MUJAHID DOKUBO-ASARI, former
President of Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) and leader of the Niger Delta Peoples
Volunteer Force (NDPVF) means different things to different people. While some
consider him a rabble rouser, others see him as a hero. Dokubo-Asari, a
committed activist, is known for speaking his mind when it matters most. In a
recent encounter with journalists in Abuja, he talked on Goodluck Jonathan
presidency, insisting that it has been hijacked. He also spoke on other issues.
Our Assistant Editor, JOE NWANKWO, was there.
How would you assess the government
of President Goodluck Jonathan so far?
I want to start with an Ijaw proverb
which says: the eye watched its seven children to death. Instead of advising
them, it was just looking at them until they died, while the mouth talked its
only child to life and success. We have continued as Ijaw people and the entire
Niger Delta and South-South to support the presidency of President Goodluck
Jonathan, but a time has come when silence can no longer be golden. We have to
speak out on issues that are very critical in the survival of our people; the
survival of the people of the South-South and the South-East which are the
political bases of Goodluck Jonathan.
Jonathan is surrounded by very
greedy people who are only in the presidency to enrich themselves at his
expense. This brings us to another Kalabari proverb which says: where there are
elders, a goat cannot be allowed to deliver in its tethers. If we don’t talk
and we continue to brush it aside, tomorrow we will be blamed and people will
say; “Mujahid Dokubo-Asari was around, when Goodluck Jonathan was president,
and he didn’t talk”. Then, I will be an accomplice and accessory after the
fact.
I have benefited immensely from
Jonathan with my stake, but benefits alone are not enough to make me keep quiet
when the period is very challenging for our people.
What is your reaction to the
face-off between the President and former President Olusegun Obasanjo?
First, there was no need for
Jonathan whatsoever, to disagree with Olusegun Obasanjo. I don’t like Obasanjo;
I don’t like his face. I hate him, but he was instrumental to bringing Jonathan
to power. Greedy people around Jonathan have not managed him well enough, to
the extent that they will allow him disagree with Obasanjo openly. If you
check, all the people who supported Jonathan and fought to bring him to power
have openly disagreed with him. What was the cause of these disagreements?
These are the questions we want to put to the president. It is alarming because
the South-South should have its uninterrupted eight-year tenure which is
constitutional. But with how things are going under Jonathan’s watch, we are
afraid that we may not be able to have our eight-year tenure, because there
will be no magic about it, if it is going to be one man one vote. Some people
say Obasanjo is manipulating Jonathan; that is why Jonathan is disagreeing with
him, and we ask: what has Jonathan’s government achieved to show that it is a
departure from other governments that have existed since 1956? For us, nothing
has changed. It is business as usual. So what was the advice that Obasanjo gave
to Jonathan that was so difficult for him to fulfill, that made him decide to
fall out with Obasanjo? Obasanjo was instrumental to and manipulated the
process that illegally removed Diepreye Alamieyeseigha as governor of Bayelsa
State and installed Jonathan as governor, made him Vice President, fought for
him to become Acting President and also fought for him to become President of
Nigeria. Apart from Obasanjo, there were so many people who supported Jonathan.
Some have been pushed out by those who were not there to give him any support,
while some others are trapped and they cannot talk.
So what do you think is the problem?
The problem is that the President is
surrounded by very greedy people who do not want the president to make any
progress. I have known the President for more than 20 years, and I know he is a
very simple, humane man, but he has allowed himself to be imprisoned by people
around him. That is why we are saying that this must stop. After the election
of the president, before his swearing-in, I granted an interview where I said
that if Jonathan failed to perform in six months, he would lose all the
goodwill, and today as we can see, the president is losing all the goodwill.
The social media was one of the avenues the president used to come to power,
but today, anywhere you go in the social media, he is being called all sorts of
derogatory names. We cannot continue to be taking punches for the President when
he has refused to wear his gloves. As at today, the President is removed from
his own people. His people do not have access to him, so people like us who
have access to him become targets. When Joseph was sold into captivity in
Egypt, it was from slavery to prison and from prison he became a prime
minister. The first thing he did was to invite his family from Israel to Egypt
to come and partake in his new found status. There is something wrong
somewhere; the people around the president have fenced him that he cannot even
see his direct family. I have complained to Ijaw elders that I cannot keep
quiet over the thing that I have seen, and they say I should wait. I am asking;
how long will we keep quiet? Our people now feel that we are at the river side and
yet use spittle to wash our face. Our people have started to complain, and very
soon the bubble will burst and the people will openly revolt. People are dying
on the East-West Road and Jonathan and Godsday Orubebe are doing nothing.
Jonathan and Orubebe will account for the death in the East-West Road. I will
continue to be an advocate of eight-year Presidency in the South-South and
eight years in the South-East because the old Eastern Region is the most
deprived region if you consider the number of people that have become
presidents in this country. It is not about Jonathan; it is about where we come
from. My continuous support to Jonathan is because he is the flag bearer of the
collective movement for change to the injustice that had been done to our people.
So, some of us are tempted to ask this question: why are all these things
happening? Why has the president allowed some ministers like Orubebe to
continue in government? Every day people die in the East-West Road. Why is
Orubebe so important to the President that he can’t be removed even in the face
of his obvious incompetence?
How much do you know about Orubebe
before he became minister?
We feel very ashamed and
embarrassed. Orubebe was one of us; he was attending meetings with us, sleeping
on the ground with us, entering night bus with us, and we nominated him to be
appointed a minister. We have gone to him and complained to him that we don’t
like the way things are going in his ministry, and told him that if the
president leaves in 2015 without the completion of the East-West Road, we are
finished. And the man keeps telling us there is no money. When General Ibrahim
Babangida was there, there was money; when General SaniAbacha was there, there
was money; when others people were there, there was money. How come the money
disappeared when Jonathan got there and there is no money to construct even one
road?
We call on the president to act. If
it is spiritual, if they have bound him with spiritual chains and covered his
face with spiritual blanket, we pray that blanket be removed and the chains
broken. If the East-West Road is not completed, the President will find it
difficult to come back.
What is your take on the proposed
construction of a new banquet hall in the Villa?
Why making frivolous provision for
building of a new banquet hall? How will the building of a new banquet hall
affect the lives of the people outside the village? What is the necessity for a
new banquet hall? This is misplaced priority, and it should be expunged from
the budget.
What is your reaction to the ongoing
constitution amendment?
I believe that the National Assembly
as presently constituted cannot amend the constitution, because the National
Assembly is not standing on any moral high ground to amend the constitution.
There are fundamental issues; the constitution can only originate from the
people and this can only be done when a Sovereign National Conference is
convoked. Nigerian constitution is a fraud. That is why 419 cannot stop in
Nigeria. Even the grand norm establishing the Nigerian state is a fraud.
The issue of onshore-offshore
dichotomy is still very much debated in the polity. What is your view on the
matter?
The irritating call for the removal
of onshore-offshore dichotomy is laughable and that is why some of us don’t want
to talk. Somebody from Niger Republic will come to my place in the Niger Delta
and claim that they should have access to the sea at the coast. If the 1914
mistake did not take place, this wouldn’t be happening. People should stop
irritating us because we are tired of being irritated. They should not heat up
the polity. It is criminal and illegal that since 1999 when this constitution
came into effect, the revenue allocation has not been reviewed unlike before
when it was being reviewed every five years. We also demand that the 13 percent
derivation should no longer go to the state government because it was out there
because of the oil bearing communities. The money should go directly to the oil
bearing communities.
How do you respond to the presidency
reaction to the protest by Kalabari chiefs over the boundary dispute between
Bayelsa and Rivers States?
I didn’t like the role played by the
president on that issue. If Kalabari chiefs came to demonstrate, he shouldn’t
have added salt to injury by Reuben Abati referring to the revered chiefs as
primary school style demonstration. Will he say that to traditional rulers
where he comes from? Does he know the history of Kalabari people? The president
should remove this man for the insult because as Kalabari we don’t take such
insult. Abati should be made to apologise to Kalabari chiefs.
Source: Daily Independent
No comments:
Post a Comment