By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor
Dr. Usman Bugaje, an academician, pharmacist and politician is the immediate past National Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN and the party’s candidate in the last gubernatorial election in Katsina State. A respected and resourceful intellectual, Bugaje was a Special Adviser to Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and the head of the National Democratic Project, the intellectual think tank that was the backbone of Atiku’s presidential run in 2007.

Bugaje was the founding chairman of Network for Justice, a civic society group focused with the promotion of civil education and human rights.

Bugaje obtained his first degree in Pharmacy from the Ahmadu Bello University, then a Masters Degree in African Studies and a Doctorate in Intellectual History from the University of Khartoum, The Sudan.

He was a facilitator at the recent Inter-Party Dialogue sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme in Abuja. He spoke in an interview with Vanguard’s Emmanuel Aziken on the fringes of the dialogue. Excerpts:

What has been happening to you since the election?

First, I took time off to go and read. I was away for about two months. But even then I was commenting briefly on some issues but mainly through the Hausa services of the BBC and VOA.

Are you concerned with the direction the country is going?

Nobody can foresee the future but when you extrapolate where we are now into the future, you can see tremendous crisis or even disaster. I don’t think there is anybody in this country who can be said to be satisfied with the direction the country is going.

Bugaje

Not even the President himself. In fact the President himself said as much in his own characteristic way that he is not a lion, he is not Nebuchadnezzar, he is not this, he is not that and that he does not know what to do.

On a very serious and disturbing note we have a major problem in our hands and this major problem is first, we have a President that does not seem to have a clue where to go.

We have a team that does not appear to gel together, I don’t think that you can call the cabinet a team because they all seem to have come from different directions and resonating at different wavelengths and I don’t see a team with the competence to be able to really pull through the crisis we are facing and the nature of the crisis especially after the elections.

You can see there are three main issues facing this country. One is the lingering problem of power. We have still not been able to address the issue of power and without addressing the issue of power there is no way you can turn round the economy and create jobs to employ the millions of youths that are there waiting to be employed. Now, that problem of power has been created by corruption and this corruption is not abetting.

This particular government does not seem to me to have the capacity to deliver on that because of this major problem of corruption.

The second issue is the issue of insecurity. This insecurity has reached a point where security agencies are clearly out of their feet, they do not seem to have the ability to tackle…as many people know they had advance information about the last bombing of the UN and they still could not stop it. If the Police could not stop someone bombing their own headquarters it is a clear message that the security agencies put together do not have the capacity to address the security issues of this country and the government does not appear to have any plan to do so because so.

Unfortunately, they all reduce it to the issue of money and they want to increase the budget and all that.

Money cannot in itself solve problems. It is ideas that solve problems and these people do not seem to have any idea of where to go. They are always talking at cross purposes, they are making statements. For example, they just saw some wretched people in Suleja and they said that they had discovered a bomb making factory. How can you on earth show that ramshackle house of some poor people and say that this is a bomb making factory. It seems as if our security people do not know what a bomb making factory is.

The third issue is that of poverty and unemployment. This has gone on for the best of this democratic era and it is not something that can be wished away or that prayer can solve, there must be a radical change to policy and I don’t think this regime is in that position. In any case part of the problem of unemployment is the closure of factories.

What led to the closure of these factories is because smuggling has been allowed on a big scale and the smugglers were the ones who were actually funding the campaign of many of those in government.

Clearly, I cannot see how this government can in fact address some of these problems. They do not have the capacity to do so and that is the worry, that is the danger and that is the kind of thing that should engage all stakeholders in the Nigeria project. It is not a matter for only those in politics, the elites, those in business and even the international community.

Bugaje

If the country hits the bottom and scatters, the impact it will have on peace on West Africa will be disastrous and therefore it is very important that the whole world comes together including the major stakeholders within the country to see what is it that we can do to salvage the country.

It is very obvious, it is kind of laughing matter in the internet, in twitter, people are quoting the President grumbling, he doesn’t seem to know where he is going, the ministers themselves don’t seem to have a clue of what they are doing.

If they have, we have not yet seen the result of this in the way they engage the Nigeria state to give us the assurance that they know where they are going and therefore we are at the brinks once again. Therefore it is very important that as many people who have the mind to see the danger come together and see what can be done.

Do you think that the political parties are doing a good job of mobilizing the people in giving direction to issues of governance?

If you look at the roots and basis of the political parties you would not be surprised that they are not up and running and that they have not risen to the challenge because a lot of them are parties that were crafted to feed the pockets of a few individuals.

They are not parties that have clear contents, they have no conscience, they have no courage to come out and face the challenges that are clearly on the horizon.

It is my view that the bigger opposition parties that are in the National Assembly should be able to come up with alternatives where the ruling party clearly has failed. So, it is important that they do this but the great majority of the parties are not even in a position to appreciate the challenge less more to address it.

You were a top aide of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and you moved out from the PDP with him. Are you returning to the PDP now that he is back?

I have made it very clear that I am not going back to the PDP. I left the PDP because the PDP from 1999 when it was crafted to the time I left it in 2007 has deteriorated, has become the real stumbling block to the development of the country and it is everybody’s knowledge that between 2003 and 2007 the party which was in power actually doubled the poverty in this country and that is ironically the time when the country made unprecedented revenue and yet that was the time the country became doubly poor.

That was the time the number of people earning less than a dollar a day moved from 35% of the population to 70% of the population. And the party had no internal process of addressing this problem and those of us who criticised the party were disciplined, expelled and all that.

For me, PDP has not changed, PDP cannot be called a proper political party, it is a cult! PDP is being run by people who have criminal records, records that are there in the courts but whose litigation has been stalled by the power of those in authority, in other words, I cannot see myself going back to the PDP.

Yes, it is a party that is winning and they have managed in a number of places to find themselves to power and the method that was used to go to power is through the biggest rigging machine in this country.

For us, those who want to go back have their own reasons and it is not for me to tell you why they are going but certainly for me, I have no business with the PDP

So do you think it was a mistake that Atiku Abuabakar went back to the party?

I cannot comment on that and I would rather that people go to him or any other person who has gone back to the party.

Sir what happened to the National Democratic Movement, that was supposed to bring the main opposition parties together?

The alliance had actually collapsed by the withdrawal of the CPC and we were left with a faction of the DPP and we went ahead with the DPP to merge and we became ACN and it has run its own course.

Maybe from the expereicne of the last election there is now a clear demand that we should revisit the issue of bringing the opposition under one roof and put all our resources together and be able to salvage the country from the hands of the PDP.