Former Minister of Education, Co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) and founder of the Red Card Movement Dr Oby Ezekwesili speaks on the Buhari administration, national security and preparations for next year’s elections on a live Television Continental (TVC) programme, Platform, anchored by SAM OMATSEYE, Chairman of Editorial Board of The Nation newspapers.
You embarked on a one-person protest at the State House. Take us through what you went through?
Well, you know, earlier in the year, there have been spates of killings and as a matter of fact, it was the gruesome killings that we saw on the third of January that prompted about my tweeting about a red card to all of our political class for the cyclical pattern of poor governance that was resulting in the cheapening of the human life in Nigeria. And following that, many more deaths continued and one of those times, I put out a tweet and said someday, I would embark on a solo march in order to state clearly that I certainly am not comfortable with this idea that many people now die and we all just move on as though we have normalised this idea of death, people killing without any recourse, without any consequences. So, when I did that tweet, I was hoping that I would not need to because the government would get a handle on it. But wasn’t it shocking to wake up and to hear Plateau. And the fact that Plateau was happening without the rest of us knowing because it appeared to have started many days before it really blew up. And so, when I saw the sheer numbers and I saw the pictures of children and women, I said, there’s no excuse for not doing what I already said I would do. And so, I put out a tweet again and said, ‘next day, I’m going to be embarking on my solo march to the Villa.’ Of course, when I went off on my march, I got all the way to the first gate which is called the pilot gate. I know the topography of the villa. So, the first gate known as the pilot gate is the furthermost gate from the villa itself because you’ve got to go through two more gates and the final gate of the villa in order to get to the villa. And my destination was exactly there because I knew that once my name wasn’t on the list, I won’t be allowed. I didn’t even want the idea of being allowed. I just needed my message to be available to the president. That at least one citizen, this is not us. You can’t just allow this to continue. And in many ways, I also wanted citizens who were sitting at home who are in some way complicit in normalising what we’ve been saying, that you have a voice. Use that voice to say to the government that this is not acceptable. They stood in my way. One of the young men grabbed my sleeves, then grabbed my banner and said I wasn’t going to take my banner. First they said, ‘you have no right to come here.’ I said, no, no, no, stop it. The truth of the case is ‘I have a right to come as far as this place.’ You need to engage me to know what I have come here for. He said, ‘no’ we’re not listening to you. Just go back to where you’ve come. And then, the next thing, grabbing my banner, seizing telephones. And I simply said you are not getting away with this because you’re picking on the wrong person. Today, I will get my banner, you’re not going to get it off my hand. And the phones that you’ve taken, I’m going to get everything back. And finally, I would do what I came here to do. And so, one of them appeared from somewhere who seemed to have better command of the situation and he engaged me. And then, I made my statement and then told him that I needed to hang up my banner somewhere. I pointed to the place. And he said, ‘okay, I will lead you there, you will put your banner.’ And I did that and I turned and left.
Many people have looked at it and said, what is Oby up to? She doesn’t know the state of Nigeria, that Nigeria is not truly interested in shaking the system.
Well, I don’t know about Nigeria not being interested in shaking the system. This system is already shaken. The system is already shaken. Any group of people, maybe they are not seeing people out there. They’re not seeing people on the streets. So, most of our political class feel very very complacent. They feel that all is well with Nigeria. All is not well. It is important for us to own up to the fact that we are fragile at this moment. The country is brittle. It is pretty brittle and we have to be careful that we don’t push this further; the resilience that we have shown so far. Only God knows how far, how elastic it is. So, I believe that those who sort of say you can’t shake the system, they have another thing coming.
Someone has also said the era of the vibrant civil society is over and that the civil society now has become so weak because they’ve now been absorbed by political parties, by this surge of corruption in the country. And that civil society has been abused by a lot of people who see it as a platform to get jobs rather than to actually do things for society.
Well, you know, I think that people also need to recognise that our society has changed as ICT, ubiquitous technology, has changed the topography of social relationships. What we’ve now seen is that you can’t even define civil society the way we used to traditionally define it. So, every citizen, every individual, is an activist their own right to the extent that they choose to engage with the system. So, the whole idea of social contract that exists between the citizen and the nation state hasn’t changed.
Some people are saying it’s even becoming more and more false because. Where do you hold when the civil society is not there for you to even galvanise it.
Indeed, but then, the offshoot of that is that people can interact and create their own immediate collectives, right. So, different collectives can have different issues. It is not static. So, we have a situation where at one point in time, you and I agree on a particular issue that we believe should be addressed. We can become civil society with the dynamism that technology brings to the social interaction that we should focus on. And I do believe that we are actually better off now than in those days when just a few people made up civil society and could stay in a room and have meetings and issue a press release. Today, you have seen that it is a wider gamut of interaction. Now, moving it from just talk to real action in the field is an entirely different thing.
That’s where I was going
Yes, because the experience that we have is a very classic case of it. When we started off with the Bring Back Our Girls movement, it took tweets from me and so many around the world began to tweet. And then, the next thing, there was a march of the 30th of April 2014. That march, many people came out for it because we had galvanised on social media and also print media and electronic media. The march was crawling with individuals, all kinds of people, male, female but majority female. Then, we had boys, we had girls, people of all kinds of persuasions, people of all kinds of political leaning, people of all kinds of ethnicity. There was just simply one thing. We all came out on the basis of shared humanity with the girls who have been missing and for whom no credible action was being taken that was known to society, to the public. So, when that crowd gathered on the 30th of April, we got all the way to the national assembly and we engaged with the principal officers. To the credit of David Mark and his colleagues, they came out in the rain. We were all drenched together with them having that engagement. And what we said to them is ’what are you folks doing? It’s almost more than two weeks since girls were abducted in their hundreds from their school. And no word from the government. You are the National Assembly. You represent these children and their parents as their representatives or senators. So, what is it that is going on in the country? This is abnormal. And so, we’re here to say to you that we want to see immediate action of rescue for Chibok Girls.’ And we engaged and then we gave them letters and demands that we were making on the issue of abduction of women and especially children, boys or girls, just do something. And they promised us that they would go to the president and then they would have a response for us. And then, we marched back to the Unity Fountain. And when we got to the Unity Fountain, everyone was looking at me. I was default leader of the march that day. So, they were looking to me to give directions as to what was next. So, I said to them, we have two options. Option one is to say, we have handed over the problem. We’ve been heard loud and clear by the National Assembly. They would now liaise with the Executive and figure out what to do and then we would get feedback and we would disseminate, publicise the feedback. Or option two would be that we would keep coming out until real action is taken concerning the girls because the fact that they promised doesn’t mean that the action would be taken. And we needed to keep up the pressure for that action to be taken for the girls. So, if you wanted results, you needed to do much more than just come out for one day and that would be it. And when I said that to the crowd, they said ‘option two.’ And I wasn’t quite clear as to whether they understood what the implication of option two was. Option two meant that you will come out. I mean, we were coming out. The day that we came out, that April 30th, I was billed to be in one of the countries where I advise the president and the cabinet. But here I was. I had had to reschedule that because this was so important. Now, if they were saying, yes, we needed to be coming out, I was saying to myself, ‘oh, my God, what are you getting into?’ That means you’re going to have to come out yourself. So, I explained the implications. I said it’s easy for all of you to scream now because it’s like a mob. You know, mob psychology, screaming and saying ‘we will all come out’. When the rubber meets the road, it might be difficult for you people to come out. So, if you know that you know that this is going to be tough for you, please be among the people that choose option one. So, I’m going to go through these two options all again. And I did. And there was not many voices that spoke up for option one. So, it was option two. And so that began our everyday sit-out. So, we began to come out every day after the 30th of April. By the way, it wasn’t until about the fifth, regardless of the fact that we came out every day, it wasn’t until about the fifth that the then president then gave a presidential chat which we all looked forward to because we thought, finally, we’re going to hear something very tangible about what government had been doing that we may not have been aware of. But when the president granted that interview, then we knew we were in trouble and that the girls were in serious trouble. And that just killed the spirit of everyone. But in a way, it brought a strong sense of a movement. By the way, on that April 30, some people said to me, why is it that your commitment to this is so strong? What is in this thing that makes you so totally committed to it? And I said to them, certain things may appear very little to other people but they are big to me. On that day, a gentleman that I didn’t know was the chair of the Chibok community in Abuja, went on his knees in the rain and said to me, ‘ma, ma, please, promise me, promise us, promise my people that you will not stop asking for these girls until they bring our daughter back.’ And right there in the rain, I promised. I said to him, ‘we’re in this together. We would stand for these girls until they come back.’ Oh my God, it depends on what background you’re from. I come from the background where my dad said to me, ‘never open your mouth to promise what you don’t plan to do.’ Integrity is not complete until it is consistent.
So, we have moved a long way from that time. Some of the girls are back. So, what is your sense of the Chibok girls because we also have the Dapchi girls
So, the Chibok episode is a shame to this administration in every sense of the word. I have and together with the movement, we have appreciated the efforts that led to the return of 107 of the girls. However, it took so much fight for this to happen. The government at many times just behaved, even worse than the government under which the girls were abducted by being so resistant to citizen’s advocacy demanding for action for the girls.
Now, we have 2019 coming and there is always a sense that maybe we would get something. Do you have any optimism?
I don’t know for whatever reason, but one of the days that I was really in despair about the state of our nation and I was thinking that how come we’re just trapped. We’re trapped in this low equilibrium of leadership where regardless of what party, it just turns up this poor quality – bad leadership, bad governance and therefore governance failure in every sense of the word. And so, as I was going through this lamentation process, then I heard, when was the first election that led to Independence. I said 1959. I said, when was the next other election that happened? I said 1979. I said how many years? I said 20 years. So, your country seems to travel on a 20 year cycle where you have a very momentous election and then somehow, you make the mistake of squandering it following after. So, we said, 1959 to 1979, 20 years of militarisation, war and everything. But 79, you got into democracy. Then that democracy became short-lived and then you travelled the wilderness again and then the next other time you got election, 1999, 20 years. So, it said, how many years would it be by 2019. I said 20 years. It said, ‘so a historical election would happen in your country. You’re going to get something that is momentous. The issue is going to be, are you going to hold it and enable it to deliver good governance.’ So, in a way Sam, I don’t know, maybe it’s that spiritual side of me sort of saying that 2019 is going to deliver surprises to us.
Is it the year of the red card then?
I think that it is a year when citizens are taking their place in democracy. That was always the missing link. You know, our citizens always felt that they were the less part of the chain. So, it appeared as if citizens sort of looked at themselves as people who would react to what the political class has decided.