Atiku’s consensus candidacy is a private arrangement – Prof. Aminu
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- Category: Inside politics
- Written by Mohammed S. Shehu
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Professor Jubril Aminu, diplomat and politician, is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. He speaks on the alleged N200 million anti-NASS campaign by the executive, his political career and captures some challenging moments of the National Assembly. He also bares his mind on the emergence of Atiku Abubakar as a consensus candidate and his dissatisfaction with the political leadership of his own state, Adamawa among other issues. Excerpts:
As a third-term senator and one of the most elderly senators in the National Assembly, are you planning to contest for the senatorial seat again come 2011?I do not consider myself a career legislator. When I went to the United States of America as an Ambassador, I was already 60 and by the time I came back in 2003, I was already 64. I told them then that I do not also consider myself a career diplomat. By the time I entered, I had reached the retirement age. I spent my youth in education where I developed myself. At my age, I will not do anything that I do not enjoy. So, I am still consulting my oracle. The Fulani oracles are very slow in responding. I still have a couple of weeks to make up my mind.
Recently, National Assembly members came under attack from Nigerians following a recent comment by the Central Bank Governor that 25 per cent of the nation’s overhead expenditure was being spent by federal lawmakers...
Who are the Nigerians? It is you the media people who are worried. I can take you to my village in Song, you will see that they are not worried.
What do you think about Sanusi’s stand on the 25per cent overhead expenditure for federal lawmakers?
Sanusi is a very principled person and he is very logical. Do you know the implication of apologizing? You are tying yourself up. He felt he was using information given to him supposedly by a competent government source in the Federal Ministry of Finance. You cannot crucify him for using information from a competent source of government. The only thing wrong with his comment is to go and discuss it at an international event, outside the country, but then in this country we have not developed that ethics, whether you are in opposition or government you must not talk badly about your country to outsiders. He is a victim of circumstances because he used the information from the best source available.
But is it true that you lawmakers earn that much?
Of course it is false. If I earn that much my house would have looked very different from what you see here. Four million a month is nonsense. You see, since I said it in the Senate, I will repeat myself here; there is a war against the legislature by interested people. Principally, the Executive, some at the federal and others in the states, principally governors, they have corralled a lot of troops from media people, political commentators and others to fight us.
In doing this, they use all sorts of names on us. One Senator said his wife came home weeping because she was called a thief by her friend.
Where do we have this kind of money? Do we print money? Is the treasury in the National Assembly? I thought our money was printed in the Mint under the supervision of the CBN, stored by the CBN and spent on the orders of the Executive? How could the National Assembly have so much access to money? Every kobo we spend in the National Assembly comes from the Executive. They talk as if we have got some kind of machine guns and we go round taking government money.
The ministers have a lot more access to money than we have; the governors too. One governor was saying to a Senator “you people get 53 million every quarter and he said, we get three billion every month. What do they do with the money? It is wrong. This is just a war against members of the National Assembly
This law we make, you yourself know that it is not fair for the Executive that is standing in election against people who are not governors and who are not presidents for them not to have freedom to bring into the nominating congress in the primaries, people who are their own loyalists. How can a minister vote against the President, or how can a special adviser vote against the President, or a commissioner vote against the governor or the Special Adviser do same against the Governor or Mr. President. Can an ambassador ever vote against the President? We had a case of one governor in 2003, two days before the convention who appointed 65 special advisers and special assistants and put them all as delegates to the convention simply because he wanted to control the votes during the primaries. And we said this time around, we cannot have such. Whatever case we make you refuse to print it in the papers.
So because the financial control is so loose, people who are in charge of money can take the money out and use it for their own purpose. How can we find a way to avoid them doing this or how to make our democracy move away from this mockery? That was why we said OK, since the party apparatus are under the control of the governors, it is only the Legislature that is a little bit independent. The party chairman sits in front of the governor and they compile the names of the delegates and bring it. Even now in many states, they have already nominated the names of the delegates to the party primaries. There must be a way of making this democracy to be sensible, that was why we did what we did. People now are finding ways to fight us. I hear that some people have budgeted about N200 million to fight our electoral law. Let them go ahead. Normally, we should get the support of the media and the people, but we do not.
Don’t you think the people are not on your side because they think you have not checked corruption in the system?
No, we are doing it. This is what we are doing. Let me give you an example, since we came back in 2007, you know I have been in charge of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I discovered that we needed a lot of foreign exchange to monitor the state of our embassies all over the world.
But people believe that some of these visitations are avenues for collecting money from ministries, departments and agencies while lawmakers look the other way, instead of carrying out the real oversight functions...
No. I am not sure that is true. If I have any criticism about visitation, it is that the amount of time we are able to spend on one visitation is too small. It is therefore very normal to accuse people here in Nigeria of compromising when you have nothing to hold them on so do not just accuse us of compromising, we do not compromise. We cannot compromise the future of the younger generation of Nigerians. How much money will they give us?
What is your take on the emergence of the consensus candidate?
There is a danger in over-blowing the importance of the exercise and there is also a danger in underrating it. Somehow in this world whatever you do, you must try to look at both sides of the coin. You should not overrate it because this is just in my view, a private arrangement more or less made by four or five private individuals. They respect each other and since they do not see the light coming through any other means, they say ‘okay, here we are; let us get some people to advise us.’ This did not involve any party, it did not involve any government, or any cultural or religious organization. They did not even involve any economic sector or educational sector.
We should therefore look at it as a private arrangement. We do not want to be seen to be cutting each other’s throats. They have the right to do so. So far, they have been able to keep their agreement and have respected it. That is why it should not be underrated. The electoral importance of what they have done is directly proportionate to each person’s reach. If you have somebody who enjoys and continues to enjoy a large following, others will join. It is a private arrangement, and should be seen as such.
Articles
Atiku’s consensus candidacy is a private arrangement – Prof. Aminu
Category: Inside politics Written by Mohammed S. Shehu Hits: 1654
Professor Jubril Aminu, diplomat and politician, is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. He speaks on the alleged N200 million anti-NASS campaign by the executive, his political career and captures some challenging moments of the National Assembly. He also bares his mind on the emergence of Atiku Abubakar as a consensus candidate and his dissatisfaction with the political leadership of his own state, Adamawa among other issues. Excerpts:
As a third-term senator and one of the most elderly senators in the National Assembly, are you planning to contest for the senatorial seat again come 2011?I do not consider myself a career legislator. When I went to the United States of America as an Ambassador, I was already 60 and by the time I came back in 2003, I was already 64. I told them then that I do not also consider myself a career diplomat. By the time I entered, I had reached the retirement age. I spent my youth in education where I developed myself. At my age, I will not do anything that I do not enjoy. So, I am still consulting my oracle. The Fulani oracles are very slow in responding. I still have a couple of weeks to make up my mind.
Recently, National Assembly members came under attack from Nigerians following a recent comment by the Central Bank Governor that 25 per cent of the nation’s overhead expenditure was being spent by federal lawmakers...
Who are the Nigerians? It is you the media people who are worried. I can take you to my village in Song, you will see that they are not worried.
What do you think about Sanusi’s stand on the 25per cent overhead expenditure for federal lawmakers?
Sanusi is a very principled person and he is very logical. Do you know the implication of apologizing? You are tying yourself up. He felt he was using information given to him supposedly by a competent government source in the Federal Ministry of Finance. You cannot crucify him for using information from a competent source of government. The only thing wrong with his comment is to go and discuss it at an international event, outside the country, but then in this country we have not developed that ethics, whether you are in opposition or government you must not talk badly about your country to outsiders. He is a victim of circumstances because he used the information from the best source available.
But is it true that you lawmakers earn that much?
Of course it is false. If I earn that much my house would have looked very different from what you see here. Four million a month is nonsense. You see, since I said it in the Senate, I will repeat myself here; there is a war against the legislature by interested people. Principally, the Executive, some at the federal and others in the states, principally governors, they have corralled a lot of troops from media people, political commentators and others to fight us.
In doing this, they use all sorts of names on us. One Senator said his wife came home weeping because she was called a thief by her friend.
Where do we have this kind of money? Do we print money? Is the treasury in the National Assembly? I thought our money was printed in the Mint under the supervision of the CBN, stored by the CBN and spent on the orders of the Executive? How could the National Assembly have so much access to money? Every kobo we spend in the National Assembly comes from the Executive. They talk as if we have got some kind of machine guns and we go round taking government money.
The ministers have a lot more access to money than we have; the governors too. One governor was saying to a Senator “you people get 53 million every quarter and he said, we get three billion every month. What do they do with the money? It is wrong. This is just a war against members of the National Assembly
This law we make, you yourself know that it is not fair for the Executive that is standing in election against people who are not governors and who are not presidents for them not to have freedom to bring into the nominating congress in the primaries, people who are their own loyalists. How can a minister vote against the President, or how can a special adviser vote against the President, or a commissioner vote against the governor or the Special Adviser do same against the Governor or Mr. President. Can an ambassador ever vote against the President? We had a case of one governor in 2003, two days before the convention who appointed 65 special advisers and special assistants and put them all as delegates to the convention simply because he wanted to control the votes during the primaries. And we said this time around, we cannot have such. Whatever case we make you refuse to print it in the papers.
So because the financial control is so loose, people who are in charge of money can take the money out and use it for their own purpose. How can we find a way to avoid them doing this or how to make our democracy move away from this mockery? That was why we said OK, since the party apparatus are under the control of the governors, it is only the Legislature that is a little bit independent. The party chairman sits in front of the governor and they compile the names of the delegates and bring it. Even now in many states, they have already nominated the names of the delegates to the party primaries. There must be a way of making this democracy to be sensible, that was why we did what we did. People now are finding ways to fight us. I hear that some people have budgeted about N200 million to fight our electoral law. Let them go ahead. Normally, we should get the support of the media and the people, but we do not.
Don’t you think the people are not on your side because they think you have not checked corruption in the system?
No, we are doing it. This is what we are doing. Let me give you an example, since we came back in 2007, you know I have been in charge of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I discovered that we needed a lot of foreign exchange to monitor the state of our embassies all over the world.
But people believe that some of these visitations are avenues for collecting money from ministries, departments and agencies while lawmakers look the other way, instead of carrying out the real oversight functions...
No. I am not sure that is true. If I have any criticism about visitation, it is that the amount of time we are able to spend on one visitation is too small. It is therefore very normal to accuse people here in Nigeria of compromising when you have nothing to hold them on so do not just accuse us of compromising, we do not compromise. We cannot compromise the future of the younger generation of Nigerians. How much money will they give us?
What is your take on the emergence of the consensus candidate?
There is a danger in over-blowing the importance of the exercise and there is also a danger in underrating it. Somehow in this world whatever you do, you must try to look at both sides of the coin. You should not overrate it because this is just in my view, a private arrangement more or less made by four or five private individuals. They respect each other and since they do not see the light coming through any other means, they say ‘okay, here we are; let us get some people to advise us.’ This did not involve any party, it did not involve any government, or any cultural or religious organization. They did not even involve any economic sector or educational sector.
We should therefore look at it as a private arrangement. We do not want to be seen to be cutting each other’s throats. They have the right to do so. So far, they have been able to keep their agreement and have respected it. That is why it should not be underrated. The electoral importance of what they have done is directly proportionate to each person’s reach. If you have somebody who enjoys and continues to enjoy a large following, others will join. It is a private arrangement, and should be seen as such.