The politics of succession is heating up the polity. Would you subscribe to a single term tenure as panacea to the power struggle?
This is happening because most people who are in these public offices really didn’t win elections to get there. So, the office becomes a gigantic picnic because they don’t have serious programmes. If you have serious programmes and you are implementing those programmes and people are watching you, it should not be difficult for you to retain your seat. But if you are there doing nothing and you insist on remaining there just because of pride and ego, then, you go to any extent to remain in office.
We copied this system from the United States and Brazil. The people in those countries are doing well because they are driven by the dreams they brought into office and the work they have to do. So, whether you make it one term or two terms, some of the issues which have compromised integrity and performance will still be very much there because it is the man or woman in office who hasn’t any commitment to the service of society that will always treat being in office as a matter of life and death.
Talking about election, should we adopt a staggered system of election?
It will be useful because the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will have less of a burden at a given time. We would be able to concentrate more on a particular election at a particular time. But, I want to emphasise that the problem is not only with the INEC. We blame the INEC a lot because it is its responsibility. But the criminal damage done to the national elections in Nigeria is more by politicians than the INEC. It is the politicians who corrupt the INEC officials; politicians are the ones who, through corruption, are destroying the judicial system in the country. The bribes are getting too large and too tempting to be resisted. Today, we hear of serious cases of abuse of court processes and miscarriages of justice by many judges, which the National Judicial Council (NJC) is now probing. Therefore, there more be, first and foremost, severe penalty for election malpractices. I suggest imprisonment without an option of fine. For anyone who manipulates elections, if he is found guilty, should go to prison. Once that begins, in fact, let me say this that in some parts of India, election malpractices almost earned a life imprisonment. It was what sanitised the system there; otherwise, India would have been impossible to manage as a democracy. We need to introduce those penalties here. And that should cover judges who tamper with justice and politicians who benefit from rigged elections.
The review of the 1999 Constitution is on. If you were to suggest three things to be included, what would they be?
First, I think they should look into this arrangement that guarantees some forms of equity at the federal and state levels.
Equity? How do you mean?
When we talk about the rotation of the Presidency, people think it is undemocratic and yet, there are serious sensitivities in Nigeria. There is the danger of one part of the country seizing power and dominating it eternally. Then, in some states, there are some majority ethnic groups, which believe that minorities should never exist. One of the weaknesses of democracy is the tyranny of the majority. And, it is as dangerous as any military dictatorship, even if it is a democracy because it is the cause of tension and disaffection in the polity. For instance, there is no reason why the governorship in any state shouldn’t go through the three senatorial districts.Since there are three zones in every state, let it move around so that nobody feels marginalised. I am an Idoma man and I don’t like the situation in my state where the Tiv majority feels that I should never have the chance to be governor. And it is so in some states like Kogi, Cross River, Anambra, Delta, Abia. These are issues that create real tension in these states. As long as we still have the tyranny of the majority, that can’t be guarantee peace.
Number two, the lawmakers should give serious attention to the issue of women. The abuse of women; the denial of women and other weaker people like children and the disabled of some privileges in society is unacceptable. Issues like rape and other things that women are subjected to should be dealt with very seriously under justiciable right.
And third, the post of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and the State Attorney Generals (SAG) should be contested for as it is done in many states of the United States of America. Instead of being appointive, it should be contested for and allow the electorate to vote for whoever they want. It is at that level that we can expect equity and justice. First, it insulates the man from being a stooge of the person who is supposed to appoint him, be he the President or the governor. And once he owes his allegiance to the people and not the President or Governor, the better for this country.
Insecurity in the country has assumed a dangerous dimension. What is the way out?
My approach to the issue of security is that real security is to be found in the contentment of the largest majority of the society. It can’t be procured by guns, tanks and machetes. The economy is the biggest victim of insecurity in Nigeria today. And unless we can create jobs and provide for the well being of the majority of society we will never have an army large enough or the police force efficient enough to suppress tendencies which are caused by hunger and disaffection.
So let us create the jobs in agriculture, in housing, in industrial growth, and let’s give up this nonsense we inherited from the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), which has continued to cause pain in this society and impoverished the majority while we gullibly hang on to it in the name of no alternative. We still have the highest interest rate among most countries in the world. So, it is impossible to borrow to invest to produce resources in agriculture. We can’t feed ourselves. We have to import everything from everywhere in the world including China. We import tooth picks, paste, Irish potatoes and so on. Unless and until the interest rate regime is set, such that people can borrow and invest, all the noise we are making about progress, will never happen. And our youths are going to be getting angrier and angrier.
You left the PDP in 2005. Many other chieftains of the party also left before the 2007 general elections. But almost everybody has gone back. Why have you not gone back to the PDP?
People have gone back out of personal choice. I have not gone back because the issues that made me to leave the party have not changed at all. So, I have decided that I am more comfortable where I am now. Though I am still friendly with those of them in the PDP, I don’t think we share the same basic principles on a large number of issues. That is why I have not gone back.
Hasn’t there been pressure from many quarters all this while?
There has been and, of course, I made my position known to them.
You recently said you weren’t prepared to be the cook of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Does this mean that the in-thing was for the President to always want to lord it over the party chairman?
At that time, yes, it was the in-thing. If you remember, Chief Solomon Lar left, and so was Chief Barnabas Gemade. There was the tendency not to give the party chairman sufficient respect and regard. Some party members, who bowed to the pressure or law of sycophancy, began to appoint the President and governors as leaders of the party. There is no such provision in our constitution; it is not in the guidelines of INEC or the constitution of the party that made the President the leader of the party or the governor the leader of the party in the state. The President is the leader of the country and the governor is the leader of the state. You can’t give them the responsibility of leading the party because that is where all the imposition and distortions set in. There is no more party supremacy; internal democracy is destroyed once people hang on the neck of the executive leaders the responsibility of leading the party at the same time. And therefore, there was the tendency to treat the party chairman purely as some low-level administrative officer.
At our time, I earned no salary as chairman of PDP. There was no salary all I had was a sitting allowance of N30,000. That is the truth. Now, I hear they pay N2million in a month as salary to the chairman of PDP. And the sitting allowance is N150,000. Things have changed. It wasn’t so in the time of Lar, Gemade, or myself or Ogbulafor or Nwodo or even Ali.
Do you regret ever being in the PDP?
No. We founded the party at the beginning. And we intended it to be a strong democratic party. I was part of the initial writing of the constitution with people like Jemibewon and others. But the party got disfigured because there were too many aggressive incursions into it by the intruders. I played my role, stood by what my conscience told me to do and when it was no longer feasible, I made my views known in writing. And when party members thought I was a heretic, I left.
The circumstances under which you left has been a subject of controversy. Can you tell us something about it?
Yes. There was the story that I was sent out at gun point. It is not true. But there were indications that violence might be deployed, if I refuse to quit. There was even a comment by a leading member of the party that I was going to be given the Bola Ige treatment, if I fail to quit.
