From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
Markus Gundiri is a veteran civil servant both at the federal and state levels and later floated private business as a civil engineer.
However, Gundiri ventured into politics and eventually ran for the governorship seat of Adamawa State in 2011 on the platform of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), but lost to the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
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Again, in 2015, he contested the governorship position under the umbrella of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and also lost.
Markus Gundiri is currently a card carrying member of the All Progressive Congress (APC),
In this interview, he alleged that the ongoing insecurity in Northern Nigeria in particular was the handiwork of politicians from the region.
He also spoke on Nigeria at 65 among other issues.
Excerpts:
Party politics is building and heating up ahead of 2027. What is your advice to Nigerian politicians towards the general elections?
My advice to Nigeria politicians is that people must play politics of honesty. Nigerians must fear God in whatever they are going to do. Nigeria is our nation because we are on the brink of collapse, if we don’t imbibe the teachings from the pulpits from the church or from the mosque, this country will continue to experience challenges and at the end of it we may not have a country again especially with what is happening in the North- West, North- East, South- East even in the South- West, and everywhere there is problem. And if we don’t do what is in the books of politics, we may not be able to contain the insecurity that may or will arise in 2027. Therefore, we have to be very careful.
What do you think the government at the federal level should do to fight hunger and insecurity because so many Nigerians appear to be dying out of frustration nowadays?
This is a good question because so many people and organisations both within and outside the country have talked much about that. Frankly speaking, the politicians created insecurity in Northern Nigeria because when I contested election there was a time people were brought in one village in 20 trucks, in one community alone without women, children and cows. So, what will you call them? And they could not speak the native language, could not speak any of the languages in the state here ,so we had to send some journalists to go and investigate and low and behold, when the journalists reached there they saw them brandishing weapons and AK-47 guns and one of the journalists was able to generate a speech in French and they told him they were brought in to help a particular candidate to win election.
Now, you can imagine that kind of situation that was created by politicians in this country and they are still in politics and they are holding power in government even in this government and people don’t talk to them. We wanted the issue to be aired on the NTA here but the manager told us that this is a difficult thing to do and that we must get an approval from the governor, the DSS and the Police Commissioner. We went to the Police commissioner first and he said well okay I will contact the governor and in the end they took the CD from us and said you must remove this and that, we said no we are not going to remove anything and we took the tape to another station in Abuja and they broadcast it and everybody was asking questions. At that time, it was the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) government in the state and that PDP governor in Adamawa State made sure that the report didn’t go anywhere. So, you can see that it is the politicians that brought in insecurity in the country especially in the northern part of the country and the insecurity has brought hunger and poverty especially in northern Nigeria because people cannot go to their farms anymore because if you go they either kill you or kidnap you for money. So, those are the things that are happening but to be able to reverse the situation will be very difficult unless there is a determination from the top to eradicate it. If the president put his foot on the ground it can be stopped.
Many Nigerians are against politicians leaving the party that brought them to power and defecting from one party to another. What is your reaction?
Nobody can tell anybody who is above 18 years what to do. I can change political party any time I wish to, but the real thing is right now in this country very few people are committed or desirous of having a change whether in their political life or not. The real thing is that most of the politicians we have, and who are in politics, have seen it as a job not as service to the people because they don’t have any other thing to do. So, it is either they succeed or they fail. And if they see they are failing in one political party they will move to where they think they can make it and if people believe in one principle they stick to what they believe in and that is how we can go forward. But to make a law stopping people from moving from one party to another will be very difficult. The only thing we must do for governance in this country is that the rule of law must be obeyed in full and also the choice of people into power must be obeyed fully and we must stop politics of selfish interest and let the interest of the people be of utmost importance.
So, having said all that, what is the way forward for Nigeria to escape all this terrible situation we find ourselves?
The only way to go about it is to fear God and go back to the basis and use religious sermons and talk to people in the mosques and Churches. We have to talk to our children in our homes and schools and we must be able to take the fight against corruption very seriously through various mass media like the National Orientation Agency (NOA), through the Ministry of Information and you people the journalists should try and create a situation whereby anybody who wants to commit or get involved in corruption will be afraid. You know, what the late Muhammadu Buhari did when he was Military Head of State was fantastic because at that time everybody was careful of what they did.
And why can’t we introduce it now again?
There is nothing that stops us from going back to that era because now you will see somebody caught committing corruption and yet you cannot prosecute him and the person will get away with billions even trillions of naira. You will see that somebody stole two hundred billion and nobody will talk. An Accountant General of the Federation will steal one hundred billion and nobody will talk. In fact, they will be giving chieftaincy titles for stealing public money. We must stand up and stop corruption because that is the only way Nigeria can be able to progress and merit should be rewarded. Furthermore, we have so many intelligent people in Nigeria who can move the country forward and because merit is not recognised in Nigeria that is why we are having so many brain drain to the outside world who take our lawyers, engineers, doctors and nurses and all the likes even the drivers.We have a problem in this country because some people say God cannot come from heaven to solve the problem of Nigeria and that is correct but God can use some of the people, the few that are exceptional to move the country forward.
Can you give an overview of the performance of Umaru Fintiri, the governor of Adamawa State in the last six years of his administration?
You know we are in two different political parties- I am in APC and he is a PDP member- but I can tell you that there is nobody who can match what this young man has done so far in Adamawa State. You know people didn’t know him much before he became governor but he proved himself as an intelligent, diligent, committed and straightforward young man and has made changes so much that people don’t believe that it is him that is making these changes. Let me give you an instance of World Bank survey of children out of school in Adamawa State few years ago, at that time, there are several hundreds of out-of-school children in the state but now, about two months ago, I read a report that now in Adamawa State there are just 50,000 out-of-school children in the state, which is something to think about and that is something you cannot quantify because that is excellent. Now, you can measure this thing by the type of people you give leadership position to. In fact, there was a time in Adamawa State, when I contested for the governorship seat you cannot move out because all the young people were under the influence of drugs, alcoholism, thuggery and the likes. These people are out of school children and schools were not taking care of them because that was one reasons they didn’t go to school because there were no roofs, no seats and other studying amenities in the classrooms. But, when this young man, Fintiri, came to office, he changed so many narratives and brought in a lot of good teachers with the recruitment of teachers even from other states to be able to help Adamawa State and he equipped the classrooms and laboratories and provided a clean environment to study. Now, if you visit Adamawa State schools you will see a lot of changes. I don’t know the last time you visited the state, but now you will observe that the state capital is totally remodelled because you can easily put your money to live in the state. Security is one of the best things he has been able to achieve as well because at one point the northern part of Adamawa was actually infested with Boko Haram but today, the Boko Haram people are gone for good and business is back and the new schools he is building in these areas has justified what he has done in the area of security .And you will find out that he is a detribalised man because he doesn’t care where you come from in the state with 85 tribes. Also, he has been able to bring the two major religions together. He is actually moving on very well for the development of the state and its people.
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