*’How they killed the PDP vision’
Chief Audu Ogbeh was the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during the Obasanjo regime. He left the office following some disagreement with the then President Olusegun Obasanjo and defected to the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). In this interview with BEN AGANDE, he speaks on some of the issues that touch on his turbulent days as the PDP chairman and the state of the nation. Excerpts:
What is your assessment of the political terrain especially in the last five years?
I think it is an environment of great opportunities but of also opportunities lost and the usual high degree of waste which this country has become notorious for. We have a situation which one finds extremely disturbing because at the time former President Olusegun Obasanjo left office, he left behind $25 billion in the excess crude account.
I remember one night shortly after the late President Yar’Adua came into office, the late Abubakar Rimi; myself; former Minister of the FCT, Arc. Ibrahim Bunu and Wazirin Bauchi; went to see the late president. He received us and we told him we came to suggest a few things that we felt needed to be done so that we could begin to address primarily the economic problems, because at the heart of all the chaos in this country, of all the agitations and the discontent is the economy. Nigeria has three problems: the economy, the economy and the economy.
We can’t have a population growing this fast where there is so much want and so much lack. Too many homes are in pains. Rents are impossible, school fees are on the increase. You see tension on the face of Nigerians wherever you meet them. We are a good and kind hearted people. But now we are being driven in many areas to a state of barbarism. Some of the horrible things people now do: kidnap children, cut their heads off because everybody is looking for money including people who call themselves men of God; at the centre of all the chaos and political disequilibrium is the economy.
I am not an economist but economics is 90% common sense. I feel that the polity is not comfortable and there is need for more practical down to earth economic re-engineering. What are the issues? There is still not enough production at home; too much importation of thoroughly unnecessary items which we just ship in from all over the world. Nobody makes pencils here for the over eighteen million children in primary schools. We produce nothing. Bananas are coming in from Cameroun; even garri from Benin Republic. At the centre of all the discontent in the country is the economy and unless and until the people, state governments, local governments got down to dealing with it, all the tinkering, all the constitutional amendments would be all diversions.
In the face of all these, would you say that those at the helm of affairs are adequately prepared or even competent to handle these challenges?
I think they are doing their best but going back to what we said to Yar’Adua that night, we suggested that there are some key areas that will generate jobs. A society without work to do is in trouble. We said to President Yar’Adua then that we should go into housing. At that time they said seventeen million housing units were needed across the country including universities. I went to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where I had a room to myself. Not now. Why should our own children degenerate under social and economic pressures to levels which are not more than intellectual slums? Is it that we can’t do anything about it?
We suggested then that a million houses a year across the country will create 30million jobs. We thought that the government would take a loan from the excess crude account and start the houses and as it begins to sell the houses through mortgages, it would start repaying the loan. But the money was shared out to governors. How many of them applied the money to the development of their states? Majority did not.
The government is addressing some issues but the speed needs to be looked into and the question of examining the structural defects in the economy should be looked into. We should also review the advice of the IMF and the World Bank because I have never believed that the advice they give is in the overall good interest of the country. I have not seen any serious efforts by government at different levels to revive the economy. Why can’t the governors sit down with those who have industries in their states and ask them what they need to revive the industriesit? If the treasury needs to help it should. America did. What are we doing here? Some states are applying this philosophy by inviting investors and providing the necessary infrastructure for them to operate. The government at the centre and the state governments need to sit down and keep doing this thing because we can’t have this pile of pain sitting on the heads of our people. If it continues this way, no matter what constitutional conference we hold, we will get no where.
Some people have blamed the party you co-founded, the
PDP, for majorly responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the
country. Though you have left the party, looking back, do you think that
the party is responsible for the sorry state of things in the country?
I must say that the vision we had in forming the PDP is lost. It is lost because certain individuals who came into the party and held certain offices simply saw the party and treated it as a private estate. They believed they owned the PDP. That was exactly what I could not stand. With the connivance of many members, such pathetic sycophants could not afford to say no to arrogant authority. A party is not owned by one individual. When a party surrenders all its thinking and all the powers to one person, the party is dead. We are a very peculiar people. We are such sycophants; such cronies that nobody dare say anything.
If you are the only strong person around, you are just one more poor person waiting to happen. There was no forum for the party to make inputs into the polity, there was little reference to the manifesto and no body was allowed to say anything even when things were going wrong. Some of those killings that were happening in the PDP then: Bola Ige went, Harry Marshal, Dikibo, Funsho Williams, later, my chairman in Kwara who was butchered when he was coming to Abuja and so many strange things. Nobody was allowed to raise the alarm. I was told that as party chairman, I had no right to raise objections to certain developments which I thought were simply outrageous. Some party members said I was a poor man from Benue, so who was I to argue with the president? And I told them if you wanted a billionaire to run the party, you should have gone to Aliko Dangote or Mike Adenuga. If not being a rich man is an offence then I am guilty as accused but I did not think that was the function of the party chairman.
I don’t know today if that party has a forum where they can sit and agonize over certain issues except maybe when the president calls the governors together. The vision is lost and many left.
So, in order words, the feeling of many Nigerians that the problems in the country are caused by the PDP is correct.
Well it is the biggest party. It controls more states. It should be the flagship. We built it to be strong but if it degenerates to just people looking for offices for themselves and there is no collective anxiety about the overall well-being of the people, then the party has failed! There is no debate on issues. Has there been a debate on education? Has there been a debate on agriculture? What is the debate on our foreign policy? What is the policy on housing? There is no sound mortgage in this country. In a nutshell, yes the blame is there. PDP is the biggest party and therefore it cannot run away from those accusations.
There is the news going round that you are being wooed back to the PDP. Is this true?
Nobody has contacted me and I don’t think the problem in PDP is lack of manpower. They are big, they have many people and I am sure if they want to apply themselves to certain issues, they can do so. Calling people back is not an issue. I don’t think anybody would listen to me any way if I was to go back. I have been saying the same thing for the last ten years. It is not important asking me to return or not to return.
Do you have a nostalgic feeling about your PDP days?
No I don’t have. Let me tell you this. I have always told people that every politician should have a first address: the business you do. I don’t like a man who says his profession is politician. Such a person in a developing country is a liability. I have something I do. I am still struggling to get it to where I want it to be because bank credit is difficult to access. When I applied for a loan for commercial agriculture scheme, I was turned down by my bank because they said I am a politically exposed person. My priority now is to get my project to where I want it to be not to be going here and there.
Corruption in the country is rather on the increase rather than decreasing. Do you see a silver lining on the horizon in our fight against corruption?
Honestly I share the anxiety of many Nigerians. We have ruined everything. There is nothing you can do now in this country without bribing. The judiciary has also experienced terrible turmoil. For many of them judgments are purchased. The midnight currency is the dollars. But when government tried to move against any one, the same society begins to bring in sentiments. People either read religion, region or tribe to every action of government in an attempt to curb corruption. The situation is helpless and hopeless.
What do you think is the way forward?
First, there is the general need to get the economy going. I am not sure that every Nigerian was born a thief. There are many Nigerians who will not touch what does not belong to them if they have an option. Secondly, it appears that we as a people are not determined to get rid of corruption because we worship it too. We shout that corruption is bad but we worship the corrupt. Thirdly people put a lot of pressure on their leaders too. If you don’t give money, you are labeled a bad man who does not want to help. It is a very complex moral enigma.
The duty of government is to look around the economy, decide what you can produce and produce it. Others are doing it. Bank credit is still impossible here. With all the reforms, this is the only country where the interest rate is about 21%. How do you want any producer or investor to survive this interest and still buy diesel? One prays that the power sector keeps improving. That will eliminate one obstacle on the path of production. A country that does not produce will die. We don’t produce, so we all pounce on the treasury and rob the treasury. The only industry left in the country now is politics and governance.
The issue of insecurity in the country has been exacerbated by the Boko Haram attacks in the North. Do you have cause for concern that with all these challenges, Nigeria may be at the threshold of disintegration?
I am worried about the security situation and very concerned too. I remember the talk I gave in Kaduna ten years ago that the Niger Delta crisis will ease off but the chaos in Nigeria was going to come from the North. I had foreseen this ten years ago and I had said it was going to be driven by alienation, hunger and deprivation but was going to wear the face of religion. I said emirs will not sleep peacefully in their palaces and I said that some children will even be willing to kill their parents to inherit any property they thought was available.
The other day I was talking with the governor of Borno State with whom I do some work on agriculture for the state. The issue is simple. What is it that drives people to such madness? Hunger! Of course religious fanaticism is in many parts of the world. There are fanatics who say their philosophy must be enforced by violence. But the recruitment base of all of this extreme behavior is deprivation. There are people who have no hope and if the extremist organization is going to offer them a fee to do anything, they are willing to do.
They are easily brainwashed because they are so poorly fed that they have little capacity to reason. We are so poorly fed in this country now that we can’t do well in sports. The sportsmen and women come by and large from very humble homes where the daily diet is eba, garri, eba. They don’t have access to proteinous foods. So height for height, an eighteen-year-old in Nigeria is slightly shorter than his counterpart in Cameroun or Ivory Coast. But we don’t even realize that in an age that demands the sharpest brains, because of the dietary problems we have and the poor state of our agriculture, we are unable to produce some of the finest minds we dream of.
Back to the state of insecurity, it is a frightening thing and the answer is not in breaking up Nigeria. It is a bit tragic when at the slightest provocation some Nigerians begin to talk about breaking up. It is a sad thing that the elite are so fond of this thing. That is not the concern of the man on the street. The man on the street is not interested in this politics of balkanization. The elites who are the most comfortable are the ones who raise it as an option. If you begin the break up, how do you do it? I hear people talking of regions but is there permanent peace in any region if there is no economic growth? Go down to the local government or your village, there are issues over which there are strong dissents. Go down to you village, people have conflict if contentment is absent. We are too quick to rush to that idea as a solution to our problems.
Having said that, of course violent conduct in one part of the country leading to bombings and killings will disturb especially when it looks selective. But even now you can see that Muslims and Christians are getting killed and people wonder this is almost near madness. The only real guarantee to near perfect security in any environment is the contentment of the largest segment of the population.
Would you say that northern leaders including you have done enough to re-orientate or refocus the energy of the youths from the region?
We have not! The North must now look at itself in the mirror and ask vital questions. Is it because for too long, we in the North have seen politics as the only industry worth investing in especially since the end of the first republic. There is too much interest in politics to the exclusion of economic activities. Since the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme, four hundred industries in Kano have collapsed.
The textile industry perished dragging down with it some five million families who were growing cotton. Agriculture is on the decline. The average age of the farmer today is sixty to sixty five. There is not enough intellectual input into agriculture and agro-processing. How many new industries have been commissioned in any part of the North in the last ten years? Is there any five-star hotel north of Abuja? There is none. What do we invest in? We were in power. The South was not in power at the political centre but they are miles ahead of us. When we have somebody in power, there is this opium addiction that we have somebody in power. What difference does it make if the man in the Villa is from Katsina or Benue? Does that decide the feeding of the majority of his villagers? I have been saying to the northern governors, you have been meeting in Kaduna, how about zonal economic summits in the three zones of the North? The president has made offers.
He wants to ban rice importation in 2015. If the South is the industrial hub, why can’t the North be the agricultural machine? Why producing less than seven million metric tons of maize? Why are we no longer producing groundnuts? We now buy groundnuts from Niger Republic. I am not objecting to a northerner being in the Villa, but for God’s sake, politics alone can only further destroy the north and worsen Nigeria’s social economic problem.
There have been sustained agitations by some section of the country for the setting up of state police. Will this solve the problems of insecurity in the country?
In a true federation, it is a fair thing to ask for. It makes sense in true federalism for states to have control of their police machinery. That is what is obtainable in the United States where we model our democracy after. But in the USA, each state has a House of Representatives, a Senate and a Supreme Court. That is how elaborate their system is. Our state did not develop the way the states of the United States of America developed. Ours were created through executive fiat. It is logical for people to think of state police but, in practice, I do not support it. Do you know why? I saw local government and regional police forces in the first republic and I saw the abuse to which they were put. I even see the abuse to which the federal police in Nigeria is put from time to time, during elections especially. When I was chairman of the PDP, there were times mobile police were deployed to organize a fake sitting of the state House of Assembly at night to impeach a governor. That was abuse of process and I said so then. The Federal Government did not elect the governor. It is up to the people through the assemblies to sanction the governor if he has done anything wrong.
Assuming now that the federal police is seen as a tyranny or near tyranny or a possible tyranny, we are going to create 36 tyrannies across the country because they will be abused, terribly abused. And if we do so now, it will not be three years before Nigerians begin to cry out against the state police forces.
Finally, can we pay? I do not see any state that will have less than three thousand police men. I don’t see any state needing less than N500million extra per month to pay that police force. They need uniforms, barracks, offices and other things. If the states are now grumbling that they don’t have enough money to take care of education and health, where will they get the money to pay the police? Why are we so quick to recommend the creation of institutions without thinking of the cost?
As I said before, the ultimate security any country can think of is the contentment of the largest segment of the population. It is that contentment that we should invest in now and not state police. Even now, abuses are going on. In Jigawa State, A.C.N members are being detained in Alkali courts without trial. Which governor will not do the same?
The governor names the Attorney General, he names the Chief Judge, appoints the chief of police.
Do you really think that if you are not on his side that police force will listen to you in a country such as ours where sycophants and poverty hold sway? When that police man knows that by doing the will of the governor he will get extra cash? The demand for state police is a very dangerous diversion and if they decide to go ahead with it, it will not be two years before Nigerians will begin to cry out against the horror that would be placed on their lives. And let me tell those governors clamouring for it that it is not a priority.
Let me also tell the federal police that it also need to reform. The Inspector General of Police should be strong enough to tell the president that the police force is not an instrument in the hand of the Federal Government or any body but an instrument for the enforcement of justice and fair play. Unfortunately, most IGPs see them selves as appointees of the president so they get involved in rigging elections.
Do you share the sentiment being expressed that the North should produce the president in 2015?
Sentiment is there and every society has its own sentiment. In fairness, there is reason for some balancing. There is logic in it. You can’t keep on having one segment of the country dominating the others. People object to that. It is a fair thing. Over the years, this anxiety almost reached a fever point when Abiola won the election which was annulled. We have to commend the Yorubas for not pushing it to the extreme because they had every reason to do so. Thank God we got over it.
In 1994, I was a member of the Constitutional Conference and we began this debate among the northern group about keeping away from contesting the election. It took years and some of these meetings were very heated which was why in 1999 there was no northern candidate for president in any of the political parties. People forget so easily that it was not imposed on us. It was resolved here in Abuja. It was a mature move by the North and people must recognize that.
Towards the middle of Obasanjo’s tenure, I chaired a meeting where we said eight years North, eight years South and I put it to vote and it was carried 57 to 2 in favour of eight years between the North and the South. I left the PDP after that and the thinking changed. Even if things changed, they should have sat down to resolve the matter by bringing reasons. It did not need to degenerate to the extent it went. It could have been done through concession with the agreement to look at it all over again.
Having said all that, yes there is agitation that it should go to the North, the South-east is also clamouring. Again it can be debated and discussed but whatever we do should be through dialogue and understanding and not for one group to say we have seized it, what can you do about it? The essence of democracy is dialogue, dispute resolution and sensitivity to each other’s feeling. Nobody should feel superior to the other. There is some logic to it. The northerners should not be made to feel that because the seat has gone South no northerner will ever sit there again. I heard that was the declaration of a certain political leader in his venom against the North. Such a language is irresponsible. Let the parties sit down and debate it. Whatever we do, the elite must not set Nigeria on fire.
Vanguard
Chief Audu Ogbeh was the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during the Obasanjo regime. He left the office following some disagreement with the then President Olusegun Obasanjo and defected to the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). In this interview with BEN AGANDE, he speaks on some of the issues that touch on his turbulent days as the PDP chairman and the state of the nation. Excerpts:
What is your assessment of the political terrain especially in the last five years?
I think it is an environment of great opportunities but of also opportunities lost and the usual high degree of waste which this country has become notorious for. We have a situation which one finds extremely disturbing because at the time former President Olusegun Obasanjo left office, he left behind $25 billion in the excess crude account.
I remember one night shortly after the late President Yar’Adua came into office, the late Abubakar Rimi; myself; former Minister of the FCT, Arc. Ibrahim Bunu and Wazirin Bauchi; went to see the late president. He received us and we told him we came to suggest a few things that we felt needed to be done so that we could begin to address primarily the economic problems, because at the heart of all the chaos in this country, of all the agitations and the discontent is the economy. Nigeria has three problems: the economy, the economy and the economy.
We can’t have a population growing this fast where there is so much want and so much lack. Too many homes are in pains. Rents are impossible, school fees are on the increase. You see tension on the face of Nigerians wherever you meet them. We are a good and kind hearted people. But now we are being driven in many areas to a state of barbarism. Some of the horrible things people now do: kidnap children, cut their heads off because everybody is looking for money including people who call themselves men of God; at the centre of all the chaos and political disequilibrium is the economy.
I am not an economist but economics is 90% common sense. I feel that the polity is not comfortable and there is need for more practical down to earth economic re-engineering. What are the issues? There is still not enough production at home; too much importation of thoroughly unnecessary items which we just ship in from all over the world. Nobody makes pencils here for the over eighteen million children in primary schools. We produce nothing. Bananas are coming in from Cameroun; even garri from Benin Republic. At the centre of all the discontent in the country is the economy and unless and until the people, state governments, local governments got down to dealing with it, all the tinkering, all the constitutional amendments would be all diversions.
In the face of all these, would you say that those at the helm of affairs are adequately prepared or even competent to handle these challenges?
I think they are doing their best but going back to what we said to Yar’Adua that night, we suggested that there are some key areas that will generate jobs. A society without work to do is in trouble. We said to President Yar’Adua then that we should go into housing. At that time they said seventeen million housing units were needed across the country including universities. I went to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where I had a room to myself. Not now. Why should our own children degenerate under social and economic pressures to levels which are not more than intellectual slums? Is it that we can’t do anything about it?
We suggested then that a million houses a year across the country will create 30million jobs. We thought that the government would take a loan from the excess crude account and start the houses and as it begins to sell the houses through mortgages, it would start repaying the loan. But the money was shared out to governors. How many of them applied the money to the development of their states? Majority did not.
The government is addressing some issues but the speed needs to be looked into and the question of examining the structural defects in the economy should be looked into. We should also review the advice of the IMF and the World Bank because I have never believed that the advice they give is in the overall good interest of the country. I have not seen any serious efforts by government at different levels to revive the economy. Why can’t the governors sit down with those who have industries in their states and ask them what they need to revive the industriesit? If the treasury needs to help it should. America did. What are we doing here? Some states are applying this philosophy by inviting investors and providing the necessary infrastructure for them to operate. The government at the centre and the state governments need to sit down and keep doing this thing because we can’t have this pile of pain sitting on the heads of our people. If it continues this way, no matter what constitutional conference we hold, we will get no where.
Chief Audu Ogbeh
I must say that the vision we had in forming the PDP is lost. It is lost because certain individuals who came into the party and held certain offices simply saw the party and treated it as a private estate. They believed they owned the PDP. That was exactly what I could not stand. With the connivance of many members, such pathetic sycophants could not afford to say no to arrogant authority. A party is not owned by one individual. When a party surrenders all its thinking and all the powers to one person, the party is dead. We are a very peculiar people. We are such sycophants; such cronies that nobody dare say anything.
If you are the only strong person around, you are just one more poor person waiting to happen. There was no forum for the party to make inputs into the polity, there was little reference to the manifesto and no body was allowed to say anything even when things were going wrong. Some of those killings that were happening in the PDP then: Bola Ige went, Harry Marshal, Dikibo, Funsho Williams, later, my chairman in Kwara who was butchered when he was coming to Abuja and so many strange things. Nobody was allowed to raise the alarm. I was told that as party chairman, I had no right to raise objections to certain developments which I thought were simply outrageous. Some party members said I was a poor man from Benue, so who was I to argue with the president? And I told them if you wanted a billionaire to run the party, you should have gone to Aliko Dangote or Mike Adenuga. If not being a rich man is an offence then I am guilty as accused but I did not think that was the function of the party chairman.
I don’t know today if that party has a forum where they can sit and agonize over certain issues except maybe when the president calls the governors together. The vision is lost and many left.
So, in order words, the feeling of many Nigerians that the problems in the country are caused by the PDP is correct.
Well it is the biggest party. It controls more states. It should be the flagship. We built it to be strong but if it degenerates to just people looking for offices for themselves and there is no collective anxiety about the overall well-being of the people, then the party has failed! There is no debate on issues. Has there been a debate on education? Has there been a debate on agriculture? What is the debate on our foreign policy? What is the policy on housing? There is no sound mortgage in this country. In a nutshell, yes the blame is there. PDP is the biggest party and therefore it cannot run away from those accusations.
There is the news going round that you are being wooed back to the PDP. Is this true?
Nobody has contacted me and I don’t think the problem in PDP is lack of manpower. They are big, they have many people and I am sure if they want to apply themselves to certain issues, they can do so. Calling people back is not an issue. I don’t think anybody would listen to me any way if I was to go back. I have been saying the same thing for the last ten years. It is not important asking me to return or not to return.
Do you have a nostalgic feeling about your PDP days?
No I don’t have. Let me tell you this. I have always told people that every politician should have a first address: the business you do. I don’t like a man who says his profession is politician. Such a person in a developing country is a liability. I have something I do. I am still struggling to get it to where I want it to be because bank credit is difficult to access. When I applied for a loan for commercial agriculture scheme, I was turned down by my bank because they said I am a politically exposed person. My priority now is to get my project to where I want it to be not to be going here and there.
Corruption in the country is rather on the increase rather than decreasing. Do you see a silver lining on the horizon in our fight against corruption?
Honestly I share the anxiety of many Nigerians. We have ruined everything. There is nothing you can do now in this country without bribing. The judiciary has also experienced terrible turmoil. For many of them judgments are purchased. The midnight currency is the dollars. But when government tried to move against any one, the same society begins to bring in sentiments. People either read religion, region or tribe to every action of government in an attempt to curb corruption. The situation is helpless and hopeless.
What do you think is the way forward?
First, there is the general need to get the economy going. I am not sure that every Nigerian was born a thief. There are many Nigerians who will not touch what does not belong to them if they have an option. Secondly, it appears that we as a people are not determined to get rid of corruption because we worship it too. We shout that corruption is bad but we worship the corrupt. Thirdly people put a lot of pressure on their leaders too. If you don’t give money, you are labeled a bad man who does not want to help. It is a very complex moral enigma.
The duty of government is to look around the economy, decide what you can produce and produce it. Others are doing it. Bank credit is still impossible here. With all the reforms, this is the only country where the interest rate is about 21%. How do you want any producer or investor to survive this interest and still buy diesel? One prays that the power sector keeps improving. That will eliminate one obstacle on the path of production. A country that does not produce will die. We don’t produce, so we all pounce on the treasury and rob the treasury. The only industry left in the country now is politics and governance.
The issue of insecurity in the country has been exacerbated by the Boko Haram attacks in the North. Do you have cause for concern that with all these challenges, Nigeria may be at the threshold of disintegration?
I am worried about the security situation and very concerned too. I remember the talk I gave in Kaduna ten years ago that the Niger Delta crisis will ease off but the chaos in Nigeria was going to come from the North. I had foreseen this ten years ago and I had said it was going to be driven by alienation, hunger and deprivation but was going to wear the face of religion. I said emirs will not sleep peacefully in their palaces and I said that some children will even be willing to kill their parents to inherit any property they thought was available.
The other day I was talking with the governor of Borno State with whom I do some work on agriculture for the state. The issue is simple. What is it that drives people to such madness? Hunger! Of course religious fanaticism is in many parts of the world. There are fanatics who say their philosophy must be enforced by violence. But the recruitment base of all of this extreme behavior is deprivation. There are people who have no hope and if the extremist organization is going to offer them a fee to do anything, they are willing to do.
They are easily brainwashed because they are so poorly fed that they have little capacity to reason. We are so poorly fed in this country now that we can’t do well in sports. The sportsmen and women come by and large from very humble homes where the daily diet is eba, garri, eba. They don’t have access to proteinous foods. So height for height, an eighteen-year-old in Nigeria is slightly shorter than his counterpart in Cameroun or Ivory Coast. But we don’t even realize that in an age that demands the sharpest brains, because of the dietary problems we have and the poor state of our agriculture, we are unable to produce some of the finest minds we dream of.
Back to the state of insecurity, it is a frightening thing and the answer is not in breaking up Nigeria. It is a bit tragic when at the slightest provocation some Nigerians begin to talk about breaking up. It is a sad thing that the elite are so fond of this thing. That is not the concern of the man on the street. The man on the street is not interested in this politics of balkanization. The elites who are the most comfortable are the ones who raise it as an option. If you begin the break up, how do you do it? I hear people talking of regions but is there permanent peace in any region if there is no economic growth? Go down to the local government or your village, there are issues over which there are strong dissents. Go down to you village, people have conflict if contentment is absent. We are too quick to rush to that idea as a solution to our problems.
Having said that, of course violent conduct in one part of the country leading to bombings and killings will disturb especially when it looks selective. But even now you can see that Muslims and Christians are getting killed and people wonder this is almost near madness. The only real guarantee to near perfect security in any environment is the contentment of the largest segment of the population.
Would you say that northern leaders including you have done enough to re-orientate or refocus the energy of the youths from the region?
We have not! The North must now look at itself in the mirror and ask vital questions. Is it because for too long, we in the North have seen politics as the only industry worth investing in especially since the end of the first republic. There is too much interest in politics to the exclusion of economic activities. Since the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme, four hundred industries in Kano have collapsed.
The textile industry perished dragging down with it some five million families who were growing cotton. Agriculture is on the decline. The average age of the farmer today is sixty to sixty five. There is not enough intellectual input into agriculture and agro-processing. How many new industries have been commissioned in any part of the North in the last ten years? Is there any five-star hotel north of Abuja? There is none. What do we invest in? We were in power. The South was not in power at the political centre but they are miles ahead of us. When we have somebody in power, there is this opium addiction that we have somebody in power. What difference does it make if the man in the Villa is from Katsina or Benue? Does that decide the feeding of the majority of his villagers? I have been saying to the northern governors, you have been meeting in Kaduna, how about zonal economic summits in the three zones of the North? The president has made offers.
He wants to ban rice importation in 2015. If the South is the industrial hub, why can’t the North be the agricultural machine? Why producing less than seven million metric tons of maize? Why are we no longer producing groundnuts? We now buy groundnuts from Niger Republic. I am not objecting to a northerner being in the Villa, but for God’s sake, politics alone can only further destroy the north and worsen Nigeria’s social economic problem.
There have been sustained agitations by some section of the country for the setting up of state police. Will this solve the problems of insecurity in the country?
In a true federation, it is a fair thing to ask for. It makes sense in true federalism for states to have control of their police machinery. That is what is obtainable in the United States where we model our democracy after. But in the USA, each state has a House of Representatives, a Senate and a Supreme Court. That is how elaborate their system is. Our state did not develop the way the states of the United States of America developed. Ours were created through executive fiat. It is logical for people to think of state police but, in practice, I do not support it. Do you know why? I saw local government and regional police forces in the first republic and I saw the abuse to which they were put. I even see the abuse to which the federal police in Nigeria is put from time to time, during elections especially. When I was chairman of the PDP, there were times mobile police were deployed to organize a fake sitting of the state House of Assembly at night to impeach a governor. That was abuse of process and I said so then. The Federal Government did not elect the governor. It is up to the people through the assemblies to sanction the governor if he has done anything wrong.
Assuming now that the federal police is seen as a tyranny or near tyranny or a possible tyranny, we are going to create 36 tyrannies across the country because they will be abused, terribly abused. And if we do so now, it will not be three years before Nigerians begin to cry out against the state police forces.
Finally, can we pay? I do not see any state that will have less than three thousand police men. I don’t see any state needing less than N500million extra per month to pay that police force. They need uniforms, barracks, offices and other things. If the states are now grumbling that they don’t have enough money to take care of education and health, where will they get the money to pay the police? Why are we so quick to recommend the creation of institutions without thinking of the cost?
As I said before, the ultimate security any country can think of is the contentment of the largest segment of the population. It is that contentment that we should invest in now and not state police. Even now, abuses are going on. In Jigawa State, A.C.N members are being detained in Alkali courts without trial. Which governor will not do the same?
The governor names the Attorney General, he names the Chief Judge, appoints the chief of police.
Do you really think that if you are not on his side that police force will listen to you in a country such as ours where sycophants and poverty hold sway? When that police man knows that by doing the will of the governor he will get extra cash? The demand for state police is a very dangerous diversion and if they decide to go ahead with it, it will not be two years before Nigerians will begin to cry out against the horror that would be placed on their lives. And let me tell those governors clamouring for it that it is not a priority.
Let me also tell the federal police that it also need to reform. The Inspector General of Police should be strong enough to tell the president that the police force is not an instrument in the hand of the Federal Government or any body but an instrument for the enforcement of justice and fair play. Unfortunately, most IGPs see them selves as appointees of the president so they get involved in rigging elections.
Do you share the sentiment being expressed that the North should produce the president in 2015?
Sentiment is there and every society has its own sentiment. In fairness, there is reason for some balancing. There is logic in it. You can’t keep on having one segment of the country dominating the others. People object to that. It is a fair thing. Over the years, this anxiety almost reached a fever point when Abiola won the election which was annulled. We have to commend the Yorubas for not pushing it to the extreme because they had every reason to do so. Thank God we got over it.
In 1994, I was a member of the Constitutional Conference and we began this debate among the northern group about keeping away from contesting the election. It took years and some of these meetings were very heated which was why in 1999 there was no northern candidate for president in any of the political parties. People forget so easily that it was not imposed on us. It was resolved here in Abuja. It was a mature move by the North and people must recognize that.
Towards the middle of Obasanjo’s tenure, I chaired a meeting where we said eight years North, eight years South and I put it to vote and it was carried 57 to 2 in favour of eight years between the North and the South. I left the PDP after that and the thinking changed. Even if things changed, they should have sat down to resolve the matter by bringing reasons. It did not need to degenerate to the extent it went. It could have been done through concession with the agreement to look at it all over again.
Having said all that, yes there is agitation that it should go to the North, the South-east is also clamouring. Again it can be debated and discussed but whatever we do should be through dialogue and understanding and not for one group to say we have seized it, what can you do about it? The essence of democracy is dialogue, dispute resolution and sensitivity to each other’s feeling. Nobody should feel superior to the other. There is some logic to it. The northerners should not be made to feel that because the seat has gone South no northerner will ever sit there again. I heard that was the declaration of a certain political leader in his venom against the North. Such a language is irresponsible. Let the parties sit down and debate it. Whatever we do, the elite must not set Nigeria on fire.
Vanguard
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