Before the foiled protest at the Lekki Toll Plaza in Lagos Saturday, Senator Gershom Bassey ( PDP Cross River South), fielded questions from journalists in Abuja where he declared that the #EndSARS protesters should give peace a chance. TAIYE ODEWALE was there . Excerpts:
Distinguished, within the last few days , some youth have been threatening to occupy Lekki Toll Plaza in Lagos on Saturday, February 13, 2021, as a way of restarting the #EndSARS protests of last year which later went violent. What’s your reaction to this?
My reaction and appeal is simply to tell those planning to occupy the plaza again or restart the #EndSARS protest, to give peace a chance because we all saw how such protests were later hijacked by hoodlums across the country with attendant collateral damages in terms of loss of lives and destruction of property owned by government at all levels and even private individuals. Such destruction was visited on my personal property in Calabar, Cross River state and those of other politicians as well. The #EndSARS protesters as seen last year in October, meant well for the country by conducting themselves peacefully before the whole thing turned violent, but the poser I will throw at them is, do they have the capacity to prevent such protests from being hijacked again as witnessed by Nigerians in 2020? The right for peaceful protests by any group of Nigerians at anytime, is guaranteed by relevant provisions of the 1999 constitution as amended, but such rights do not confer on anybody violence – triggering platform . So they should please be cautious on their plan and exercise restraints in giving peace a chance in the land .
In addressing insecurity, don’t you think the federal government should divert its resources into creating state police instead of over centralizing federal police?
You are asking two questions, one is about budgeting. There is no doubt whether we have state, federal or local Police, they must be properly funded. Nigeria is under-policed, we are far below the international standard when it comes to the ratio of police to citizens. We need to recruit more police. Second, we need to fund not just our Police but our security agencies. Like some of my colleagues were saying on the floor of the Senate that we need to have an emergency in security, that emergency must include funding, like the federal government is doing for COVID-19.
You don’t see kidnapping in many countries, why? It’s because of technology. Once you have the technology, kidnapping becomes extremely difficult. Why not acquire the technology to reduce kidnapping? In Nigerian states, where technology has been introduced, kidnapping has been virtually eliminated, same with other crimes. Let’s go to the fundamentals first. The ones we have, let it work. The other ones like State Police, is a medium term issue. You cannot amend the constitution today, it takes chain of processes. But in the meantime, Nigerians are having problem, so let us address the problem now. If today we have an emergency in security, then we can quickly allocate funds, recruit the personnel and acquire the technology needed within few months.
What about the quality of personnel being recruited into police?
We have one of the highest graduate unemployment rates in the world. So finding graduates to recruit into the Police Force should not be a problem. We have enough able-bodied men and women who are ready to go into security agencies. We need them to secure the country. And if you say there may be bad eggs amongst them, even in journalism, there are bad eggs, but you still recruit. What to do is to find a way to screen out the potential bad eggs.
The implementation of federal government’s social intervention programme has been heavily criticized for not reaching the targeted populations. What’s your take on this?
In theory, I totally agree with the Social Intervention Programme ( SIP) because our people are suffering and the economy is shrinking. In practical economics, one of the ways to come out of the recession is to inject more money into the economy and direct very fast ways of putting the money into the hands of the vulnerable people, so that they will have disposable income. The idea of the programme is something I agree with, but I’m not too conversant with the way it is being implemented. But I know that alot of people from my Senatorial District have started receiving a lot of intervention from the Central Bank of Nigeria ( CBN) . What I will advise is that those responsible for the programme implementation should move with speed in disbursing funds to people. If they move fast, I think people will feel the impact.
Do you support the establishment of ranches as a way to end farmers-herders clashes?
Criminality is criminality. If a person has committed a crime, he has committed a crime, and a crime is when one has contravened the laws of the land. However, people who are more qualified and have more information than me are beginning to find a consensus around ranching as a solution. I think there’s a need for us to put on our thinking caps and see how we can quickly resolve this problem because too many lives are being lost.
Do you also support negotiating with bandits for peace to reign as being done in some states by the governors in charge?
I do know that in south-south, even in my state, there have been negotiations under the amnesty programme with militants, who were agitating for something. What we found was that when we had those negotiations under the amensty programme, the level of militancy reduced particularly under the late President Yar’adua. I think that is the model the few governors in the north may be looking at. However, they need to be careful because there is a question of control. If you negotiate with these people, can you control their actions thereafter? I don’t know the answer to that. So, it is not a question I will talk on the media like this, it’s a more intricate question. If that is the way they want to go, they can ensure that all agreements are respected. But a lot of law-abiding people will tell you that it’s very difficult.
Finally, going by information filtering out from your state, are you contesting for the governorship seat of Cross River state in 2023?
We are in 2021 now, February for that matter. Any aspiration for what ever position in 2023 is too early for expression and activation .
Besides in my own state, the incumbent Governor, Professor Benedict Ayade, is doing excellently well and should not be distracted by anybody’s ambition now .
