 It's still plus politics. Let's talk about insecurity. Well, former governor Yerry Mann, he is a former governor of, well, former governor of San Farris State. Now, he has said that Tinnable is considering a quick resolution to security challenges, including the option of dialogue and bandits terrorizing the northern parts of the country. Now, the former governor is advocating that the federal government negotiates with repentant bandits. And he says he believes that the military force should not be the last or should be actually the last resource. He say the dialogue is the answer. Also, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has said that firing and replacing generals is not the solution to banditry and terrorism. Well, joining us to discuss this is Reverend Joseph Hayek. He's the chairman Christian Association of Nigeria, Kaduna State. Thank you so much, Reverend Hayek, for joining us. Good evening. Thank you for having me. Good evening to you too. Good evening. Now, of course, the Tinnable Administration is barely 40 days in office, and there's so many prescriptions on how he should handle the economy, how he should handle governance, how he should handle insecurity, which is a major front burner issue, and several other issues. And like I always say, this administration has, and Harry said, a lot of problems. He has his plates full. But let's start by considering what the former governor of Zanfar States, Ms. Yerima, is saying, that the issue of force should be the last resource, that dialogue should be considered. In fact, if I must quote him directly, he talks about the issue of amnesty for these so-called bandits. For someone who has lived in the North, for someone who's watched people being killed and seen different, the different tentacles of terrorism, whether it be cattle rustling or banditry or kidnapping, or even Boko Haram. Would you say that dialogue is the way to go, considering what the former Zanfar State Governor has prescribed? Thank you very much. Well, I'm not sure why the former governor of Zanfar said what he said, but you see, the challenge in Northwest cannot completely be discussed without looking to his direction, because he also played a role in giving back to the problems we are having today in the Northwest zone. Remember precisely in November or in September 1999, when he declared his sharia sparked up crises in Northwest that left to the killing of many people in my state, and he really didn't even show remorse for that decision. And then he has been from one controversy to the other, or the most recent one is his statement about Marine and underage girl, and he feels that was nothing wrong. So you see, sometimes people just want to come to be on the news. They want to come and speak. If he is recommending that to Tinibu, I know Tinibu and the men around Tinibu are smarter and wiser enough to know the kind of person who is offering such advice. He has been around after being governor, he became a senator. If dialogue and negotiation was proper, what did he, what kind of dialogue did he have with them in the previous time, because he was a serving senator? What exactly did he play? I am afraid he is not putting a banana peel for Tinibu, and then tomorrow he will blame him for something else. But I don't want to stress too much about that, because I know that it's just a recommendation, it's just a suggestion. Tinibu and his men are wiser enough, and I know the new military service chiefs that have been appointed are wiser enough to know exactly what needs to be done, because you will ask me this question, or we should ask this question. What exactly are the bandits and the terrorists agitating for? They are not told us exactly what they are agitating for. So what are you dialoguing with them about? What are they agitating for? And what has the commandment that they have terrorized stopping from going to farm got to do with their agitation? And so people just come with some form of criminality, and then we go and start begging them, dialogue with them. Once they get money again, they will go back again and start another new strategy. So I pray that our government will not fall into the trap and go in and then get herself in a fix that she cannot come up. The truth is that these people have not come out to tell Nigerians what is it that they want? What is it that is their problem? Why will they be stopping innocent people who are traveling and kidnap them from their bosses? They go to villages, local farmers whose source of livelihood is just simple farming. They kidnap them and demand ransom. These people have eaten money and have enjoyed this ransom they've been collecting. Unless government have some money to just spend on people, which I believe that the situation of our economy now do around, we just want to spend money on anybody anyhow, because we should spend money for something that is useful, something that will be productive, something that will bring about some certain restoration in Nigeria, not this business. So for Yerima to say what he said, well, he is entitled to his opinion, but I think I have some dislocation about that idea. Let's look at the messaging here because he's not just talking, he's not just recommending that we dialogue, just straight up dialogue. I mean, because we've used force, we've tried and we know that fighting against these people is not a normal and an usual warfare, it's a guerrilla warfare. And we've stretched our soldiers thin. We've also had a lot of them fall, you know, on the battle lines. And he's saying that, well, force should be the last result as opposed to it being placed in the forefront of dealing with these people. If our security agencies have tried all that they've been able to try and still haven't gotten a resolution to this, shouldn't we be paying attention to what he has to say? I mean, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has also been brought into the conversation, I'd like to bring that in. He said that sacking these generals and bringing new ones is not also the solution to the problem. And he's one of the first people who had, I sat down with him sometime, I think two years ago or last year, when he spoke, I think it was last year when he spoke about the issue of poverty, bad governance, being the reason why these so called bandits have decided to undertake this dastardly acts that they have been carrying out in the country. And I said, and I said back to him, there are several other Nigerians who are also recipients, if not all of us, you know, of bad governance, and most of us poor. Why are we not taking up these arms and, you know, kidnapping people and doing the same thing? Just as you said, could it be that maybe if we had a conversation with these people would probably get to pick their brains as to what it is that their problem is? And maybe that would be the solution to the problem? Should we not pay attention to that? Let me put it this way, over 30 or four or five years ago, the commander in chief of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria held from not west. The fact is that he even claimed to be a philani. So in other words, he knows the terrain, he understand the people, he understand the language, what all the efforts on the negotiation that Sheikh Gumi and others did, what can they tell us exactly is the fruit is the result of that negotiation? Or is there any other particular negotiation they want to do different from the other one that they did? Because they told many of us that they went to many states, they went to the bush, they met the bandits, they had conversations with them. In the first place, they told us and I want to quote that they actually went to because they realized that they were ignorant about religion, they don't know God. So they went to preach to them. Did they really preach to them that we are still talking about negotiation at the moment? So you see, there are so many mix up of it. What we are simply saying is, yes, we did agree that the efforts in the past was not successful. But can we first look at the effort? What did we do right? And what are those things that we didn't do right? And allow time to correct that before we jump into what is not? I don't want to mix up this conversation about negotiation with bandits and the issue of the retirement of generous. This is a different conversation. I'm going to respond to that later. But I don't want it to be mixed because we will not be sure of what we're talking about. Negotiation with the bandits is what some of us are saying. We don't understand. We don't think it is the right thing because we don't even know why they are rising Nigerians and dealing with Nigerians. I was speaking in a conference recently outside this country, and I shared my concern about the security challenges and I said to someone who is a security expert, I said, this is the problem. When you go to deal with when peace workers go to communities that are in conflict or where their attacks are going on, and they call innocent Muslims and innocent Christians together and say, hey, go and keep peace. There's no division of all religion. Unfortunately, this group of people that are being gathered by these peace practitioners are victims. All of them are victims. Those who are perpetrating the evil terrorizing both the Christians and Muslims in those communities never come to dialogue table because they don't even have anything to dialogue. They continue to cause havoc. Our government have never strategically dealt with them. I don't want to go back again and begin to explain some of the things we observed that were the arrows of the previous people in charge and who they did that never gave a result. But the most important thing we are saying is that if you want us to negotiate with them, let's know what is actually the grievances. Let's know what exactly who offended them. Let's know why they are terrorizing people. I like the way you put it because if the excuse is that they are poor, is the excuse that there's bad governance, if the excuse is that things are not working well in Nigeria, personally talking here, there's bad governance. It's affecting me. It's affecting my family, but I'm not taking arm against anybody. I'm not going to kill someone just because of bad governance. I'm not going to kill someone because I've not been able to pay my children's trophies. So, this is just flamzy excuses to justify failure. I think something is wrong and they have also told us that some of these bandits are not Nigerians. So, what are you negotiating with them? In the first place, how did they enter our country illegally? And today we are negotiating. So, some people can also come from another side of Nigeria and start terrorizing Nigerians and we negotiate with them. I don't think we are sovereign state if we do that. So, as a sovereign state, we must not allow criminals to hijack our country, to terrorize our people and we now call them for navigation. On what ground? How did they even come into Nigeria? What are their documents? Because those who have come out of Males of the Kibnab then would tell us that the kind of flynees that they are there with are not the flynees you see around and the government of Karno state, the former governor of Karno state Gandhi just said so and so many others. Why can government not go against enemies of our state? You see, the trouble we have is that when people are terrorizing Nigerians, instead of showing them that this country belongs to Nigeria, we are sympathizing with them either because the Shia common religion with us or the Shia common tribe with us, we have some kind of affinity with them. That is not the matter. Anyone that look, if my tribe of her. So, hold on Reverend, you have other countries. I'm sorry Reverend, are you saying or are you accusing certain people of being complicit and allowing for this terrorist activity to continue to labor? It is so clear in the public domain in Nigeria that there were a lot of complicity in the way and manner these things were handled and that's why we are still talking about those people who we have ourselves clearly come up publicly and say they are not Nigerians because it has been said by those in authority. So, who are we dialoguing with? Are we dialoguing with criminals who came in from another country to arrest our citizens and we dialogue with them? I think we need to ask ourselves so many questions. One thing I know is that at the moment we have a new government. Secondly, the new government have put in place service chiefs and security leaders who in my own knowledge and judgment, I am hopeful that they would think differently and they would think rationally to know how to tackle this challenge. Hopefully with time we will forget this because they will overcome it. But we are going to give them support. We just want people to come with some suggestions and ideas that will further upon the problem and confuse the new leaders. That's where I'm having concern with the suggestion of dialogue. Then I come to your issue where you talk of timing of generals. Truly speaking, if you don't personally subscribe that any time service chiefs are appointed a large number of generals should be retired. What is the essence of retiring people we have trained? People we have built their capacity and at the time we supposed to make use of them then just because of an appointment we ask them to go. Research have shown that in this country we've had when a senior military officer was not head of state. His general officer became head of state. He served under him as a chief of defense staff and nothing happened. So those who try to justify the history of no there is not like once there is a a general officer in charge then every other senior should go, should forget that it should remember that this thing was not wrong because one person we've always said example is Duncan Barley. When? When Babangida came into power and when the Babangida came to power in 1985. So why are we making things as if things have never worked? I don't want the situation where we keep retiring people because some of them will go angrily. They feel that the country have not treated them well. So we are now giving them back to another breed of angry generals. And you know the reasons for many of our violence and crisis cannot completely be separated from the way we treat our citizens. So if a citizen has not been treated well and enemies come, the need for him to be patriotic to defend the country will not be there. So he will just be wait a minute. It is the same country that ignore and abandon me. So we have to be careful. So I want to appeal that we shouldn't hold onto a tradition that has no ground just because it was it ever happened. So we think it should continue to happen. No, let's allow these people. Some of them still have strength. Some of them still have a lot to contribute to national building. Some of them have many things they can do. There are certain posts in that such senior officers can be sent to. Well, the other ones are handling so that we don't get people to confuse. So if on that ground, I wouldn't say I disagree with whoever is recommending that. What I disagree is dialoguing with people who do not even know what is the agenda. Okay. You talked of something that's very important, politicizing the military or bringing politics into the military. Now we know as human beings that there's politics everywhere, even in the church that you pastor, there's politics everywhere. But why do you think that this has become so overly politicized? Because half the time, I mean, we've had a good luck Jonathan who was not a military general and was a civilian and was a politician through and through. Now we have a Borla Tinibu who's also not a retired general who's led this country. Why can't these leaders who were not uniform men before they came into the democratic system charge the cause or lead that cause of making sure that there is no politics in the hierarchies in the military? Well, the unfortunate thing with the system in Nigeria is that in all services people scramble for posting. People are not posted or appointed because they are capable, they can deliver, they scramble for it, they lobby for it. Let me begin with even the genius staffs. You find so many young policemen who have accepted to join the police have been trained. If not really discharge their roles, all their interest is that they should be posted to guard one VIP because in their worldview, if you are guarding a VIP, you will make money. It's something with young cadets or young SSS officers who have been recruited and trained. What you hear they are interested in doing is they should be posted to either the villa or to be around a VIP, to be bodyguard to a VIP. So the whole idea is making money not service delivery. So when the lower staffs think that way then you imagine the commissioner, the assistant commissioner of police, imagine commissioner of police, imagine the general in the army, imagine a real admiral in the air force, in the navy, imagine an air commando in the air force. So that's where the whole thing is. Military supposed to be something that like the civil service, you know it's something that's applied to our civil service. The reality is that people supposed to grow from one cada to another. So that by the time they reached assistant director to director or permanent secretary, they deserve it. But in Nigeria today, you are just praying that someone from your village should become governor, so that at level 12 you will become a PAMSEG. Someone from your town should become president, so that at level 14 you become a PAMSEG. Well, others have served, have been in the service system for years, and sometimes they will just bring in some cross cycler that will make it difficult for another person to grow through the system. That is where we are having problems. So this problem is actually in every sector of Nigerian polity or governance. That should not be, it's not encouraging people to bring out their pets. It's not encouraging people to grow and be obedient. No wonder there's so much insubordination in the civil service it's something in the military because people are just feeling until you are connected. I hope and I pray that the president of Nigeria should not allow that to continue. Let's put an end to it so that if your son, my son, or any other person joined the military, he knows he will rise through one level to the other till when he retires. So there will be no issue, someone will be misdemeined, but there's no issue someone because of nepotism, others are more than others. It's uncalled for, but because we've not allowed the system to flow. So when these things happen like this and you come to retire many generals, the problem is that some other people who's probably the only general they are seeing, I just, you just retired him, you are provoking more anger around the country. We should come back and do what is right. We should come back and insist on what is right. All these things that we are bringing and hiding under whatever is part of the reason why Nigeria is not growing. The fact is that it kills the morale of the young people who desire to be anything in Nigeria. No wonder many young people feel since I will go there and just get sucked in a twinkle of an eye without a proper procedure. I better just be an yahoo unless the AFCC or the police or security agencies do a good job and eventually arrest me. I can be a yahoo, the women will be celebrating me. That is not the kind of spirit we should have among our young people. Let the young people aspire to go to military because they know they will grow to the peak of the career. Let them aspire to go to Navy. Let them aspire to go to every force and know they will grow. That is when you will have a son of nobody, someone from a tribe that does not even matter in this country may become the chief of Army staff. Recently something happened. When the service chiefs were appointed, they were celebrating in some quarters. I'm coming from the governor's state that I got calls. Hey, someone from your state has been appointed chief of defense staff. I say wait a minute. He wasn't appointed chief of defense staff for my community or for my village. He was appointed chief of defense staff of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. There are so many places in Nigeria that there are crises. So I want him to go and serve and serve diligently to bring about the resolution of peace in Nigeria, not just in Southern Canada. All right. Oh Reverend Hayab, always a pleasure to speak with you. Well, he is hoping that those that are in charge of the military, including Mr. President, is listening to us and will do the right thing. Reverend Joseph Hayab is the chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Kaduna State. Thank you so much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Great. Well, I want to thank you all for watching the show tonight. It's been an interesting one, but we'll be back tomorrow because this is just the start of the week tomorrow and the days after talking for development. I am Mary Annicole. Don't forget to play catch up on our previous episodes on plus politics. Just go to YouTube channel plus TV Africa and play catch up. Have a good evening.