A former chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr Olisa Agbakoba, in this interview with WALE AKINSELURE, speaks on his role in the June 12 agitation that terminated military interregnum on May 29, 1999, the involvement of pro-democracy activists in politics, propositions regarding a working formula of governance in Nigeria, the President Bola Tinubu administration and the influence of governors over traditional institutions. Excerpts:
President Bola Tinubu, in his June 12 national broadcast, identified you as one of the heroes of the June 12, 1993 struggle. You were particularly associated with the United Action for Democracy (UAD) and the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO). Do you think the intents behind the formation of the NADECO and have been realized? If not, why?
Let me clarify first that I was not in NADECO and it is a fallacy that I need to correct. There were two pro-democracy groups. The first was the younger group, more militant, more activist and that was driven by the Campaign for Democracy (CD); the second group was NADECO, more elderly, were part of the political structure and led by the late Abraham Adesanya. I was the first to start up the pro-democracy movement called Civil Liberties Organisation on the 15th October, 1987, when we felt it was time to have an organized rather than individualized resistance to what we saw as military rule and that democracy was the answer for Nigeria. So, it got organized and off it went. Of course, there were many groups, there was National Liberation Council of Nigeria (NALICON) led by Wole Soyinka; there was NADECO as you mentioned; there was Joint Action Committee of Nigeria (JACON) led by the late Gani Fawehinmi; there was Committee for the Defence of Human RIghts (CDHR) led by the late Beko Ransome-Kuti; there was a movement led by the late Dr Fredrick Fasehun; there was the student movement and the labour movement. All of us crystalised into what was called opposition to military rule and it was very successful. At the end, we managed to push out the military. But I think the first strategic mistake which perhaps accounts for what we see today was when we were asked by the international community, upon the death of MKO Abiola and Sani Abacha, because there was a huge gap. The international community did not want Nigeria to fall into an abyss and the challenge of conflict in Nigeria would have worldwide implications, particularly for the West African region. So, the international community, led by the United States, the United Kingdom, in particular, sent envoys here and they played a very strong role in shaping the democratic process that emerged. We were asked, as pro-democracy activists, to participate, but we made a very strategic error in declining to participate because we felt our task, now I see was wrong, was simply to push out the military. The honest truth is that the quality of politicians that then went through the filter in 1999, 2000 was extremely poor, bereft of any ideas or ideology and I think that became the root cause of the continuing challenges we see in the political process. Like it or not, the political process is absolutely immature, void of principles and there is absolutely no integrity. There is hardly a politician who has not been in at least two or three political parties, that you will not find anywhere in a developed system. Here you see politicians shifting positions in the bat of an eye and the sole consideration for doing this is power. Unfortunately, since 2000, our political party process has not grown. From 2000 till as I speak to you, we do not have political parties, what we have are political ladders that politicians climb to ascend to power. That has meant that our democratic journey which oscillates around four important cycles has not even gone beyond the second. The first cycle is authoritarian; the second is semi-democratic or semi-authoritarian, depending on how you look at it; the third one is the illiberal, where you can see semblance of democracy but it isn’t there. So, in a sense, Nigeria has drifted from semi-autocratic to semi-democratic to illiberal. An illiberal democracy has features where you have formal elections, we call it electoral autocracy. So, every four years, of course, there is election. So people cannot say there is no democracy in Nigeria because you have elections. But the question is: what is the quality of that process? Are people participating? Are their votes counting? Can we, in Nigeria, for instance, have what is happening in the United Kingdom where Labour Party is going to whitewash the conservatives? Conservatives are reputed to going to lose this election. This is going to be the worst result in about 100 years, because in the last 14 years, they have performed badly. Do we have a situation here where as a result of bad performance, people can say, ‘We will not vote you.’ If that is not the case, clearly, we don’t have a political process. To be quite honest with you, if I look back to when I came out of prison in Enugu under Sani Abacha’s detention orders, after he died, and look at it today, the difference is so marginal. The difference is I don’t see soldiers wearing uniform in office, I see civilian governors. But I ask: are these governors really different from governors of the past who wore khaki?
Some would argue that pro-democracy activists like you are behind the Third Force movement. But the Third Force is yet to achieve the goal of producing Nigeria’s president. What is the debacle of the Third Force movement being the force to look up to?
The Third Force isn’t the pure pro-democracy force we had in 2000. Third Force is an amalgamation of political jobbers, pro-democracy activists. So, I would not refer to the Third Force as one to look up to to take us to the Promised Land. We felt at that point that we were above politics; it wasn’t for us to descend. When I look at that process today, that was a major error. I don’t say that if we had taken part, it would necessarily have resulted in greater things. But I think it would have changed the system if we were in it and laid the foundation. If you come to office seeking to be local representative of Eti-Osa local government area, Lagos, then I would be doing so out of two reasons, not because of the money. I think there would have been a difference and that was a major lost opportunity that the pro-democracy movement should be held accountable for the grave error that it made. The error occurred in Chief Gani Fawehinmi’s house, which was where we met in the night. All the leading lights of the pro-democracy movement met and decided on a vote that we should not take part in the process, and I maintain, that was a huge error.
President Tinubu is referred to as a pro-democracy activist. So, you have one of your own now in power. Do you think he has shown leadership for pro-democracy activists being in leadership positions?
To be honest with you, I will like him to do more, being one of the active members of our movement. When I speak I don’t pretend that I speak for every single Nigerian, but I am sure that all Nigerians will join me in saying that they wished that the country were a lot better. They wished there was food on the table, hospitals were available, the democratic process was stronger. So, I think it is a possibility for President Tinubu to see that there is an advantage he has in being a member of our movement to do a lot more than he is doing.
There have been different propositions regarding federalism. What do you consider the most workable steps that should be taken to achieve what people call true federalism?
It is just take the constitution that has 98 items of power and give to the states what belongs to the states and leave at the centre what belongs to the centre. Just devolve power from the centre to the states. So the states would be responsible for those things that are clearly better achieved at the state level not at the federal level. Take education for instance, what is the business of the federal government in education? I can see the Federal Government dealing with defence policy, foreign policy, justice policy, monetary policy, banking, overall economic policy; everything else should be at the state level so that you don’t have the intense competition for presidential power at one level in Abuja. You will have intense competition across 36 states. People will like to be governor because they see that being governor is very relevant, which is why Ahmadu Bello declined to become prime minister and allowed Tafawa Balewa to be. He preferred to be in Kaduna and they used the Northern Nigeria Development Corporation in the North, Western Nigeria Development Corporation in the West and Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation in the East to drive these three regions. Between 1964 and 1966, the World Bank rated the Eastern Nigeria economy as the fastest growing in the world because there was very intense, healthy competition among these three. But today, the Federal Government stifles everything. So there is no initiative. The governors have no powers under the Exclusive List; that is, 68 items of power; they have no power under the 30 remaining items we call Concurrent. So, a governor is no more than a ceremonial chief who has money from the centre, which he abuses to the neglect of his people. Why don’t you empower him so that he has no reason to come to Abuja? Most governors spend more time in Abuja than in their state capitals because they know that is where the money is. But if you transfer natural resources back to the states, the only challenge I see about transferring natural resources was identified when we were in the national conference in 2014, which is oil and gas. We made a special procedure for oil and gas. We said we will have what we call legislatively, the Sunset clause. It is difficult to persuade the Nigerians that oil should be exclusively owned by the Niger Delta people. So, the Niger Delta people agreed that there will be a sunset clause where the Federal Government would retain control of oil and gas natural resources for about 30 years and transfer while immediately all other resources, whether solid or whatever, will go back to the states. Ondo sits on one of the world’s largest deposits of bitumen, it’s there doing nothing; Enugu sits on one of the world’s largest coal free from sulphur, it’s absolutely doing nothing. Enugu down through the Benue into Onitsha and Delta is a large deposit of gas. It’s sitting down there since 1958 doing nothing. There is agriculture in the North. Due to the fact that the federal government controls everything, nobody in the states is doing anything. So, true federalism is the way forward.
What about the proposition for six-year single tenure, parliamentary form of government?
It is absolutely diversionary. It is because people don’t want to face the truth, and the truth is: devolve power. Forget all this talk about six-year single tenure, is that the problem? The problem is, make the federating units viable. No one will be interested in being Nigeria’s president in the way that we kill ourselves. Six-year single tenure is not the problem. A president, who has sat down there for four years, if you give him six years, is likely to be worse. The only way forward is to transfer real authority to the states. I always remember Chief MKO Abiola’s famous solution for this. He said, I have four wives and I live in the main house and have four bungalows and each wife lives in a bungalow with her children. The soup of the day in one house may be okra; in another house, it might be okpa, I don’t care because it is their business at their different bungalows. But if I have all four of my wives and children in the main house with me, there will be chaos. That is an apt example of the kind of democracy and federal system that Nigeria needs, not six years. That is diversionary because we don’t want to answer the problem of devolving power and making the states viable.
But with the powers that governors have, they are already perceived as emperors, abusing power at will. Yet you talk about giving them more powers!
To devolve power is one leg of the process. Devolving power does not mean that you do not build institutions. Why I say Nigeria is an illiberal democracy is that our institutions don’t exist, so strong men overwhelm the institutions. If you want to devolve power and make the region strong, you must also, in the context of the region, create institutions that, in the words of the late Professor Ben Nwabueze, constitute the notion of limited government. The governor cannot be limitless in power; he must be limited by the legislature, judiciary. But if it is the governor that nominates every judge, people don’t know that. No judge is appointed in Nigeria without the imprimatur of the governor. So, the governor is a feudal lord; the governor is ‘worse’ than the president because he is the feudal lord. The governor is the sort of person you found in the English crown in the 14th century. He can do whatever he likes. But what we do when we are designing a new federal system is to: first, devolve power; the second step is in the devolution of powers, you create institutions that the governor cannot control. A good example of how that has happened is the judiciary. In spite of the weaknesses of state judiciaries, most of the Chief Judges have held their own and the governors cannot interfere. So, you create a situation where you have a strong legislature that does not take orders from the governor because their funding does not come from him. There are so many schemes that you can introduce. South Africa has it in chapter 10 of its constitution. It is called, ‘Institutions Consolidating Democracy.’ We can incorporate that chapter 10 of the South African constitution into all the constitutions of all the states. So the governor would immediately see that he just can’t run riot as they do today across the states. I know that the governors, if you give them all these powers, may become tyrants but my answer is that if you also limit their powers constitutionally and create the very clear process by which a governor that misbehaves will find himself out of Government House, you will find that it is not as bad as you think.
You were part of the national conference in 2014. The report of that conference is yet to be implemented. Is that the abandoned solution to Nigeria?
The conferences that we have had are absolute waste of time. Those conferences have been engineered by various political actors for their own personal interest. What I think should happen is, if we had somebody in office, for example, President Tinubu who understands politics, he does not need a national conference to tell him that, all he needs to do is, by fiat, organize a one-week intense engagement with the National Assembly to transfer all powers relevant to the states to the states. The conferences that we have held since the Babangida are useless because we already know the answers. Those conferences have been held in order to elongate power or to obfuscate the real issues. Nobody needs to tell me, as a constitutional lawyer and democracy scholar, that the problem is too much power with the federal government. Why do I need a conference for that? I just need sensible ministers around me and I need a good President of the Senate, a good Speaker of the House of Representatives to say, let’s distribute power, and it can be done in a day. It is simple as ABC though I know it is not simple to implement because of agendas. It is the agenda of people that is stopping what I have described as a very simple process.
A typical instance of the governor wielding his power in Kano and Rivers states; for the sake of peace, how should the issues in the state be resolved?
I don’t discuss personal things. I am a policy man.
So you don’t care that governors have the power to remove traditional rulers and discard traditional systems!
The traditional system pre-dates Nigeria. So, I have always asked myself the question, why is it that if I want to be Obi of Onitsha, I need to be endorsed by a governor? I don’t need endorsement by a governor, I am a traditional ruler of my people and my people lifted me and put me on the throne. So, hypothetically, by what authority do governors even dare to exercise power over traditional rulers. The Alake of Egba land has long being there; the current Oba of Benin is number 42 going back to 1492. So what role does the governor have? That is part of the decay in the process. I am not interested in who is the Emir today or who is not. But what I would urge the traditional rulers, generally, is to free themselves from the control of governors. It is very belittling for an Emir or Obi who has more authority than the governor in his own domain, to seek to go to the governor and get a stick or paper called a certificate and it is that certificate that makes him Emir. How can that be possible? The Emir is made Emir by virtue of the historical and traditional antecedents of a particular people. The traditional rulers should free themselves from these statements of government that, ‘You are fired.’ The traditional ruler cannot be fired because his authority stems from the stool upon which he sits carrying with it the traditions, cultures and values of the people. So, the governor has no business interfering in that at all.
A vast spectrum of Nigerians is discontented by the strides of the President Bola Tinubu administration thus far. What is your assessment of his socioeconomic policies, security, rule of law? Or are you one of those who say that assessing the present government after one year is premature?
It is not premature. Mr Tinubu has been there for one year and I feel that a lot more could be done. I still believe that the removal of fuel subsidy, floating the naira were important structural adjustments. When an architect looks at a building that is faulty, and feels that the only way to remedy the building is to restructure it, you don’t blame the architect for making that call. So that call by president Tinubu was right. The challenge has been the follow through. I said so when I had the privilege to address him alongside Mr Godswill Akpabio as President of the Senate at a function in Abuja. I laid down 10 points. I said the issue of redirecting or correcting the economy was correct but it was the follow through that has been the problem and there are various areas through which the follow through could have been more effective. No nation survives in chaos and insecurity. So I pointed out that first thing to do is to establish a National Order of Peace. You can’t be growing an economy if there is chaos everywhere and the index of failed nations grades Nigeria as a country being in a low grade civil war. You can’t have an economy really grow in the context in which we see it. So, I would have done three things. One, I will focus on the issue of security and bring it under control. All the elements causing problem and insecurity will be looked at and addressed. I said at that meeting that I didn’t believe that conventional war where you see soldiers jumping up and down planes, armoured cars would resolve the problem. You don’t fight an irregular war by regular methods. The theory of military warfare is so clear on this, you will never win. America lost in Vietnam because they were fighting an irregular Army. I believe that in sitting with the original owners of Nigeria, the subnational entities like the Afenifere, Ohanaeze, PANDEF, you can get some peace. Those are people who can play a very strong role in cooling the temperature of Nigeria because without peace, development will be difficult. That, I believe, is a point that is not too late to engage. Second, I will focus on the economy, which has so many aspects. And I would not address all the aspects. I will focus on what I think is the primary driver of any economy. Oil and gas is not the primary driver of the economy because, how many people does it employ? We have 133 million people in multi-dimensional poverty. The oil and gas industry is probably employing about 100,000 people. So, I would focus on the manufacturing sector. Peter Obi was very correct when he said, we must go from consumption to production. If you don’t produce anything, you will be in trouble. If you have a big farmland, and every year, you just throw parties and don’t cultivate your corn, pear, yam and you come back, you won’t get anything. So the productive capacity of Nigeria today is absolutely low. I would declare a state of emergency in relation to the manufacturing sector. The present economic policy of the government, I would fine tune. The present economic policy of the government seems to be monetarism. So you find the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that should be way behind, not heard, dominating economic discussion on what is the rate of the naira to the dollar. So, it does seem to me as if the CBN governor is making a strategic error when he thinks that the numeric value of the naira is important. It is not important. What is important is the productive value of the naira. You have countries that exchange their currencies to the dollar for about 2,000 but they are producing. So what is the point of having a strong numeric value but we have nothing. We are pumping too much to prop up the naira. The money we are pumping to prop up the naira will be given to the productive sector, the manufacturers so that they can rebuild their industry, produce. The name of the game is if you don’t produce, you perish.
You then would be impressed by the decision of the Attorney General of the Federation to sue governors over local government autonomy.
Absolutely, I did it myself 10 years ago but I lost because the judge agreed that the local governments were democratically constituted and ought to be elected and any local government that did not have an elected local government administration should be deprived of funding from the centre. But he refused my application because he said; the very people I am here to protect are those who would suffer. So, what Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) is doing is laudable. Coincidentally, on the day he filed the action, the House of Representatives had a programme on the point and I spoke and I urged the National Assembly to invoke the provisions of Section 162, subsection 5. Section 162 is the section that deals with public revenue and it creates an account called the federation account and it talks about how the money in the federation account shall be distributed; first, the federal, then federal to the state and then to the local governments. It says that these monies shall be distributed in a manner prescribed by the National Assembly. So I urged the National Assembly to create conditions in whatever law they pass in the sharing formula. So in the Appropriation Act, the National Assembly shall say, these funds for the local government, that will be passed to the governors for onward transmission to the local governments shall only be given upon the following conditions, that in State X, all the chairpersons are democratically elected, if not, the money will not go. There must be conditionalities. So, a lot of good is in the constitution. The problem is that our politicians don’t apply it. The constitution is not as bad as made out; it is the politicians that are the bad people, not the constitution. We have virtually all the answers in our constitution but if you don’t implement it in the way it is said, then, there will be problems.
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