Goodluck Jonathan says his team underestimated Boko Haram

I and my team underestimated Boko Haram
– president Jonathan
In an interview with ThisDay, President
Jonathan said he underestimated the
strength of terror group Boko Haram when
he assumed office as President but now
believes that the leader of the sect will be
arrested before the elections.
He said bad press & poor Public relations
has negatively affected his government as
people, including himself and his cabinet
members are not up to date with the
achievements of his government. Read the
interview after the cut...
"I think the thing that has brought this
government down with both Nigerians and
non-Nigerians, is the issue of Boko Haram.
One thing is that terrorism is all over the
world, but they believe that we did not
handle it the way we were supposed to
handle it. Probably at the beginning, we and
I mean myself and the team, we underrated
the capacity of the Boko Haram. Capacity
not in terms of what they have in Nigeria,
but their international linkages, we
underrated that and thought that we were
dealing with some local elements that we
could overrun.
Many of the security chiefs had made
statements that later on you people took
them up on. That shows they
underestimated their capacity. We’ve now
realised that the handshake had gone above
the elbow and so we have to move fully and
that’s why we are running round to get the
right military equipments we need. Somehow
we could not get them early enough, and
now it has moved too close to the election.
But with what is happening now, in the next
two weeks, that is three weeks into the six
weeks, God willing, Nigerians will be happy
with what the military has done in the
North-east.
On whether there is anything I would have
done differently, yes. I think one thing about
the government is that we have done quite a
number of things. At times many of us in the
government don’t even know what we have
done. People tell us. I remember in the
beginning of this campaign, if I wanted to
visit a state, I will ask those in my office to
list out some of our projects in some of
these states so that we can tell them what
we’ve done. Sometimes when I go to the
states, people from the host governments
will give me a longer list than the ones
prepared for me in my office. That means
that even some of us in the government
don’t even know all of what we have done to
impact positively on Nigeria.
Probably we did not put attention and
resources on media and public relations.
Public relations is a major thing and that is
why companies have departments for this.
No matter what you do, you must have a
team that would manage your image. Shell
doesn’t need anybody to advertise their
crude oil, they’ve sold it already, but they
still have image makers. I think we
downplayed the issue of image for the
government, and of course making our
achievements known.
Also probably the issue of corruption,
because these are the two areas people
tackle us - corruption and security. For
security, God willing, that will soon be a
thing of the past. The next thing is the issue
of corruption, and I used to tell people: if I
don’t want to fight corruption, I wouldn’t
have brought in (Ibrahim) Lamorde as
chairman of the EFCC.
I came on board as the vice-president of
Yar’Adua, (Nuhu) Ribadu, you all know the
story, was removed. Lamorde was Ribadu’s
second in command, he was the Director of
Operations, and was removed from the EFCC
back to the police. Farida was appointed and
she was trying her best, because she used
to brief me from time to time. We had to
drop her because of reports from both
within this country and outside. And given
that Ribadu was Lamorde were well- trained
by the west, they argued that if I bring
Lamorde back that EFCC would improve. If I
am someone that don’t want to fight
corruption I would not have listened and
brought back Lamorde because he once
investigated me. My in-law was detained
here in Abuja for weeks. But I sent for him
and told him that Nigerians and non-
Nigerians believed in him, so we would
bring him to help EFCC, because he was the
backbone of Ribadu. So we asked him to
come and be the head of the agency.
But people often say that my body
movement encourages corruption which is
not true. Lamorde told me about their
limitations, being in court and the court
compromising. I then came up with some
innovations again. Though constitutionally,
the three arms of government are not
supposed to meet; there is no platform for
the three to meet, even though the executive
and parliament do meet because we are all
politicians, but I said look we must, for the
image of the country, come together. I then
called for a special meeting with myself, the
vice-president, then the head of corruption
agencies, EFCC, ICPC and the Senate
president and his deputy, then the speaker
and his deputy. Then for the judiciary, all the
judges of the federation, the president of the
court of appeal, the chief judge of the federal
high court and (from) each of the zones, we
nominated a state chief judge each. I told
them that the executive, legislature and
judiciary must work together in the interest
of the country to fight corruption.
I called the meeting because of the issue of
court delay, and we discussed and
everybody showed concern. But the judiciary
operates like a university setting where
every lecturer behaves like he is 100 per
cent academic freedom .Every judge has
some level of autonomy, and if they don’t
operate that way there will be issues. So
there is a limit that even the chief judge of
the federation can control a judge. The only
thing is that if they misbehave they will be
punished under their guide book, but other
than that, the judge can decide to ignore any
decision. We had several meetings, and it
was in one of those meetings that the
question came up about the difference
between corruption and stealing based on
the laws.
We are doing our best to see that corruption
is reduced. You can see that in the payroll
system, we have eliminated corruption and
theft including the agric sector. One major
area that we will go into is the oil sector.
So we are going to sanitise all the sectors,
but I always believe that fighting corruption
is not just about first arresting people and
celebrating the arrest on television. We
have to investigate and prosecute before
publicity" he said.