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Home » Featured » INTERVIEW -Dr. Datti Baba Ahmed: “How we want to make Nigeria work”

INTERVIEW -Dr. Datti Baba Ahmed: “How we want to make Nigeria work”

Excerpts of views made by Dr. Datti Baba Ahmed, the running mate to Dr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party, at different times – some during interviews, others in-sessions.

July 21, 2022
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Yusuf Baba Ahmed

Yusuf Baba Ahmed

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What I represent

You can go through my business and political career and see how careful I have been in selecting people that work with me.  Go to the website and see those that work with me; there’s nothing to hide. I have successfully convinced a large number of our people in the North to understand that our being together as Nigeria is designed by God. My date of birth is not something that is supposed to generate controversy, I was born in 1969, I am 53 years old. I am highly honoured to be part of the project to change Nigeria for good.

Nobody who buys delegates’ votes will do anything good for Nigeria.  I withdrew from PDP governorship race in Kaduna because God has not created me as one that will buy delegates’ votes. When Labour party called me to be Peter Obi’s running mate, I embraced it because I like the Presidential candidate and his principle. Anybody who earn legitimate income in Nigeria is by default a Labour Party member. If you go to work and make legitimate income, you are LP member.

Our movement

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In recent months, Peter Obi did not only gather some followers, he gathered phenomenal supporters. 8 million new registrations from young Nigerians within a short period of time is phenomenal. It clearly shows that a difference is going to be made. What is going to hit the powers that be, which happened in 2015, will happen again. LP is a train – not like the Abuja-Kaduna train – and it will be very difficult to blow it off because the whole Nigeria is in it.

We represent the interest of Nigerians; we want to link Nigerians together in unity and harmony. We are going to invest in education.  We have a pyramid we want to implement; not necessary that everybody must go to university to obtain degree. Our pyramid will increase the number of Nigerians that can communicate with basic literacy, to awareness, enlightenment, education, professionals.  When people ask you about southerner leading the country, you need to ask them certain questions. You need to ask people about their condition in the last eight years, if they have been more secure? Who is in charge? What is your interest? Let’s find someone to do the job for us irrespective of his region.

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How to make Nigeria work

First and foremost, we have to end the award of inflated government contracts.  We are going to bring about prudent procurement because the moment you eliminate inflated government contracts, which Peter Obi did in his eight years as governor, you will have more money to spend on working conditions.  The moment you are able to attract and retain earned revenue, you are good to go.  If your intention is to get inflated contracts and that is why you are supporting me (us), forget it. If you are coming to me(us) with clean mind and running a legitimate business we will patronise you, and make sure we get benefits of your expertise either you are in Nigeria or Diaspora.

Nepotism, personal and group interests in appointment is why you get the wrong people into right offices and right people into wrong offices. We can only be 100 percent correct. What they call Due Process Office and Bureau of Public Procurement, I was involved in 1999. I designed it and among about 1,000 members that have been to national assembly, go and check it, I am the only one that sponsored a bill against inflated government contracts. This has destroyed Nigeria in about two decades.  We all shout against corruption but when it is time to act, people turn away because they are going to benefit from it. The next Nigerian President must be somebody practically ready to micro-manage Nigeria.

Micro-managing Nigeria

How many people have you ever heard coming to speak specifically about how they are going to stop the award of inflated government contracts?

There is no need giving too much credit to myself, I leave you to judge from what you hear from me. But I can assure you, this is different from what you know.

When Buhari said he is going to fight corruption, how?  If you ask Buhari now how does corruption in Nigeria happen, he wouldn’t know. What we need now in Nigeria is better mechanics, better builders and better businessmen from the public side. Aside that, we also need to make use of our best expatriates who are in leading universities across the world.

In Canada, among the top ten professors, there is a Nigerian; and among the top ten surgeons in every top hospitals in Europe and America, there is a Nigerian.

When I started my PhD in Westminster in 1997, the highest paid individual was not the Vice Chancellor but a Nigerian who is the Head of IT.

We need to tap from our people in Diaspora.  If you think we should develop technology, it doesn’t work in a vacuum; what we have is a vacuum.

Corruption

I’m not so sure President Buhari really understands corruption.

I can quickly tell you that there are seven different ways corruption is perpetrated in Nigeria.  First, inflated government contracts, which is responsible for anything between 55% to 65% of the quantum of corruption.  Second one is unremitted revenue.

The third one is extortion – from the N50 collected on the road to the multi-million dollar deals that are done before anybody could see the president.  Fourth one is conversion of public property into private.  Fifth is the use of security votes – the way you have it before is the way you still have it today.  Sixth one is wastefulness – criminal wastefulness, anything you can create to spend money on recklessly, including undue use of private jets and any other instruments of government that is wasteful, it is wasteful, it is corruption.

The seventh one is undue influence of fraternity and relationship, which we call influence-peddling (man knows man).  Buhari has never scientifically looked at corruption.  Corruption does not perpetrate itself.  There are ways that it happens. Of these seven, some are administrative, some are legal and you’ll discover that about 70% of the way corruption is done in Nigeria is simple administration.  What President Buhari has been saying about corruption since 1984 has been mere rhetorics, he has never fought corruption till this moment.  The way contracts were awarded during the PDP years is the same way that contracts are awarded today.

Arresting people does not address the issue of corruption.  It addresses the criminality.  What we should be technically interested in is how did the act happen? They inflated contracts; so how would you stop it?  It is to control the mechanism – logical limits and mathematical limits.  Those jailed now you’ll discover that some of their cases started during the PDP era.

To fight corruption, first pass the bill on inflated contracts. Secondly, deploy technology so that people do not under-report or divert Nigeria’s revenue.

You cannot deal with extortion by not leading.  When you surround yourself in Aso Rcok Villa with friends, family and cronies, the natural tendency is for them to extort money from business people and politicians before they get to see you.  Surround yourself with technocrats and experts in various fields, not a nephew who was never elected.  That is how to fight corruption.  Somebody has been doing the complete opposite of fighting corruption but  because his actions tally with the typical illiterate, ignorant (pardon my language)Nigerian, who, all they want to see in life is the downfall of others. In the meantime, there has never been any government in the history of Nigeria that has promoted corruption in the way Buhari’s government has done and the worst form of corruption is a fake war on corruption.  I stand by what I’ve said.

Insecurity: Tackling terrorism, banditry, kidnapping

Security, in the context of Nigeria, where you have kidnappers, bandits, secessionist, you need to be careful; there are certain things unspeakable now; but if his excellence, Peter Obi, has not said it, I will not say it, but bear in mind there are unspeakable things that have happened.

I love Nigeria so much that sometimes I take risks and I can tell you, at least, being a vice presidential candidate in a contending, leading political party, I will not be tempted to say certain things for now because I love Nigeria, and, without Nigeria we are nothing. There are some people who promised to bring security to Nigeria; there were few bombings in Abuja as at that time; the moment they relocated to Abuja, the bombing stopped. So, what is going on?  They used to travel Abuja-Kaduna frequently every day, but the moment they brought private jet and stopped public means of transportation, it became one of the most unsecure roads.  What is happening?

The reason why we are not saying so much now is because we know too much. I have to pray in my heart because I say the little I did now, if you know what we know you will wait until we get there and see the way we will deal with those that brought insecurity into Nigeria.

We are not going to play with the issue of security. Why will I listen to APC talking about how to secure Nigeria when, after eight years of borrowing billions of dollars, there is no tangible outcome.

Take a police constable with wife and two kids for example!  What can N100,000 do for him? Nothing happens so quick and overnight, and that is how you know leaders that mean business.  We will try to give humanity back to the security operatives, from the police constable, to the army officers, custom officers and public servants like teachers and lecturers and nurses among others – give some humanity back to them, redirect there loyalty to their nation and profession, and, that way, the police will not collect bribes on the street.

Technology and security

Look, South Korea that manufactures this CCTV camera, if you go to them and say ‘produce half a million units for me’, that will, in the first instance, crash the price and then you bring them to Nigeria – there are millions of Nigerians willing to embrace technology.

Every road – about 40,000 kilometers of road in Nigeria – CCTV can cover.

Remember, that is going to be done concurrently with the identification of every vehicle and individuals, deploying technology with security personnel. If we do it in such a way that you can not get public transport or enter a mall or a hotel or hospital without identification, I want to know who will come out from a community and say he wants to go to another community to kill.  Once you can identify almost everyone, crime becomes less attractive because once people know that they can be identified, that serves as a deterrent.

Right now, what we have is a lawless society, it is everybody for everybody, because you can come out from Sudan or Cameroun or any part of the world and go into the middle of Nigeria, commit any crime and nothing will happen.  The absence of a system in which people know that they can be called to account is the reason why there is so much insecurity in Nigeria.

In the last crisis in Jos, where hundreds of people were killed, I assure you, that killing will not have been done if there is database in the DPO’s office that can tell you about all the men between the ages of 16 and 45 that live in that area.  Because, if you want to investigate and with CCTV, you will have the database to question where people were, when and what they were doing when the incident happened.

Potential area of conflict with NASS

In the first three months, if Nigerians feel that they can travel to all parts of the country with safety assured; if we don’t see naira sliding; communities are not attacked; Christians are in the church and don’t need to block the road because they don’t feel safe; you don’t need extra security because nobody is going to attack you.

If we succeed in that regard in the first three months; or, that, none of Peter Obi’s relatives are in the system; no corrupt arrangement in the Central Bank is attributed to Peter Obi or myself.  And when they see the return of Nigerians in diaspora – medical doctors coming back to open hospitals; industrialists start assembling computers, motorcycles and vehicles in Nigeria.  That means Nigeria has changed and it is no longer about political parties alone, but purely about success on the part of Nigerians.

You can’t impeach somebody that is succeeding as we will; it doesn’t make sense. That national assembly will not attempt it.  So, it is the people of the constituency that will start the recall process on whoever makes such a move to impeach.

Made in Nigeria product?

We will address the issue of ‘Made in Nigeria Products’ with what I call ‘PEDIGREE’ (Presidential Economic Development Initiative for General Redirection of Economic and Empowerment.  Yes, I call it PEDIGREE.

That is to show you that I have done so much work in the last three years (2018); not that I just woke up one day and said I want to run for this office.

The concept of PEDIGREE will require so much time to explain.

Civil service

We are going to cut out so many things and do it in a civilized way. With the problems confronting Nigeria today, we will sit and design our civil service procedure and public service procedure in such a way that it will work for us.

We are interested in basic literacy and civic awareness; you have already created middle class. When you have a stable middle class as a government, and you ensure that everybody’s take home at the end of month is enough to last them till another end of month, if we achieve this, then we would have achieved something fantastic.

Who is Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed

Baba-Ahmed, who was born in 1969 is the Proprietor of Baze University, Abuja and Baba-Ahmed University Kano. He attended the University of Maiduguri, where he studied economics, up to the Masters level.

He had his NYSC at the Federal University of Agriculture in Abeokuta.

After his service year, he worked as Projects Co-ordinator, Baze Research and Data Services Ltd. and as Officer II in the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company, Lagos.

He also worked as a Banking Officer, First Bank of Nigeria Plc from July 1997 to Dec 1998 and then came back to become the Managing Director of Baze Research and Data Services Ltd in July 1999 – January 2003, before venturing into politics.

He was elected as a House of Representatives member for Zaria in 2003. In between his tenure in 2006, he bagged an MBA from University of Wales, Cardiff, the same year he completed his PhD studies, earning the title of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Westminster.

As a lawmaker, he opposed the third term agenda of President Obasanjo.

After leaving office in 2007, Baba-Ahmed returned to his Baze business group and founded Baze University Abuja in 2011. He is now the pro-chancellor.

The same year, he moved back to politics and won the Kaduna North senate seat, under the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC)..

However, the electoral tribunal overturned his victory and he left office in 2012.

He became a notable professor and expert on Islamic jurisprudence. He is known to have been speaking out against corruption and the rot in the country’s educational system.

According to his biography published on the website of Baze University, Baba-Ahmed was inspired to set up the school to rectify the appalling educational system in Nigeria.

He hoped Baze University will contribute towards fixing the system in order for Nigeria to realize its potentials and address various challenges.

Sen. Datti Baba-Ahmed is a well accomplished philanthropist. Among many of his corporate social responsibility projects; he built and donated two junior secondary schools with total capacity of 4,000 students. It is worthy of note that the schools have graduated over 6,000 students to date.

In 2015, Sen. Yusuf Baba-Ahmed was appointed as Chairman, Board of Trustees (BOT) of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Hope Alive Foundation – which campaigns for post-service economic survival of corps members who suffered permanent disability during service.

Sen. Baba-Ahmed is currently the Managing Director, Baze Research & Data Service Ltd, Chairman, Baze Construction Ltd.

His companies employ a total of over 1000 people including expatriates, and highly skilled professional Nigerians from the Diaspora.

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