Kuku: I’m Awaiting My Doctors Nod to Return to Nigeria

Last Tuesday, in the steaming temperature of Atlanta Georgia, United States, Adeola Akinremi caught up with the former Special Adviser on Presidential Amnesty Programme, Kingsley Kuku, where he was undergoing physiotherapy for his knee injury. The man who has been invited by the EFCC to give account of his stewardship explained why he couldn’t make the September 30 appointment as earlier fixed.  He also spoke on his stewardship and shares his views on the future of the amnesty programme

It’s been more than three months since you left the government, what has life outside the government been like for you?
I want to say it’s a mixed life, because I miss the Presidential Amnesty Programme, where we were touching and changing lives. We were dealing with a situation where our brothers, and sisters, who never had an opportunity to leave their communities, had the opportunity of flying to Lagos, and going to America and Europe to improve their skills, all on the back of a government scholarship. I was merely a servant getting that done, and that was fulfilling.  Now, I’m not handling that again. I miss them. They used to call me daddy. I miss that.

But, now I have some level of rest to think and review on how to move on, and what level of service I can still render to my community, my state, and to our dear country Nigeria. From the 2nd of July, 2007, when the late President Yar’Adua appointed me Presidential Secretary to the Niger-Delta peace process till when  I left office in June 2015, I’ve never had respite or peace, or time for myself and family. If you meet my wife today, she will tell you that from 2004 that we got married, till today, she had never had two complete weeks with me, because of service to our nation. So, today, beyond my recuperation, I think I’ll have some time with my family, wife, and kids.

Has the phones stopped ringing?
No, my phones haven’t stopped ringing.  It’s amazing. Sometimes, I complain to people. Normally for public servants who leave office, phones start to ring less. But what I have come to realise is that, it’s not the same for everybody. And, I know why. I’m a young man who came from nothing. But I never forgot my old friends; those who grew with me remain my best of friends. So, nothing really is different. What I have always done is to always keep my friends, carry them along, and moved with them. I think that’s one of the reasons why my phones cannot stop ringing. It keeps ringing. Even today, so many of the students still call me. My mails are still coming.

How fast is your healing coming and why did you have to wait till now before going for a surgery?
I thank God that He has given me an opportunity to carry out this procedure. This was an injury I sustained in 2006, playing football, when I was a member of the Ondo State House of Assembly, at the Ondo State Stadium. Then, as a serving member, they took me round so many hospitals in Akure; we were not able to really solve this. And again, I‘m an Ijaw man, and my people believe in the traditional ways of healing fractures. So, a lot of trado-medical persons came; they tied the leg, cut blade on it, remove bad blood and all that. We must give kudos to those trado-medical doctors whether we like it or not. From 2006, till the moment I carried out the procedure, whatever kept me moving, though with pain, was done by the traditional medicine practitioners in my community. And for over two months, this knee was tied and I was down, but I was able to walk. I left the House of Assembly, and four days after, I got a job with the NDDC, under the able leadership of my elder brother and boss, Chief Timi Alaibe. He appointed me SA, and made me Head of Conflict Management Unit, a new unit in the NDDC. That was how we started the process of test-running the training of ex-militants and getting them out of the creeks. I was able to spearhead that and take them to South Africa: Johannesburg, Bloemfontein and Soweto. Eventually on 2nd July 2007, the government of the late Yar’Adua appointed me Presidential Secretary of the Presidential Committee on Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Niger-Delta.

That was how we commenced the process of visiting all ex-militant camps, from Ondo state through Edo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, to Akwa-Ibom. So, from then till June 2015, I had committed the entirety of my life into the peace process, into talking with the ex-militant leaders, assuring them that government was sincere. We finally got this in 2009, and from there, the process of reintegration commenced. I didn’t know that, one day, I was going to be the one managing the Amnesty Programme. And that was because I knew most of them, from Asari Dokubo, to Tompolo, Shoot-aside, Henry Okah, Charles Okah. They were all my friends and brothers. So, that firsthand knowledge of those who were directly involved in that struggle was an advantage for me. And the government of Yar’Adua, I think properly being counselled by the then Vice-President, my immediate past boss who made whatever I am today, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, made me Secretary; they tapped my potential, and I was able to take the government’s position directly to those who were the people to take the decisions. That was how we cemented that peace process. I pray that it will not relapse, because we committed so much to get to where we are today.

So, I didn’t have the time. To do a surgery like this, it will demand up to three to six months for recuperation. You must be serious and committed to ensure that, after the procedure you get your knee back to the level you want it. It is whatever you do in psychotherapy that will determine the kind of knee you will leave with. So, after the procedure I had to make up my mind.

In 2009, I went to London, when I started having serious pain. I was to come for my postgraduate studies at City University in London. So, I went to Essex, me an orthopaedic surgeon, paid money, and the next day was fixed for the operation. But the next day, I ran away. What happened? The surgeon made the mistake of telling me that I won’t be able to fly out of London for three weeks. That was what discouraged me, and made me run away without even demanding for my money. So, I waited this long because of service to my fatherland.

After we lost the elections, I knew it was time to go do the surgery. I was scared when it was being carried out. They wanted to do general anaesthesia, but I didn’t sign for it. So, they did local. And I also told them I would love to watch what they were doing. So, they gave me a screen, and I watched. By the time it was done, I’ve been undergoing psychotherapy. I did psychotherapy in Birmingham, for nothing less than one month, before they referred me to the one in Atlanta. And from that moment till now, I have been there.

Did you do your best for the Amnesty Programme?
As far as I’m concerned, looking from where we are coming from, yes. In 2009, we had a drop in production to 683,000 barrels per day. The kind of job we did from 2007, just to assure our people that there was a need for peace in our region. We recommended the need for Amnesty. And from then, the process began. A lot of governors, political actors didn’t believe that there should be amnesty. Some had grouses. But this thing was a general process that was going to be done for the good of all. Some governors took it up, and finally, we got Amnesty.

There’s a need to remember the wonderful work done by elder statesman, Chief Tony Anenih, who played a very key role in pulling Tompolo out of the creeks. There was a time Anenih had to submit himself, by dropping from the chopper, so that Tompolo, who was to meet with Yar’Adua, was not allowed to return, they would kill him.
But Yar’Adua was committed, and Jonathan was always there to tell him this was the right thing to do. And he was a president determined to do the right thing.

In all these processes, the luck I had was that I commenced the peace process from 2007, practically. And during the Godwin Abe era, I was with him as a member of the committee; during the Chief Timi Alaibe era, I was also with him, nominated even by ex-militant leaders. So, I was their representative on the committee. So, it was a familiar terrain for me when I was to spearhead the Amnesty programme.
For government, I played my role of entrenching peace in the Niger-Delta, stabilising the security situation, production rose. There was a particular time, between 2012 and 2013, when production was between 2.2million barrels to 2.7million barrels per day. That was evident in the type of job that we had done.

Are you surprised to hear that the Amnesty Programme is a conduit pipe to siphon government money?
That’s a very unfair assessment of what we have done there. I have seen a lot of prominent Nigerians make such statements, but what I have done to reply some of them, is not to insult them. In the past, Nigeria has been a country where, when agencies are set up, those managing the agencies just sit down and share money, without doing what the money was meant for. So, too many Nigerians don’t believe that the things that we’ve been able to do with the Amnesty programme was possible. But what I have done is, I put together a compendium of what we’ve been able to do in the programme, with names of students and delegates who are in flight training schools in Oxford, England, in Lufthansa, Germany, those who were doing helicopter training in Italy. All of them, we put together.

In the United Kingdom, over 800 students were deployed to over 72 universities. In the United States, under my watch, we brought over 300 students. You will find them in universities across the states. If you go to Malaysia, you will find them. In Ghana, we went to the best of schools. For those who were not as bright as those who got scholarships to go abroad, or who didn’t want to travel, we took them to the best private schools in Nigeria. Today, you can find over 700 students, under my watch, at Igbinedion University in Okada. You can find over 400 students at the Benson Idahosa University in Benin. You can find them at the prestigious Afe Babalola University. It’s not a child’s play. At Novena University, we had over 156.

So, before I left office, I had successfully deployed some of my students that I put in Igbinedion University to the Nigerian Law School. There are some of them with first class. In Nigerian universities alone, I was able to deploy about 2,000 students. Outside Nigeria, I was able to deploy about 2,000 students. I challenge any political actor in Nigeria, any governor – I will publish the names of the people I deployed, with their emails, their courses, their schools, the grades they are graduating with, their age, their communities. I know everything, I have the records. So, if you take me to the court of public opinion, I am coming out clean. It’s not as if there won’t be errors, because it’s a novel programme.

How did we come about aviation programmes? From 2003, when Olusegun Obasanjo commenced a second term, aviation started growing as an industry. Nigerians were doing more of air travel, maybe due to our bad roads that were under rehabilitation. But airlines that were indigenous to Nigerians were not surviving. Part of the problem was because of expatriates pilots – they were becoming too expensive to hire. An expatriate pilot will work for Arik for one month, and he’s paid, for  instance, $50,000. He’s off work for one month, so he can see his family. You do business class tickets for him; he comes to the United States for vacation, and he’s still being paid the same $50,000. We saw this as an aberration. And we have human resources. We have bright young ones in our country. Aviation is for very young kids growing into it. So, I used the opportunity of this programme to create a platform and fill a gap in the growing aviation industry, so that we can have certified, world class pilots from Nigeria.

So, we decided to send our people to the two of the best aviation schools in the world: CAE Oxford and Lufthansa Aviation Training School in Frankfurt, Germany. Now, Arik does not need to spend their money to send the pilots for further training – the federal government has trained the person – so it becomes easier for Arik and the airline operators in Nigeria to immediately employ them. These Nigerian pilots don’t go on leave for one month and collect the money. If he’s going to have leave, it would be a decent one.

As we are talking, we were able to train over 150 commercial licensed pilots. But for those of them who have moved beyond the commercial pilot licenses, in Lufthansa, I left behind 21. They all got trained in South Africa, but we went into advanced training with Lufthansa and CAE Oxford. So, they’ve acquired the European licence, CPL; they’ve gone into ATPL. – special training in Boeing 737. Three of them, before I left Nigeria for my surgery, have finished their programme, and they are back. They’ve got their licenses, and done their conversions exams. One of them, Bassey, after his CPL, said he wasn’t going to fly, that he would love to be an instructor. He’s training people in aviation now.

I have Moses, who has been employed and further trained by Airpeace Airline. I felt like crying when two of my former staff said they were flying to Lagos from Abuja, and by the time they were announcing those who were flying them, they heard Moses’ name, one of their students. By the time they landed in Lagos, they had to wait to see who truly Moses was. So, the success story is there. Moses is one of them. There is Clifford Wilson and David Abang, they’ve finished from CAE Oxford, they’ve finished from Gatwick. So, they are certified Boeing 737 airborne pilots. But, they’ve not released their certificates, because, as of today, the Amnesty office owes some funds.

I want to say, first, that there is really the need to thank the soul of the late President Yar’Adua for finally agreeing to the fact that we can get peace by peace from the Niger Delta. And because the Niger-Delta struggle was not about destroying the Nigerian state, it was about yearning for good life for the people of the region. It was easier to accept the offer of peace. We thank God for the life of Goodluck Jonathan, who is a universal peace ambassador. He was Vice-President at the time, and he put his life on the line by visiting a militant camp. He could have just been kidnapped, and that would have been the greatest news. But luckily, he came out because the ex-agitators also meant well for their environment. When he became president, he consolidated on the gains of the programme. This programme has become a world model.

There’s a need for people to understand what DDR means. DDR is one of the most sensitive and most difficult peace platforms you can create. So, leaders of the region, governors, came in, and that was where our commitment came – we put in everything. And today, we now have a Nigerian made DDR programme. The United Nations didn’t get involved, under my watch; no Commonwealth, no United States government, no international body contributed one dime to fund that programme. That programme, under my watch, was funded entirely by Nigeria’s taxpayers’ money.

I came to the United States Department at a time, and they asked me whether I needed financial support, and I said no. All I needed was technical support, and support at the immigration level, by giving visas to our people who were going to come here to get the best of education and training. This was the same message I went with to the United Kingdom, same to Brussels when I came to address the EU parliament. And, finally, the visas opened, and everybody started to accommodate our people. Initially, it was difficult, because of the ex-militants tag. But I strongly fought to remove that tag, because truly they were not militants, but agitators, freedom fighters.

If you had brought a man from New York to manage this DDR programme, he was going to fail; because he was going to look for people who would help him look for who Tompolo was, who Ateke Tom was, who Boyloaf was, who Shootaside was. That was going to take him a whole year. But I knew them. I knew phone numbers. They knew mine, and we started relating. We agreed sometimes to meet in Yenagoa and other places. The template I implemented was endorsed by certain meetings where they were physically present. We scrapped the idea of menial training, of artisan training, and dealt with professional training. So, it is a model that is novel. As we talk here, even the United Nations funded DDR programme till today are having issues. In Sierra Leone, they failed. The only DDR programmes that have succeeded in the whole of Africa are the ones in Nigeria, the Niger Delta, and Burundi. And these two were put together and funded locally by the government of those countries.

Anytime the United Nations or these international organisations are involved in DDR programmes, if they are budgeting $500million, about $400million will go into consultancy services. They pay themselves all that money, and when they hear the sounds of war, they will be the first to escape. That’s what they’ve been doing. But we localised our DDR, and we have peace today.

I think what the Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, is doing now is a consideration of what we have done in terms of amnesty. There is no bad or good peace. The moment a people agree to peace, whatever is needed to entrench and consolidate that peace, we should think of how to compare what war takes, and what peace can give. So, this is a model that should be applied all over the world. Even the United States has written that “surprisingly, the Nigerian Amnesty programme has surpassed expectations”. It’s there in the records. So, I don’t know why outsiders and critical reviewers can see success in what we have done, and we don’t see it here. We were the precedence. So, if you look deep, you will see some mistakes that can be improved. But that’s not surprising because it was a novel programme.

What is the rationale for the foreign scholarship and training programmes, when there are institutions with such capacity in Nigeria. Is that not capital flight?
Thank you for this question. Indeed, the foreign scholarship and vocational training programmes, including aviation, were some of the lofty initiatives we introduced. Apart from the fact that we could comfortably accommodate these programmes in our budget, the major consideration was the proper reintegration of these youths from the region. The template adopted for the programme was based on the global DDR model, which made the reorienting and rehabilitation of such non-state actors outside the environment they were used to a key aspect of the process. We were committed to a process that would produce completely transformed individuals, who would no longer find attractive their former lifestyle in the creeks. Life in the creeks is actually very harsh. So, the new environment they are exposed to locally or overseas helps the reintegration process greatly. By the time most of them returned to the country, you notice a completely different person. Of course, our country is better for it.

But talking about capital flight, we tried to check that through the approval of the National Assembly to build four state-of-the-art vocational training centres in the Niger Delta. Even though our mandate did not include capital projects, we saw the necessity for such centres. Before I left, the training centres sited in Bomadi in Delta, Agadagba-Obon in Ondo, Kaiama in Bayelsa and another in Rivers State were near completion. These are specialised centres for training in oil and gas technology, power and electricity management as well as maritime studies.

So why is the EFCC coming after you, if you have had a good record during your tenure of office?
I want to say that, first, I will never be scared, because I was a public officer. I am not afraid of EFCC. I remain a public figure. In running a programme that is so novel, without any precedence, no template, and I created a template with my team, and we funded it, and have so many success stories all over, things like these are bound to come. EFCC does not work in a vacuum. People write petitions. I have seen some of the petitions, and so many of them are frivolous. For example, a group of ex-militants claim that I denied them the opportunity of being accommodated in the programme. That’s a petition before EFCC; and that they should force me to pay them their 65,000 from 2010 when they disarmed, according to them. And they are 38 in number. So, that’s the crime I committed. I’m not the one who accommodates people. Before I came on board this programme, 20,192 were taking part in the programme. When I came, another 6,166 were documented. So, put together, over 26,000 people were already documented. I only came to advocate for over 3,000 people because I saw danger in what we were doing, as part of learning on the job.

There was a growing population of Niger-Delta youths, women, young boys and girls, who didn’t believe that the Amnesty programme was going to create pilots, marine officers, educational opportunities for so many people. They thought even some of them were going to be captured by government and put in jail. So, they stayed away. So, I went into the records of DDR, and found out that the woman in the community, whose livelihood was affected by the negative operations of even the ex-agitators, and the Nigerian military, in maintaining law and order, was also due for compensation. The youths of that community who were not ex-agitators, but suffered collaterally for the damages arising from the conflict, were also due for something. A lot of letters were coming to me. So, I ran to the president, and begged him to help the programme. True, the United Nations has provisions for non ex-militants into the programme, so that we would not be seen as a country paying for violence alone. For that purpose, Mr. President approved the third phase Amnesty. This was how we got this young boys and girls. Some of them have not even seen a gun before, but they were covered by what Mr. President defined as the violence impacted communities slot. Most ex-agitators never wanted to leave Nigeria, that’s why most of them were involved in the vocational training. Most of the people you are seeing outside are those who were affected by the violence. And this was given across ethnic nationalities in the Niger-Delta. Everybody took advantage of this.
I am never scared of defending my stewardship. It was a trust from the tax-payers of our beloved country Nigeria. So, I’m ready to defend what I did in that office. Every public officer is open to scrutiny; I am no exception.

I’m not a saint. We made mistakes. We made errors. We corrected the ones we could see. So those who succeeded us must be able to review them and make the programme better. I’m human. But, consciously, I did not hurt my country. I committed the entirety of my life, the comfort of my life and family, to ensure that that programme succeeded under my watch.
However, when such scrutiny is suspected to be laced with political undertones, witch-hunt, we would quickly seek protection in the law, against unnecessary harassment, detention, media trial. But you still have to create that window of having the opportunity to create that window. And that’s what I’m doing with the EFCC.

I must be treated as innocent; and when those signs are threatened, the only option left for common men like us is to seek refuge in the law, while still opening the opportunity of defending our stewardship.

Everyone who receives invitation from the EFFC says it’s politically motivated. Are you in this group?
Sometimes I think so. Sometimes, I take solace in the fact that it also gives me an opportunity to stand before Nigerians today and defend the beautiful job I have done for our beloved country, which is being misunderstood by too many now. They will definitely understand in five, ten years now; when the thousands of students we trained graduate; when these students are in positions of authorities; at that time, maybe in my old age, I would be able to hear people say Kuku deserves national honours. This will come, I’m confident.

Even if it is political, it is not created from the EFCC. The EFCC is only doing their job, based on petitions that were written to them. They are acting based on petitions. They don’t hate me. Since 2007, I’ve been serving, and they never invited me any single day. But when people started writing petitions, they have to invite me. If they don’t people will even say the EFCC is taking sides. So, they are doing their statutory work. However, even the political one might also be wrong. I’m a PDP stalwart in Ondo state, but it might be wrong to even assume that  the political witch-hunt is only coming from APC. It is possible that PDP people in Ondo State or outside, who are threatened by the likelihood of a Kuku attempting to be a governor, might even be the people fuelling it. So, the political angle to it is not restricted to a political party. You know Nigeria. Even APC people might not even care about you; but your own PDP people might come up to be doing these things.

Will you honour the EFCC invitation?
I will honour the EFCC. When I got their invite, I was already in London, on my way for my surgery. It came in the night. I told my lawyer, and we wrote them that by 30th of September, I will honour their invitation. But what you plan could be different from God’s. I’ve been here recuperating, but till today, clearly, flying from here is going to be very hectic and terrible for me. So, I do want to honour them, but I have to see my doctor to see if it would be possible for me to travel so that I can honour the invitation. But if he says no, I will write to them. I will love to honour them, because they are our statutory institution. If we, public officials, do not honour our institutions, it would not strengthen our democracy. I must be alive to honour their invite. So, giving me further extension is not going to be difficult for them.

Do you have any fear about the future of the Amnesty programme?
I am a bit worried, leaving the programme at the time I did. I didn’t meet a soul in the university when I came on board, but I left behind over 4,000 students of Niger-Delta extraction in various schools, home and abroad. I didn’t meet any aviation trainee, I have left behind over 150 commercial pilot licensed trained, over 30 ATPL holders, and 10 of those who have finished their programme. But there were still some little things to make most of them employable. Today, I still remember people like Timothy who left Edo state and went to the School of Oceanography in Lagos, because he was so determined to do marine training. Beyond that, we took them to the world maritime institute, in Poland. Today, NLNG in Bonny engaged Timothy and put him onboard a vessel for sea time. He called me from the Port of Spain, from the waters of Cape Town in South Africa. He called me from Barcelona. He has called me from India. That’s a product of our collective effort in the Amnesty programme. These guys are our hope in Nigeria.

My concern is that this academic revolution we had brought into the annals of Nigeria, whether they are Niger-Delta people or not, the key point is that they are Nigerians. My concern is that their life ambitions are not going be truncated. Luckily, a few of them are graduating this year. I am sure over 300 of the people we took outside will graduate this year. Their tuition will be paid. I just pray for continuity. I am worried.

After the elections and inauguration, I heard Mr. President’s inaugural address. Knowing President Muhammed Buhari, he is a lover of education; he’s a man who must believe in what you are explaining. If the opportunity is given to the right people to explain the Amnesty programme to Mr. President and the NSA, I do believe that there will be continuity definitely beyond December. It is not going to be possible to take 17 and 16 year olds to schools in the UK, and abandon their academic pursuit. This, Mr. President, will never do. But it needs direct and practical explanation on where they are from, and what they are doing in those countries. And these all forms part of my brief. And I do believe that when Mr. President pays attention strictly to the Amnesty programme, he will definitely see. I urge Mr. President to send a team led by the coordinator of the Amnesty programme to Europe and America, and see what we were able to do with that office. They are Nigerians.

I’m also aware that there are steps to return the aviation students who left because of lack of payments. I hope they return. These are critical points that can really sadden me. Imagine that billions of naira have been invested in the education of these kids, and that they were returned as a result of non-continuity by the Nigeria government.
So, it is vital that that continuity happens. If it does not happen, it would be a big blow to me. I put in five years of my life to make it happen. These kids are the hope of the Niger-Delta. They are the ones who will come back and drive the economic development and political consciousness of the Niger-Delta. We cannot truncate this dream. This is vital.

Most importantly, the federal government need to know that the Amnesty programme cannot be terminated in December. It cannot. While I was there, even under President Goodluck Jonathan, I wrote to him severally. When we planned, it was a five year initial programme. At that time, it was about first phase. It has nothing to do with the second and third phase. Now, the five year plan has been fulfilled. But because of incessant protests for inclusion and accommodation by those who didn’t believe in the process, and later saw that it was succeeding, why would government not listen? So, more people, about 10,000 to the original 20,000, were included. And this inclusion was not considered when the five year plan was made. So, these 10,000 people, government still owes them. We owe them an obligation to get them rehabilitated and reintegrated into the Nigerian society. We need to fully reform them. They have fulfilled their own part of the contract by disarming and coming out. And government also gave a commitment. And that part, for the second and third phase, has not been fulfilled by government.
So, for me, speaking from experience and what we were able to do, within this period of four years, it would take nothing less than two to three years more.

Do you believe the new Coordinator can work to move things faster?
Before I left office, the full brief has been written and given to the new coordinator. I believe very strongly that, the new coordinator, being an Ijaw man from Bayelsa state, understands the Niger-Delta environment. He does know of the Amnesty programme, and what it means to the Niger-Delta and Nigeria. He has also being in charge of peace-keeping operations of the Nigerian Army. I actually visited him at a time in Zaria when I went to deliver a lecture on security in Zaria. He hosted me so profoundly and held me in very high esteem. I was really marvelled. I do want to say that, on behalf of our people, the new coordinator is a proud son of the Niger-Delta. We are proud of him. I do believe and pray for his success. He should look carefully into what we’ve done, put bias or sentiments apart, and do all he can to entrench and deepen the gains we have recorded already. Because that would not be Kuku’s legacy. By the time he leaves, it would be his own legacy. Kuku would have to come and struggle out his legacy  from there. A lot of people would say General Boro did this and that; so, he must take advantage of what we have done. We’ve set the template. Godwin Abe came at a time when to look into the case of an ex-militant was dangerous, but he succeeded.

Chief Timi Alaibe almost got killed, with respect to this peace process. He was attacked, a lot of vehicles damaged, and he barely escaped. That’s the kind of programme we are talking about. From the day I came in, there were protests here and there, attack here and there, until we stabilised the programme. The programme has been stabilised and we’ve done our human best. I believe that the new coordinator has the capacity to deepen the programme. I believe that he has the support and wherewithal to deal with the issues in this programme on behalf of President Muhammadu Buhari and the people of the Niger-Delta.