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Taking a retrospective view on the heels of Nigeria clocking 47, can you tell us whether the country has fared well or not?      Well, if you really want me to assess our progress or retrogression politically or economically in the last 47 years, I will say that even though in the last nine years this country has received so much revenue, the kind that it has never ever seen or dreamt of, our poverty has also escalated dramatically to such an economic state that one could not have ever thought of.

Because, I remember very clearly, by the end of our time when we thought the oil price per barrel had risen, then the highest was $8 per barrel. Today, the price of oil per barrel is $80. Obasanjo seems to always be lucky with crude oil prices. He got it better even before we came during the Second Republic and he got the best during the last eight years. But in his last eight years when our revenue has risen so much, our poverty has also escalated.

Politically, we have even done worse. If yesterday, we had credibility problem with our elections as a result of pockets of complaints about rigging, the kind of rigging we saw under Obasanjo was one that the whole world has never seen before. It was a disaster. It was shameful for our nation. It tells very bad about the quality of our educated class and our elite class.

So to me, in the last 47 years we have degenerated. We are on a slippery slope politically and economically and nobody knows when we will reach the bottom. The bottom is a total collapse of the nation state. Even in certain circles, some major observers have started counting Nigeria among the next set of failed states.

But some people believe Nigeria has made some progress. The country has seen the longest single stretch of civil democratic rule from 1999 till today and there has been a peaceful handing over from one civilian government to another. Don't you believe we are improving at least in those aspects?

Well, I am not sure what happened on May 29, 2007 was the desired succession we all expect politically and from the dictates of our constitution. All we have got is a militarised imposition of succession, highly pretentious of stability but completely empty of it. That is my own assessment because everyone of us knows that there were no elections in 2007 whatsoever and if there were no elections in 2007, there could not be any government to take over from Obasanjo.

But since Obasanjo had to go and he had to create a pretentious situation of a stable handover, he had to use his military stooge, agents and so on to bring about what we now call in quote, 'stable succession.' So this time around it cannot be said that there was a stable political succession borne out of normal democratic process. No.

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has admitted that there were flaws in the elections and has pledged electoral reforms to avoid reoccurrence. He has also indicated that constitutional reforms will go on. Isn't that a commendable step?

You see, personally, I don't have any problem with Yar'Adua as a person. I believe he is a nice person. But let me say that I am worried with the way some of his government's decisions are being taken. There is a lot of inexperience and immaturity in the decisions. There are contradictions. Contradictions from the point of view of their global effects which will in turn affect our domestic politics. This is because of lack of proper continuity and the absence of people who have experiences as to what happened before; people who could assist him by informing him of certain decisions and the proper mood to take decisions safely.

I will give you the latest example. Professor Charles Soludo, the Governor of Central Bank had announced the appreciation of Naira which would take effect August next year. This is an issue of contemporary significance. That is the best thing that could ever happen to Nigeria but because the political experience was not there and because the decision was taken out of political vacuum, naturally, the President reacted the way he did by rejecting it or suspending it.

During the Abacha days when we were in government, we made sure the Naira appreciated by almost N68 without anybody noticing it, without changing the denomination of the currencies by printing new ones. When Abacha came to power, our exchange rate was N150 to one US Dollar. By the time he died, the value of Naira had appreciated to N82 to one Dollar.

Therefore, Soludo could have done it through normal budgetary policy. You don't need to make any new prints or advertisement of the policy. It was as result of the pronouncements of the Governor of CBN that the Western powers who naturally want our currency to fall continuosly reacted the next day to say that they didn't recognize the election of Yar'Adua. And naturally, the President himself reacted by suspending the policy, saying that there wasn't sufficient consultation.

But nobody has doubted that Soludo was trying to put Nigeria on the right economic course. But because of political inexperience and immaturity, he took the wrong process and indeed those that want our currency to be cheap reacted negatively and the president reacted the way he had to do.

The issue of the value of our currency lies at the centre of our political crisis. As far back as 1982, the US government under President Ronald Regan asked the Shehu Shagari government to devalue the Naira by a whopping 500%. Shagari refused on the ground that the measure would impoverish Nigerians. He said it would be suicidal for his government to accept that when the Nigerian economy hasn't got the capacity to raise its production by a corresponding 500%. If he had accepted that request from Reagan under the prevailing economic situation at the time, Nigerians would have been impoverished by over 500%.

Reagan threatened our government and warned of dire consequences. A lot of arm-twisting economic measures against Nigeria followed from then on. Even the British under Margaret Thatcher joined the Americans. I remember very well in March, 1993, we suddenly woke up one morning and heard that all the buyers of Nigerian oil from Western countries were no more interested in Nigerian oil as sweet as it were and being the best oil available in market.

It was a natural shock to all of us. We had to stampede President Shagari and take him to the Senate to go over and to within 24 hours to make what we called Economic Stability Act. We therefore imposed imposed import duties, et cetera, moderately so that we will be able to accommodate the intervening period of loss of sales and loss of export of oil until the OPEC which realised with our failure to export oil, OPEC as an organisation will beckon. So they collected two billion dollars to come to our aid.

This same Reagan took his phone and called King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and said it will be against the interest of America if the OPEC and the Arab countries were to come to the aid of Nigeria with 2 billion dollars. Thus, that kind of amount of money was drastically reduced to 700 million dollars because the OPEC countries were determined to come to our aid and it was Gadafi that brought the cash personally because they couldn't do it through the normal banking transactions in-case the American government will trace it. So since we did not budge to depreciate our naira the way they wanted it we were overthrown by their boys the way he said it.

You mean they had a hand in it?

Well you need to read The Economist of May 1986, I can’t remember precisely of which week, but this is the days of information, you can go to the internet or any service providers. You can recall, there are only 5 issues of Economist magazine. In the country's study of Nigeria, you can get the copies and read it. It has given a detailed account of what happened. After the introduction of SAP (Structural Adjustment Programme) SAP was an instrument of a breakdown of our economy. SAP was the very economic and political policy that brought the breakdown of our or made the drastic depreciation of the naira.

But SAP was not introduced by Buhari who overthrew Shagari. It was introduced by Babangida..?

Well I am coming to that, when Buhari came he found a pamphlet in which we distributed to all the ministers of the second republic. We took a detailed study of all our economic commitments and involvements externally and domestically and drastically reduced the foreign debt which we knew were not genuine and decided also to have 2% per annum. So when Buhari saw that, what we called presidential administrative blue print, he adopted it, he distributed it to his ministers. If you can recall, Buhari said if he had known that this was the situation Nigeria was and this was the measure being taken they would not have made the coup.

So are you saying the Americans were behind the coup in one way or the other?

You must understand it's a general naivety which our intellectuals, our elites and technocrats including the soldiers when they take action, they take it from a different perspective and when they are put onto it, it is from a different perspective and you have to understand the western mode of propaganda. Take a very simple example of Darfur and Israel. There is more people killed everyday in Israel than in Darfur but UN is hammering more on Darfur and not Israel, not Iraq.

There is no day Iraq/Afghanistan situation that over 30 or 40 people are not killed on daily basis and Darfur you hardly hear of death. So we must always understand the western propagandic approach. They know there is mineral resources, heavy oil deposits, gold so they need it very badly and therefore they created Darfur and they made it the emergency of the world to divert attention from the other more serious emergencies.

So when Buhari adopted that document I had a document where the World Bank said that Buhari cannot be the instrument of change and therefore he had to go within 18 months and truly in 18-months he went and I believe although I have no proof, it must be from the Americans. So when this SAP was coming, I want you to also go to the internet and look for financial times of August 24 or thereabout 1986, you will find there in the front page, Financial Times of London was saying that the Nigeria Government on its anniversary of his coup was going to come with a new Financial policy which is going to create a 2-tier monetary policy and that, that economic proposal was written in Washington DC.

Shortly when I returned from exile, one of the then governors had told me in confidence that when they were called for the National Council of States to discuss the proposal for SAP they were not given even one hour to read over it and you know exactly what follows, the crisis of the Iraq coup, the 2 billion dollars brought about the overthrown of Babangida and when Abacha came he tried to reverse all the political economic situations.

I was personally the person who negotiated with Clinton's representative who came to Nigeria on the 7th of December 1994 on how to contain Nigeria crises. He and I drew the political programme of transition for the government of Abacha and he now wanted to know what role America could play. At that material time I wasn't a member of Abacha's government.

I told him that I was not a member of the government but I suggested that since they were good friends of NADECO and Campaign for Democracy as well as our good friends, then there was a role to play, that of reconciliation. And secondly being leaders of the west they must understand that Abacha’s government will have a mutually beneficial economic relationship. Then Clinton’s representative said to me, what about privatisation of all our economic resources?

I said well, I won't be able to speak on that but that I will tell the government and I did. And I took everything we did, it was in writing, my own handwriting and handed it over to Nigeria government. Abacha was not willing to go back to status quo ante because he didn't want to go and take loan, he didn't want to go on depreciating currency and therefore he told me when we were on a flight from Zuru to Kaduna.

He said, Uba, economic policy is a matter of common sense. He said to me, nobody will ever help you to be as rich as he is much less to want you to be richer than him and therefore the question of anybody coming to you as a good Samaritan to tell you on how to handle your economic proceeds to any economic success is a far fetched idea and therefore he was not going to succumb to that, rather economic proposal, an issue that could not lead us anywhere.

He said look Uba, it is World Bank through their own representative and foundation that gave us the first basic elements of our economic development and that was what the First Republic politicians implemented in-to-to and that was what set us back on the course of economic degeneration and that we have been living with that for over 30 years. He said, how do you expect that same doctor that has been degenerating your illness to give you more dosage of the same drugs and for you to expect to survive?

So he said he was not going to do it. Therefore you can see, the politics of appreciation of currency sold Shagari off, sold Buhari off, it sold the killing of Abacha. And so if Prof. Soludo had known this when he was making his announcements on the appreciation of the naira maybe he would have consulted with the politicians and the politicians would have looked for their older politicians to discuss what happened earlier in this kind of policy formulation, probably, they would have benefited from it, probably they would not have put the western powers on notice that we want to change our currency and assure its appreciation.

Let me tell you the most contemporary example about this politics of currency appreciation. The greatest contemporary, political, economic crisis that exist between China and America today is one on the strength of Chinese Yen.  US is doing everything possible for China to depreciate its currency so that they will be able to buy things cheap in China and sell expensively to China and Chinese of course have resisted that.

There are quite lots of other countries that have walked out of it, this currency depreciation, political, economic policies because it is totally inadequate and deficient for the purposes of any type of political, economic development of any nation. That's why China won't do it, Russia won't do it. All of the other major countries that I know, even small Gambia at one time refused in the same 80s, Zambia refused in the same 80s. Subsequently, it was political economic arm twisting that got them back into it.

So what Soludo proposed was quite good but because of lack of experience and historical background of this development which have stretched over 25 years, which have seen through three respective governments of Nigeria. You see the reaction when Soludo published it and the next day they said we don't recognise the elections of Yar'Adua, I am not sure if the government could relate the European reactions to Soludo pronouncement.

You can see whatever economic resources we have in this country so long that we go on with the current monetary policies whether it is in the first republic or this republic we will never progress economically and if our common men are hungry, economically frustrated and alienated we will not expect stability to prevail in this country.

Against the background of the sketch you have made, especially with hitory of western interference, do you see this administration now being able to stand on its own or will continue to succumb to the powers that be outside the country.

Well, there are certain policies they have that are very progressive. I have already told you one. The second very progressive policy is making Nigeria to be significant in her diplomatic policies. I know that today of all the citizens of this country the most humiliated, frustrated overseas is the Nigerian citizen and he is the only citizen that is abandoned by his own Embassy before. Infact we have known of governments repatriating Nigerians because they wanted to deal with Nigeria.

As opposed to the Indian economic constitution, the Indian citizen is protected to the heat in his country and they never repatriate any of her citizens under whatever circumstances and they would not sign any such treaty. Of recent, my good friend, Ojo Maduekwe have announced that whichever country that humiliates Nigerians, Nigeria will consider that country an enemy country.  That also will put this country at a logger head with the western powers.  I do also know, the very people that have been working for them from the First Republic until this republic are very much involved with this government and because there is lack of continuity in government particularly in security information.

Any new set of security men that comes in does not hand over the security information down to the next government and therefore we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over because there is no continuity.

It is after the government had made the mistake, when it is too late it will realise it has made a mistake and by the time it wants to come back a good excuse must have been given for this people to overthrow them. Now, let me give you a good example. In 1973 when the government of Nigeria was relatively friendly with most of our Northern neighbours, Niger, Chad, etc and Niger and Chad were having a lot of problems, they started coming into Nigeria through the Northern states particularly Maiduguri and Kano and we knew at that material time there was a deliberate disinformation planted on Nigeria.

That this people that were coming from the Northern part of the borders when you shake hands with them, he or she will lose their organs, that brought out crisis and riots in Maiduguri and Kano and most of the people were killed because this sensitive important intelligent information was not passed to our younger intelligence and security officers. They perceived it in Jos to be religious problem. That also brought crisis in Jos in 2001, but if our intelligence officers have known here in Jos that this kind of thing had happened in Maiduguri in 1973 and they knew the consequences, when this rumour started filtering out I believe the Nigerian intelligence community would have taken immediate measures to forestall it.

Look, Nigeria went to Liberia, Nigeria liberated Liberia, Nigeria conducted the election democratically, successfully and peacefully, what brought Taylor into government and as this was going on there was a coup in Sierra Leone, Nigeria went into Sierra Leone disarmed the coup plotters brought back Tejan Kabba. But when Obasanjo came he withdrew Nigerians from those countries, America took over Liberia, British took over Sierra Leone only for us to find out from the next day when Obasanjo woke up from his sleep that we had to send back our soldiers there.

But then the Liberians and the Sierra Leonians began to believe that it is the Americans and the British that saved them but we did the job, we did everything. They didn't put their soldiers there to fight. The same thing happened in Bakassi, when we were in the international court of justice, I remember very well Abacha having told me that the West want some shares of our oil. They want also a passage to pump their oil from Chad to Bakassi therefore that this case in the International Court of Justice will never be decided in our favour, we knew it when we were in cabinet and therefore we took a decision to make sure we occupy Bakassi very well and we even took some land of Camerouns so that when the judgment comes against us we can now withdraw from the Cameroonian land and settle in Bakassi, we would have never lost Bakassi.

But we lost Bakassi, we lost our oil deposits in Bakassi, we gave them way to pump their oil and I want you to look at the judgment in International Court of Justice. They made it in such a way that their pipes, the IMF pipes will find smooth a passage in Camerouns from Chad to Bakassi. Abacha knew this and he took adequate care of that possibility. But when Obasanjo came because it was Abacha that took that decision and because he was not favourably disposed to Abacha he reverted that policy.

What happen to us? We lost the oil, we lost Bakassi. And our citizens today of Bakassi and other parts of Nigeria that have been handed over to the Camerouns are now suffering and are crying because they don't know where to go. You see one thing that Obasanjo regime has been known for is consistent inconsistency and selective application of Justices and injustices. Obasanjo has provided the most crude government ever that this country has ever seen and I don't believe we are going to see anything like that and therefore whichever government that is here today particularly Yar'Adua he needs a better fresh hands, cabinet.

What he has there in his cabinet most of them are politicians who does not even know this events that have happened. Most of them when the events were happening they were in secondary schools.

Gowon was able to last 91/2 years in government because he had old seasoned politicians around him as well as old seasoned civil servants around him and they were able to help him to fight the war, to make the conciliation with our own brothers of the South East and to recreate Nigeria. In the whole history of warfare in this country there had never been a war that have ended with rapid reconciliation like the one Yakubu Gowon fought in the 60s.

This is simply because he had first class old hand advisers. So what Obasanjo did was to make sure that he has done away with every old politician that could probably help to run his administration and fortunately the mistake I'm now seeing which Yar'Adua is making is still bring brokers and Technocrats as members of his government without any politician. They may say they are politicians because they have been in government for 8 years but there are administrative politicians there are political politicians, what he requires are politicians who are up to date in Current Affairs and are able to know the global political economic implications of every step he takes and I will advise the President to look for the Book called “Sabotage As a tool of Diplomacy of Foreign Policy.”

This is a book written by an American scholar. This is a book that discusses the relationship between America and Indonesia and Indonesia at that material time was supposed to have been the best friend of America and yet to rule out the advice they were given them they were subverting their government, trying to break the Islands into pieces and we all know what Indonesia is today. Everyone of us knew that the best friend of America after Indonesia was the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcus.

Go and ask Matilda Marcus about their experience with their friends. So this government should not take governance for granted and you don't assume things in governance either in diplomacy, in the economy or even in politics. Obasanjo was given prominence to what is called "Civil Society" I'm sure 99 percent of our so called educated elites don't even know the concept "Civil Society". Civil Society is a new concept that have been created by Western Politicians to replace the normal voting public and to use them to destabilise and to overthrow their own government.

I will give you a contemporary example. During Abacha, I made decree No 29 to ensure that every NGO is registered in Nigeria and it declares its sources of income and its sponsors etc. There were hue and cry that I was bringing draconian laws. Today Russia of all places have discovered that the major source of destabilising their society are the NGO's and therefore they brought laws which the West have been crying against that they are not allowing freedom to their people in the country. Now what is freedom with the West is that they instigate your own people against you and you must not use the instrument of law or constitution to make sure you address the issue. Once you do it you are a dictator, you are oppressive, if you leave it you are overthrown and the country is destabilised. Therefore our young governments need to learn and they need to learn very fast before we get into trouble.

There was something you mentioned while you were answering this question. That is pertaining to the death of Abacha. What you said connotes that he did not die a natural death. Can you throw more light on that statement?

Of course Abacha never died a natural death. Abacha was murdered. You see there were two Indian girls who were dormant operators of the foreign intelligence and they had to be flown in because every measures that were taken to get assess to Abacha was aborted because of the vigilance of his Security Agents. So when the two girls came, they were introduced to Abacha through his innocent friends, they don't even know what this girls were all about.

But for you to know that Abacha was killed deliberately, you need to read either Newsweek or The Time magazine I'm not sure which of the two because it's now almost 9 years ago. But one of them when they were covering the death of Abacha, you need to read loaded sentence, it said Abacha died, I am quoting now "Abacha died because he took a pill which he thought was Viagra" it obviously means by this sentence that the author of that story knew that Abacha was not taking Viagra and it also means that the suggestion of that writing that the very person who administered that drug on him knew it was administering Viagra. Therefore it meant he was being administered with poison and there is no doubt about it. With the way he died and the immediacy of his death having taken the drug speaks load. Viagra doesn't kill in minutes. But he died minutes after taking the pill. He was obviously killed and that is my conclusion.

You were the Minister of Labour then and was still in office for sometime after Abacha died so why were the Indian ladies not arrested and so on?

You know this is a security matter. I did not know how the security people handled it, but I do remember very well that I called their attention to that publication and I asked them to read it very well and to read it between the lines. So what they did to them, I knew also that they put them under house arrest not in prison but under house arrest. So I won't be able to say much about the security aspect of that one.

In fact they wanted Abacha to die because they wanted the Nigerian naira to go back from where it has come from the SAP era so that it will continue to have a free fall like we are having during Obasanjo and they wanted to take over our oil, all our assets to be sold and indeed all our assets have effectively been sold now by Obasanjo. They did not only sell but they even confiscated by force, unconstitutionally, illegally properties of Nigerian citizens and allotted it to themselves. That is the kind of government we went through for eight years.

Abdulsalami Abubakar himself did not help us when he took over, because when they were talking of Abacha having so much money or Abacha loot....... Abacha loot. What has amazed me and what has surprised me is that no Nigerian yet has taken it up to embark on investigative reporting to find out really how did Abdulsalam Abubakar came about the information of Abacha loot in Switzerland.

Switzerland is one country where the Jews have been hiding their assets and wealth, gold, money and everything they own that is precious since 1917 during the 1st world war including the 2nd world war, from 1917 till today the Jews are unable to get assess to their inheritance because of the coding system and the absolute secrecy with which the Swiss account are shrouded and yet Abdulsalami was able to tell us within his 7 days of ascendancy to power that Abacha looted money and that they have found out the account, they have found out the numbers and that they have found out the balances.

Now I will tell you one thing. When Obasanjo came he confirmed it and having confirmed that he even went forward to say they have recovered some of the loot and our Senate made it as one of the basis of impeaching Obasanjo, the disclosure of the money they have recovered because its not been receipts, it has never been reflected in our accounts, budget or the federation account and therefore the senators when they wanted to impeach him made that as one of the subjects of investigation and impeachment.

I can even tell you more, like I have told you repeatedly, Abacha's government was the only government that operated under sanction, yet when he came to power Nigeria was owing foreign loan of $33 billion by the time he left Abdulsalami himself had announced in his budget speech that our loan was reduced to 26 billion which meant during the 5 years of Abacha, he was able to repay 7 billion dollars.

In addition to the repayment of 7 billion to our foreign debt, we had a domestic debt of over a hundred million (100,000,000), Abacha paid it. Abacha left foreign reserve of $9 billion when you add that to $7 billion that is $16 billion.role of the west, economic policies and more...

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