Adamawa State Governor, Senator Mohammad Umar Jibrilla Bindow, is seeking re-election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). On Tuesday, he formally received the party’s flag to contest the 2019 poll, at the official launch of his campaign. After the campaign flag off, he spoke with a group of select journalists on his plans and why he believes that President Muhammadu Buhari will defeat the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, in his home state. TONY AKOWE was there.
You have flagged off your campaign, what next?
Have flagged off now, we are going to start our local government campaign. Before then, we will zone the state into three segments and start within the zones. We have already established acampaign council in each of the zones and have already inaugurated them to campaign for the President, the governor and all other candidates of the APC. By Monday, we will start going to the local governments and to continue what the zonal campaign teams have started already. Basically, this is what we are going to do having inaugurated and flagged off the campaign. You saw that the flag was given to us and l will now go round to give members of the assembly and other persons their flags.
During the flag-off, you did say that President Muhammadu Buhari does not need to campaign in Adamawa State and you know that this is the home state of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Don’t you think there is a challenge?
Yes, as a former senator, not only that l was opportune to be in the Senate, l was also the Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Defence and l knew how this area used to be in terms of insurgency and the way our people were suffering and what have you. I was almost the de factor chairman because the chairman didn’t like coming to the North East because of Boko Haram. He is from Rivers State and he was not comfortable coming here. Honestly after President Buhari was sworn in and we started seeing what he was doing in terms of fighting insurgency, the commitment of the President in fighting Boko Haram is what everybody here must commend. Before now, they (Boko Haram insurgents) used to go in thousands to capture villages, towns and what have you and for your information, they even captured my own local government, Mubi, the second largest town in the state. Some people will tell you that Mubi, in terms of population, is even bigger than Yola but Boko Haram almost captured that place for 14 days and at that time, the Chief of Defence Staff, Badeh, who is now late, is from there. He was in service and they captured that place and even changed the name of Mubi to Midinatumhanji Islam but immediately the President came in, before you could say anything, things started getting better and not only that, we in the state collaborated with the military and with the local hunters in the entire process. The local hunters really helped us.
This Boko Haram thing, honesty up till now, nobody has told me the real objective of this struggle that they are doing. For me, it is just a bunch of International criminals that are trying to terrorise everybody because they would go and burn churches, burn mosques, kill children, kill women, break into banks and commit all sorts of crimes. So, what is it about? It has nothing to do with religion. There is no any religion that says go and kill women and children and something like that. Basically the President has done very well and even with the IDPs that were left with us in Adamawa. When we came in, we had about 25 IDP camps and out of the 25, l will tell you that 95 per cent of the contents of the IDP camps were not from Adamawa State, so we had to close some because we came at a time the IDPs were used by some criminals to collect money from international agencies, that they have NGos and they would come and snap children and you would never see them again; they would just go and do something else. We say no, this must stop. We don’t want to say we have IDPs and it will stop us from developing Adamawa. So, we try to send those IDPs back. Those from Adamawa were taken back to their communities and those from other communities, mainly Borno, we tried to talk to the governor to take them back and from there as far as Adamawa is concerned, our security, generally, is stable and everywhere is calm.
Are you saying that there is no chance for the former Vice President who is the ‘son of the soil’ to defeat President Buhari?
We want to campaign based on issues. On fighting the insurgency, President Buhari has done a lot of things in terms of community development in the state. There’s no road today in this state, federal roads, where work is not going on. You can go and verify it. From Yola as you are going to Mubi, you will see contractors working. From Mubi to Maiduguri, people are working physically now. You can see it. From Yola to Gombe, one Chinese company is also working. From Numan to Taraba, they are on site. From Mayo Beluwa to Jada, which is where Atiku hails from, that road has been there for over 20 years, nobody has done the road. That road, Jada – Ganye – Tonga, has produced Vice President Atiku; Bamanga Tukur, the former PDP National Chairman, he is from Jada; PPS to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Hassan Tukur; the former Comptroller General of the Nigeria Custom Service (NCS) is from there. Many personalities that could have done that road are from there. So, will you go and tell those people, not to vote for Buhari? This road is going on. They have seen development and change in their own lives. So, by the time we say ‘go and vote for Buhari’, they will do it. I hope you understand what I’m saying?
The fact is that we can campaign based on issues. I don’t talk on anything personal. For me, it’s not politics. Once you start personalising things, then you are not a politician. I don’t want to be part of that kind of uncivilided thing. We want to campaign based on issues. Even in the state, if not because the President is helping us by bringing the Paris Club refund and all sorts of things, we wouldn’t have been able to build all the infrastructure you are seeing. So, when we say vote for Buhari, they will vote. You will see Buhari winning Adamawa very clearly at the end of the day.
I want to take you back to the issue of Boko Haram you just talked about. Your counterpart in Borno State, Kashim Shettima, wept at the Aso Villa when he took stakeholders to President Buhari. Would you say the government has done enough in view of the current development since there was an initial claim that the group had been decimated?
With the word ‘enough’ that you used, they have done more than enough. If you have said they have eradicated Boko Haram, I will say no. But whether they have done enough, I will say they have done more than enough. That is what I just told you. Before, towns were taken over. But since Buhari came, no single town, no matter how small it is, has been taken over by Boko Haram. You never see them moving in groups engaging in guerilla and suicide attacks. They may be looking for soft targets like markets where people are gathering and release bombs, killing people. But taking over villages and towns like before even in Borno, the case is now different. So, the President has done wonderfully well. Nobody can deny that, especially anybody living in the North East, particularly we that are in the front line states – Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. Before, if they tell you to come to Adamawa, you will not come because of the perception that there is Boko Haram. If they tell you that there was a time when Boko Haram operated here, even if you go to where they had reigned, you won’t believe because people have already assimilated into the community.
In Adamawa State, we are now safe by 95 per cent. The only local government that is under military watch is Madagali that shares border with Gwosa and Cameroon because there are mountains around there and that is where some of Boko Haram men are hiding. Let me tell you, my own belief is that the remnants of Boko Haram are the locals. Like Madagali that I mentioned, it is their children who were in Boko Haram before, who are now back terrorising their own people. While looking for food, they will come, terrorise the people they know and rush