A President Who Couldn’t Grow His Business Can’t Grow Nigeria’s Economy

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who defected recently, from the ruling All Progressives Congress to the Peoples Democratic party, has denied a festering rumour that he is about to dump the PDP for the resuscitated Social Democratic Party. This is coming barely four months after he left the APC. Atiku, in this interview with LASISI AYUBA, says the SDP defection story is absolute falsehood, and volunteers a historical recall of how he was hounded out of the PDP and begged to join the APC. The former VP, widely believed to be in the presidential race, also offers glimpses into a Nigeria of his
You are a Fulani and most of the recent killings of innocent local people in Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba states have been attributed to herdsmen of Fulani extraction. Does this not make you uncomfortable?

The herdsmen crisis actually came about as a result of leadership failure. Nations are not static; they grow and change. To be sincere, desertification was not an issue in northern Nigeria 50 years ago. Now, it is an issue. The changing environment has placed a great strain on people who live off the land like the herdsmen. Leadership is essentially about anticipating the consequences of these changes. When I gave the keynote speech at this year’s Silverbird Man of the Year ceremony, I addressed this issue. I said Nigeria was caught up in a Malthusian trap where population growth has far exceeded Gross Domestic Product’s growth. For the specific issue of herdsmen, in my private capacity, I established a company called Rico Gardo that provides animal feeds at very affordable prices to pastoralists so that they do not need to graze their cattle on private lands. This firm has been very successful in reducing herdsmen-farmers clashes in its area of operation. John F. Kennedy said, ‘When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents ‘danger’ and the other represents ‘opportunity.’

I think our current set of leaders are too focused on the danger side of crisis and are not as focused on the opportunity side of it. Turn this crisis into an opportunity. New challenges require new thinking. If I were to advise the Federal Government, I would counsel them to learn from Rico Gardo. Just as Nigeria has built government and privately owned fertilizer plants, the government should build and encourage the private sector to build animal feeds factories. Sell the feeds to the herdsmen and make money from them. The value chain this industry will create will generate jobs for Nigerians and revenue for the government. But most importantly, it will end these clashes. I am not telling you of what I have heard. I am telling you of what I am doing. And what I am doing is working in the area where Rico Gardo is operational. My plan for the future is to expand nationwide. However, let me also say that it is a misnomer to use the term ‘killer herdsmen of Fulani extraction’ or ‘killer Fulani herdsmen’. When kidnappers kidnap, we do not identify them by their ethnicity. We identify them as kidnappers, pure and simple. The vast majority of Fulani people are peaceful and live in harmony with other ethnic groups. There may be fringe elements with criminal tendencies. Some may be Fulani. Some may not even be. Let us identify them by their activities and not by their ethnicity.


How would you describe the recent kidnap of 110 schoolgirls from Dapchi in Yobe State, barely four years after a similar thing occurred in Chibok, Borno State?

Let me paraphrase Oscar Wilde and say that to lose one set of girls to Boko Haram may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose another set, looks like carelessness. As an opposition party, the APC was vocal to the point of exploiting the issue of the Chibok girls’ kidnapping. They criticised that government every step of the way and some may even claim that they undermined the then government’s efforts at resolving that unfortunate incident. So it is rather surprising that a set of people who were so unsparing in their critique of the previous government would be in a situation whereby they have allowed these same terrorists to kidnap 110 girls. And not just the girls; I am very sad about the killing of United Nations’ staff and aid workers in Rann. We have also had policewomen abducted by Boko Haram.

But if you were the President under this circumstance, what would you have done differently?