Barrister Utum Eteng,  a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) based in Calabar, spoke recently with NSA GILL on sundry issues of national interest, alleging that there is a clear gang-up against President  Muhammadu Buhari. Excerpts:

Some people have alleged that the President is being ganged up against ahead of the 2019 elections. Do you share same view?

I must confess to you that I am in a very sober mode. Sober in the sense that there are so many unfounded insinuations being made against the office and person in the office of the Commander-in -Chief of the armed forces, President Muhammadu Buhari.

There clear indications that there is a gang up but one thing is very certain, the President is doing his best to ensure that we can recover this country.

We have to recover this country from the hands of notorious looters, from the hands of people who have, over years lived principally on our common wealth without ever doing any job; People who have shared much of the property belonging to this country.

People who are afraid of being apprehended; people who have built fantastic houses in Abuja but they are now afraid to go near those houses. Accumulation of all these group of persons I have categorised, have ganged up, to give, literally, “a dog a bad name; and attempt to hang it”.

It is an aspect, or in other words, the expected aspect of the fight back of corruption.

People are fighting back and using all manner of means to fight back because they have been discovered. And the President has been persistent and consistent as well as determined in this war and crusade against corruption.

So the people are coming in many different ways against the President.

What is your perspective on the recent case of the NHIS Executive Secretary who had been suspended by the Minister for Health since last year on fraud related charges, and by presidential fiat, he was reinstated this year. How would you defend that?

One of the problems we have in this country is that, there is a lot of heap in terms of information spread and dissemination.

If a man was a civil servant; let me use that for an instance, there is a procedure that has to be followed. If the procedure is not followed and the man is booted out of office, you are exposing the federal government to a possible law suit; for which several of such law suit are pending in court before now and several millions of naira are charged against the federal government. So when these things are done, we should be concern and question the procedure. Has the procedure been followed, besides media hype?  Besides propaganda? These are the things we have to look into. If a civil servant is alleged to have done anything, there are provisions and procedures to follow. The person is either interdicted, quarried, investigated or suspended for a period of time until investigations are carried out.  When investigations are done and he is found not to be blemish the way he was openly published as having committed that offense; you see that the public will think, the handlers of that situation has not been fare.

Basically, there is a lot of misinformation going on in this country; deliberate misinformation and to a very large extent; I have said it before and I will say it as many times as opportunity present itself; the president, the APC, lack a proper propaganda approach to confront all these shades of mis-information.

The Minister of Information cannot do it alone. There should be a provision where a group of either government appointees or a committee is set up; officially or otherwise to help disabuse the minds of people by giving out the correct information.

The Inspector General of Police swiftly declared the spokesman of former President Ibrahim Babaginda wanted after issuing a statement which he got approval from his boss to issue; the IG knows the procedures and many believe he did not follow it, how do you also defend or explain such in the context of attacking mis-information?

If you are invited by the police and you are evasive or you are invited and you are not evasive, the law allows the police to declare you wanted….

The incident upon which he was declared wanted happened within 24 hours, so he may not have been invited or given opportunity?

The police can give you one or two hours to kindly come to the police station and throw light on a matter, if you have a conscience that is clean, you go in there. A clear conscience fears no evil. Also even if police invite you and you answer to police investigation, the police have limited period within which to detain you, especially when they know, you know your rights. If the interview cannot be concluded in one day or two days and they are getting to the lawful 24 hours depending on the nature of offence, the police will grant you bail. If they don’t, you meet your lawyers and they will do the needful and get you out.

But where you are invited and you are evasive, nobody is above the law. The Police is the only organ, upon which certain things will have to be investigated and ventilated.

I have read it in some of the papers questioning what should concern the Police with a statement someone issued on behalf of another, some citing freedom of speech and all that. There is a limit to which there can be freedom of speech; if a statement is issued by you that I have said this, and I authorise you to say that; and I come again to say I have not authorise you my friend to say that; that is impersonation. There is criminal defamation.

Can the police on their own charge me for the statement even when you have not lodge a complaint that I have defame you?

In a situation of this nature, there would be two wrongs to be looked at; there is a civil wrong, which is a civil defamation and there is a criminal wrong, which is impersonation. If you are taking it from the point of a civil wrong, the police has no authority to go into it, because it is personal to the person who said you have defamed me.  If the person makes a statement saying, these statements in the media, I did not authorised it; that is impersonation and the police can go after you. Besides there is criminal defamation in our laws.

So people should try as much as possible to give the correct explanation at all times to avoid misinformation. The APC must rise up to the challenge; there appear to me a clear gang up. They have seen that the party is lacking in terms of information dissemination, lacking in defending before the public some of its actions in a well serialised manner.

You know in democracy, information is key. The lack of information can lead to people having different interpretation of a very simple situation. The law has not specify how long you must look for a man before declaring him wanted. If there are some element of evasiveness in the person to prevent the police carrying out investigation, the police can go ahead to declare the person wanted but that should be communicated properly.

However all these is just considering the case in a general terms but I will not want to go into the statements because it is still under controversy and is being disputed. It is because of it, that someone was declared wanted. I prefer to allow sleeping dog to lie until it is completely sorted out.