Relevant institutions must mobilise to stamp out corruption in Nigeria – Gundiri

Markus Gundiri, chairman of old Gongola Forum, spoke to Blessing Adimabua on Nigeria at sixty-five years of nationhood, the achievements of Governor Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa State, insecurity, corruption in the system, politicians and the way forward in the country. Excerpts:

Nigeria will be celebrating 65 years as an independent nation on October 1st 2025. What is your take on milestone?

Well, the history of Nigeria actually started way back in 1914, when the two protectorates, that is the North and South, were put together as a country. It was amalgamation of two equal partners in terms of development, resources in both natural resources, human resources and political awareness which was done by the Colonial Masters. They actually did it without the input of the Nigerian people. During the amalgamation, they just put the two protectorates together and named it Nigeria and since then, Nigeria has been wobbling. However, in October,1,1960, there was an Independence of the country when I was just eight years old and we enjoyed ourselves; danced to music and they gave us food to eat because we didn’t know what was actually happening and what independence was all about then. As I grew up, I found out that there were lots of things that were missing from the independent Nigeria from what we read about being an independent nation.

We thought it was going to be a very nice country and we were going to rule ourselves and that things would be better under us than under the British. But lo and behold, the whole thing was not as rosy as we thought because from all indications, the Colonial Masters hoodwinked us into what is happening to us; hatred was planted, nobody trusted one another and they just went away leaving all these troubles and problems which have been deteriorating since then. More so, in these 65 years of Nigeria, I think the intervention of the Nigerian military was based on the observation of what was obtained then before they struck.

They thought Nigeria would be better and they saw a lot of corruption coming into the system, a lot of hatred, a lot of mistrust and therefore, some of these military guys said, if this is the case why don’t we try, and they tried but they also were unable to sort out the problem of Nigeria. We have been on it up till today. I am telling you that today, since then there is no love and trust in Nigeria and a lot of hatred towards one another, from the regions, from the tribes to the religions, and to the politicians. People will not obey the rule of law and think about the future but what they will get now.

So, we politicians started wreaking havoc to the economy of this country and this country would have been better now if we had feared God and concentrated on the little our Colonial Masters planted in us and also if we had allowed it to germinate well we could have been able to have a better country by this time. At 65 years, not much has been achieved so far. We are still far away, in fact, by now we should have been compared to other nations of the world. We have been running a race or a marathon and some nations that started after us have surpassed us because we have been wallowing in distrust of one another because of our greed and every other thing an adjective cannot describe for Nigerians and that is how Nigeria is for the past 65 years I have known it.

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 Buhari did when he was Military Head of State was fantastic because at that time because 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 awarded.

Furthermore, we have so many intelligent people in Nigeria who can move the country forward and because merit is not recognized 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 and here we are.

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.

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 eighteen 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 are in politics 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.

Can you give an overview of the performance of Umaru Fintiri, 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 and that time they 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 fifty thousand 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 talking 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 and you will observe that the state capital is totally refurbished 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 eighty-five tribes and 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.

What do you the government at the federal level should do to fight hunger and insecurity because so many Nigerians are dying out of frustration?

This is a good question because so many people and organisations both within and outside the country has talked much about that and 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 twenty 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 journalist to go and investigate and low and behold let me tell you something when the journalist 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 reserve 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.

Party politics is building and heating up towards 2027. What is your advice to Nigeria politicians?

My advice to Nigeria politicians is that people must play politics of honesty. Nigeria people 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 unto the teachings from the pulpits from the church or from the mosque, this country will continue to cripple 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 with the insecurity situation that may or will arise in 2027. Therefore, we have to be very careful.