Since '95, a lot of things have happened. In terms of being more mature, better leadership, the wealth - personal wealth of people, I think nothing has changed. We're just witnessing deterioration. The situation is even worse now. I have been reading in the papers, the economy is in shambles, businesses are stuck; infrastructure is gradually coming to a standstill. If you look at all these, you will see that 1995 and the earlier years were much better than they are now. So instead of making progress, we are moving a little backwards.

The Abacha years were not particularly good for me or for many Nigerians. Even though I was very close to Abacha before he became Head of State, my relationship with him was down. I didn't choose to participate in his political programme because I didn't see any need for it.

I didn't, right from the beginning. A transition where you are the central figure is not a transition. It is just a transformation of yourself into something else. I didn't see any reason why a military leader should try to be a civilian person when you are already the leader. Where is the point to waste so much money, why do all those things in order to be what you already are. What he needed to do, in my opinion, was to device a very comprehensive political programme which is genuinely conceived to usher in genuine democracy instead of self promotion. So this view that I held, when I told him, made our relationship go sour.

Of course, he was not happy at all about it because he was convinced, or some people had convinced him that the best way forward was for him to transform into a political leader. I didn't think that was worthy of leader who came in by the means of a coup de'tat.

He didn't harass me as such but some people close to him tried to do that. But this is a long history and it is past now and most of these people are no longer around and we thank God for that.

At that time, when the National Executive Committee appointed me as the chairman of that committee, I was on the verge of traveling, had only about three or four days to travel and my journey at that time was very important.

What I did was to allow the chairman to inaugurate and then I went for weeks and came back. When I came back, we immediately called a meeting of members. We met last week in Abuja and plotted our strategy.

There are many more. If you recall, when APP was formed, almost everyone was APP, remember Ojukwu, Saraki, Jakande, Mahmud Waziri, Yusuf Ali, many people who are politically very important. As a result of politicking and scheming, some of these leaders felt they had to leave. Most of them are actually around in other political parties. Those people you have mentioned, Jeremiah Useni, Attahiru Bafarawa and some others, fortunately, almost all of these people are my friends. I know them very well. Not in APP, but much earlier. So it will be easy for me to be able to talk to them, discuss issues heartily as friends, most of them have got different reasons for leaving. Some felt maybe because the PDP government was terrorising them or offered them some incentives or because they are afraid of something and they had to leave.

I said I would never talk about June 12. I talked about June 12 in 1994, '95, '96, '97, 2000 and I am just tired. I think Nigerians should be tired of this issue. It has passed, it is gone. If you want to know my views, go back to all those old newspapers. I'm sure if you do research, you can find my views. I think it is now time for Nigeria to focus on today and tomorrow. If people have not learnt anything in these last 15 years about June 12, they will never learn anything in their lives.

Look, if a legitimate government has been toppled, why don't you talk about that? Shehu Shagari was toppled; he was elected. Wasn't Sardauna of Sokoto (Sir Ahmadu Bello)toppled? He was elected and even killed. Why don't people talk about that? Why do people just want to stick to June 12 which was just an election that was annulled and no government was toppled?

I feel there are more important issues to talk about, especially now. You know the situation we are in: the corruption that we read about everyday; the way people have wrecked this economy; the way people are made so poor; the way industries are closing down every day - even mine. If you cannot buy a drum of diesel every day, then you are out!

Look at the power situation. This alone is enough for people to engage themselves to know what happened. Why shouldn't we find a solution? But I think people are stuck with June 12. I don't know why they do that. For 15 years, we've been talking about it. If we've not learnt anything from June 12, we will never learn. As far as I am concerned, this issue is dead and buried! I will never talk about it; I will never discuss it.

Let them say whatever they want to say. If you want to find an answer to that, go back to the things I said earlier. If you've not been following all these years what I had been saying and every year I have to repeat it, I am not going to do that. I'm not that stupid.

It is because of you people. You are stuck in it. I don't know why, but the media is stuck in this issue. You have to find a way to get out of it and face what is more important for Nigeria today and tomorrow.

(Cuts in)If in the last 15 years you still have not found out what to do about it, if it happens in the future then you will never find out.

I am not telling you. I'm not going to discuss June 12 again. No matter the way you come to it.

Absolutely! Look at Malaysia? Look at Indonesia? These are countries that we are even older than by two or three years. I was in the NPN (National Party of Nigeria)as the National Financial Secretary early in 1980s when the Malaysian Minister of Agriculture came to Nigeria and collected seedlings of palm trees. He was even given extension workers to go and train their people.

If democracy had been allowed (and)had been sustained; if the 1960 coup or even the 1980s coups were not done, Nigeria would have been a much better place than it is today, because these interruptions have caused Nigeria a great deal and we are a very backward country. Forget these tall buildings, nice cars. These are not marks of development that will determine whether people are developing.

All of them, through good leadership and selfless leadership. I think that is what Nigeria has been lacking for many years. If Nigeria, hopefully, in the next election, is able to have a leader who is not corrupt, who is not associated with corrupt people, who has people who are serious minded in his cabinet and in his appointments, then of course Nigeria will move forward. But if we remain sycophantic, with nepotism, corruption, tribalism, religious bigotry, we are not going to make any progress. So, whatever Nigeria is going to be, we have to start from the leader. If we have a leader who is serious and who will regard all Nigerians as equal and view people and determine that you get things in Nigeria for what you can do and not who you are or who you know, then, of course, the sky will be the limit for Nigeria. We have all the resources and manpower to achieve whatever we want to achieve.

First of all, you go to the root of corruption. Why are people corrupt? Never dismiss the fact that every human being wants to make himself better. So if in your work place, your remuneration, your package is such that what you take home will not be able to feed you, send your children to school, provide what you need to take care of your family, then where will you find the money to do all that? Public servants, people who work with companies or Newspapers, should be adequately taken care of so that the propensity for them to look for money from the public purse will not be there.

If you go to a Police station and you ask the Desk Sergeant who is the Chief Clerk there how much he earns a month, you will find that whatever it is, will not be sufficient to take his children to school, pay his medical bills etc. Even his uniforms are in tatters, so he is ashamed to be in those uniforms. The Police station is so ill-equipped that he is ashamed to be working there. Now, how could you expect a person like that to give his best when he knows that everybody at the top is building a nice house through corruption? When he knows his bosses are deep in money? Or when he knows that when they submit their budget, more than half of the money will be stolen from the coffers?

Now, these are the problems. If you have a shop and do not pay your shop keeper adequately; you do not take adequate care of him and his family, he is going to steal through that shop. This is the way it is. So we have to make sure that people are properly taken care of, and then you can establish the rules that you need to establish in order for them not to be fraudulent.

Take the public servant. In the morning, a government car will come to him, he lives in a government house, when he gets to his office, there's tea and coffee, everything is free. His thought is when I leave this service, which house will I live in? Which car will I ride in? How will I pay for my children's school fees? This is the time to start collecting.

There is no pension for him when he retires. He doesn't know if his pension will be paid on time.

Where did he get the money? He stole it. He stole the money. He didn't start stealing when he was Inspector-General of police. He started stealing when he was Superintendent. People don't just start and that is even more dangerous because they know its happening. Look now, we read in the newspapers, how many billions were expended in the power sector by Obasanjo and his cronies. Who is doing anything about it? Somebody asked me 'have you seen how much money these people have stolen? I said yes, I have seen it. This will make people angry, but what will make them angrier and frustrated is the fact that nobody is going to do anything. We will just read it in the newspapers today, maybe tomorrow, and before six months, it has fizzled out and Nigerians are talking about something else.

Just like you are talking now about June 12, forgetting of what is written that billions of your money is being stolen and because there is a small book launch by somebody, then everybody's attention is now cast on this man and things which have been done with 15 years ago. But the current thing that is killing you, killing your children is now of less importance.

Let him write whatever he wants. When the election was annulled, there were three results of the election. You people should ask him (Humphrey Nwosu)to provide the documentation. Where are the documents to prove that the results he put in his book are the correct result?

No, I'm not saying anything. I am just saying that this is the sort of question that newspapers, not me, should be asking. I am not a Journalist; I am not here to make inquiries. That is your job. Nwosu, okay, we've seen these figures, where are the supporting documents? Where are all the election documents? If you are interested, you should ask him all these questions, but you didn't.

No, you shouldn't ask me. I dealt with that a long time ago. When we remember Abiola, we should just pray for his soul. We should not torment his soul with June 12. What he needs now is prayers - that God will forgive his sins and will reward him for the good works he has done - and he has done so many good works, so that the heavens will be his. But each time you talk about Abiola, rather than pray for him, you are just telling him about June 12, something that may be, became the reason why he died! Abiola didn't want to hear June 12, just like me.

I haven't talked to his family for many years, but I know most of them.

We were talking of corruption.

(Cuts in)I've not gone yet. When I die, maybe they will name a street after me.

I felt very bad, and the thing I did was to pray for him. Even when I went for my Umrah in the last four weeks, I prayed for everybody and I prayed for him, because I knew it was about two years later that he died.

Abacha and I were not very close because of the reason I told you earlier. When Abdulsalami Abubakar asked me what he should do, I said release Abiola. That was the first advice I gave him three days after he became Head of State.

Why do you (always)come back to this?

I have confidence in the National Assembly, but I don't think that the federal government is capable of dealing with anything.

Because they are of the same party; they know each other's secrets and I don't think they will sit there and expose themselves, put themselves in prison. It doesn't happen anywhere.

That is just for show. You will see that they will release them with time.

The National Assembly should do its job. But the job of exposing people is fine, but the most important thing is that when you expose them, you must ensure that they are brought to book. You must ensure that they are prosecuted. There's no need to tell us something that somebody has done wrong and then, that is it. If you are in a position to do something about it, then do something about it.

But even you, anybody in this country, can take them to court as a Nigerian. Anybody can go to court and sue Obasanjo because this is his money.

I was a member of the committee that wrote the ANPP position on electoral reforms, and there are so many areas that we have dealt with. If you have any question about specific areas, I will tell you what my views are.

Yes, I suggested that. The punishments are there in the electoral law. If definitions are not adequate then the National Assembly should do that. It is not the work of any committee to write the law, but if you say that there should be an electoral crime commission, then of course, just like EFCC, you should write its terms of reference the way it should work and the laws and whatever the penalties will be.

(Cuts in)My position is that the number of parties should be reduced but you can't, in my opinion, say parties A, B, C, D should be out. What I suggested, maybe they didn't report it properly, is that the next local government election around 2010 sometime should be on the same day throughout the country and any political party or association that has not achieved a minimum of 10 per cent of all the local government seats throughout the federation, that party or political association should be expunged. So, you base it on performance at the next local government election. That is what I said. And if the 10 per cent is the minimum, then it means that there will not be more than 10 parties and since some parties will get more that the 10 per cent, it means there will be only about two, three or four parties throughout the country. That is the only way you can justly eliminate these political parties; by putting baseline performance which they must cross. If they don't cross that, then they are no longer recognised. They can now go and join any of those that have passed the mark.

Absolutely, it will work. But you see, during the military, it was a law and all the political parties and groups had to abide by it. Since each political party has its own constitution and the way it wants to conduct its primaries, it is for the political parties to do that unless you go and change the electoral law. You know A1 is the ward level; A2 is the local government level; A3 is the state and A4 is the national level. So, you have to pass through all these stages winning until you do the A3. When you do the A3 then you go to the national convention (the A4), and participate there with all those who won the A1 in there states and from among the 36 of you, one of them will be presidential candidate. And this eliminates bogus, loud-sounding politicians, people who have no grassroots support. Because if you remember, some of these big politicians were removed right from their wards because they were arm chair politicians just in Lagos and Abuja parading themselves as big men but nobody at home knew them.

That is democracy. But that open ballot where people line up sometimes discourages people from voting. The best one is this open balloting where you go and tick your ballot paper in secret but you come in the open and drop it and nobody knows who you are voting for.

Yes, it will be counted on the spot. For example, I will tell you that of all those who contested under A4 both in NRC and SDP, no one got the number of votes I got in the ward, local government and in the states.

A few days to the election there was confusion whether the election would be held or not. And even up to the day when the election remained one day, most people thought that there would not be any election because of the court order. It was late evening that it was announced that election would hold. You know it was during the rainy season and everybody went to farm. Nobody expected an election the next day. So, most people did not go out to vote as they were in their farms. But a lot of Abiola's supporters who were his tribesmen and are businessmen and so on, they went and voted. So it was not a surprise to me that in that circumstance when all your people have gone out to farm you will lose that election.

I got a lot votes everywhere. You know I don't want to talk about June 12. I had talked about all that.

That is for Babangida to answer, not me. I don't know. I was not a party to it.

Believe me. Any one Nigerians want is alright for me. But what I believe is that it is not the system that is wrong, it is us. Even if you do seven or six years, what is happening now will happen unless people change their attitude and unless we have the right type of leadership. It is for the electorate to begin to recognise good people and vote for them and for people who are good men to be able to go to their wards even if they are not politicians but are leaders in their wards, to talk to people like themselves. They can decide who to send in their wards. I am not talking about ANPP or PDP or any other party. I am talking about leaders in their wards electing a good man in whatever party he belongs or supporting him. If they do that, then we will begin to have good leaders. And if election comes and Nigerians vote, not for the party but the candidate 'because the candidate we have in the other party is a better candidate because of this and that reason, they should go and elect him.

(Cuts in)Yes. In that case if they know that people are looking for good people they will endeavour to sponsor good people as their candidates. They will bring about measures to ensure that only mostly good people will be their candidates rather than leave it open for any sort of person to stroll in and become a candidate. Look at what is happening throughout the country, all the money that is being wasted at the local, state and federal level and nobody is going to do anything. Yet there are so many good people in Nigeria who have the right experience but they are not politicians. Some of them would say 'we don't have the money.' They should ask questions: How did those others get it? Did they have the money before? Why should somebody, if he is serious about his country, say 'I don't want people to insult me; I don't want people to abuse me; politics is for hooligans.' I think those kinds of people are useless people. These are people who will allow anybody to rule them and wreck the country because they don't want to be abused. You know, if they are Christians, they should know what was done to Jesus. If they are Muslims, look at what they did to Prophet Mohammed. Who are we? Are we as big as Jesus or Mohammed to say that when we want to struggle for our good, we don't want to be insulted or abused or thrown stones at? Who are we to say that if we really mean good for our society we cannot be abused? We should make sacrifices and go and participate. And unless good people participate in elections we will not have the right type of leadership we need for this country. There are so many of them but they are lukewarm. They are in their offices; they are in their businesses and they don't want to hear anything about politics yet they are in the forefront complaining that things are bad.

Four eyes. All the four eyes.

It has pulled Nigeria backwards and I don't think the present administration is pulling it back. I don't think they are doing enough to put Nigeria back on track. We need much more than they are doing now but I wish them good luck.

I have been to Niger Delta even when I was parading myself as a presidential aspirant. Last year, I was there. Anybody who goes and sees how those people live will have sympathy for them but I think the issue now is beyond what is really in the interest of the people; it is just business. Some people have turned the Niger Delta into a big multi-million naira business. But for the people, I think whatever money will be set aside for the Niger Delta they should not allow their leaders to steal that money. The Federal Government should organise responsible ways to ensure that whatever development that these people need is actually taken there. You cannot take development to small villages, a settlement of 10 to 20 people. What you need to do is find an area and collect all these people into a larger community, build houses, schools, hospitals, churches for them, lay out industrial areas for them and then ensure that whatever money is being received from this derivation and other ways, truly benefits those people and make sure that they are also trained in say fisheries, oil activities, in things that are common to them. Once you do that and this can be done very easily, then nobody has any cause to make trouble. But if people there know that billions are always allocated to them and they don't see it and they are still living in squalor, then they will assume that nothing is being done about their state. Everybody knows this but nobody is doing anything about it. Everybody knows that this money is being stolen. Most of these leaders are not leading in the best interest of their people but are leading in the best interest of their selves so that they can get what they can get out of these billions of naira given to them. That is the way it is. Unless this is stopped, the Niger Delta problem will continue. Focus on the people, get their money, use it for them, put them in larger communities, build all the infrastructure, anything they need, take care of them and they will stop the problem themselves.

All this talk about summit is a gimmick. Everybody knows what should be done. Focus on the people. The government doesn't need any summit to know what is happening in the Niger Delta and what should be done. This is not a new problem, but they don't have the nerve to tell certain people to their faces 'you are the culprit; you are stealing your people's money'. We have to put a stop to all that. The Federal Government should deal with it. There is no more OMPADEC or whatever, NDDC. We will do what is right. By the time you send money to a committee and then they pay for projects which will never be done and people are still there dying in poverty. If it were you, would you like it? But all these people who show themselves, they are in billions, but 99 per cent are still in poverty.

Nothing. It is not a new problem. It's been going on.