President Jonathan has really not performed to public expectation-Sara-Igbe

Antabs Sara-Igbe, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader in Rivers State, in a chart with our reporter, in Abuja explains why President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and the North may remain two parallel lines in the quest for Presidency. The anti-terrorism expert also discloses why the Boko Haram terror will persist, among other salient issues

Can you do a mid-term assessment of President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime?

I will answer your question from the Niger Delta angle. Mr. President, as somebody from the Niger Delta, has not yet addressed the Niger Delta question. All those contentious issues like resource control, the cleaning up of Niger Delta environment of oil devastation, the abrogation of certain obnoxious laws, fixing of our damaged economy, unemployment, etc, are issues that formed the basis of agitation in the Niger Delta over the years. The agitation died when Jonathan became President. We felt that as our son and brother, we should not fight him. We decided to give him the opportunity to address some of these challenges. I want to put it on record here that the amnesty to the militants by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua did not succeed because an Amnesty was granted; the peace in Niger Delta today is because Jonathan is the President. I have the fear that as somebody from Niger Delta, if President Jonathan fails to address the problems of the region, an incoming President from another geo-political zone may not want to do anything there again. But Jonathan will write his name in gold and in the hearts of the people if he is able to tackle the issues that caused the agitation.

On the national sphere, has the President performed to your expectations, two years after. Can he solve the security challenges?

President Jonathan has really not performed to public expectation. Here was a man every Nigerian came out to vote for in the 2011 elections. As a man who said he had no shoes, people thought he would be able to understand poverty and problems of the ordinary people if he became the President and change their lives for good. Unfortunately, there is no clear sign that he is on the side of the people through his policies and programmes so far. The President has completely surrendered himself to a cabal in government that has no focus; power-mongers who are selfish that care less about the problems of the ordinary people who made the Jonathan Presidency possible. No doubt, President Jonathan has challenges with Boko Haram. The issue of Boko Haram terrorism has escalated because Jonathan does not listen to good advice. He would have made the problem of Boko Haram history a long time ago if he does listen. The country is fully aware that what we are facing today would come. People may call us prophets of doom because we had predicted these things based on our professional knowledge of terrorism operations. Security agencies in this country are, most times, told about Boko Haram’s planned attacks, but they don’t take any pre-cautionary or pre-emptive measures until the terrorists attack. This is not right. In countries like America, there are a lot of terrorist organisations. In the case of Nigeria, the group has broken into three factions of Boko Haram. This has further increased the volume of violent attacks on the country, and the security agencies don’t seem to know what to do. When we told Mr. President last year to sack the Service Chiefs, he delayed. Jonathan was taking wrong advice and was appointing wrong people.

When we say the President has failed, people think we don’t love Jonathan; but it is not true. We want him to succeed. If Jonathan fails, it means the whole of Niger Delta has failed this country. On a larger scale, the Christians both from the North and South supported the President. The Yoruba of the South West gave him their support. And, of course, the South East and South South voted for him 100 per cent. Jonathan has failed to realise that he has to go miles ahead of the Boko Haram that has made his regime uncomfortable. Terrorism operations have its peculiar dynamics. You have to preempt them by cracking into their network. If you don’t do that, what happened in Nasarawa, where security agencies are ambushed by terrorists, will reoccur. To succeed in the war against terrorism, the government must set up a CTU which should be headed by a director, an officer not below the rank of a Colonel or Major in the Army. He must be a combatant officer who is dynamic and can undergo torture and who has undergone training of a sniper. The person must understand things about moveable objects. Terrorism war is all about intelligence and not of arms. If you don’t understand how to fight terrorism, even if they give you all the arms in the world, you can’t function effectively. It is wrong policy decision and tactic to be appointing people who are not trained in terrorism combat as security advisers. These people want to be in charge. And that is not the correct way to fight terrorism. So far, for the war against terrorism to succeed, all the security agencies need to set up their anti-terrorism unit – both the Army, Navy, Air force, Fire Service, Immigrations and Customs. These are bodies that can be made to understand the dynamics of terrorism. The amount of money being voted for security in this country is so huge that a lot of things can be done with it security-wise.

Mr. President needs to sit down and address all these things in his remaining two years.

Secondly, electricity is one area that the President needs to work on as he enters the second half of his first tenure. No doubt, power situation in the country has improved, but the minister of power needs to be taken to task by the President for him to understand that Nigerians have high hopes on electricity improvement in this country. So, the President has not met public expectation yet. But he can do better in the remaining two years of his tenure.