement that defines the scope of such cooperation, the duration of such cooperation. And that there is a transparent mechanism of reporting, enshrined in those arguments. It should not be, you know, shrouded in secrecy. But we cannot raise the issue of sovereignty within the context of limiting ourselves that we do not stretch our hands and embrace international cooperation. This is not something that is sensible because the terrorists themselves are already undermining the sovereignty of Nigeria and Nigerian government looks incapable of rescuing the country from this kind of crisis. The terrorists are collecting taxes in Sokoto, in some parts of Zamfara. It’s only few states that collect taxes now. And if terrorists are collecting taxes, you cannot be raising the issue of sovereignty. The sovereignty of the country already has been, you know, eroded by these international terrorists.

Talking about these terrorists and their activities, when Dr Goodluck Jonathan was president, there was a time he declared state of emergency in Borno and Yobe. Is it not time to declare state of emergency on states like Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara because of the activities of these terrorists?

It’s not just Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara. Those ones are old stories. The new theater of the operation now is Kwara, Niger, and part of Kebbi. You understand?

Let me tell you, same for urban states like Kano, Jigawa, there are few states in the whole of the 19 northern states today, where you don’t have active terrorist cells.

And more with the capacity to even carve out the terrorist states, a kind of caliphate, ISIS kind of states. They have the capacity to do so in about four or five northern states. They do have the capacity to do so. And they have not seen the willingness of the Nigerian authorities to fight. To be honest, the Nigerian authorities have not been fighting terrorism. They have been on the defense. People come, kill people. They come and condole them. And then you see whether you can scare the terrorists away.They have not been.

When you are fighting, you are taking the fight to the terrorist camp. You are making an arrest, destroying camps, seizing weapons. Have you ever seen Nigerian authorities doing that? They are not doing that. They are on the defensive. They are not even on the offensive. So there is no fight against terrorism that I see on the Nigerian side.

So we need a government that is willing to fight. We need some mechanism for immediate fight. This government is not willing and is not fighting and is not willing to fight.

You see, if the terrorists kept on collecting tax. Tax is another way of ensuring sovereignty. And these terrorists are imposing tax.

They are conducting international trade. They are exporting lithium. They are controlling the mine, gold mines. They have a lot of resources. And there is a lot of complicity on the side of Nigeria’s political authorities. As if, okay, just make sure you are just operating in the rural area. Don’t come to the state capital. Most governors in northern Nigeria and places like in some of the states, they only control their state capital. The rural areas are controlled by the terrorists. They administer their own laws and justice system. They try people, execute people. They do all kind of things.

Let’s move to the economy. People say the prices are gradually coming down.

The prices are gradually coming down because the exchange rate of Naira to the dollar is coming down. It has been coming down because since October last year, I have been attacking them and saying that they over-devalued the Naira. They over-devalued the Naira unnecessarily because right now our daily crude production is double. We are doing 900,000 barrels per day under Buhari and Naira was exchanging N700 to a dollar. Now we are doing about 1.8 million barrels per day. So Naira should by now, under reasonable circumstances, be exchanging between 500 to 600 to a dollar. They still have a lot of arbitrage even now that it’s 1.3. So the prices should come down more drastically if they get Naira to its actual market value. By my own economic measurement, the actual value of dollar to Naira should be N500 to N600.

See where I’m coming from. Most of the price we are talking about is dependent on produce of the farmers. What has the produce of the farmers got to do with the exchange rate?

Well, fertilizer is important. It’s not produced locally in sufficient quantity yet. Dangote is doing some local production now. And it’s not subsidized. The price is still high. Besides other farming inputs, even seedlings. Most of the people selling the seedlings, there are a lot of foreign inputs for the production of those seedlings. That is number one. So, now what the APC government did when people were complaining about high prices was that they encourage a lot of importation of finished food products like rice and all that which will soon have some negative effects, because we have achieved some level of local production over the years. It was seriously addressed. But now they try to crash and force artificial price. And these also have very terrible effects on the agricultural sector.

Our $5 billion has been lost in Agric investment locally in the past two years as a result of those forced price decrees. So, and I had advised that what they should have done was to devalue the Naira, and now they are dropping the rates. They are the ones manipulating the value of the Naira. So, to drop the rates, you will see the falling prices, not just of Agric products, but even of manufactured goods.

The FCT Area Council election has come and gone. What’s the next step for PDP?

Well, the election shows that the grassroots voters are still with the PDP, despite the challenges at the top that has to do with some of the elite members, either leaving or fighting. So, I mean, what is clear is that the grassroots of the PDP is still intact. That’s what this election in Abuja shows. Despite the fact that in Bwari, where the candidate was pressured to desert the party for APC three days to election, the people still went all out to vote for PDP. The PDP came out with five out of 10 councillors, even when the Bwari chairmanship candidate was left. So the people of Nigeria are still with the PDP, despite the shenanigans of the elite. So what PDP needs to do is simply to see how we unite at the national level. The grassroots is still with us. So uniting the various factions at the national level will still remain a top priority for somebody like me.

Is it fair to judge the outcome of Saturday election to be what could happen in 2027?

Yeah, you could extapolate. Abuja is mini Nigeria. There are Hausa here, there are Fulanis here, there are Igbo, there are Birons, there are Idoma people who are even picking nominations and contesting elections.

Abuja is a microcosm of Nigeria. So it’s a fair barometer. And that’s the way APC also approached it. And you see that they took it more that look, this is a barometer of what could happen in 2027. And they threw themselves into it. Most of their governors were here. They assigned themselves into various local governments, spending money, putting pressure on the electoral agencies, on the security agencies and all that.

So everything was thrown into it by the APC. And at the end of the day, they could not win, convincingly. They could not win. They didn’t. Look, the true picture of it is that PDP would have emerged with about four councils, if things were left to go the normal way. If the Bwari man was not pressured to abandon it, Bwari was, of course, a sure win for PDP.

And you saw, we still had five councillors from Bwari local government. So we won Kuje, of course, they changed the results. That’s why you see that in a polling unit, they declared the result of 1,200 when there were just about 300 accredited voters. So, PDP won the election. And back to your question, this is a fair microcosm of Nigeria.

So, if that’s the position, how will the PDP reinvent itself under the circumstances?

I think we are not going to discuss everything on the newspapers. You know, but what I can assure you is that there is a strong commitment for PDP to reinvent itself. And this is where we have been facing since all these days. I mean, this is a resurgence of the PDP. The PDP was never dead. We just have some issues at the national level.

The grassroots is still intact. Don’t forget that in 1998, I was one of the founders of this party. And great efforts were made to bring all kinds of interests and cultural groups together. The PDP was formed out of 13 political organizations that would have been independent political parties. So there is no polling unit in Nigeria where you will not find 10, 20 members of PDP. There are still polling units in this country that APC after about almost how many years in power now, you will not find them in some polling units in Nigeria. I’m telling you, PDP has a bigger spread among the political parties in this country.

Under the circumstances again, PDP is bedevilled by crisis.

By the grace of God, that devil that is bedeviling it will send it out. By fire, by force, in Jesus name. In Jesus’ name. Every devil that is inside it will go out.

You are an aspirant under the platform of the PDP, are you sure PDP will be at the ballot in 2027?

Well, some people even thought PDP will not be at the ballot for the area council election because PDP was not in ballot in Ekiti and all that. PDP will be on the ballot for sure. Because all the contentions in court, I think, I expect that within the next few months we should have the judgment on the appeal court. And then even if anybody wants to go to the Supreme Court, everything should be finished by April and we’ll have clarity.

Okay, the nomination process will be July by the old times table. So, there is still ample time for PDP to sort out this problem.

Still on PDP. The governors of Oyo and  Bauchi states are scheming to become presidential candidate and running mate. Where will Gbenga’s place be in the political cslculation?

A – Well, I think all these kind of things have been overtaken by events. You know, even when Damagum was still chairman, he made a clarification that look, there is nothing called zoning that anybody can impose. You know, those are advisory issues, you know. Nobody can stop Gbenga Hashim from running for presidency on PDP platform. When it’s time, I will buy my form and nobody can stop me.

And people who think if you come from the south, they can go and vote for Southern candidates, you know. But nobody can stop me from buying my form. Even the electoral Act is very clear on that. And the constitution does not support all those things.

With the FCT’s six area councils election over and crisis still rocking the PDP, are you thinking of another option? What is your plan B?

For me, my priority is how to fix the PDP. But one thing I can assure you is that whatever happens, I’m going to be on the ballot in the 2027 election by the grace of God. I will be on the ballot for presidential election.

With or without PDP?

Well, I hope it will still be with PDP, because we are working hard to make it so.