Colonel Abubakar Umar (rtd) former military governor of Kaduna State and rights crusader spoke in an exclusive interview on the decision of President Goodluck Jonathan to declare a state of emergency in three states, Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. Umar, who is also the chairman of Movement for Unity and Progress (MUP), spoke with SAXONE AKHAINE, northern Bureau Chief of the Guardian.
The Federal Government has declared a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. Do you think will solve the insurgency problem in the north and other parts of the country?
IT is our hope that the declaration of a state of emergency would have impact on peace and stability of those areas and the country in general. It may be a solution, but you see, the fear is how the security forces operate in that area. The danger of this type of decision is that since the state of emergency has been declared and the governors were not removed, the danger is to increase the security forces to those states. Now, if they don’t behave responsibly, the tendency is to alienate the people of the areas. In other words, the security forces generally may alienate the people because there would be serious security forces activities in the areas to the extent that they would cause so much inconvenience to the people. Of course, granted that already, much inconvenience had been caused by the activities of the insurgents, but one hopes that the security forces will understand the feelings of the people in the areas, so that they do no get alienated. That was exactly what happened in Iraq initially, when the Americans went in there. There should be a serious effort to discriminate between the insurgents and the law-abiding citizens of those three states.
Beyond declaration of state of emergency, what do you think should be the solution to the menace?
Well, the solution to the problem is to run a good government in the most democratic way. There have been reasons given for the emergence of this unprecedented state of insecurity. People talk about the poor economic state, particularly unemployment among the youths, the resentment that is building between the haves and the have nots, and the gap between the rich and poor widening. The fight against corruption has been handled without seriousness, dividends of democracy that they talk about have not trickled down to the common man and it looks like it is only the political elite and those in public offices that have benefited from our democracy. If those issues are addressed in general terms, the present insurgency will reduce.
Secondly, there is this fear also that as you move troops to the areas where you declare state of emergency, other hot spots will fester and need focus; and the attention of government will be more on the three states that emergency rule has been declared and you leave those other areas that are already becoming problematic unattended to. Places like Nasarawa, Benue and even Niger Delta.
With the present level of insecurity in the country and coupled with the recent comment of Asari Dokubo, what is your opinion on the 2015 general elections?
You know, my only surprise is that people are taking what Dokubo said so seriously. People should understand where he is coming from. I think there is no need to over-heat the polity. I don’t think Asari Dokubo’s comments should actually pose any security problem to this country, provided people understand where he is coming from and his pedigree. The problem is that when you begin to pay attention to this kind of characters and you react, it has the tendency to over-heat the polity. So, I think what we, particularly politicians and the general public should do is to disregard people like Asari Dokubo. My only concern is the kind of statements responsible people also make about what would happen in the event things don’t go their ways. There is need for all sides, not only the PDP, but all other political parties to understand that comments coming from responsible people may also over-heat the polity, to raise expectations from both sides and when those expectations are not met, we may find ourselves in a serious backlash after the 2015 elections. So, responsible people should guide against their utterances so that we do not raise expectations and lead this country to a bad situation, to the extent that when 2015 comes and all those expectations are not met, we pray that what happened during the post election violence in 2011 will not repeat itself.
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