Decree 4 (Buhari continued)...Decree 4 was what you used to gag the press? Decree 4. You people (press), you brought in Nigeria factor into it. When people try to get job or contract and they couldn’t get it, they make a quick research and created a problem for people who refuse to do them the favour. What we did was that you must not embarrass those civil servants. If you have got evidence that somebody was corrupt, the courts were there. Take the evidence to court; the court will not spare whoever it was. But you don’t just go and write articles that were embarrassing. But don’t you think you went too far? What do you mean by going too far? But you went to the extreme that public officers could do no wrong, as if they were saints. You called the decree ‘Protection of Public Officers Against False Accusation,’ and clamped down on the media. Those who did it, the editors, the reporters, we jailed them. But we never closed a whole institution, as others did. We investigated and prosecuted according to the laws, because shutting a newspaper, it is an institution and we lose thousands of jobs. But we found out who made that false report, who was the editor, who okayed it and then, we jailed them. No regret? No regret, because we did it according to the laws we made. We neither closed a whole institution and caused job losses. Then, you left power, 20 months after… No. I was sent packing from power. Ok, you didn’t leave on your own volition? No. That is a good one. For Nigerians, they remember War Against Indiscipline you brought. What was the philosophy behind it? Well, I think we realised that the main problem of Nigeria, then and now, was indiscipline and corruption. When I say we, I mean the Supreme Military Council. Those two, are Nigeria’s Achilles heels. And I believe the Nigeria elite knew it then and they know it now. So, we started to discipline them. People must realise their level in the society and accept it. If you go and read hard and get a PhD, certainly you will get the best of life than somebody who hasn’t been to school at all or who has been a drop-out. And then, in the public, people must behave responsibly. If you go to bus stops, it is step-by-step or turn-by-turn, and not to force your way. If you go to bank, you find out if people were there before you. Why can’t you go behind them? Or you come early and be number one. Exactly! I think that was accepted. And up till now, I think it is the only thing that survived out of our administration, the queue culture. People accepted it with calmness. And in Lagos, they wouldn’t like to associate themselves with the military, so they call it KAI. That is right. Kick Against Indiscipline. But it is still the same thing. It is the same. The only difference is that one was brought by the military and this one is through democratic system. When you were eased out of power and you had time to reflect for three years, what did you then see that was wrong? We gave them the opportunity in the three councils I told you. Those rules are supposed to be in the Nigerian archives, except somebody destroyed them, destroyed the evidence. Otherwise, what did we do wrong to warrant being sacked? For example, when we overthrew the Second Republic, we had what we called the SIP, the Special Investigation Panel that comprised the police, the National Security Organisation (NSO) then and the intelligence community of the military. We did nothing by impulse or ad hoc. We went through the system. (To be continued)
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 10:46:47 +0000
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