Date: 2014-08-18

Col Theophilus Bamigboye (retd) was appointed the military administrator of Bauchi State on August 13, 1996. He was later redeployed to Osun State in August 1998, also as a military administrator. He speaks with SUCCESS NWOGU on sundry national issues and his experiences in the Army

The military action against Boko Haram appears not to be succeeding as expected. What do you think is the problem?

The military action is succeeding. It is only that people expect overnight magic. The operation in the north-eastern part of the country is not conventional warfare.

We know where Sambisa Forest is. In normal military operation, it is not a problem to approach or advance to such a place to dislodge the enemy but they are there with over 200 schoolgirls from Government Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State. You cannot bombard such a place; else you kill the poor girls. It is a very complex operation and it has to be handled with care; people expect the military will just get up and match to the Sambisa forest to rescue the girls and destroy the insurgents. It is a very complex operation and people should understand it is complex.

What then is the best way to tackle the insurgency?

It requires a high-level decision and it is not easy. If the government releases the detained insurgents as swap for the girls, how are we sure they will not continue; or how are we sure it is a genuine promise that they will release the girls when their members are released? If their demand is genuine and it will solve the problem, I will personally appeal to the President to toe that line and let us have peace. But are we sure they are really going to stop and give peace a chance? That is the problem.

Politicians often blame the woes of the nation on protracted military rule in the country. Do you agree?

I do not agree and I will never agree because the same so-called politicians, with that erroneous view, benefited immensely from military governments. Today, any small thing, they will say military caused this or that. When we were in government, they were part of us. They benefited by appointment and by contracts. They should just accept they have failed and should not put the blame on military rule. They keep blaming the military: military of how many years now? The military left since 1999 and people are still blaming the military. Power failure, they say it is military; this one is military; the other one is military as if they were not part of us. We were together then.

What legacies by military regimes can boast of?

It is not something I will start narrating here. Circumstances brought us to power; let me leave it for Nigerians to judge.

People have blamed Jonathan for not taking action after the abduction Chibok girls till after 18 days. What’s your position on this?

As the President, he is the father of the nation. There is a chain of command. He has his Minister of Defence, Chief of Defence Staff, service chiefs and commanders. We should not blame him. He has advisers and they have to put their heads together for the best decision and action.

It is a complex thing. The Americans and other foreign collaborators came, what have they done? I think by now, they must have gone back. People should just pray for this nation and the President.

Are you saying the involvement of foreign security operatives in the effort to rescue the Chibok girls amounted to nothing?

What has it achieved? Have they been able to rescue the girls? Have they been able to tell us the place where these insurgents are? The girls are still with Boko Haram. It is a complex problem. It is beyond what I can start talking about now as an individual.

As a retired colonel, what are the memories of your life as a soldier?

I wanted to become a medical doctor. I worked very hard, trying to see that the core subjects, such as Biology, Chemistry and Physics were my best subjects.

After my Higher School Certificate studies, I could not pass all the papers, So, I could not gain admission. I proceeded to the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. There, I was in the School of Basic Studies preparing to study Medicine.

Meanwhile, I also developed interest in the military. I applied for a short service course in the Nigerian Defence Academy. In January 1973, I saw my name in the papers. I was offered an opportunity to join the academy for military training.

I left ABU. I found myself in NDA. That was the beginning of my military career. All along, I had made up my mind that I had to make the best out of that career. I was enjoying my career and was doing very well in all my courses, both local and foreign courses. I went to India and Pakistan to attend military courses and I did very well.

My ambition was to get to the top of my career in the military. I prepared myself for that until my appointment as military administrator of Bauchi State came up. That was in 1996.

What was your lowest point?

It was the day I heard about my retirement on June 10, 1999. That was the day I was retired along with 93 others. We were told those of us who had held political appointments as far back as 1984 and were still in service should be retired. Ninety four of us were retired the same day. The thinking was that we had tasted power and should go so that we would not pollute other officers in the barracks.

Did you regret joining the Army?

It was after my retirement. I sat down and said, ‘What do I do now?’ If I had been in the engineering section of the military, it would have been better; I could pursue something like construction but I was in the artillery, dealing with heavy calibre weapons.

What were your experiences as the military administrator of Bauchi and Osun states like?

When I got my appointment as the military administrator of Bauchi State on August 14, 1996, I was in Minna. Somebody came to me and said, ‘Congratulations on your appointment. You are going to be a governor but look at the state you are posted to.’ The Tell Magazine of that day had the headline, ‘Time bomb in Bauchi State.’ It had to do with the problem in Tafawa Balewa Local Government then. I said, ‘No problem.’

I sat down and I spoke to God. I said, ‘God you have given me this task and this appointment. I never dreamt about it anyway. My brother was the first civilian Governor of Kwara State and now by destiny, you said I should go. I thank you God. So now, I am going, lead me there and whatever the problem in Bauchi State is, help me to sort out the matter.’

I did my best there. When General Abdulsalami Abubakar came on board as the Head of State, I was moved to Osun State. Just as I experienced in Bauchi, I met crisis in Osun State. Osun then was boiling because of the Ife/Modakeke crisis.

When I got to the state, my first concern was to stop the killings, arson and all sorts of things going on. Again, I thank God, I was able to restore peace to Ifeland.

God helped me to resolve the issues in both Bauchi and Osun states. These are the high points of my stay in Bauchi and Osun states.

How did you grapple with moving away from core military duties to becoming a military administrator?

In the military, we are trained to defend the integrity of the nation; go to war; in the process, shoot and kill. That was the job. Finding myself governing a state was not easy because in the military, you have your schedule, you have your chain of command. In this case, I was on top; I found myself managing human and financial resources of the state.

The greatest problem then had to do with finance. People were expecting so much from me and the fund was not available. When we received our monthly allocation, after paying some debt and salaries, we would fold our hands and wait for the next one. The internally-generated revenue was nothing to write home about. We engaged some tax consultants and we were able to achieve maybe about N6m increment monthly.   At times, we realized about N9m, the highest may be N15m of IGR. The IGR was never beyond N15m. But in the case of Osun, we realised more than that. In Osun, during the cocoa season and harvest, we realised more. After that, you fold your hand and wait for the next allocation. Finance was the major problem.

You were known for your attention to education as a military administrator, are you satisfied with the level of education in the country now?

Education is a continuous issue. You can never say this level is the best and you relax. You keep progressing. When I got to Bauchi in 1996, the WASC examination results were not impressive.   We sat down to identify the problem. We discovered there were many problems. There were dilapidated classrooms and high number of pupils and students in classrooms.

In one school, I asked the principal how many students he had in a classroom and I was told there were about 180 students in a class. I said, ‘No. this cannot be. I never went to that type of school and why should I come and leave such school like that.’

We started building extra classrooms, providing furniture and beddings for students to feel comfortable. We also bought text books and even went to the extent of encouraging teachers. I   bought bicycles for primary school teachers and motorcycles for secondary school teachers.

I later discovered that some of the teachers were not qualified to teach, I commissioned few people to go round and recruit teachers, even from outside the state. I thank God it worked well and things started improving.

That of Osun was a different situation entirely; the standard was quite high, there were many schools with many teachers but few students. I gathered all the principals and it was a large meeting. I asked them what the problem was and I told them we could not go on like this. I told them we could not continue to have schools with many teachers and few students. I told them that we were going to merge the schools together. Though, some protested, but we succeeded.

How would you rate the standard of education?

Nationally, we have yet to get there. We have many universities and polytechnics but many of them do not have standard and sufficient lecture rooms, laboratories and other learning facilities.

I am the chairman of Governing Council for Federal Polytechnic, Bida; only two weeks ago during the council meeting, we went round the lecture rooms and the laboratories. I was not happy with what I saw. I was expecting to see well-equipped workshops, laboratories and others.   The workshop that has to do with carpentry in the school was just a little bit better than ordinary carpenter’s shop found on the street.

For me, we are yet to get there. We still have a lot to do. But I am happy the Federal Government, not long ago, put in place Needs Assessment Committee for universities and polytechnics. Hopefully, when this assessment is approved and government decides to implement it, things will improve. But for now, I feel that we are yet to get there.

Your venture into politics has not favoured you so far, especially your ambition to become the Kwara State governor. What is the problem?

It was not my ambition to govern Kwara State. My brother governed Kwara State for eight years under General Gowon’s administration. After my retirement, I was here in Ilorin enjoying my retirement life, people just came and asked me to join politics and lead them. I told them to forget about the idea, that I was not interested. But they came again. They insisted first I must be interested in politics, that they wanted me to contest. I said, ‘okay, go and pray about it while I also pray about it.’ I put it into prayers and they went away praying. When they came back again, I said, ‘okay, it is alright. Let me surrender and see what we can do.’

I started making consultations here and there. We started like that. I was in the Peoples Democratic Party then. But something happened along the line and I started changing parties here and there. I was residing in Lagos but I came back to Kwara around April 2006, then of course, I had my own vanguard and we started holding meetings. I was going to places, letting people to know about my interest and soliciting for their prayers.

But something happened. I was told that the incumbent, Dr. Bukola Saraki, had been endorsed for the second term. I said ‘what is the meaning of that? This should be a free contest. Let all of us go for primaries and whoever succeeds, we will rally round him.’ They told me that once somebody was endorsed you should not go against that. I said, ‘Well, in that case, I better try my luck elsewhere.’ Then I found myself in Democratic Peoples Party. While I was in DPP, again something funny happened. One of our brothers came around and said he had so much money. Usually, the elders and other stakeholders would ask every aspirant to address them and tell them how they would want to fight the battle. It was a battle and up till now, it is still a battle.

Each time I was called upon to address them, I made them understand that though I might not have the money, I had the experience. I had ruled states and I knew how to go about it with the little resources that would accrue to the state. I discovered that because of other aspirants offered money and I told them I had little money, they opted for persons with the money. I said, ‘Okay, let me try my luck somewhere else.’

I went to the Accord Party. Accord Party, as at that time, was just on paper. Somebody was acting as chairman in Kwara. I do not think Accord Party members then were more than 20 people. I was told that one of my classmates, a retired Major, was the acting chairman. I said, ‘Okay, he will be able to put me through.’ I went to Abuja and registered and we started talking of Accord Party and the party started gaining ground and people started talking about Accord. That was how I found myself in Accord Party.

I contested under the platform of the party in 2007 but again, the rest is history. The incumbent was declared first. I was declared the fourth winner. I accepted it like that. It is not a do-or-die thing. Later on, my good friend and brother, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, insisted I must return to the PDP. Actually, he brought me back to the PDP. Then Baba Olusola Saraki, Bukola and every one of us were all in PDP. I came back to the PDP