Malam Lawal Batagarawa was Minister of State for Defence under the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration. He was one of the founding members of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), but is currently a chieftain of the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC). In a 30-minute programme on Trust Television with Mannir Dan-Ali, he bares his mind on issues surrounding the 2027 general elections, his party’s chances, the state of security, economy, governance and why President Bola Ahmed Tinubu shouldn’t be given a second term mandate among others.

What exactly are you currently up to in the opposition party? INEC has recognised your new leaders in the ADC, but there are still some contestations in the court, over that matter. Is that a distraction to the party?

Well, every time you have to go to court on any matter, it’s a distraction, because you’d rather put all your energy into building the party, into mobilising support for the party. But rather than do that, you are bogged down with the court processes. So yes, it is a distraction.

I saw your spokesman a few days ago saying that he believes there are some forces, more or less saying the sitting government may be involved in all these court cases. How does that square up with you?

The ruling party will, of course, do everything to destabilise the opposition, because they know if the opposition is concentrated and putting all its energies and resources into defeating them in an election, then that gives them a slight edge. So if they can find a way of diverting them from that, obviously, they will take it. So, it is not surprising to get to hear a spokesman saying that, look, we have strong belief that the sitting government is involved in trying to destabilise the party.

How do you feel when you see the current government borrowing from the PDP’s book of tricks as some would put it, and paying you back In your own coin?

When you are making an accusation, you should be very clear about it. What tricks are you talking about? We didn’t have any tricks. We were fair and square in almost all our dealings.

But you did say that it is not surprising for the sitting government to want to be involved, which suggests that maybe you may have been Involved as the sitting government.

No, because the current government is not performing. It is grossly underperforming in the field of governance. It is grossly underperforming in the most basic responsibility of government of providing security for life and property and ensuring a peaceful atmosphere for the citizens of the country to go about their lawful activities. The government is failing in that respect. So they will go up to all kinds of mischiefs. But we were a performing government.

But some would still say that some of these problems started with your administration. It was there, bubbling underneath, when Ali Modi Sheriff was governor, not of your party, but in the same republic, under the same president, Obasanjo’s government. And the matter was led to burn below the surface before it burst on everybody’s face.

Again, that’s a speculation, because the existence of Boko Haram, anybody can tell you his own story. But whatever the case was, we were able to manage circumstances very well. There was no fear for people to travel in all parts of this country at that time. I was in the Ministry of Defence, and we had no problem saying that there are terrorists here, there are bandits here, or there are cultists here. We were able to manage all those things. Today, you can’t go from Abuja to any place after six o’clock feeling comfortable you will arrive there safely without being molested or harassed.

Let’s concentrate now on your party and what you are trying to do. Are you concerned the way governors, legislators, power brokers and others are all lining up to support President Tinubu ahead of the 2027 election? Does it make your job more difficult?

No, It makes life more interesting, because then you have more things to occupy your mind and find solutions to all of these problems. You see, that’s the beauty of democracy. Everybody is free to express what is in their mind, but that does not in any way make us feel that we cannot defeat the president.

How will you do that when the power brokers in their different localities, including Soludo, still in an opposition party, were saying that, look, come 2027, I am with the president and not anybody else?

That’s the beauty of it. Anybody can express what they want, but when it comes to election, the amount of hard work you put, most of it under, not necessarily on the surface. Look, a lot of mobilisation is done in a sitting room under very cordial circumstances, where you sit down and put your own cases to people of goodwill and influence.This razzmatazz is part of politics, but the real work is not done in this manner. Ultimately, politics is about resolving conflicts, putting interests together, and convincing people that we are a better representative of your interest than the other person. So if they choose to do their own in the public glare in order to score cheap political, psychological shots, they are free to do so.That doesn’t mean much.

So what will be your own case? How will you go about it?

How can I expose our strategy to you at this point in time?

Do you have any strategy?

Of course, we do. Have you seen any politician who will just go out to the field without a strategy? Well, there is the oppo”tunism of political parties.You may be assuming that simply because the sitting government may not be that popular, it will be a walkover for you without maybe an absolutely stupid politician to do that. I have been in politics since the early 70s. I have operated with some of the smoothest operators. We were in direct opposition to NPN, the National Party of Nigeria, and those guys were good.They knew their onions. But we stood up to them. That is, under Balarabe Musa in Kaduna State, in the PRP, People’s Redemption Party, which was just one of two states where you had government, Kano and Kaduna. And you can see our success over them. They were forced to change a number of their policies to adopt our own policy. But in the end, they prevailed because they removed our governor from his seat. Balarabe Musa was impeached. Look, they had numbers.It is not a question of doing anything. The PRP election in 1979 was rigged even before the election took place. And I will tell you how it was done. You see, everybody was supposed to present their tax clearance certificate before you can stand for election.We submitted candidates who did not have, because most of them were peasant farmers, they were not eligible for tax. So 48 hours before the election, the Federal Electoral Commission released the list of those who have been disqualified from standing for election because these were peasant farmers.

So how did you resolve that?

We didn’t. People were disqualified. So we’ll find PRP getting 10,000 votes, NPN was 2,000 votes, and they will be declared winners because we had been disqualified. Okay, they used the legal system to disqualify, to win the election. It’s not a popular vote that took them there.

Do you have the fear now that the election could be rigged before the election day?

It’s a possibility, but now it is our responsibility to anticipate that and to have plans in place to cope with that.

Your party boasts of many of ex-this and ex-that, including yourself, and people are concerned that will you be able to manage the egos that are in there? You have Atiku, Peter Obi, El-Rufai and others.

Look, there are sufficient number of us in there who are mature enough to be able to sit down and say, look, hey, we can cope with these issues, and we can resolve them, we can manage them. After all, don’t forget, we know each other very well for a very long time, so we should be able to find the platform that we can manage this so-called conflict that people see. But we see them as an opportunity, because it is giving us diversity.And Nigeria is an extremely diverse country. If we, it is the test of how much we are going to be able to manage the government and the country, how we manage the party.

So you’re already thinking of government?

Of course, we are. That’s why we are saying we want to be in government, because we are thinking of how to get there. Part of managing these egos that you are talking about is a basic foundation for managing national unity. Because Nigeria is a huge country of a huge amount of varieties. For national unity, you must be able to bring a platform that will be able to manage these diversities.

What is the government doing wrong that you want to correct?

Okay, let’s talk of two key areas. I can make it three. Number one, security. You cannot move anything forward without peace and security. These two things are the two sides of the same coin. Peace and security are two sides of the same coin. The major responsibility of any government is to provide security for life and property. It is very clear to everybody, to all unbiased observers, listeners, and commentators, this government is failing and it is a responsibility to provide a secure environment for Nigeria.

But that’s not the view of the current national security adviser who has been giving the government pass mark.

Do you expect the National Security Adviser to come and say, look, I’m a failure? Because if the security situation is totally out of control, it means he himself is a failure. And therefore, to protect his own job and to promote himself, he has to make those stories, whether they are true or not. Otherwise, he is accepting that he is a failure. That’s the problem.

But by your own estimation, as someone who has worked in the security sector, former minister of state defence, what’s your honest view of our security currently?

Look, it is something that can be fixed in a fairly short period. However, to sustain it after you have fixed it will have to take a big plan. First of all, one of the major sources of insecurity is hunger. Anybody who is hungry beyond a certain time becomes an irrational human being. Their brains don’t work. So it means that even if you can suppress terrorism, banditry, and cultism, you have to have a plan. I have suppressed this thing. But I must have a plan to ensure that new members are not recruited into the banditry, into terrorism, into cultism, all the sources of Insecurity. That is the use of the kinetic in suppressing and the non-kinetic in addressing these issues. The long-term sustainability of the security. That’s right. So you can see there are two sides to it. Now, clearly, this government is not addressing any of the two. You can see because of inflation, the pressure on people to find an alternative means of surviving from their own that has collapsed is very high.

But the insecurity was there for many years before this inflationary trend.

All I’m saying to you, the current activities, the activities of the current government is further fuelling the insecurity instead of managing it better. They are not managing the insecurity itself at all. Because yes, you can see it’s crazy. Local communities are going into peace deals. Now, it is very interesting that it is not the local government, it’s not the state, it’s not the federal government that is involved. It is the communities. But we still see the district head is a representative of the state government.And even the governor who has been talking tough about not agreeing to negotiate with bandits seems to be climbing down in the last one week or so. The whole point is this. The communities are taking initiatives and because the state and the federal government have no plan, no strategy to deal with it, they are following the lead of the communities.

But the federal government, the Chief of Defence Staff have been clear that they have a strategy of combining kinetic and non-kinetic, and they are sure that somehow maybe it will work.

Let us take away the noise and look at the facts. If the Chief of Defence Staff is saying that they have a strategy, it shouldn’t be their strategy.It should be the strategy of the federal government of Nigeria. Because the military are not in a position to move the non-kinetic component of the plan or the strategy forward, that’s one. Two, look, as you said, I was in the Ministry of Defence. I know some of these guys, top quality. The most highly trained component of Nigerian society, whether they’re private or public sector, is the military. And I have a lot of respect for them. But what the Chief of Defence Staff is saying, he is making noise. Where is it? Let’s see it on the ground. Let’s see it on the ground. It’s not a question of saying it. Let’s see it on the ground. The military can help to suppress everything. But the non-kinetic component will have to be the community itself. It will have to be the local government. It will have to be the state government and the federal government.

So, is it your view that this approach will not work, the peace deal with the bandits?

How many peace deals were signed between communities and the bandits? How long did they last? Look, we are Nigerians. We know these things. Sometimes these peace deals will be signed and three months later they are out. Because the communities do not have capacity to insist the bandits, you must respect your own. Anytime the bandits feel it is not convenient for them, they change.

We have spoken on one aspect, security. What about the economy? Is it in any way something that you think can help your case as opposition to displace the sitting government?

You see, the economy is just like security. You have to plan. You have to plan it. The government is supposed to be an enabler. The key is that the business community, they are the ones who invest. They are the ones who create organisations that employ people. So you put your plan, you put your strategy, and you have to make it very clear to the business community, this is what it is, and stick to it, and stand by it, so that they can now invest. You see, the same APC government, let’s look at Buhari. He took a position on growing rice in Nigeria. Over his eight years period, the amount of money that was invested into processing rice was huge. Within two months of this government coming into office, the entire rice production system has collapsed, simply because they don’t even have the capacity to sustain a policy that was started by their predecessor. That’s how incompetent this government is.

But President Tinubu is very proud of what he has done. He always says he had the courage from day one to remove subsidy, which has been there. He also floated the Naira, so that the Nigeria’s currency will find its level. Aren’t those signs of a government that is very clear-headed about what it wants to do?

Look, I laugh when people are telling me this. Why? Very simple. Everything he is proud of saying he has done has pushed the economy into a tailspin. So how can you be destroying your own economy and be proud of it?

How is he destroying the economy?

Okay, what is the inflation rate as a consequence of these two policies? How much were you paying for transport before, and how much are you paying for transport now? Look, how many workers in the whole of Nigeria, whether in the private or the public sector, can their salary be adequate for them to go home and come to work on a daily basis? You’ll find that workers, whether in the private sector or in the public sector, are subsidising government. Is that an achievement by a serious government?

But aren’t those the policies that have been pushed by the so-called foreign investors that liberalised the economy so that we can come in?

Is he the president of those institutions or the president of Nigeria? His responsibility is to protect the interests of Nigeria, not dance to the tunes of people from outside Nigeria. Even if he has to do that, he has to come up with a plan to alleviate some of the consequences, when your own workers, their entire income is not enough for them to come to work and go home.

But the government has increased the minimum wage to N70,000 . . .

How much is a trip per day from your house to this place? How much is your fuel cost from your home to this place? It’s so easy to say that maybe the government is incompetent or it has gotten into policies that have pushed Nigerians into poverty and what have you.

But why would they trust you? Because you’ve been there before. You are not too substantially different. I mean, all the figures in the opposition, they have been there. Atiku, Obi, El-Rufai . . .

Well, I was a key figure in the Obasanjo’s government and I challenge anybody to say there wasn’t an improvement in the economy in our time. I challenge anybody. Not this coupling together of things like APC, all right? Let them come and compare their time with our time in terms of the economy. Let them come and let’s compare their time and our time in terms of peace and security, telling me one policy decision they have made which is wrong, which they have the courage to accept and change. (Weekend Trust)