I’m angry with Jonathan–Dokubo Asari

Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo Asari, ex-mili­tant and leader of Niger Delta Volun­teers Force (NDVF) is angry.

He sees Nigeria as a huge contraption that is bound to collapse..

For him, his greatest desire is to see the country break up, even as he urges the South and the Middle belt to rise up and confront those he said have an unhidden mission to conquer and dominate everywhere.

A glimpse: “So for them, their grip on pow­er, their intention for which they left Guinea, spreading death and destruction, destroying Borgu, destroying Kanem Bornu, destroy­ing Kwararafa, destroying the Oyo Empire, destroying the Gbagis, destroying the Katafs, destroying all civilizations on their way to take power is fading. They know that it will not last forever.”

He vows to lead the battle to debunk the myth of ‘born to rule’ which has been their driving force.

He describes Gideon Orkah, the leader of the April 1991 botched coup d’etat against ex-president Ibrahim Babangida, which excised large portions of the North- west from Nige­ria, as a prophet who saw what many did not see.

Dokubo warns those who deride Jonathan not to dare “a deaf and dumb man” by push­ing him to the wall as his bid to get off the wall may be catastrophic for them.

Saying that Rivers State governor is a trai­tor, he likened him to the biblical Judas Is­cariot, who committed suicide after betraying Jesus.

He speaks more on Obasanjo, February polls, and related issues. Excerpts:

Ahead of the general elections next month, what are your basic fears?

Normally, elections are special when a northern candidate, a Gambari candidate is involved. They believe that they will resort to violence. Reports of violence have been coming in, in Kaduna, where somebody driv­ing the president’s branded bus was beaten to the point of coma. A couple of days ago, a bus was burnt in Jos North; a branded bus of the president was burnt in Jos North. The arsonists were chanting, “Haram me, Muna fike kafere. Baba yoyo oyo yo. Sai Buhari.” It’s all recorded. These are the things that will trigger retaliation. In Rivers State today, APC secretariat in Okirika Local Government Area has been bombed according to reports. There was also a reported case of shooting of APC members. People are not going to fold their arms. There would be actions and reactions from the North and the South. This is very, very unhealthy, because at all times, they initiate violence and people just ignore them and say let us forget about them; why are we bothering about them? This cannot continue forever. People have to stand up to defend themselves. These are the fears, because they know that in every free and fair election, they will not be able to get underage children to vote. We all saw underage children collect­ing PVCs, very openly. Nobody confronted them, they did it openly. They will incite and scare people away from coming out to vote. The insurgency which they masterminded to make the government of Goodluck Jonathan not to be able to have a grip over the country is raging as a result of the promise they made after the last elections that they will make the country ungovernable for Goodluck.

You said if the violence continues, it may spark off some reactions?

The reactions are already there with what has happened in Rivers State, and I know that it’s going to spread all over the South very soon, it’s going to spread. Look at what is happening in Lagos State, where posters of PDP candidates are being torn, and I saw somebody on television boasting, talking that there is a law. So, the law permits APC to paste their posters and the PDP not to paste their posters? If you drive out, on federal roads, federal highways, federal pavements, PDP posters are being torn, APC posters are spared. I drove round Lagos Third Main­land Bridge and all the expressways which are owned by the Federal Government and maintained by the Federal Government. La­gos State Government officials are bringing bad policies in the name of APC, going about defacing posters.

Don’t you think this is just the icing on the cake, and elections may not hold now that violence is erupting?

It’s for the North and their supporters to moderate their actions, because they had al­ways been the people to initiate violence. It’s for them to moderate, see reason and live with human beings.They want to reduce us to their level. But there is nothing we can do about it. If they want us to come to their level, there is no other option than to come to their level. We will not fold our arms and die. We will not fold our arms and watch them take the man­date that was freely given to Goodluck, that  will be freely given to him on February 14 to continue for another four uninterrupted years until 2019. So, we are not going to fold our arms and watch them fight people, and watch them have an exclusivity to violence.

They say actions beget reactions. The way things are going now, Nigeria is like standing on a tinder box. If the North do not let go, if they don’t allow Jonathan rule if he wins, on your own part, what are you going to do?

Jonathan will win, no matter the way they want it, he will win. So, they are the ones who have problems.

But in the North, they don’t support Jonathan, and if you look at the pos­sible voters’ dispersal index, you will see who will possibly win in the elec­tion?

The voting in the last elections was very clear. Apart from Taraba State, no part of the North east and North west voted for Jonathan. We keep records.

So you are saying that Jonathan can still bounce back without their sup­port?

He will win. This is the map of the 2011 elections (opens i-Pad to show the delineation in the voting pattern of Nigerians) red is for CPC, green for PDP. Taraba is the only state that they did not win. PDP got Plateau, Nas­sarawa, Kogi, Benue, Abuja, Kwara in the North central.

But politics is dynamic. Things have since changed since 2011 and there are two grey areas APC is latching on to swing votes, and these are insecu­rity and corruption. Things have really changed in voters loyalty switch. You don’t think so?

Which corruption are you talking about?

The talk is that Jonathan is con­doning corruption and that they will stamp it out, if they win.

Excuse me please. There are about 800 governments in Nigeria. We have 774 local governments. We have 36 states and Abuja and that is over 800 governments. Sixty-four local governments in Kano State are under an APC governor. Is it Jonathan that diverts Local government money? Money meant for the local governments. The budget of three states controlled by APC is almost the entire budget of the federation. The budget of Rivers State, the budget of Lagos State, the budget of Kano State are almost the budget of the federal government, N400 and something bil­lion, and N500 and something billion budgets for Rivers and Lagos. The Federal Govern­ment budget is close to N4 trillion. So, these governments are controlled by APC. What have they done about corruption? The Federal Government is just one tier of government, and when you look at it, it’s not even up to a quarter of the budget of all the local govern­ments and states put together. So, which cor­ruption are we talking about?

You see, people get easily deceived. You go home and ask your local government chair­man, whether he is APC or PDP or APGA what he has done with the money allocated to him monthly. In most of the states, elections are not held. The governors of these states, mostly APC states confiscate local govern­ment money and they use it as they deem fit. So, how? where? what corruption? The peo­ple who stand to talk as if everybody is a fool, as if they are going to pull a wool over our eyes and we won’t know what has happened in Lagos State, Rivers State, Akwa Ibom State, Edo State, Kano State, Delta State, Borno State and Yobe State should equally concern all of us. I think that corruption is not peculiar to the Federal Government. Corrup­tion is endemic and it cuts across all the tiers of government.

There is palpable fear especially from feelers in the North that if Jona­than returns to power, the country may disintegrate. Don’t you habour that fear too?

I will be very happy if Nigeria disintegrates. It will be the greatest thing that will happen in my lifetime. It will be the fulfillment of my greatest wishes and aspirations.

Why do you say so?

I hate… I am not a Nigerian. Why should anybody force me to be a Nigerian. Where did I sit down with anybody to accept to be a Ni­gerian? Where? I never sat with anybody. So, it would be the greatest fulfillment of my wish and aspiration. It is my dream come true. Hav­ing said that, they don’t have the monopoly of violence. They should be told. They should be made to understand that they don’t have. Nobody will tolerate them any longer.

But as arms are pouring into the Boko Haram enclave, there is peace on this other side, the south. No pro­liferation of weapons…

(cuts in) Then the people in the South are stupid. If they tied their hands, I certainly have not tied my hands. I am not waiting for any­body. I will protect myself, my family, my community and my country. The right to life is the greatest right. It’s the first right that is accorded to me by God, and by everything that exists. So, as far as I am concerned, if any southerner sits down and folds his arms, and thinks that he will not prepare to defend himself and wait for the North, as they come from Guinea to overrun him, then he has him­self to blame. I will not be that foolish, and those who believe in me and listen to me are not waiting. They are preparing. We too are preparing and we are waiting for them and Insha Allah, because we stand for justice, we will defeat them.

The Gambaris as you call them hinge their opposition to Jonathan on the reason that they believe that he is usurping their slot in the zoning arrangement of the PDP. The argu­ment is that a northerner should have stepped into Yara’Adua’s shoes when he died and not Jonathan. Are you fazed by that?

You see people don’t go with the whims and caprices of individuals. Countries are ruled by laws and the greatest law, the law that governs the country is the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as they call it. The con­stitution says that when a president dies, the vice president takes over; when a president is incapacitated, the vice president takes over. And the constitution clearly states that every citizen has the right to aspire for any office. And in every democracy, the right of first offer is given to the sitting president by his political party. In their belief that they are born to rule, they make rules they think are superior to the constitution. It was not the right of any other people when Yakubu Gowon was succeeded by Murtala Mohammed. After Murtala Mo­hammed, they brought Olusegun Obasanjo, who was overshadowed by Yar’Adua. It was their right. Then Shagari took over, Shagari handed over to Babangida, Babangida hand­ed over to Abacha; Abacha handed over to Abdulsalam. Then they brought Olusegun Obasanjo, their puppet, who handed over to Yar’Adua. You see, for the first time, some­body has become president that they did not decide for the people.

So, for them, their grip on power, their in­tention, for which they left Guinea, spread­ing death and destruction, destroying Borgu, destroying Kanem Borno, destroying Kwara­rafa, destroying the Oyo empire, destroying the Gbagis, destroying the Katafs, destroying all civilizations on their way to take power is fading. They know that it will not last forever. And they see that Nigeria is their most prized trophy in their battle for the subjugation of the nations which are indigenous to this part of the world. They have been defeated in the Central African Republic (CAR), the aborigines, the owners of CAR have kicked them out of their land. And they know that if that continues, if it starts in Cameroun, if the Cameroonians also do the same thing, it will come to us. And with this, we will finally kick them out and rid ourselves of their colonial mentality and sov­ereignty. They know it, and our people are not aware of the historical importance of the inva­sion of our land by these people from Guinea.

They know that instead of living amicably with other nationalities, as strangers on our land, not offending our sensibilities, insult­ing us, they keep on exhibiting high sense of insensibility towards the owners of the land. Even though they have committed genocide, all manners of crime against us, we still have the large heart to accommodate them. It’s for me, for most of us who know these historical facts and their importance to our lives, a re­sponsibility to say the truth. We believe that Gideon Orkah was a prophet. He was a proph­et who saw beyond what all of us could not see. When he stood up and said these people would be excised from Nigeria, that they have to purge themselves of this feeling of coloniz­ing other people, to take what belongs to oth­ers, that they have to first of all purge them­selves, and if we are satisfied that they have totally done that, that there is a purgation of this noxious idea of born to rule, then we will admit them back to live with us as equals. But many people did not know.

Former vice-president Alex Ekwueme recently exploded saying he has been betrayed and neglected and the Igbos have also been be­trayed by Jonathan, and as a result he cannot guarantee bloc Igbo votes for Jonathan in the forthcoming presi­dential elections. What is your view on that?

I am very, very disappointed when elders become childish and senile. If there is one man that I respect and I look up to, if there is one man that I see as a role model, it’s Alex Ekwueme. So, Buhari who put him in prison when he committed no crime, put him in Kirikiri and left Shagari under house arrest is the one that has not betrayed the Igbos?. What did Obasanjo do for him, when he was presi­dent? What did Yar’Adua do for him when he was president? A Goodluck Jonathan, under who an Igbo man for the first time became Chief of Army Staff is now anti- Igbo? Pray, all parts of the financial sector, the economy of Nigeria are controlled by the Igbos. The Minister of Finance, Central Bank Governor, D. G. Budget, D.G, Due Process, the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, are all controlled by Ig­bos. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF is an Igbo, Deputy Senate President is an Igbo, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives is an Igbo. So how has the Igbos been betrayed?. The Second Ni­ger Bridge, nobody constructed it until now. Construction has commenced. I went there. Julius Berger was there. I saw it, and that was in October.

Today, there is an airport in Enugu. Interna­tional flights are coming into Igbo heartland. It never happened. Nobody ever permitted it. Igbos must go through Lagos. Everybody must go through Lagos. There are a lot of things happening in Igboland today. So, for somebody to say Igbos have been betrayed, I feel very scandalized and I just held my head. Because, as somebody who has Igbo blood flowing in me, I feel that the old man, some­thing must have gone wrong with him some­where, because if something has not gone wrong with him, he will know that the person he is indirectly campaigning for was the man who put him in prison without trial. It is so unfortunate.

The North appears to be homog­enous, and the South so atomistic. Don’t you think if the push comes to shove, the North will leverage on their homogeneity and ride over the entire landscape?

I don’t know what you mean by homoge­neity of the North. Where do you keep Na­sarawa State? Where do you keep Plateau? Where do you keep Taraba State? Where do you keep Kaduna State? Where do you keep Kogi State? Benue State? Where is the homo­geneity of the North? Even if they claim to be homogenous, the Gambari invaders who have made slavery acceptable to the Hausas, how have they related with other people?. So, for me, I am not a coward. Let the enemy plan, but he will fail in his plan. I believe it, I know it and I am prepared for it. And I am ready at any moment to confront the enemy and to make sure that at least whatever he tries to do this time, he will fail. And he will be humiliated, and what happened in Central Africa Republic will happen here.

Let me take you to Obasanjo. He has been making scathing criticisms of the president. But surprisingly, he showed up at his daughter’s wedding and Jonathan was persuaded to pay him a visit at his country home, Abeo­kuta. Do you trust him?

I don’t need to trust Obasanjo. I am really pissed off at the attitude of President Good­luck Jonathan in condoning this old rascal. I am really pissed off. I was to go to the wed­ding. I had already taken my bath when I heard that Obasanjo was at the wedding, I didn’t want to go and spoil anything. So, I de­cided not to go. Definitely, if I went and he says anything disparaging about me, I will re­spond. I didn’t want that to happen. So, what­ever reason Goodluck allowed him to come there is best known to both of them.

Do you not think it was out of des­peration that the president is seeking support from Obasanjo in his re-elec­tion bid?

Jonathan was not the first to go there. Obasanjo came to his daughter’s wedding. So it’s reciprocal. Jonathan said that some past leaders talk like motor park touts, and then in the next two, three days, Obasanjo surfaced at the wedding. So, Jonathan decided to pay him a visit, maybe, e get as e be, he will sup­port him. That’s why I find it difficult to seek elective offices because I cannot condescend to this sort of level. I believe that this man, Olusegun Obasanjo is evil, and should be treated as such.

Historically, each time Obasanjo makes a peace overture, something snaps. It happened in the case of the late Chuba Okadigbo, it happened with Audu Ogbeh. In fact, he even danced with Okadigbo’s wife and the next day he was impeached. He ate pounded yam with Audu Ogbeh in his house and a few days later he was sacked as national chairman of PDP. People read a lot of ominous signs into these peace overtures to Jona­than. Do you relate to this?

I cannot answer what I don’t know. The mystery is there. I am not Goodluck Jona­than. These questions are meant for Goodluck Jonathan. There are certain things I cannot do for Goodluck Jonathan or answer for him. I am an Ijaw man; I am from the south, and I support the position that it is the right of our people from the South and the middle belt to hold on to power perpetually as against those who are foreigners, who invaded our land, who continue to colonize our people. These people ordinarily should have been told to go back to where they came from. If by our magnanimity we want them, then they should be able to be amenable and accept to live with us as human beings. So, if Good­luck Jonathan plays with the destinies of the people, our collective destinies, and continues to hobnob with people like Obasanjo, who are beneficiaries of these colonial institutions of the Gambaris, then it is unfortunate. It is un­fortunate if he does not understand the histori­cal relevance of these events. I believe he will not rest on his oars. He will try to cover all areas of leakages so that the enemy will not have the exclusive power to overwhelm him. So, for me, I think that it’s very unfortunate. The president should be decisive in dealing with those who are not really against him, but against the aspirations of the collectivity of the South and the Middle belt.

Somebody from the South called for an insurrection or mutiny in the armed forces should the election fail to meet the basic test of fairness. He went ahead to say that a parallel government would be set up. Are you comfortable with that? That man is from Rivers State.

Chibuike Amaechi is a traitor, and there are ways to treat traitors. Judas was given some pieces of silver coins to betray Jesus Christ and after that he became frustrated and hanged himself. The treachery of Chibuike Amaechi? He has started getting the pay back. He wanted to become the vice presiden­tial candidate of APC. He could not get it. On February 14th , he will fail in his bid to sell the people of the South –south. And after he fails, because this is a man who said Jonathan is favouring Biafrans, who denies to be an Igbo, but recently in Abia, he said, “me I am Igbo, I speak Igbo language, ask Jonathan to speak Igbo”. He thinks he can hoodwink the people, and deceive the people. He went to Bayelsa, he put his hands in his pocket, say­ing there is no money, we are suffering. This is a man who was a houseboy to Peter Odili, a driver, a nobody; the process was manipulated for him to become what he is today. Look at his picture in 1999, when he was looking like a malnourished young man, to a governor fly­ing in a private jet, junketing from one place to another, spending billions of naira. Every­body has his day. He is having his time. Our people say ore nini. Chubuike Amaechi, even if the people do not punish him, will punish himself because he will have nowhere to go to. I am telling you because after February 14, I even say nobody should talk to him. He will commit suicide. He will commit suicide with his own hands, because when you betray your people, like Judas, the consequences will be far reaching.

For me, he is so shameless trying to say APC put up the roller coaster he called mono rail from station junction to UTC, even if it isn’t moving. They lifted the train and put it there and they show it. They think they are de­ceiving people. The people are not deceived. Goodluck Jonathan will win. If anybody at­tempts a parallel government, hmm, do not push a deaf and dumb man. When he fights back it will be terrible. They are pushing Goodluck Jonathan. They are pushing him. He did not use power like Obasanjo did in sacking Ladoja; in locking Ngige in a toilet as a governor, in chasing Dariye away, in chas­ing Fayose away, in putting Alamieyeseigha in prison. Goodluck Jonathan, because he re­fused to use these powers is clueless, is weak, is incompetent. Don’t fight with a deaf and dumb man. Whatever you are talking, he does not hear you. He can’t even express himself. So anything that enters his hand is a weapon. For us, if they make Jonathan to make a 360 degrees turn, I pity them.

I don’t pray that Goodluck Jonathan should change his nature. Sometimes I get very angry with the president. Why is the president not taking action? At times, I look back and I tell myself, maybe that is his nature. That is what has worked for him. We are not the same. If it is somebody like me that is the president, ah! by now a lot of issues would have been settled, Obasanjo will not be anywhere around and be talking. It’s Goodluck. You abuse him and he will come and sit down with you and eat with you. It’s the good side of him. Maybe that’s why God has kept him alive and successful. I pray that he should not change his nature, no matter what, to become a Dokubo Asari. Be­cause, if he becomes a Dokubo Asari, nobody will be able to stay in this country.

I listened to one APC man on television, he was talking that nobody has run out of the coun­try because this is a government that condones corruption and accommodates the corrupt. So El-Rufai that ran away when Yar’Adua was there and came back during Goodluck Jona­than’s tenure was corrupt.

That’s why he ran away. And now they are fielding him to become governor of Kaduna State. Ribadu, who until recently was with them, who ran away and came back… look, don’t dare this man, Goodluck. I am telling them, they should not dare, because when you push a man to the wall and he does not become a ghost, and he cannot pass through the wall, he will resist you, he will fight you back, and in fighting you back, it’s the fight of his life and he will not consider any other thing, his own is to fight to get himself off the wall and be able to defend himself and survive. Let us not reach that stage..If we reach that stage, the Ango Abdullahis, the lie-lie Mohammeds and all of them will regret and taste what it means to be an Obasanjo and a Buhari in government.

 Interview by Chidi Obineche for The Sun