Impeachment Threat Not A New Thing – Abati

• Opposition Only Heating up Polity

In this interview with GEORGE AGBA, special adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on media and publicity, Dr Reuben Abati, defends his boss on the plethora of allegations levelled against his government. Insisting that the President has not committed any impeachable offence, the presidential spokesman argues strongly that while blackmail is the reason why the issue of corruption is being played up against the current administration, those accusing the Jonathan government of corruption are the ones who are most corrupt

Dr Reuben Abati

The opposition has kept insisting that the Presidency was behind the recent incident in which the Speaker of the House of Representatives and some lawmakers were locked out of the National Assembly. Would the police have embarked on such a mission without orders from above?

The police is an institution; it is a constitutional body. Its functions are properly spelt out in the Police Act and the Constitution. The police have the responsibility to maintain law and order. If in every instance when the police have intelligence reports or where they see the need to perform their constitutional duties, they would still have to get clearance from the President, then there will be chaos in society. I would have thought that the idea of having institutions is that such institutions should be strong enough to discharge their constitutional responsibilities whenever the occasion arises.

The President had no hand in that incident, and the police themselves have said so. According to the police, they got intelligence reports that some hoodlums were trying to overwhelm the National Assembly and you need to understand the context in which that occurred. If the police whose responsibility it is to maintain law and order have that kind of information, they don’t need to go and take directive from the President, even if in this instance what was involved was the legislative assembly. In fact, the situation called for even greater urgency and prompt action. Legislators are very important Nigerians.

So, the police said they acted on the basis of the information that they had to prevent thugs from overwhelming the National Assembly. They have also said that given the fallout from that action that they took, which was meant to be preemptive, they are still going to investigate to find out exactly what happened and that at the end of the investigation they will make their findings known to all Nigerians. I think that is where we are at this moment on that matter and I think it is most unfair to continue to drag the name of the President into everything. Even if the President of a country as big as this wants to, there is no way he can micro manage every little thing.

There are institutions that have been established to function under the law, but because politicians are involved, it is very convenient, and this is election time, to try to drag President Jonathan’s name into everything that mischief-makers can dredge up.

The resultant effect from this incident is that the House is now divided, with the opposition lawmakers angling for the impeachment of the President and those of the ruling party opposing the move. Don’t you think it is a bad omen for the Jonathan presidency? 

This is not the first time that the House of Representatives would threaten to impeach a sitting president. I think they issued a similar threat under former President Obasanjo. But I don’t think that anybody will impeach this President, because this is a President that has not committed any wrong. He is a President who has served this country diligently. For the opposition politicians, Nigerians can see through their antics, because the people who are calling for the President’s impeachment are members of the opposition, the All Progressives Congress (APC); the same people who are threatening that if the President wins in 2015, they will form a parallel government and make Nigeria ungovernable.

The 2015 elections have not even taken place. The President is still an aspirant; he has not been officially declared a candidate. He has just been screened by his party and given a certificate of clearance, but already it looks like the APC has accepted defeat. They are already speaking like losers, bad losers, in an election that has not taken place yet; that will still take place in February. Perhaps all this is consistent with their rhetoric of saying they will make Nigeria ungovernable, they will form a parallel government, they will cause commotion. So, their threat of impeachment is part of it and I think that Nigerians should appeal to them to allow democracy to take its course, to allow the Nigerian democracy we are trying to consolidate to flourish.

Threatening fire and brimstone, and mayhem, all of that is bad sportsmanship, totally unpatriotic in my view, and it is selfish. Even from the rhetoric, either on the platform of the legislature or in other circumstances, there is so much threat. They are heating up the polity. If they want power, the best place to go is the ballot; it is not through threat of impeachment or making Nigeria ungovernable, and as I said earlier, Nigerians can see through their antics. We should appeal to them to allow the people of Nigeria to freely express their will through the ballot box and they must not do anything for any reason whatsoever to hijack the will of the people through the back door.

Governor Amaechi, who actually made that statement of forming a parallel government, had been consistent in criticising the President and the federal government. That he seems to get away with the weighty allegations he keeps making gives credibility to whatever he says. Any plans to get him to prove the allegations he has made so far?

You know that as a sitting governor, he enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution, and I guess, in his own case, he interprets that immunity to mean a licence to be utterly disagreeable whenever he chooses to be. It is really pitiable that a man like Governor Amaechi is almost descending to the level of the ridiculous with the accustomed manner in which he spews sound with no sense. At nearly every event these days, including the ones organised by him at public expense, and even when the event has nothing to do with President Jonathan, he will find a way of accusing President Jonathan of doing nothing for Rivers State, whereas that is not true. When that is not the issue, he would whine childishly about Soku oil wells. Or he will invite his audience to make sure that they don’t vote for President Jonathan in 2015.

In fact, in one recent incident, he was said to have been addressing a group of students and he told them that in 2015 they must vote out President Jonathan and the student responded in unison, “no”. He lost his audience. He was booed. It is instructive that the more he tries to condemn President Jonathan, the more he finds that nobody is willing to listen to him. He doesn’t have an audience because the people know that his baseless allegations against President Jonathan make no sense

We will like to encourage Governor Amaechi in the few months that remain out of his tenure in Rivers State, to concentrate on governing and serving the people of Rivers State, rather than going about launching what looks like a full-time obsessive maniacal campaign against the person and office of President Jonathan. And of course, he must realise that we are living under the rule of law. Those who invite the storm over the heads of other people oftentimes fail to realise that when that storm descends, it may descend first on their own heads.

Soon after the President’s declaration, the opposition alleged that it was insensitive for him to have proceeded with his declaration barely 24 hours after over 40 school children were butchered by Boko Haram sect in Potiskum, Yobe State. Doesn’t this sound like President Jonathan is a leader who lacks empathy for the plight of his people?

On that, I granted an interview in which I accused the APC of sheer hypocrisy, because a day after the President’s declaration at the Eagle Square, they themselves had one elaborate event in Edo State. So, why didn’t they postpone their event? Why didn’t they even remember the children that were said to have been killed at their event? So, you are dealing with people who are duplicitous, people who go by double standards; they talk from both ends of their mouth. Whatever they do, no matter how questionable, is supposed to be accepted by others, and when another man does anything at all, especially if it is President Jonathan, they try to pull him down, and of course, I accuse them frontally of jealousy, hypocrisy and unproductive pull-him-down politics

They saw that the declaration by the President was a very successful event supported by Nigerians across all facets of society. Even in the United Kingdom, in the US and everywhere in diaspora, Nigerians celebrated President Jonathan’s declaration for a second term in office, which for them (opposition) cannot be good news because they could see with their own eyes very clearly, they could hear very clearly too that President Jonathan is the man, he is the leader that Nigerians prefer.

The truth is that President Jonathan is fully committed to bringing the nightmare of terrorism in our country to an end. Anyone who tells you that he is not, is just being unkind for their own selfish reasons. No President will want to preside over any form of insecurity, because without peace, security and stability, it will be difficult to achieve the objectives of national growth and development across board.

The aggression, especially after the failed botched negotiation with the Boko Haram insurgents had been one of the greatest reasons for attack on the President. Is there any hope of a total repel of the miscreants in the territories they now occupy?

The war against terror is a war that this administration is determined to win no matter how long it takes, no matter what it requires. President Jonathan has been very unequivocal in making it clear that under his watch terrorists will not take over Nigeria. In what appears to be a resurgence of terrorist activities, there have been quite a number of unfortunate incidents in the North-Eastern part of the country but the government is acquiring new arms and ammunitions, soldiers are being retrained, more effort is being put into the cooperation with our neighboring countries.

But of course if you look at the history of terror in different parts of the world, in Colombia, in Afghanistan, terror is a major threat to the whole of humanity because it is a cancerous kind of evil which even when you think it is gone, it suddenly resurfaces. But in this particular case, government is adopting every strategy to ensure that it wins the war against these evil-minded persons and that at the same time it safeguards the lives of people and their property.

Aside terrorism, there are communal clashes like the recent one in Nasarawa State. Each time the clashes happen, the state governors keep saying they are helpless in quelling communal aggression and clashes. They keep insisting that it is only an assignment for the President and the federal government. What exactly does the constitution say about this and has the President been able to handle this in the face of rising socio-political clashes in Nigeria?

The responsibility for ensuring peace and stability is not that of the President alone. It is that of all Nigerians, and the governors in whatever state they may be cannot say that it is not their business. What you are trying to suggest is that a sitting governor can legitimately say that the welfare of the people under him and their security is not his business. And for any governor to say that at all is irresponsible because state Governors owe the people they serve a duty of care.

Take for instance, the Safe Schools Initiative that has been introduced by President Jonathan which involves physically securing schools and ensuring that schools without gates and fences, are properly fenced and all that.

Are you saying that a state governor who knows that the state governments are equally responsible for secondary school education can legitimately say that it is not his business to provide security in schools? Some of these communal clashes that you talked about are usually as a result of disagreements between two communities or two sects or two ethnic groups and at the state level. These are grassroots issues. Can a Governor say it is the primary responsibility of the President to resolve communal clashes or to provide an enabling environment for inter-ethnic and religious harmony? I don’t think that any responsible Governor would say that. Even in terms of security, it should not be taken in the literal sense of soldiers and the police securing a particular environment.

Security if taken in an expanded view involves economic security. Is it not also the duty of Governors to ensure the welfare and prosperity of the people? In fact, when you say this and that is the responsibility of the President alone, you clearly want to turn Nigeria into a one-man state where one man is responsible for everything. We are not running a one-man system. That is why President Jonathan at every occasion has always talked about unity of purpose, about solidarity of action and that is why we have a National Council of state where governors and the President sit together and take a decision on major issues.

And that is why President Jonathan has said the kind of solidarity that was demonstrated in eliminating Ebola is the kind of unity of purpose, solidarity of action he would like to see in other aspects of national life, security inclusive. So, it would be wrong to say it is the President alone who is responsible for all the security. These days when people even dream and wake up in the morning after a bad dream, they will say oh, President Jonathan should do something about people having bad dreams. That is how ridiculous it is, the president gets blamed for everything, and if Governors begin to sound like that then it means that we really have a serious situation on our hands which amounts to abdication of responsibility on the part of whichever Governor is talking like that.

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Impeachment Threat Not A New Thing – Abati