By Mike Odiakose, Abuja

The National Leader of the Social Democratic Party, Prince Adewole Adebayo has become a known face especially after the 2023 general election where he contested on the platform of SDP which he presently leads.

MIKE ODIAKOSE reports in this interview monitored on Sunrise Daily on Channels TV penultimate Friday, that Adebayo, a lawyer, farmer and international businessman said President Tinubu’s visit to Benue State on a condolence visit was ill prepared and full of theatrics. Excerpts:

You were reported to have said that the President’s visit to Benue where he held a town hall meeting was grossly sickening.

Some people will say isn’t that a little harsh given the fact that the president had là or no control over some of the things that harpfopened?

My sympathy to the government and people of Benue state again and the same thing with the almost forgotten people of Bokkos and other places in Plateau State and many parts of the country where this massacre, killing, kidnapping, banditry go on and on.

What is clear is that the president cannot say he did not know or has no control over the state. He is the Governor-General of every state in Nigeria. So, he’s the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and these things that are happening in many parts of the country, especially Benue and Plateau, are things which are supposed to be the daily features in his security reports that he receives; that’s why he’s the Commander-in-Chief.

When I said control, I wasn’t talking about security. It does appear that your criticism bordered around what some have termed the fanfare that preceded the president’s visit. That was what I was referring to…

Okay what I see is a general pattern where the president politicises everything. If he’s going to commission a road, it’s always there’s always this cartoonish aspect that has to do with singing and all of that. He goes to National Assembly in a country where people are suffering and he’s making some efforts but those efforts have not yielded significant results yet and people feel these things and when he goes there, they sing these various anthems that they wax all the time.

Now they’ve not gone one step beyond reason by going to a place of mourning, a place of massacre where even during the civil war it would be newsworthy, if there was 200 lives lost in one time at one time and when he was giving awards on June 12 and all the struggle, there was no time during the resistance to the military that the military or anyone killed 200 people at a go.

So such a place is a somber occasion and he’s in charge of all the people who followed him there and what you get there is like another political rally and that sombreness is not there; and some of the theaters they were doing there with the chief of defence staff giving the president a salute, are the things they should have done in the situation room.

And the president, I think, should have gone there as a chief mourner and the language should have been sober and the responses should have been better controlled and it should have made sure come rain, come shine, come anything that he got to the venue of the attack, Yelwata; he gets there and he sees the people. You cannot say as Commander-in-Chief that there is no part of the country that’s unreachable by you. People are living there and you leave them there and you’re responsible for their welfare there, so I think, as a whole, the notion that by merely going to Benue, which is a place where his heart should be as a Commander-in-Chief emphasis, that merely going there is enough sacrifice is not true.

And some of the commentaries and his own reaction to it did not do anything to suggest to the people that his priorities are with those who have been killed. I know them by name because as commander-in-chief I will know all of this before going there.

Which of the reactions now?

The general atmosphere, even the speech he made, the content of it.

Is it at the venue or the speech initially made?

In that hall which looks like a banquet. The whole setting is not the setting you would find for mourning. Even the effort they put into it, the whole staging of it is not sympathetic enough and is not appropriate enough and that’s our understanding of that. And it does not portray to the president that he understands that using that visit is to address all these similar issues because God forbid and I will pray it doesn’t happen; if it happens elsewhere is he gonna carry the same theater to those places? So when you go on an occasion like that, you set the tone. You let the people know that you understand the situation.

You clearly identify and indicate some solutions to them even if you don’t give all of it and the whole business looks like this is a place of mass death and the head of the family is here. If you play that tape again a hundred times, you will not have that feeling at all.

Starting from the moment he landed in Benue, how do you think he should have handled what would have come off as sympathetic because the truth is when people have died in this sort of situation it’s very difficult in many ways for you to actually meet the expectations of everyone?

The basic thing is that you should realize that those people died because of you, because you are the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
You are the one running the police, running the armed forces. If you had done your duty, the people working for you in uniform and out of uniform had done their duty, that thing would not have happened. So the first thing you do is to take responsibility. And then you let your protocol people know that I’m going to this event. I’m going only with people who are relevant to security and the local people there. And as we are going, make sure that you have given me sufficient briefing about the families who were lost, their names.

I am not the commander-in-chief yet but I have the names, family by family, which family lost how many people. I have some names and the president will have verified those. Make sure that in anything we are doing, select members of these families. I’ve been bereaved before. I know how I will conduct myself if I lost members of my own family. I will not go there with the fanfare. I will interact with them. I will get information.
How did it happen? You talk to the people, they will see you interacting with the victims and the survivors yourself. And then you indicate, and then the leaders who are there, they would be made to know that the president is not coming here as a politician. He’s coming here as the head of the family.

This is the head of state function. Remember I keep saying there are three functions in that office. You are head of state, you are the chief executive, you are Commander-in-Chief.

So, this hall should have had victims’ families, right?

Victims’ families mainly. And the rest of the fanfare should have been cut down. Indication will have been given to traditional and political people that taking children and asking them to lie on the streets and wait for so long is out of it because this is not Independence Day.
This is not Democracy Day. This is not you coming to give them roads or food or something. This is you, coming to say, I am sorry I failed you.
The governor of the state will also take a cue from you and say, we failed you. These are steps we need to take. You are now behaving like a foreign dignitary who is coming to, even foreign dignitaries, even the Pope, if the Pope had come, he wouldn’t come and conduct a mass and make it look like he’s doing that.

One thing that people have pointed to in that particular town hall meeting was when he spoke to the Inspector General of Police, the Chief of Defence Staff and the intelligence agency heads. That statement he made to the Inspector General of Police, a lot of people understood when he said no arrest has been made. Isn’t that something that points to the kind of demanding accountability from his security chiefs?

No, that’s a failure of his own Commander-in-Chief position. It shows that the President may have other good qualities but totally not a good Commander-in-Chief because before you go there you will know whether arrests have been made. This Commander-in-Chief thing is not a joke. It’s not the same thing as being chairman of a party or wearing agbada like I’m doing now.
If I’m President, I know what is going on, how many vehicles pass a road unless it’s not relevant to me. The information is there. The information apparatus was paid billions and trillions of naira for this kind of information.
You will know who has not been arrested. You will have gotten pictures of the area where people went. If they go to a foreign country, within 24 hours you will be in touch with the foreign country.
You will know it’s not there that you will behave like a pedestrian and be asking no arrests have been made. No, you will know if arrests have been made, if there has been an investigation, if there has been anything.

I don’t think he said it because he didn’t know. I think in many ways, saying it out there was, in many ways, showing that you’re not doing well as Inspector General of Police on this particular matter.

Thereby showing that he is not doing well himself as Commander-in-Chief because normally, if there’s any aspect, if for example arrests have been made, the security may not want to tell you that arrests have been made because it may affect the investigation. If you want to communicate to the people, you communicate that one, we are sorry, two, we are on it. So if you need to let people know that arrests have not been made, it is not there that you’ll be asking your Commander-in-Chief, your Police Head, he’s talking to you in public, you are the boss. Even if he says something that is not correct, yes sir. If you tell a soldier anything, he’ll give you a salute, yes sir. Police, the same thing.

But if you want to communicate with the people, you have to ask them. Either you communicate confidence to them that we are on it or you keep quiet. That kind of question is not appropriate for that.
If you want to communicate that you need their cooperation, then you let them know. Please give us more information. We know we are bereaved, but please come forward, give us more information.

The Chief of Defence Staff had an engagement in the FCT after the President’s visit and was very poignant saying we are doing the kinetic bit of this job, but the non-kinetic bit of this security work takes up over 70 percent. What do you make of that assertion?

You see, first, the protocol of politics is that an aspiring Commander-in-Chief, a politician, should not criticize people in uniform who are risking their lives and so I wouldn’t criticize the Chief of Defence Staff, but I would criticize the Commander-in-Chief who appointed him and the whole setting that they are given there is not a sign of seriousness. Killing of people is kinetic, if we are going to use their language, because they think that now that they are spending a lot of security budget, they should also be bringing security vocabulary to the public.
The public wants to be safe. Kinetic, non-kinetic. The killing of people, the movement of logistics of people who can kill 200 people in a flash, going around, all of that is kinetic.
There are many parts of the world and there are parts of Nigeria where poverty is endemic, but lives relatively safer. So it is not the poverty that is making you not to know ahead of time that there has been some surveilling of some communities, that large groups of people are coming there, that there are unusual activity of people being housed, being given petrol, other things that they use, being given all that logistic support, food and everything, and they are massing around. And there is a lot of investment we’ve made in different coverage of Nigeria.

And Benue is a regional centre for our Air Force, so we can always do air surveillance and everything. And you are not reading your estimates, and any person who has any national network, receives a lot of information. As I’m here now, I receive a lot of information, because if I tell an SDP person, help me go to one community and do this and that, he will tell you, oh this road is not safe, oh there’s a problem there.
So there’s a lot of information coming. The non-kinetic side is also the President’s problem, because if he’s not, Commander-in-Chief is our Chief Executive, he’s supposed to provide. Long and short of it is that there is no excuse you can give.

There is no word in the dictionary you can give to explain why and justify why, one, you would not know that this area that are tense. Some of the factors are known. If you ask me now, I can give the one that is not too sensitive to you, that there are three factors working there.
There are three factors of infiltration of communities by marauding groups, whether they want to retain people’s land, displace people on land, and all of that, who are going around. Some of them have reprisals that they want to do because of previous interaction unresolved. For example, the one in Bokkos was related to an event that happened two years earlier, which the government said they were going to deal with. And those who were killed recently in Bokkos, we have not satisfied them, so they too might be thinking, okay, we’ll wait for the government another one year. If they don’t, we too will retaliate. Second, we have communal issues.

Because of the fluidity of these communities, you will see places, you will see that both the farmers, and to a larger extent, the herders, like to move from place to place. Where society is not static. Where we farm here this season, we go further down to farm next season, or we carry animals around. Geography changes quickly, and people can be confused as to what method they can use to retain advantage over each other and killings start.

Thirdly, there is an element of politics there, where the political leadership, rather than collaborating together to help resolve the problem, are using this insecurity to score political points. Okay, you say you are not going to govern with me, even though we plan to govern together, or politics together. Okay, I’m going to make sure I don’t give you federal assistance.

It’s a little confusing when you criticize the traditional rulers, because you said the traditional rulers felt that they had to pledge their massive support for Tinubu in the 2027 elections on this somber occasion. It’s both pathetic and undignified. That’s what you said, but you know, listening to the Tor Tiv, it appears he was finding a way to speak with courage to the commander-in-chief. He told the president that what happened was a calculated, well-planned, full-scale, genocidal invasion of their land. So what exactly informed this criticism that you had for traditional rulers?

Okay, it was a lamentation of the state, the undignified state of traditional rulers, not really about criticism of them in particular. You cannot be commander-in-chief. I cannot be Commander-in-Chief, and I don’t talk to the Tor Tiv regularly, because as Commander-in-Chief, whether there is a crisis, there is no crisis. You have a selection of traditional rulers you must talk to, religious leaders you must talk to regularly.

You have dinner with them regularly. You have consultation with them regularly. Each of them, the first-class ones, should have an ability to call you directly as commander-in-chief, or call one or two people close to you if they can’t reach you. This is the standard work of commander-in-chief, given the complexity of governance in Nigeria. And when this event occurred, between the president, a commander-in-chief, and the Tor Tiv, who is the traditional head of all the people affected, and the governor, and the commissioner of police there and the DG,DSS, there would have been a lot of interaction. Some of the things that the Tor Tiv is saying to the president in the open, they would have done the interaction.

In fact, as president, I would have gone, had a private session with the Tor Tiv, and the serious people, so that we can talk to ourselves, frankly, in camera, before we now go out and assure the people. So the idea now is that the traditional rulers have been put in a place where the president is appearing to them like a foreign guest, and they are having to pour all they have to say in the short message in the public.

So as a result of that, and they are not familiar with the president enough to see, because of that failure of leadership by the president, to have interaction with them and gain their comfort, now they are now thinking, like, okay, how do I communicate with this person? He’s a politician, so even though I’m communicating what affects my people to him, somehow I know he has an ego problem, so I need to kind of also play to his politics, which is now taking the traditional ruler outside their comfort zone, because the traditional ruler is a father, and he’s able to speak the truth to you without having the need to assuage your feelings and give you sugar coating. And I see it repeatedly, wherever traditional rulers are being brought, either to launch a commission, a road, or to play any interaction with government, there is this element where they end their story by saying, we are going to vote for you, we are going to, which is totally a taboo, and that is more painful on occasion like this, where lives have been lost, and the traditional ruler should have been the chief host, and the chief mourner, and the president will have come there to mourn with them, and then have time. Traditional rulers have a lot of information, and they have code of conduct and ethics, of what they can say, what they cannot say.

So, my advice to Mr. President, I hope there is no other visit to Masaka and all of that but he should try to be in touch with traditional rulers. They have a lot of information they may not give to the governor of the state, because of local politics, which they will give to you. From time to time, pay unannounced private visits to them, let them come and see you privately, let them have access to you. Some of this idea will have been given to the president before he made his own speech, before the Tor Tive had to react to say, sir, with due respect, let me correct what you are saying.

The president will always speak last. I’m sure he was reacting to…

No, the president spoke earlier, before going to the event, you know, when the thing occurred, the president, I think, was commissioning some FCT projects, and when he was announcing that he was going to change his schedule, and go to Benue instead of Kaduna, he made some comments, indeed, regarding that subject, which shows that he had not listened to the people affected before making that comment, and that comment did not go down well with the Tor Tiv, and he courageously went to correct the president.

At the same time, because of that obligatory pressure that they give to the traditional rulers, to always now add a bit of politics, to kind of sweeten the truth for the politicians, and that aspect is what I criticise, not that the traditional rulers themselves are the people who are the object of the criticism, that they had to feel like that, that they had to be put in such a situation, the way the president had organised the interaction was what led to that bit.

Now that the Benue people have come out to say that this is an attempt to wipe them out and take over their lands. What do you think the president and Commander-in-Chief, should be doing to people who feel that they’re facing an existential threat? If really that is not the situation, how do you think they can actually change the narrative?

It is difficult to say that subjectively, that’s not the situation, because that is the evidence that they have, that’s the feeling, and it’s not only in Benue, if you go to Plateau you will see it. If you go to a bit of anywhere in what we call the middle belt, you will see it. In many parts, and if you go to Zamfara and other places in the upper Savana, you will feel the same way.
I think that the president should not be receiving this information as if they are new pieces of information. If you look at the pattern of troop movement, pattern of violence, if you put them on a map and you will see that there are certain territories where these activities take place. The feeling in Plateau is even worse, because I’ve gone to communities in Plateau where crises like this happen, and I interact with them, and they give you evidence that they have, they mention them.

If you go to Borono, they will tell you, look at how, what the so-called Boko Haram is being reorganized and reassembled. Look at how this particular person from this community who had stopped this activity has now gone back to be doing the activity. They will give you a lot of information. President needs to know that this commander-in-chief is a very hard job.
You have to give away some other things. You have to give some of your politics to other political operatives to do for you. Spend six months and put together a proper plan, one to gain a foothold in your territory, so that when these unsafe areas, relatively unsafe areas, wake up in the morning, they see the law.

They see that the closest person to them is law enforcement, and that if they have any concern, they don’t need to run away or agitate, they will immediately reach law enforcement. If the law enforcement below is on the ground, is not behaving well, they have access to brigade commanders, police commissioners, directorate of the DSS, and all of that, and that if the people who are professional fail, they can talk to their leaders, like the national rulers, like the religious leaders, like the government, and they can reach to the commander-in-chief in Abuja. If you put that in place, and every community knows what number to call, that feeling is going to go down.

Secondly, you have to have a change, as you have a change of command, you must also have a change of responsibility. If something happens in a particular geography, somebody’s head has to be chopped off, among those who are responsible, because a chain of command is, that’s why they salute you when you arrive, that’s why you give them instruction, that’s why you give them resources. There must also be a chain of responsibility.

If you are in charge of a particular zone, and there are sectors under it, and you put people there, like this year, who is going to face court martial? Who is going to face orderly room? Who is going to face investigation? Where is the investigation panel set up? Where is the judicial inquiry set up? These are tools for obtaining accountability. So when people feel like, whether it’s supported by evidence or not, or just sentiment, or just the general, commonsensical analysis of patterns, there will be an inquiry. Where they will go there, that inquiry would deal with it.

There will be an inquiry at the state level. There will be other NGOs, like the Catholic Church, and other people, that will be allowed to do their own investigation, and assist them, so that you can collapse all of this information together, and have a white paper, that will speak to the people, because you need to give accountability. And you would, in the inquest, for the killing of each person, because under the law, each of those people killed, Nigeria owes them an accountability of how they lost their lives. So if any of their children, grandchildren, come up 100 years from now, they will say, my family were affected by a massacre in Yelwata. My grandfather was killed. This is what the government said about it.

This is the compensation we were paid for it. This is the measure taken. And it’s because of this, that these laws and measures have been taken. But if you just do this political theater, and then keep quiet, and God forbid, you wait for another thing to happen, in another location, and then we start debating, should the president go there, or not go there, and then we start all over again, because people have forgotten Bokkos. They are forgetting that in Sokoto State, the Sarki of Gobi was killed, was captured with his son, and was killed, and up to now, neither Sokoto State, nor the federal government has explained, and you know better than I do as a journalist, you can go back to the beginning of President Tinubu’s presidency, you can go back to Buhari’s presidency, you can go back to Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency from Chibok girls up to now, no resolution.