There are many tangible achievements under President Muhammadu Buhari, which many Nigerians have not objectively, analyzed or considered – Architect Waziri Bulama

There are many tangible achievements under President Muhammadu Buhari, which many Nigerians have not objectively, analyzed or considered – Architect Waziri Bulama

In this interview with NEWSng, former National Secretary and Caucus Member of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Architect Waziri Bulama speaks on Politics, Insecurity, economy and the crusade on Corruption by Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration. He told James Bwala and Lazarus Balami how the government inherited these backlogs and what the government is doing to stabilize the country   

Q: Thank you sir for the opportunity of having us, may we please who Architect Waziri Bulama is?

My name is Waziri Bulama. I am from Maiduguri, Borno state. I am a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architect. I hold a Master’s Degree from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and another in the UK in Architecture and Entrepreneurship respectively. I have put more than 30 years in public service before joining a private business as well as curving a niche for myself in politics. I left the public service as Director Physical Planning Unit at the University of Maiduguri, Borno state in 1993.

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I did some other thing before transiting into politics and ran for the House of Representative in 2003. I also ran for governorship in 2011 after which I continued with my political journey and worked closely with President Muhammadu Buhari. My last two assignments were as the Deputy Director General of the Buhari Campaign Organisation of the APC in 2019. In 2020, I was made the National Secretary of the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC. Our tenure was substituted by a caretaker committee in 2020. The National Working Committee where I was the National Secretary was dissolved in June 2020 and was succeeded by the caretaker committee.

I remain actively involved since then and at the moment I am also doing some National Assignments.  I am currently chairing the governing council of Waziri Umaru Federal Polytechnic in Birnin Kebbi. I am also the Chairman of the committee of chairmen of governing councils of Federal Polytechnics in Nigeria and I am also Chairing Federal Government Committee on renegotiation of agreement with the Polytechnics (ASUP). Basically, this is where I am at the moment. However, I have also joined the ranks of statesmen of the APC being a former National Secretary of the Party.

Q: As a Caucus member, a statesman of the APC, can you tell us what is going on with the way and manner in which the party is currently conducting its primaries?

Well, the party has already announced to the public the timetable for the internal primaries, for adopting or electing candidates to run for the different offices in the 2023 elections. You know, these offices are the House of Assemblies, the House of Representatives, Governors, Senates and the President.  Two weeks ago we started with delegates who would elect the candidates among the aspirants to run for the different offices. So, that went on successively throughout the country. This week the party sent committees to preside over the election of gubernatorial candidates and Houses of Assembly candidates which took place on Thursday throughout the country.  The Federal representations, the House of Representative, the Senate and the President will take place within the preceding days and end by 29^th of May, 2022. So, everything is going according to the plan and timetable given by the party.

Q: But what about the body language of the party, It seems tilting towards the south-south and rumour making the rounds suggest that President Buhari may be anointing one of his former cabinet members from there. How true sir?

There is no evidence of APC tilting attention anywhere. All the aspirants of our party are on the same level playing field. There is no body language tilting anywhere. In the South-south we have about five candidates. We have Jack Rich from Rivers state, Amaechi from Rivers state, Akpabio from Akwa Ibom state, I understand that Silver has stepped down, but Adams Oshiomole is there from Edo state.  There are about five or so other candidates from the southwest you know, Osinbajo, Asiwaju Tinubu , Fayemi and others. In the east we have Ogbonaya Onu from Ebonyi state, Omahe, Ken Nnamani and a few others.

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All of these aspirants have been moving round the country and engaging with the stakeholders and delegates. The only difference perhaps is in the intensity of the campaign by different Aspirant. Some Aspirants have covered the whole 36 states and Abuja, some have not.  That is not, however, a determining factor in electing a candidate because every aspirant has his own programme. Some choose to go round; others choose to engage through social media and so on, or through some other methods. So, it is about their strategy rather. For now, there is no evidence suggesting whether the party body language is tilting towards the south- south or any candidate. I know that many people are trying to read the body language of the President to know who the President is supporting but so far the President has not indicated support or come out to reject any Aspirant.

Q: But we also learnt that the party may be opting for consensus. Do you think that is feasible with the huge amount of money people invested in nomination forms, which indicates how serious they are to contest?

Well, you know the difference between an observer and someone like me is like the difference between a passenger in a car and a mechanic. A Mechanic knows how the system works but an onlooker or a passenger who boarded may not know. So, the real issue you know is, the party has outlined methods for conducting the primaries elections. We have the direct, Indirect and Consensus.  The electoral act also allows for such. Now coming to the Presidential election, we are faced with choices and because of the omissions made in the electoral act which disqualify statutory delegates from participating. The number of people that are going to participate in the elections of the party’s candidate has been drastically reduced from about seven thousand to about two thousand, three hundred or thereabout with the provision of the electoral act. By our standard this number is not much compared to the number of people that attended our last convention.  However, the number is manageable and it can be easily handled.

Q: A new party has emerged to challenge both APC and PDP in the 2023 elections. That is the NNPP, now with the merger also with about seven other political parties. Tell us how jittery or scary is the APC with this development seeing what NNPP is already doing in Kano state?

Based on my experience in politics, there is nothing scary about the merger of this new party. These obscure parties coming together mean nothing really. I don’t know what the next month may give birth to; we have the next election in February/March coming year. In politics they said, one day is very significant. Looking at things now and what may come before the election year, many things will change.  One of which is the campaign to canvas for votes and these parties coming together to stand as NNPP do not present any threat to either the PDP or the ruling APC.  Especially the APC because of many factors: 1. You look at the membership and spread of the party. APC is a party that has been here for long and has registered its presence in the minds of the people. This is different from the party that is struggling to even make its name known. 2.  Another thing that matters in the success of parties is their structures, spread and presence in different parts of the country. This is one advantage which this new party doesn’t have.

Both APC and PDP have spread and have structures in all the 36 states of the federation. They have membership and candidates in all the states.  They also have experienced politicians. These are advantages which these new parties don’t have and you know another thing that would count is this issue of structures that will count to the existing parties. These parties have candidates for the other elections like house of assembly, house of representative and senate in all the states of the federation and when they are campaigning they are promoting the party and they are also promoting their own candidature. This is one advantage which this new party doesn’t have. So, there is nothing like getting alarm over the party’s merger with others or its emergence on this political ground. However, I am not disputing, in politics anything can happen. As a stakeholder in APC, we are also going to have our own strategy to end threats from this party especially issues of migration of members and win the 2023 elections.

Q:  Are you telling us that APC is going to win the next election?

Well, I can tell you that APC has a very good chance of winning the 2023 elections. However, we will not be overconfident.  Our party is big and it has a balanced spread. We are in control of 22 states at the moment and we have elected representatives in all the 36 states. So we have the required strength to master and carry out broad based campaigns. I can also tell you that there are many tangible achievements of this government under President Muhammadu Buhari, which many Nigerians have not objectively analyzed or considered which have made many Nigerians to appreciate the records of the achievements of the APC under President Muhammadu Buhari in many areas.

We would also as a party say that there is no threat of this party falling apart. We are united and we intend to keep this unity together and work towards the 2023 general election because unity in the party is very important especially in a country that is diverse like Nigeria. Under APC we have been able to achieve unity in our diversity as such we are confident that this unity is going to work for us. 

In APC, we were able to dissolve the identity base party and everybody is being appreciated without sentiment to religion, tribe or region. There is no reason given to anybody to leave the party. Instead, we are admitting people into our fold as you know. In the last two years we have admitted the governor of Ebonyi state, we have admitted the governor of Zamfara state and others. In the other party, you must have heard that Abaribe has dumped the PDP as well as Peter Obi but here in APC we are intact. We also have a record of performance across the country to show.  So, we have a good chance of talking to Nigerians based on our records with some measure of confidence.

Q: Speaking on the security situation in the country, how would you rate your government under President Muhammadu Buhari?

Insecurity is a big problem in our country. When President Muhammadu Buhari went out to campaign in 2014/2015 general elections, he noticed the threat of Boko Haram that spread across some local government areas of Borno state and the northeast region. He also noticed their spread to other party of the country to the effect that they even threaten and bomb the UN house.  So, he first put this as his number one priority and you will agree with me that the threat of Boko Haram outside the northeast has completely been curbed. They have been degraded. So, the insecurity that we inherited, we were able to subdue it. 

The second insecurity issues that we in the APC inherited is the situation in the Niger Delta where young boys have been vandalizing oil pipelines and therefore resulted in the drop of oil exploration activities; however, that also has been curbed and oil production resumed its full capacity and we are getting  about 1.8 or 1.9 million barrels today. For those two security challenges, we were able to curb but other forms of insecurity which emerged, whether they are related to Boko Haram or not, only the expert in security matters can be able to tell us. Now we are experiencing sort of organized crime where people are being abducted for ransom and others and this is very disturbing but this too is being tackled by this government.  

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What our government has done is to boost the capacity of our security agencies by arming and kitting these agencies for better operational performance. However, I want to say that insecurity and other social vices that we are experiencing are things that this government is tackling with all seriousness.

Q. How about the Inability of the government to subdue bandits in northwest north central Nigeria?

Well, the point is or rather the important thing to note is that the contexts of the environment within which we are living couple with the way we are organized socially and politically as well as economically if anything is the cause of our problems. There are millions of young people who are uneducated and are living in poverty. Also is a fact that our institutions of governance are not working very well. For instance, just this week President Buhari obtained a Supreme Court judgement  announcing the autonomy for local government so as to free funds meant for the local government from being trapped by the governors. Also you will agree with me that unlike the developing countries Nigeria does not have for example mechanisms for deterrence to crimes.

We also do not have sufficient security men in the country even though we have many types of security agencies but the men on ground are not sufficient to check crimes or criminal activities in the country. We have not grown our security architecture or capacity to the level that would deter people from committing crime. Right now as a society generally, there is this culture of impunity all over that if somebody makes you angry you slap him or if somebody steals something from you instead of going to court you take the law into your hands and execute judgement.

We do not even believe that we have a system that gives justice in the country anymore and this is not something that was created by the APC administration. It is something that we inherited and we are gradually tackling it. Anywhere there is breakdown of law and order it is the duty of the police and the army to tackle it, however, what is very weak is the atmosphere of deterrence  and that will improve with time but crime will continue to happen. There are countries where you will travel for one hundred kilometers and you will not see one policeman. You go to a settlement of two or three hundred people and there is no police station. 

Borno state alone is about 70,000 sq km and Niger is about 72,000 sq km in fact the entire southeast, which is five states, their total land mass, is about 25,000 sq km. Which is less than 50 percent of the landmass of Borno or Niger states but yet you see, in those areas you have less than 10,000 police men in the whole of Borno state. How do you secure such areas? It has been like this and I know this for the past 20 years. 

So the atmosphere, the context of deterrence is what is weak in the country.  The police also lack the resources to do their work very well and efficiently.  They do not have surveillance equipment; they lack so many things to carry out the job effectively. In England for example, there are over 16,000 street cameras attached to a voice that warns people with intention to commit crime from the control centres. So, the climate of deterrence is what is lacking in this country but this government has done a lot in equipping the police and we are doing more to get there. Another thing we need to have is the readiness to address crime.

Q: Looking at Nigeria’s economy, what can you tell us that this government has done to help curb the informal security situation due to lack of stability in the economy?

To understand any situation, you have to analyse the context and understand it. I am telling you this as a professional and a strategist when you want to understand why things are happening  or even if something happens to you try to understand the context before you react.  We are a country of over 200 million people. This country used to be a middle income nation in the 80s but one reason or the other led to where we are now and these are many factors. The way the country was being managed, grosses inflation, political leadership issues etc, makes this country to descend from middle income in the early 80s when naira was changing for one dollar and today dollar is changing for six hundred naira. Now, we sell what we have and import what we lack but because of our weak currency, we cannot continue to operate most of the factories in Nigeria that used to employ people such as textile and what have you.

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The purchasing power has also become weak and the army of unemployed youth keeps soaring. The government was not getting enough tax to meet its obligations, all these are contextual issues. In fact by the time we came to power there was very high poverty in Nigeria,  there  was a very high lack of development in the country, and we didn’t have an adequate transport system in the country. These are the context within which we are but when President Muhammadu Buhari came to power; he said that after insecurity, the priority will be the economy.  That is to stabilize the economy, and this means governance does not stop and the market, the farm and everywhere people work to earn a living does not stop. Once the economy is stabilizing, the next step is to go into development. When we came in 2015, nearly 30 states in Nigeria were not paying salaries, some owed six month, some owed one year. The federal government itself was borrowing money to pay salaries, sometimes they even owe three months salaries.

Buhari however, ensured that this ended; he gave the states a bailout of one trillion naira. Then he also generated money which the Obasanjo administration owed the states amounting to also another one trillion naira and he released this amount so as to give the states a boost.  Since Buhari came to power, have you ever heard that salaries are not being paid? He pays as and when due. Now people are talking about allowances and others but actually we have been paying salaries. We even raised the minimum wage and went ahead to continue paying. Now at the level of the Federal government we have been able to sustain the economy. In fact the economy went into recession twice but intelligently and through proactive measures we are able to pull out the country from two recessions.

Again, the challenge of Covid-19 came, when the entire global economy was shut down and crude oil was not selling but the Nigerian economy did not come to a standstill. This informed the commendation of Nigeria for how the country was able to manage Covid-19. This government is also putting up infrastructure in all the six geopolitical zones. We are refurbishing all our airports, big legacy projects like the second Niger Bridge, Lagos, Ibadan Express way and Lagos, Ibadan rail lines, Abuja, Kaduna and many others. These are heavy infrastructure that is capable of improving the economy. They create employment during construction; they also generate internal revenues and flow of cash. These are the aspects the president is addressing to help stabilize the economy and grow it. We believe this will help address some of the insecurity issues in the country.

Q: But don’t you think that corruption has grossly informed the current economic situation and also the growing case of insecurity in the country?

Yes, but in addressing it, you have to look at the context within which self-help, abuses, mismanagement, and misappropriation of funds, the collective issues that amount to corruption within a system or environment. The reason why I said the context is because some of the things we do in this country and get away with it, you can’t do in America and go free. You cannot do it in Dubai or Saudi Arabia. So, it is because of the context within which things are happening. For instance, when President Buhari came to power, the first thing he did was sign into what we called OPG- is a global practice that requires a certain standard of doing things and on account of that, one thing that President Buhari did was to change the context within which corruption takes place.

This he did by digitizing the entire government management system. Everything now became centralized and also done digitally. The entire accounting system for example the IPPIS , TSA and so on. So, by digitizing and creating centralized ways of doing things it made interference and self-help more difficult. You know, all these accountants, they know all the juicy ministries where money is flowing but with this system they became paralyzed. This is one thing this government did in terms of creating a system that is less vulnerable to self-help. This has helped to curb corruption. This government fights corruption more than any government in history. I am sure you know what is currently happening with the Accountant General, Ahmed Idris and former governor and Senator Rochas Okorocha and many others with huge amounts of money being recovered.

Q: Finally sir, politics is ongoing and politicians are at the grassroots. You have a big name in the political circle especially in Borno state, why are you in Abuja when you should be on ground in Borno?

(Laugh). Well, I should be there really, but like I told you. I am now a member of the statesmen of the APC. I have more assignments for the party here than back home. I am now managing the National Political structure. My presence locally is not felt because of the much work at the national level. I was nominated by the Chairman of our party for so many national Assignments and this is where the future of our party is being decided. We have to keep the party flourishing from here.

There are many tangible achievements under President Muhammadu Buhari, which many Nigerians have not objectively, analyzed or considered – Architect Waziri Bulama