Mrs. Sarah Jubril, Nigeria’s first female presidential
candidate, was Special Adviser to former President Goodluck Jonathan on
Ethics and Values. In this interview, she blamed some of government
functionaries and Jonathan’s appointees for the woes the immediate past
administration suffered. She also frowns at the infighting and alleged
impunity in the current administration and says that implementation of
ethics and values in the polity is the surest way to rescue the country
from the clutches of corruption.
Her assessment of President Buhari’s fight against corruption
It is a worthy fight, a good fight on behalf of all of us. However,
it is a continuous fight because even the previous administration talked
about zero tolerance for corruption, that was what late President Umaru
Musa Yar’Adua was talking about. The fight this time is coined as
fighting corruption for change.
The previous administration mentioned about fighting corruption by
transformation agenda. The realisation of the result is the issue. It is
not only the government that has been trying to fight corruption, there
are other social institutions that have embarked on such initiatives.
There are people in the public and private sectors, and the
international community who expect Nigeria to raise the standard of
fighting corruption.
Fighting corruption
So, Nigeria as a leading country in Africa is expected not to relent
in fighting corruption. But it should be a fight on PPP level. Public
and private partnership, not only the government.
The government and stakeholders should partner with the private
sector, the family and the institutions. They should also not sit back
and leave the whole fight against corruption to the government because
they are the people that pay taxes and make the population, they are the
voters.
They were the people that gave votes to the people that contested and
became political leaders. That is why I keep talking about the
stakeholders as the first fighters against corruption.
This issue of corruption is a whole thing that starts from the oath
taking of public officials, if you read the content of the oath of
office and the oath of allegiance which are supposed to be in line with
the fulfilment of the implementation of the constitution of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria.
If I refer you to Section 2, subsection 15.5. It says that states
shall abolish all forms of corruption and abuse of power. In subsection
23, it is talking about the national ethics.
The 1999 Constitution of Nigeria as amended, chapter 2:23 says, the
national ethics shall be discipline, integrity of labour, social
justice, religious tolerance, self-reliance and patriotism. Subsection
24 talks about the duties of citizens.
The fight against corruption started when the public officers took
oath of office either as appointees or elected officials taking oath as
senators or governors or president.
Do you think the ministerial nominees are the best after waiting for four months?
They don’t appear to be the best but whatever happens we must have
the patience and spirit of tolerance because we will not ask people to
go and riot. These people: their records are there but if Nigerians want
to remain complacent and sweep things under carpet, it’s left for them,
the hypocrisy about corruption continues.
It is alleged that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP
governments, in the past 16 years, operated in a corrupt environment.
What is your take?
I think the PDP government starting from the board of trustees, the
party executives, did not open their minds to understand what their
slogan and manifesto stood for. The PDP government had desirable
virtues, which turned out to be a moral verbalisation that did not touch
their conscience and minds.
The PDP government had, I will say, the best of party slogan anywhere
in the world, but unfortunately the plague was philosophical
understanding of the manifesto.
The ignorance about the high sense of responsibility of claiming to
be a progressive party, and only thinking of the slogan and not acting
practically.
When you have a constitution and you don’t abide by the constitution
and whatever your slogan is, they are the first steps of preventing
corruption. By the time we take the oath of office and oath of
allegiance, and after we have read it we say, ‘so help me God.’
Raising of godly politicians
The PDP government and even their predecessors had the problem of not
realising that politicians in public office or civil service are
supposed to ensure that the name of that God they called, they are
supposed to raise godly governors. But they forget the contents of what
they pronounced at the oath taking. They do not remember to obey God.
How?
If there were so much stealing, inappropriate behaviour and not
practicalizing what the manifesto said, then it means people deviated
from what they took oath to do, what they were supposed to be doing as a
party.
It appears to be demonic plague that they will not understand what
they are supposed to be doing. There was no strength of correcting, to
put back on track what was going on. And those who want to do the right
thing and get back to track were blackmailed, maligned and were shut up
from the presidency that was supposed to steer the country in the
direction.
Unfortunately, I just saw a book that says that people deceived
President Goodluck Jonathan. What they are saying, believe me, those
things are true. People did not have the fear of the Almighty God.
There was a government by the so-called people who are supposed to fear
God, progressive people that left out the fear of the Almighty God to
which they took oath.
They saw Mr. President coming with the money from the South-South,
there were supposed to be enough money, it was God’s grace that brought
Mr. Goodluck from an obscure background to the presidency. The oil money
was there but the PDP missed how to use the grace of the Almighty God
upon this country. And if we choose to disobey God, to disobey the words
of our mouth, of course, we will go astray. So PDP lacked discipline.
But you were part of the administration, what were your efforts to point out and correct those anomalies in the system?
Was I not given the assignment by Mr. President to handle ethics and values?
Assignment on ethics and values
I will give you my schedule of duties and you will see it. Didn’t the
elders in the party from the board of trustees, from the financiers, to
governors, senators, Reps, councillors, council chairmen, party
executives, didn’t they know about the constitution? When Mr. President
gave me the assignment on ethics and values, it means they did not find
out what ethics meant if they didn’t know.
They had the responsibility of finding out what Mr. President meant.
It was unfortunate and I feel so sorry for Mr. President but believe me
all I was praying for was, ‘Lord help this man to finish and walk out of
Villa with his two legs, alive.’ Did you ever see the PDP government
use the words ‘ethics and values?’ Did you ever hear the speech of Mr.
President that contain anything about ethics and values? Mr. President
appointing Sarah Jibril as the one in-charge of ethics and values was
unacceptable and against the intentions of the governors and the
managers of the party.
I am saying this now because government officials should not be the
chief polluters. Something has gone wrong with Nigeria, I am not
exonerating myself, maybe, I didn’t try enough but I was audacious
enough to the point that I was maligned and blackmailed.
Mr. President had to open his mouth and said look, ‘if you people
don’t have anything to say about Mrs. Jibril, leave that woman alone,
that was what I met her doing before I joined politics, I heard of Sarah
Jibril, ethics and values.’
Dr Jonathan knew that I was lecturing in NNPC on ethics and corporate
governance. He was following up. The book I wrote on ethics for
development and launched at my 60th birthday in 2005, he was the first
that bought 100 copies for Bayelsa government and I am telling you that
when they were to raise funds for PDP, I didn’t have the cash.
I took my book, 100 copies and said, this was what I had. The party
executives ridiculed me and said they didn’t want my books, they wanted
cash. Even you pressmen were surprised and said what PDP would have done
was to use the books and do auction and they would have raised money.
When I am talking of philosophical ignorance, power arrogance, poor
definition of politics and democracy, misinterpretation of leadership,
misinterpretations of the transformation agenda in which Mr. President
was talking about the innate change, philosophical change of Nigerians, I
am doing that so we could move on as a leading country in Africa.
What do you mean by power arrogance in PDP?
When we were saying that we will rule Nigeria for 60 years, did we
know what it meant? It meant we would have lifted up a standard not
deceiving Nigerians into poverty without apologies.
It meant we were supposed to lift up high standards of integrity,
accountability, high standards of ethics and goodwill. These were
lacking and anybody who tried to do that in the PDP was maligned.
With all these anomalies in the polity, do you think that Jonathan’s administration recorded any success?
Yes, physical. All the programmes, the power, the roads, physical
efforts were made, billions of money were spent by President Goodluck to
do all the social infrastructures, but it is the conscience and
philosophical infrastructures that were lacking.
And it should demonstrate to you that when people remove the
application of their good minds, the application of their conscience,
you may see the physical beauty but you will see chaos in people’s
behaviour and it was because of this that when we started fighting
insecurity, there was lack of trust, there was corruption, there was
stealing and all sorts of mismanagement and those of us who dared to
arrest some of these perpetuators of corruption were maligned.
You said Jonathan’s administration recorded success, can we know some of the achievements?
The rail roads were resuscitated, the airports, I am talking of
physical infrastructures. A lot of roads were refurbished, new roads
were opened. The starting of hydroelectric power not only in Zungeru but
also in the high hills in Adamawa. You have a lot of schools
established, more universities for students.
There were infrastructures in any sector you can talk about. There
were partnerships that were made. In the agricultural sector, a lot of
efforts were initiated in the technical sector, the ICT boomed.
He brought money and people were more concerned about doing part of
the job but not changing their own attitude in pilfering and stealing
part of the money.
You have on few occasions contested to be the president of Nigeria, do you still have the zeal to contest in 2019?
Everybody is a political animal. I didn’t come into politics because I think politics is my all in all and my ticket to Heaven.
So, as a mother, it is my duty to continue to nurture the conscience
of the human specie. That is part of the primary assignment even
President Buhari accepted that, women are the conscience of the nation
and even the conscience of the world.
Conscience of the world
And one of the things I am telling you is that PDP did not help
women, a lot of women were in government but they were not positioned to
improve the conscience of Nigeria. That is the pain and I will not give
up on that. And that is why I drew my programmes on ethics and values
and the compliance.
One of the things I have been saying and I must say it again is, how
can a government that has so mush money to spend on physical things give
Special Adviser to Mr. President N300,000 every quarter and when I was
complaining, I was seen as a big mouth because I felt I was older than
everybody and because I felt I was a soldier’s wife? That was a
blackmail.
We are coming from a political constituency and I am telling you from
2014 up till the time we finished, the SA did not receive one kobo. How
are we supposed to help the president to achieve what we were supposed
to advise him on? It was not possible, the villa blocked the chances of
Mr. President.
So with this your programme on ethics and values, are you contesting election in 2019?
Why do you want to hear about 2019? I am busy for now, I am taking
one day at a time. Whatever I am going to do in 2019 is it not
ludicrous, can you imagine this audacity somebody is just taking office
and they are already fighting for 2019. What is the 2019 they are
fighting for?
Have they proved that they are ready to come up with godly
governance, good governance, have they proved that there is democracy,
can you see all these immunities, in corruption, manipulations? How far
do you think Nigeria is going to go with this nonsense that is going
on?
sOURCE:Vanguard
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