Jonathan’s government was a disaster – Aisha Yesufu

Co-founder of #BringBackOurGirls Movement, Aisha Yesufu, has condemned the administration of former president Goodluck Jonathan.

Yesufu stated this in an interview on Arise TV programme.

Though she said his successors have made the country worse.

During the interview she dismissed claims that the #BringBackOurGirls Movement was funded by the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, to deepen the socio-political crisis faced by the Jonathan government. Excerpts

What is your reaction to allegations about the non-governmental organisation, NGO, that you co-convened, the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, was sponsored from abroad in an attempt to destabilise the government of President Goodluck Jonathan and ultimately unseat him?

My first reaction is that the Bring Back Our Girls movement is not an NGO, neither is it a civil society organisation. It is a movement of people who got tired and were angry that girls that had gone to school were taken away. 276 Chibok girls were abducted. In all of the things that have been happening recently, a lot more people are coming to the conclusion that indeed there was abduction because it took us years.

People said there was no abduction. The Bring Back Our Girls movement has never received anything from anyone. We, the members, decided that we were going to self-fund it. We put our empathy and humanity in it. Whatever we need, we use our own money to do it.

Were there contributions?

No, if you are not a member, nobody collected anything from you. I led the movement for some years. I think from 2015 to 2018, 2019? I am not sure. The Bring Back Our Girls movement started on April 30, 2014, when we marched on the street. I think it was March 18 or 19 in 2020 that the physical march stopped. We stopped the sit-out. Why was that? Because there was a lockdown by the Federal Government due to the COVID-19. This allegation of us being paid, being sponsored has been going on for 11 years. People have said they will check whatever it is that they need to check. We don’t have bank accounts. We were not registered. We don’t have anything. So in what way were we doing business with the USAID? Is it the t-shirt we could not buy for ourselves? Is it the teargas that the government was sending to us? Was it the thugs that Jonathan’s government sent to come and beat us at the Unity Fountain? I think what is happening is that we have a lot of Nigerians who are bereft of empathy, humanity, who watched girls that went to school being taken away and did nothing. For 11 years, they have looked for ways to concoct allegations and say that BBOG was either funded or whatever. No. The thing is that we all are victims waiting to happen. The fact that Nigeria refused to come together and put politics aside and focus on the lives of girls that were taken away, they were focused on an incompetent president at that time, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

They have turned him into a feeding baby that cannot talk. Was it USAID that told Goodluck Ebele Jonathan that for 19 days he should not talk about Chibok girls that were abducted under him? I think another thing that a lot of people have forgotten is that before the abduction of Chibok girls, Buni Yadi boys had been slaughtered in their school. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan never said a word. How heartless, how callous can you be? Children who were taken by terrorists and their necks slit in front of other students.

There was a girl that we knew, her brother was slaughtered in front of her. Goodluck, Ebele Jonathan never said a word. His administration spokesperson didn’t say a word until 2015 when the Bring Back Our Girls Movement had an anniversary and that was a few weeks to election. And people sit down focused on a president who didn’t protect girls that had gone to school. One other thing that Nigerians keep forgetting is the fact that at the time the Chibok girls abduction happened, there was a state of emergency in Borno State. Meaning the federal government, the military were more in charge than the governor. There were people who questioned why the governor was left in charge since a state of emergency had been imposed. I saw a lot of people who said to us, why were you making demands in Abuja? Why didn’t you go to Borno? And the first thing I said to such people, what were you doing, why didn’t you go to Borno? There is nobody that is meant to come out to protest, everyone of us was supposed to have protested.

It is when we demand, and this is what we always say, when we were making demands for Chibok girls and we are still doing for the rest that are still not back home, we are not doing them a favour. It is not a privilege. Bringing them back home is their right as enshrined in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Nigeria failed them by allowing them to be abducted. The next thing was to have brought them back immediately, which they didn’t do. We have been on the street and we are still making demands. I see people who come out, people who are devoid of empathy, like I said earlier, make accusations that it was political and was done to remove Jonathan. Really? People died. Jonathan was busy doing his shenanigans. PDP said for 60 years, nobody was going to remove them, but they left children to die.

Given the things you have just said. Even if it was not at the instigation of USAID, you clearly wanted Jonathan out of office…

Myself or the movement?

Well, you and possibly others in your movement…

The movement had nothing to do with Jonathan. The movement was apolitical and it maintained that. One of the things was that at the Unity Fountain where we met, no talk of politics was allowed. This is the thing, there were people from different political parties who were all parts of the movement. There was never a time we had political talk. Even though I remember Dr Oby Ezekwesili would always insist, sometimes when members were angry and they were referring to the president with just his name, Goodluck or Ebele she would say: ‘no, you must add the president because he was the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’. But I, Aisha Yesufu, yes, I wanted Jonathan to be removed because he was clueless. He was incompetent. He had failed. There was so much corruption. Nigeria was borrowing money to pay salaries. Nigeria was borrowing money to service debts. We were going through so much. There was such corruption. We had monies that were meant to buy arms stolen and all of that. I, Aisha Yesufu, wanted Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to be removed. And I worked towards it. And I do not owe anyone an apology for having the right to use my inalienable right to vote out an incompetent president. There are some people, Nigerians who have turned themselves into oxygen wasting vessels, who think that they are slaves and they are not citizens calling on me to apologise for voting out an incompetent president just because the people that came after him failed. This is the thing. I see now when people are talking they compare Jonathan with Buhari, who is an abysmal failure and to Tinubu, who has failed woefully. How do you do that? Are they okay? Should we say that because somebody’s failure is greater than the other, then the other one now becomes better. No, why don’t they compare when Jonathan was there with the time that Yar’Adua was there and the time that Obasanjo was there? That is how you do comparison. People sit down and say: ‘oh, in hindsight’. In hindsight, do you know what I expected from the people? That Nigerians would say enough is enough and never again. And that anybody who does anyhow will be voted out. But we had people who sat down and refused to do what they are supposed to do and say that it is other people they want to help them vote out. For every one of them, I say to you, if you said I voted out Jonathan, why didn’t you keep him in? After all, he was the incumbent? And they were telling us that it would take 60 years before they vacate power.

In January, I can’t remember the specific day. But in January, 2000 people were killed in Baga. President Goodluck Jonathan at that time did not say anything. A few days after the Charlie Hebdo shooting, I can’t remember how many there were, eight or something like that. Some people were killed in Paris, France. Guess what? Goodluck Ebele Jonathan dared, without being afraid of Nigerians, he sent them a condolence message. And that was the time Julius Malema of South Africa called him an irresponsible leader.

If Nigerians want to sit down and turn themselves into slaves and forget where they are coming from, because it has worsened, sad. There are some people who say: ‘oh, Jonathan should have been kept. He’s the best thing after jollof rice’ because they could buy tickets for N10,000 from Abuja to Lagos. For those people, the message I have is that those who have died, they don’t know that tickets are now N300,000. And when they could buy the tickets for N10,000, there were others who couldn’t afford it. There were people who were running from insurgency in the North-East. There was a woman who had miscarriage and didn’t know she had a miscarriage. That was how frightened people were. We had our military who were running away. Our own military ran away from a ragtag army and entered Cameroon. What did they call it then? They said it was a tactical withdrawal. What did we not see? And today they dare to tell us all sorts of things.

Whoever it is saying whatever, let them go and fight whoever is funding what. The Bring Back Our Girls movement is a movement that is self-funded and no matter what they try to do, they will not take away the pain that we went through to ensure that Chibok girls are brought back, although some have been brought back to speak. I remember, was it 1999 when I was in my youth service? They overpaid me. The National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, overpaid me. When I was returning that money, everybody was making fun of me, even the bank, defunct Peoples Bank. Even the people at NYSC were fighting me. It was quite a bit of money. I returned it. If I didn’t return it, do you think I would have the mouth I have today? I wouldn’t. I am a stickler for process. In short, sometimes you will be irritated.