•People are scared of state police because govs may turn them to private militias
Former Chief Executive of National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof Usman Yusuf, while assessing President Bola Tinubu’s one year in office, has asserted that Nigerians haven’t fared better within the period.
He also insisted that the military can never bring solution to the insecurity in the country, noting that every crime is local and would require a local solution.
In this interview with VINCENT KALU, he expressed his views on the clamour for a return to the parliamentary system of government, among other issues.
President Tinubu has just clocked one year in office. What is your assessment of his government?
I recently wrote an article which was published in several mainstream and online media. The title of the article said it all: “Tinubu’s Reign of Deception, Destitution and Hopelessness.” President Tinubu’s ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’ of this administration has brought nothing but hopelessness to citizens. The salary of a worker cannot pay for food, rent, transportation, school fees and other basic necessities of life.
Why do you think this is so?
This harsh and intolerable condition is brought about by President Tinubu’s inhumane, World Bank- prescribed economic policies of sudden removal of fuel subsidy, massive devaluation of the Naira, and interest rate and electricity tariff hikes. These misguided policies have resulted in galloping inflation which is now at a 28-year high of 33 per cent, and food inflation rate of 40 per cent. In a country with 133 million, 65 per cent of its population, already in multidimensional poverty and over 20 million children out of school, these misguided policies have added millions more of citizens into multidimensional poverty and millions more children out of school because their parents cannot pay for their school fees.
Millions of Nigerians, mostly women and children, go to bed hungry with no certainty of anything to eat when they wake up. Heads of households are absconding from their homes, abandoning mothers with children because they cannot feed their families. The Nigerian healthcare system is in shambles, with many hospital wards looking like slaughterhouses. Many Nigerians do not bother going to hospital when sick and millions have stopped taking their medications because of the skyrocketing cost of medications. Tinubu’s harsh economic policies are resulting in increased admissions of children with diseases of severe malnutrition, marasmus and kwashiokor. Children of the poor continue to die needlessly from vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, diphtheria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and meningitis due to lack of access to healthcare.
There is a mass exodus of healthcare workers out of Nigeria because of the conditions of our healthcare facilities, lack of work tools and poor pay for healthcare workers. Recent report by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) revealed that there are 130,000 registered doctors in Nigeria serving a population of 200 million, giving a doctor-to-patient ratio of one doctor serving 1,500 patients (1:1,500). The WHO’s recommendation is that one doctor should serve 600 patients (1:600). This ratio is much higher in many states signifying that all Nigerians, regardless of their station in life, live in a very high-risk medical environment.
What can be done to shore up the naira and tackle inflation?
The economic policies of any government should aim to fight inflation, fight unemployment and grow the economy. President Tinubu’s economic policies have caused a lot of living crisis in Nigeria, resulting in unbearable hardships on all citizens. Workers’ salaries cannot pay for rent, water, food, clothing, school fees, transportation, and other basic necessities of life.
Runaway inflation has pauperised citizens and worsened hunger in the land. The managers of the economy are at a loss as to what to do. Their attempt at borrowing and hiking the interest rates to artificially prop up the value of the Naira against the Dollar has not and will never work. It is voodoo economics to think that taxing citizens beyond their capacity to pay will revive Nigeria’s comatose economy. Taxes do not grow economies, production does.
The federal government has quietly resumed paying for the same fuel subsidy it removed on 29, May 2023. The simple questions to ask are, (1). Why is the pump price not back to where it was before the removal of subsidy? (2). Are these payments provided for in the 2024 budget? And (3), who are the new cabals benefiting from these payments?
You have continuously bemoaned the insecurity in the North, but the National Security Adviser (NSA), Ribadu, has said insecurity under Tinubu has been drastically reduced. How do we reconcile these positions?
There is nothing to reconcile because, contrary to the official propaganda and half-truths about improvements in Nigeria’s national security, the reality on the ground particularly in the North-West and North-Central part of the country says differently. Terrorists still control a large swath of the country’s rural areas 15 and nine years into the wars against Boko Haram and bandits respectively.
The land is still drenched in the blood of innocent citizens, villages are being ransacked and pillaged, villagers chased off their homes or abducted for ransom. Farmers are chased off their farmlands or levied on their harvests. Major highways still remain unsafe from terrorists who attack travellers, killing and abducting passengers at will for ransom. Ethno-religious conflicts and killings continue unabated.
The 400 women and children abducted by Boko Haram insurgents from IDP camps in Gamboru Ngala, Borno State on March 3, 2024 have been forgotten by the government. The morale of members of the military is at its lowest because active duty personnel are increasingly being ambushed and killed by terrorists all across the country. In the last eight months, over 500 officers and soldiers have been reported killed in such attacks.
Recent hurried, unplanned withdrawals of the military from two bandits-infested areas in Maru LGA. Zamfara State and Shiroro LGA, Niger State, where the military sustained unfortunate losses, could very well be a sign of frustration and battle fatigue in our soldiers.
You have always maintained that only a local approach will solve crime. What is your take on the idea of state police?
Yes, I have always said and believed that all the security challenges in this country from Boko Haram in the North East to banditry in the North West and North Central, to the ‘unknown gunmen’ in the South East, to militancy in the South South, all have their genesis locally, and their solutions must be found locally by involving all stakeholders. I have also consistently said that big plans from Abuja without local consultations have never worked and will never work.
The call for state police is fuelled by the undeniable fact that there are not enough law enforcement boots on the ground to police our communities. Almost all that the military is doing now is internal policing as a result of this deficit. This is not what the military is trained for. So, there is no doubt that Nigeria needs more police but, the big concern is that state governors do not use them as their political militia to the detriment of citizens.
In the past administration, nearly all those who manned the security architecture of the country were from the north. Why couldn’t they stamp out this scourge from the region?
To be fair to President Buhari whom I have been a big critic of, he did exceptionally well in fighting Boko Haram by liberating all LGAs from the terrorists. So, he did what President Goodluck Jonathan and his South Eastern military chiefs (to borrow from your north, south lingo) couldn’t do.
Having said that, President Buhari and his security team took their eyes off other security challenges like banditry in the North West and North Central and the scourge of ‘unknown gunmen’ inflicting terror in the South East.
I have been on record as one of the few Nigerians that have been vocal about the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari left Nigeria less secure than he met it.
Ten northern state governors recently travelled to the United States to discuss insecurity in their region. What do you say to this?
While their house is on fire, 10 Northern Nigerian governors went to America looking for solutions to problems they are complicit in creating because they control the drivers of insecurity in their states. I have said it again and again that all our security problems are local, and their solutions must be found locally, not in Abuja, New York City, Washington DC or anywhere else. The armed militias created by some of these governors in their states have done nothing but worsened the bloodshed.
It is no secret that both the American and French governments have been lobbying the Nigerian government to open bases and station their troops on Nigerian soil following their expulsion from Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. The real concern is that the timing of the invitation to the 10 Northern governors by the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) may not be unconnected with this lobby.
Addressing Nigeria’s intractable security challenges will require a sincere, strategic, holistic approach involving all stakeholders instead of the disjointed fire brigade approach currently employed.
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have pulled out of ECOWAS. What are the security and other implications for Nigeria?
President Tinubu’s impulsive and amateurish handling of the aftermath of the July 2023 coup in Niger is largely responsible for the exit of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso from the ECOWAS, thereby jeopardising the survival of the organisation created 49 years ago.
The exit of these three countries from the ECOWAS, acceptance of Russian troops on their soil and the frenzied lobby of the French and Americans to relocate their military bases to Nigeria are all harbingers of bad things to come.
It is concerning that while many Francophone African countries are breaking free from the shackles of oppression and exploitation of their colonial masters, President Tinubu is dragging Nigeria blindly into the embrace of France.
Why are you opposed to the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway when you didn’t oppose Buhari’s monumental projects like the Kano-Katsina rail to Niger Republic?
My opposition to this Lagos-Calabar coastal highway has nothing to do with the pedestrian argument of North or South, but that President Tinubu unilaterally gave this contract at a cost of N15.6 trillion which is 55.7per cent of the total national budget of N28 trillion to his friend and business partner in whose company the president’s son is a director. Apart from this blatant conflict of interest, all laws and procedures of procurement were breached in the award of this contract. Finally, this project will just be another white elephant project and an avenue to siphon Nigeria’s commonwealth.
Talking about Former President Buhar siting multi-billion dollar projects in the North, which of these projects are you talking about? In his eight-year term, he could not complete the most important highway in the North that is the major artery of nine states to the FCT and southern Nigeria, neither could he even break the grounds for Mambilla hydroelectric dam which would have tremendously improved the epileptic power supply the country is witnessing. Neither has any road or rail projects been done to Niger Republic. But the last time I checked, President Buhari’s government built the Second Niger Bridge in the South East that governments before him couldn’t. What do you say about this?
Many are advocating a return to parliamentary system of government. What is your view on this?
There is no doubt that the American presidential system Nigeria has operated over the last 25 years has not served the citizens well. For one, it is too expensive with an unsustainably high cost of governance.
In contrast, the British Parliamentary system that Nigeria operated during the First Republic was much cheaper and leaders were more accountable to the electorate. Most importantly, leaders of that time were more responsible and responsive to the yearnings of their people and they were also better custodians of that which they were entrusted with. You cannot say that of the current crop of leaders steering the ship of state in all tiers of government all across the country.
What is your position on restructuring?
Who is afraid of restructuring? Please bring it on, today, today!
How do we get it right as a country? Everyone that emerges president always enthrones nepotism and sees his tribe as his constituency?
We will get it right when we realise that all these political shenanigans of nepotism, Emilokan, secessionist agitations, terror and violence will get us nowhere.
What are your final words?
President Tinubu’s tenure has thus far been a catastrophic failure in governance. His policies have plunged the citizenry deeper into poverty, imperilled our national security and compromised the integrity of our institutions. Tinubunomics, under the guise of reforms, is only intensifying hardships in the land. The misallocation of resources and corruption reflects a leadership that prioritises personal enrichment over the public interests. This administration’s actions are disappointing, morally reprehensible and go against the principles of democracy and good governance. We cannot and will not remain silent because silence in the face of evil is itself evil.
