LEADERSHIP, NIGERIANS’LL TRUST PDP AGAIN
It scares some people and some people even trivialise it. Structural problems have been with us in this country over the decades, whether you talk about the economy, the politics, even social relation but reduced to fundamentals, when we are talking about restructuring.
What does it mean? I will just take two examples, not to take too much time. One is that education is the key of the development of any region. So, if you have restructuring, it will make it possible to put an end to strikes in this country. There is no reason whatsoever for lecturers of University of Lagos or Bayero University, Kano or Port Harcourt earning the same salary and some lecturers either in Ekiti State or Kogi State and so on. People should be able to have that independence. That is the autonomy we are taking about. So, that is part of restructuring.
When things go wrong in Calabar, those who are lecturing or workers in Niger State University or some other places, will not down tool. That is part of restructuring. A lecturer or a professor in a university even within the same state can be earning different salaries. Vice chancellors do not have to be earning the same salaries. But when you have these straight jacket types of arrangement, of course, there are bound to be problems. That is why people ground everybody.
The other area I will like to talk to is in the political arena. Why for goodness sake, should a governor in some states that can hardly generate enough to maintain basic needs and the civil services be earning the same salaries as those of the others? Restructuring will make you cut your coat according to your cloth and you develop at your own pace and you will be able to manage your affairs the way it should be managed, not depended on what is going on in other places and there will be very healthy competition and it should be possible for people to move around. But when you put everybody in a situation that you do not have what could be regarded as true federalism, you have a situation that is akin to having a military type of structure and governance. I mean it is not in the interest of the country. So, without restructuring, we are joking! We are not going anywhere. We should be able to restructure meaningfully and liberate the energies of Nigerians to actualise their potential and encourage people to develop at such pace that would be to the benefit to the people. You don’t tie people down here and there and you do not generate unnecessary tension, because it leads to tension when you bottle up everybody unnecessarily.
Restructure doesn’t mean separating. It doesn’t mean confederation, no! You will have federating units and certain things will be done centrally. There will be less wastage, simply because by the time you limit what is handled at the centre, states and local governments do quite a lot and of course, people will be challenged to tap their internal resources because opportunities will be there for them to tap what has been left dormant. The governors come cap-in-hand to Abuja and once they collect whatever, they go back and share and that is because you are having free money. So, that is the essence of our restructuring.
What is your take on the recent proscription and subsequent desigation of IPOB as a terrorist group? Do you think it was a decision taken in good faith?
I don’t believe that such a decision ought to have been taken. The people in the South-east have great leaders who are patriotic, who are nationalistic and who want to build a strong nation and who really could easily handle what has been going on in that part of the country. And of course, I also believe that if they had been encouraged, they would have done quite a lot in terms of getting the IPOB people to realise the futility of what they are trying to do, because you do not necessarily need to have witnessed the war that took so much out of Nigeria in terms of human life and resources to appreciate the fact that whoever claims to be proud of being an African and is based in Nigeria is doing that, because of what Nigeria represents presently in terms of size, in terms of resources and in terms of image.
When you now say you want to go ahead and be on your own, what it means is that you are not thinking through the implications all along. So, those people are now agitating based on their own perception of what they would like to be. What we needed to do at that time was to have moved in early enough. Why are these people agitating? Address those issues, because they will not go away and the leaders there too will be encouraged to look into all these problems.
The Ohaneze has been very wonderful in looking into the issue and taking position and other leaders too. But it shouldn’t have been allowed to degenerate to the level that it did but then, having degenerated to that level, you do not use the sledge hammer to kill an ant. It is not right categorising such people with their agitations here and there and of course, by the time we deal with the situation approximately through dialogue and so on, people with the type of sentiment that it generated would not have been generated.
Again, one other thing that we should always appreciate in this country, a multi-ethnic society, is that we have to interact and rotate, bearing in mind some underlying differences – that we are trying to transfer allegiance from local peculiarities; ethnic groups to the new nation, and once some people feel rejected, external rejection leads to internal solidarity and people will now see themselves as disadvantaged and it leads to so many things.
Nigeria recently turned 57. Do you think her unity as a country is truly settled and not negotiable?
Nigeria is an ongoing project, we should take it as such and realise that there are serious challenges ahead that we still need to face. I believe that by now we are supposed to have reached a situation, whereby those who are born outside their so-called states of origin, should be regarded as bonifide. I wouldn’t call it indigenes but residents of where they are. They should have equal rights to vie and do whatever they want to do.
Indigenship, I believed that is one of the things that is creating problems for this country and so long as you make distinctions, some people whose parents came from Ogbomosho and have been living either in Jos or Kaduna or their parents are from Kano, they have been in Ibadan for decades and they still will be regarding such people as belonging to some other places, I do not think it is right. We should be able to integrate in such a way that people will have this common bond that this is our nation and that because you regard yourselves as more or less equals, the love that one generates will have a spillover effect on the harmony within the system and the nation, of course, can only grow on that basis.
But, until we take those things that appear to be little things seriously, we will not be getting the type of nation that we should be building and of course, when there is no bond, people will be talking about negotiating relationship. They will be talking about Nigeria still not there. When will Nigeria be there? We have to start taking steps. Some steps were taken on the part by our fathers but we did not build on them. It was possible in those days for someone from the north to be a mayor in Enugu and in some other areas. Of course, in Oshogbo, there was a northerner that won election and in some parts of the north so many southerners. That we should develop.
We should have built on that and type of relationship that existed when you talk about Kaduna, Lagos – those are cosmopolitans areas, the way people are developing and even in the rural areas too. People were integrating, they are seeing themselves as Nigerians, but all of a suddenly, because of the selfishness of politicians, they started using elements that divide people as weapons of electioneering simply, because they want to gain some supports instead of basing their campaigns on issues they are now using such factors as ethnicity, religion and so on and so forth, of course, that further divides the nation and it is not good for us.
So, in summary, I believe that we will get there once we begin to seriously take appropriate steps, but this is not something that can be imposed; it is a way of life and we have to appropriate that and take necessary steps to cement that in the education sector, in the social relations and some other areas and more particularly in the political area. The leadership matters a lot in this regard. The leaders can make or mar, the unity of this country and whether indeed we have a strong nation that we can be proud of and that we can continue to build and pass on to the coming generation will depend on what the leaders do.
One of the issues that were raised during the 2015 election against your party was the matter of security and precisely that of Boko Haram, herdsmen killings, kidnappings and the rest of them. Now, if you look at the APC administration since 2015, do you think it has done anything better than the PDP did?
We all got it wrong initially, because there was this assumption that the phenomenon will fizzle out and there was what I at some point regarded as failure of intelligence. But the very moment it started shaking the country, then of course, the government started doing certain things about it and I could say categorically that the approach was based on the limited appreciation of the dimension that it could take. Those of us who have studied conflicts in societies and terrorism and all that know that the way it was going, it could consume the whole country.
We thank God that in spite of some other short comings here and there, President Jonathan was able to really face the challenges appropriately at some point and he did his best at that time. But then there was need to build on it, but there was disconnect – a gap – shortly after the change of power. If it took some time before the new administration realised that they could not politicalise this thing, we really need to tackle it and then they now started doing something concrete about it.
My own approach would have been slightly different anyway and this is something that you have to defeat the Boko Haram, you also have to win the heart of the people and do those things that led to Boko Haram in the first place and make sure that we do not have Boko Haram in the future or the ones that are on row we clean up effectively. So, what some people regard as regular war will not arise.
How will you rate the current fight against graft? Are you of the view too that it is selective?
I believe that it is selective, because we know what has been going on in this country all along and I believe that people should do things not based on personal interest, what will suit them politically or even economically, but what is good for the country; what is good for the future. The coming generations are watching and in this country, the things that are done today have consequences for the future.
Once you decide to be selective, you are sending a very wrong signal to the society and those, who are coming behind and this is why I have been worried and say we really need to tackle corruption no matter whose ox is gored. And until that is done, I will not applaud whatever is going on, and people are watching and people have been very disappointed about the way it has been handled.
Lastly, as you journey towards the PDP chairmanship, what is your biggest fear and why?
As we are moving forward, there is nothing I can say or consider major or minor fear. Each time I wake up and I am praying, my mind is always drawn to the book of Isaiah that says “fear not, for I am with you” and on the basis at that, I just go on. I do not see any challenges as insurmountable. We have a Caretaker Natural Executive Committee that is anchoring what is happening. I have every confidence that they are going to do a very transparent election. I also have the confidence that we have all learnt from our past and that everything will go very well.
The concern that I have, which I also put into prayers is the fact “that a tree does not make a forest”. I am going to work with a team. May God throw up candidates, party faithful that will be passionate about this party, the way I am passionate so they will be committed to doing the right, to put an end to the absurdities of the past and we will together start a new beginning. I have no control over that but I know that God has control and he would lead our leaders to encourage people, who will truly serve in a different style following due process, the rule of law, promoting internal democracy and making sure that the love of the masses is paramount in their minds.
Above all, that by the grace of God, when we take over power, we’ll truly serve the people, so that people will know that government is there to serve them and that the shortcomings of the past become part of our history.