‘Why insurgency may last beyond 2023’

Kudla Satumari contested the Senatorial seat for the Southern Borno Senatorial District against current Senator representing the area, Senator Ali Ndume, who was declared winner of the seat. An aviation consultant and philanthropist, Satumari, in this interview with Tony Akowe, speaks on the outcome of the election, the security situation in the Northeast. Excerpts

DOES it bother you that the man you contested against is moving a step further to contest the position of the Senate President?

It does not bother me at all. If he won the election free and square, I will be one of the people championing his desire to be Senate President considering the fact that he is from my Senatorial District and being the Senate President, he could attract some developmental projects to the state and senatorial district. What people don’t know is that I have worked assiduously for him to become a Senator representing Southern Borno in 2011. I was one of the people that worked so hard for him to emerge as Senator. I even built a primary school in my area and named it after him. It is not that I am fighting him or not happy that he wants to be Senate President, but just like Obasanjo would say, we should not reinforce failure because for the past eight years that he has been in the Senate, I cannot say for certainty that this is what he has done to justify his being there to represent the good people of southern Borno. Apart from getting involved in controversy, if you go to my senatorial district, you will know more of this person who is larger than life when he comes to Abuja. This is somebody that could not go to his senatorial district as a candidate to participate in his own primary. He is there because the governor of Borno State and the powers that be wanted him as a candidate. Otherwise, the people resisted him and did not want to see him. In Gwoza, the Senatorial headquarters where they held their primary, he could not go there because the people did not want to see him. This is somebody who has never gone out one day to campaign. This is not the Ndume that we know. But by the time things started unfolding, the people said they wanted him removed from the seat. That was while there was a consensus among our people, irrespective of religion or other considerations. They came and said, we must vote this person out. In about seven, out of nine local governments, by 4.00pm, the exit poll already suggested that we have won the election and people were screaming, running around and shouting my name that I have already won. Within a short period of time, when votes were being collated at the polling units to the collation centres, figures began to change. In his own local government, a bomb was dropped on Election Day and that was a local government where election held in two places because the people are displaced. Yet, they retuned 113,000 votes, the highest in any of the local government, when Biu, the Senatorial headquarters where people have never moved since the insurgency began brought only 54000 votes. In Abuja alone, we have 14 IDP camps, with 75 percent of the population from Gwoza. About 75000 people are behind the Gwoza hills on the Cameroon side. We have camps in Taraba; we have camps in Keffi here, in Abuja, in Jos and in Kaduna. How did you mobilise these people to come and vote on Election Day. On a day when bombs began to fly, people from hiding in the hills suddenly came down to vote and came up with 113,000 votes, higher than Maiduguri Metropolitan with the highest number of registered voters. How can you justify telling me that you have 95 percent voter turnout in two towns out of 13 wards. Any discerning person knows that elections may have held, there were other things that took place.

Will you accept out of court settlement?

Never! There are people that by their fruits, you shall know them. In 2015, I contested election. I was the preferred candidate to win. In my local government, we have a tarred road separating two towns. On side of the road, is Adamawa and on the other side, is Borno State. They told me that there was insecurity on my side of the road and they refused to hold election there and moved it to the IDP camp in Maiduguri. Because of the insecurity, the shortest route you could take then was about 12 hours from my constituency to Maiduguri and yet they took the election there. Meanwhile, on the other side of the road, which is Adamawa, they were holding election and insecurity did not bother them. Fast track that to 2019: A bomb was released on that same day and election still went ahead. Regarding the issue of settling out of court; this is not about me, but about my people. When I say about my people, I don’t want to go emotional, but the level of insecurity in my area is so much that I don’t know what is happening. I don’t know if we still have men of character and integrity to question what is happening. It took a legislator from Jigawa State to go to Maiduguri, observe what was happening and almost cried on the floor of the National Assembly. Yet, we have a people representing us as senators. We have a member of the Defence Committee from Borno State; we have a member of the committee on Army from Borno State, we had Senator Ndume who was the Senate Leader and he could not say a single word about the circle of insurgency that is happening. Nobody is bringing the insurgency to the centre stage. My 80 year old mother, by 3.00am last week, slept in the bush. They come here and told us that they have degraded Boko Haram and the kind of insecurity that we are experiencing everyday has never been under Jonathan. Under Jonathan, it was worse because they can take over a whole local government, sit down and operate from there. But the kind of hit and run that we are having and the seeming lack of concern or tangible effort being made by those in authority and this makes one to wonder whether we are still part of this country? So, I will never accept any form of settlement out of court. Let the court decide and say he has won. If that happens, I will appeal and let the appeal court also say he has won. If that also happens and since I cannot go further than that, I will leave it to God. But there is no amount of threats that will stop me. My life has been threatened several times. There is nothing that has not been done. There is nobody on the surface of this earth, including my mother that I cherish and respect so much, that can come and tell me to step down because of whatever consideration. I will never concede. Even if the lawyers refuse to defend me, I will defend myself.

Some of your adversaries will say that you are just being a bad loser. What do you have to say to this?

If you hear my story, you will know that my people are with me and I don’t think that anybody will say that I am a bad loser. I am not a professional politician. I am a professional in politics. I have something that I do that can keep me busy. If you ask me what they get at the National Assembly, I don’t even know. I only know that when I become the Senator of the Federal Republic, I can easily access some privileges and bring some development to my people. God gave us the money to do what we did as well as dedicated and committed people to work with. While people are entitled to their own opinion, I can tell you that majority of my people will tell you that I am not a desperate politician.

If you eventually take over the seat, what are those things that you want to do for your people?

One thing I know that I can do is that if I knock on some doors, I can get some grants and development projects to my senatorial district. I have gotten grants for people in the past. I have worked for international donor agencies in different places to seek interventions in some areas and have built hospitals in the area without being a senator. If I use the office of the Senator of the Federal Republic, I know that will open more doors with bigger opportunities.

You said insecurity has been on the rise. From your point of view, what are we not getting right in the fight against insurgency?

First, I may not be able to speak authoritatively on security issues because there may be things they know that we don’t know. I speak the way I am speaking because I am from the Northeast and have experienced the bitterness and the pain of losing 13 of my direct relations in one day and another 35 members of my extended family in one day. I am a living witness to the extent that I know that my village is not more secured under Jonathan. I want to tell anybody that cares to know that if Jonathan had remained President up till today, probably, the level of degradation of insecurity would have been the same with what we have now or even more. If in six weeks that Jonathan sought for extension of election, he was able to reclaim and degrade their capacity to the extent that election held in every part of Borno State, including Chibok, then, I want to believe that if he had three years, he would have rolled them and pushe them to the extent we are today that people are saying it’s only Buhari that can do it. When I was in the university, I had two pictures on my wall. One was Thomas Sankara and the other was Buhari. That was how much I idolise and respected him. But right now, I am disappointed with his leadership in this dispensation. I believe that we can do more with the resources being pumped into the northeast; with the kind of international support we have willing to assist us degrade the capacity of these people. If we don’t change the current group of people that are being recycled in Borno State as elected representatives, we may have Boko Haram beyond 2023. We have to change the strategy because if you use the same strategy every day, you will have the same outcome. That is our pain and that is why we are crying and shouting and people are not taking our cry anywhere.

Some of the Chibok girls are still in captivity. What did we not do right in trying to rescue them?

Like I said, there are somethings that I may be able to talk about. What I know and what I can see is that the enthusiasms with which they talk about degrading Boko Haram and the insurgency is not the same thing they are putting on ground in terms of touching the lives of the people. There are two things that will make people feel at home. Number one, provide the security and number two, provide them the assurance that they are safe and secured. These two things need to come together for people to feel comfortable.