During the heady days of the military rule, Dr. Dipo Fashina and a host of others in the civil rights groups fought to free Nigeria from dictatorship. Fashina, a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Obafemi Awolowo University, (OAU) Ile-Ife, Osun State, is also a former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Edozie Udeze met him recently.
DO you think that what the Civil Right Groups fought against during the military have been achieved today?
I think when you look back you find out that, all we did together was to get the military off the stage. There were then the two ‘wes’, okay. The first ‘we’ were groups of people who were already in active politics.
These were people who were in party politics then and were really fully involved in it. These were those who were in MKO Abiola’s party then; there were those who were in NADECO. All these already had party affiliations, yet they were members of the Civil Rights Groups. These were people who took advantage of party politics to swim through to the other side.
Then there were the group who had a larger view of what was needed to get Nigeria on the path of progress. There were the people who we saw as the socialists and who were also on the broad left. Those people decided that it was necessary to free the country in order to advance to the next level. That time, there was a coalition of the civil rights people. There was the late Beko Ransome-Kuti who was later joined by the late Gani Fawehinmi and so on.
All these were led by people who had their antecedents on the left – that is the socialists group. Now, I am saying this because, when you look at it now, what we were fighting for was to be able to get not just the nebulous idea of the people, trying to chose their own type of government, we were also fighting for a situation in which people would be able, generally, to advance the cause of workers. That was the general idea and concept behind the struggle and the motivation to liberate the society. We needed to produce the ordinary people who would build their own society, where there would be at least a minimum welfare state.
However, coming out of the defect of military rule, we now found out there was not really unity of goals. As far as that other group was concerned, all we needed to do was to get the military off our backs and then life continues. After that there would be party politics so that they would get into power.
And another said, well, after the defeat of the military, the forces will be reorganized so that we would advance and improve the cause of the working people. Now, what has happened is that those who just saw that anti-military struggle as a way of just getting political power are the ones who have benefited from the status quo. They are the people who now claim and cling to the leadership of the state. You’d be surprised that when you now hear the history of the anti-democratic struggle you only hear about people who were in NADECO. And that is not quite correct.
NADECO is now what is on the lips of people. Yet there were the CD, the JACON, etc, etc. After the military struggle, it was easy for our patriots who also struggled to enter into the mainstream politics, win governorships, establish political parties and all that. That is where we are presently.
That other ‘we’ is still trying to reorganise itself. We knew what we wanted to do – to build a socialist country, not to build a Nigeria that is ruled by the same forces who now behave as the military did. Now they are being influenced and controlled by American government, international funders and so on. These are the people who funded the so-called democratic forces and they are now in total control of the affairs of the nation and the people.
Some Southern leaders of thought have been advocating for state police. Do you think Nigeria is ripe for that now?
Usually in Nigeria when there is a problem, people will say okay it was there before, that there was regional police before and it was later dismantled. And why not bring it back now? You see, I find those arguments rather light-headed, because, unless you ignore history, you’ll not get to the root of these problems. You have to really analyse history to see what it was like in the past. When we had state or regional police, what was it like, what was the situation then? Why was it dismantled and so on?
What was the situation in which we had regional police? And what is the situation now? Now where are we going? For me, right now, honestly it is not that I want to dodge the question. It is to get the fundamental problems in proper perspective. What is the police force for? What function does it play in Nigeria today?
In Nigeria now, as I am talking to you, do the police protect the people, the masses of the nation? Do the police advance the interest of those millions who are suffering in the society? What is the state of the police itself? When you look at it, our police is a rag– tag force. It is badly equipped, badly paid; it is without any doubt in a bad state.
Clearly from the way the police has been stretched – bad condition of service, corruptive tendencies, you don’t expect them to operate better. Now, again, when you look at it, when the police come out to do a function, it is basically to oppress. To quell riot, to collect money, that is the main function of the police as it is today.
For me, instead of saying how do we create a society where we will transform the police, to play the role that it ought to play, we are not talking of a police that is so badly run and equipped, badly treated and all it can do is to serve the function of the rulers. This is not proper at all.
There is no general universal answer to the question of the state police. No, there is none. With the way the Nigerian police is right now people are talking democracy, but there is no class now that is truly committed to democracy. Or is there? That includes the governors.
What the governors believe is that all you need is to keep power by all means. For me, the question is badly put – a state police issue now, it may turn out that someone wants to use it in the hands of corrupt people and anti – democratic elements. I don’t think that it is historically justified to have a situation when state police can be the answer. It has to be based on the historical function under which we are now in this society. I am answering the question whether or not police should be in state hands or not. I am basing my views on the historical parameter in which we are.
NUPENG threatened to go on strike based on the oil subsidy probe and other cases of corruption in the system. How do you assess this vis-à-vis the level of corruption in Nigeria?
The question of the oil subsidy thing is a question I think the working class people of this society who are the ones at the receiving end should be able to defend. Let me say one thing –we are here because of political and economic choices, not by a group of people who have been installed there to lead. It is not a question of who is there now. When we told people that EFCC, ICPC and so on are not our ideas, that they were what they were out of the conditions that we were given, many people did not believe us.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala being there now in government is not an accident. It is not at all. The subsidy probe is part of the agenda why she is there. And you saw all the futile arguments she presented over there about the oil subsidy removal. Now Nigerians know better.
The question that rises today is: the way we pose this question needs to be re – examined. Should we prosecute the Faruk Lawans or the Femi Otedolas and so on? Should we now have a new PIB bill? Those questions are important; yes we can prosecute them. The first thing we have to do is if we begin to talk about prosecution in a country where the judiciary is bad, even if the judiciary were the best, the question for me still remains how do you punish the offenders. How do you punish people who have been found guilty of fraud? A serious country will of course punish those found guilty.
But the harder question is, what is the root of this oil theft? How did we get to this level? It is that history we have to look at first to be able to get it right. In this country, many people have been saying that our problem is that the people who are running this country are the same people who are interested in power for the sake of amassing wealth. And as long as power is in the hands of these people, this cannot be called a country.
So, that is the fundamental question. Those who are in the habit of enabling them – the IMF agents here, the civil servants who join them in this situation… Come to the history of it all. When we removed the military, President Olusegun Obasanjo who took over was the one who created the basis and foundation for all this. When he created all these conglomerates; when he created what he termed captains of industries. And then he created Transcorp through which he created the policy of selling all public institutions to private ownership.
So, if you want to clean up this mess, you cannot start from here. You have to start from the Obasanjo era. They are all alike; the same set of people. We are talking of a class of rulers all of whom are involved in this melee of corruption. Then you go into it and the task is big. I am not against taking people to court. But taking people to court and appearing to punish them here and there seem to be the same to me. They seem to exchange batons and, therefore, there seems to be no progress at all.
People are talking about corruption daily and …
Oh yes, people are criticising it, calling for a final solution. Yes, it is an enfeebled government. But it is an enfeebled government because it is the latest stages of a system of a regime of fraud that started with Obasanjo. That is what all of us should remember. So while we are dealing with it, we should remember it is the latest in an ancestry of the same corruptive tendency by the same people.
I am saying this because we move from one illusion to the other. And we still come back to the same thing. People should be striking for what they feel is a fraud and it is legitimate. Those who want to solve the problems of this country must put into consideration that all we have are the same class of people who hold the country by the jugular. Until we wriggle free from their tendency to continue to tie us down perpetually, we will continue to run in circles.
What is your take on private universities that produce so many first class graduates every year?
Let us also talk about federal universities. In most federal universities there are certain disciplines where you can hardly produce first class graduates. The history is there and it is justified. And nowadays when you produce just one or two first class there after many years, people will know their worth.
But these days, when I hear of a private university producing dozens and dozens of first class materials, I wonder how and why. Sometimes they produce, double or even triple what a federal university has not produced since its inception or in the past twenty years. When we hear this, of course, we know that something is wrong.
In some federal universities, there is no one who will tell you that you cannot fail a course. Of course, where you fail you either have a re-sit or carry-over. This is to maintain a standard. But in some private universities that I know you do not fail. No, you do not and this is unorthodox. I also know some people who think private universities are not up to standard. And in order to make the world see them as better, they have to produce many first class to justify their existence.
I know that if there is any federal university that produces as many first class as the private ones do, you’ll ask what is wrong. It is not a healthy development for education in the country, too many first class is not a tea party and it is not an everyday thing.
Without prejudice that there are many bright students in the private universities, that is not a guarantee that first class materials are that many. Remember also that they do not have the kind of quality staff we have. Most of them still borrow lecturers from here where we have better qualified teachers and professors. So how come they now do better than federal universities? It is really difficult to imagine how they now train extremely high quality students who garner first class at random.
Generally, many of us are now very critical of the standard being set for our young graduates by the private universities. We are also worried that this too may not be too healthy for our society, where people with first class cannot easily prove what they are worth. We need to really, really look into it for the benefit of our educational standard and the future of this country.
