Olisa Agbakoba, a former national president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) recently dragged the Federal Government to court over the alleged neglect of the South East geo-political zone on infrastructural development. In this interview with ZEBULON AGOMUO, Editor, he traced the trouble with Nigeria since 1914; the urgent need for a new constitution and dialogue. The maritime lawyer also said that solution to Nigeria’s problems is not in restructuring, warning that the future of Nigeria seems uncertain unless right steps are taken to stem the tide. Excerpts:
May we know from your own perspective what you think is the cause of Nigeria’s problems and the possible way out of the problems?
In our evolution (that is from Colonialism, independence, military rule and military democracy) what we have had is authoritarian governments and exclusion of the people. No serious effort has been made to engage the people and build consensus. The colonial and post colonial constitutions did not emanate from the full involvement of the Nigerian people. The result is that Nigeria has remained a geographical expression. This explains the frequent national conflicts/agitations. Nigeria’s situation can be likened to a failing marriage. To salvage it, the couple need to make adjustments/changes to make the marriage work.
Some people have advocated restructuring as the solution, but restructuring is conceptually wrong without reviewing why it is needed.
I think, what Nigeria needs is a new deal and the present political elite cannot deliver because of the entrenched personal interest.
Going forward, the Civil Society needs to wrest power from this ruling political elite to achieve a new system that is inclusive and works for all and not a few.
What do you make out of the deafening calls for restructuring?
It is because of the problem we have in Nigeria. We are in problem- problem of Biafra; problem of Ijaws, Itsekiris and problem of the Boko Haram. Nigeria is just divided along ethnic lines. But what I think is important is to ask, what’s the way forward? I see every politician now says it is restructuring but I disagree. I think it is a conceptual error in assuming that restructuring will work. I also think that the Acting President was wrong to say that Nigeria is insoluble; there is nothing sacrosanct about Nigeria. It can blow up any day. It’s an artificial creation; it was made in 1914 when it was amalgamated in the interest of the colonialists. Since 1914 to date, we have not had any home-grown process in the creation of our constitution and that is our problem. So, to just go into restructuring without asking some key questions, I think it is fundamentally flawed. So the summary of what I have said so far is first, Nigerian sovereignty is not sacrosanct; Nigerian sovereignty is sacrosanct for those who are eyeing 2019.
They will do this, deceive us, go to 2019 pretending that restructuring is the issue; they are now climbing on the bandwagon of popularism. They are everywhere- Atiku Abubakar, and can you imagine someone like Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida singing restructuring; when they were there what did they do? I don’t understand why we are so taken in by these people; we are so gullible. We have millions of unemployed youths and infrastructure is almost none existent, yet they continue to deceive us. That’s part of the warning that needs to be passed on by the civil society that it is not in the interest of Nigerians to continue to listen to what I call the conspiracy of the elite. The conspiracy of the elite is to be found either in the APC or PDP or whatever new party emerges for 2019. We need to look inwards and determine how best we can grow our country. I think we can do so by asking the real questions. And it is not for nothing that Nnamdi Kanu has sprang up from nowhere. Here’s a guy who no one knew, suddenly springs up; why? It is because the politicians have created the space. Politicians are not on ground, they sit in Abuja and talk; nobody listens to them; they are detached from the people. And people can relate to their own ethnicities or sub-national groups.
So, Nnamdi Kanu sees there’s an opportunity to take over the South East; he goes there, he discovers there’s marginalisation, unhappiness and there is poverty, and they join him, but the south east politicians meanwhile are in Abuja canvassing with other politicians for Abuja power and they leave their home porous; now this guy goes in there to fill the vacuum and they are complaining. I have nothing against him except that he must do what he is doing according to Nigerian law. What he is doing is called self-determination. He started from the natural law, moved to the American revolution, French revolution. Everywhere you have self- determination- the Catalans in Spain, the Scottish UK are asking for self determination; so there’s nothing that says that any ethnic group in Nigeria that wants self determination cannot organise themselves within the context of the Nigerian law, present themselves for departure from Nigeria. So, there is nothing sacrosanct. What is sacrosanct about Nigeria, and this is the missing jigsaw, is that we have to agree whether we want to be together. The issue is like- if you have a wife at home who is not happy with the way things are going, you cannot force her to be happy in an unfriendly environment; you can’t say, I am going out, you can’t go out; I will lock the door. Whereas you should be asking her, ‘my wife what is wrong with our marriage? Are there things I am doing wrong that I can improve upon that can help us resolve our differences?’ So, all I am saying is that you can’t force government on people; for people to live together or remain in an association you must include them. You must talk to them and create time to listen to them. Then this dangerous noise about restructuring- that’s the buzz word-, what does it mean? In whose interest is the restructuring? Will the restructuring in the context the politicians are saying it going to mean, Ok, bring the country back to regions; will it create jobs, will it transfer the inequality from the centre to the regions? If you ask people on the street what they understand by restructuring, they have no idea. So, is it economic restructuring, political of simply a matter of Nigerians needing to have a social justice, equality, inclusion? Those are the debates we need; we don’t just need a debate where we say restructuring for the sake of it. So, my key point here is that we should be very wary about our politicians who, as usual, like to pull the wool over our eyes and we fall for it. We have been doing this consistently since 1914. In 1914, the Colonial government pulled the wool over our eyes and we followed like cattle. Then when they saw that it was no longer relevant for them to continue, they engineered independence constitution (colonially-generated independence constitution) which had nothing to do with us; it collapsed. Then the military came; again when they saw it was no longer relevant or possible they engineered the present structure- a military-generated constitution. These steps, not even one represents the people; that’s the problem.
Why is federal system not working in Nigeria; again, the once vibrant civil society in the country has gone comatose; how can they make themselves relevant in the present circumstance?
That question is absolutely reflective of the civil society today. Whenever I go out of this country and see how vibrant civil society groups are, I ask myself the question, ‘how come we can’t get people to critique it, ask questions about what is going on in the country or to agitate?’ That’s what you have just said. The civil society is fractured. The traditional society is also fractured. The religious society is fractured. The only society that is intact is the political elite and they understand this. Wherever you find them, whenever they meet, they speak one language- the language of power. They don’t speak Igbo or Hausa or Yoruba. Whether the person is from PDP, APC, no matter whatever party, it doesn’t matter what party, they speak the same language. That person speaks that language to sustain his interest. That obviously could affect the response of the civil society to be influential, but that’s not to say they should not keep trying. Second point is Federalism. There’s a book, ‘Federalism: An Introduction’ by George Anderson; There is no one sign fit-all for federalism. You can’t say federal state, federal state, federal state, but they are symptoms of where you can apply it. The best place where you can apply federalism is where you have diverse views; where you have multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural views. We are perfect for that. We have six federal sub-zones. Federalism will suit Nigeria, but the problem is can you point to any of sub-zones in which the federal process has been applied? The only period when federalism applied in its best form was the First Republic, when you had regional governments with their own constitution; self authority, etc. So, we are looking for a federal system that is fully genuine and that can deliver Nigeria from its present morass. Again, I still repeat, there’s nothing sacrosanct about Nigeria. To say that nobody should talk about it is wrong. It is a debate. The debate should be on the basis of convincing people that it is in their interest to be part of the Nigerian process; that is it.
Are you then saying that the call for restructuring is misplaced?
Well, restructuring will not solve Nigeria’s problems. You need to hear what the Itsekiris are saying about the Ijaws or what some of the non-Fulani Hausas are saying about the Fulanis. The cleavage is deeper than restructuring can cover. It is a very deep gulf. Restructure is, for instance, when you are building a house as an architect and you only have a ground floor; but here, there is no ground floor. So without the ground floor you can’t go to the first floor. We need to have a conversation in which we can find some common benefits why we need to be one. Once we have done that, we can then go to say how? So restructuring is the second question, and that is the how? But without the first one, restructuring will transfer the incompetence, the corruption from the federal to the regions.
Was the 2014 National Conference, in which you participated, not qualified enough to be considered the type of conversation you talked about? Secondly, You recently dragged the Federal Government to court over alleged neglect of the South East, which is also the grouse of some of the groups in that zone; do you think there is a deliberate policy by successive governments in Nigeria to keep the Igbos down?
No, there isn’t a deliberate policy by the government to put the Igbo down, but there is a selfish policy by those political elite who hold power to chop everything. That’s the problem. They are greedy and selfish that they can’t see beyond their interest. When they are there they forget everything and everybody. That’s why the contestation for presidency is phenomenal because the person who becomes the president determines how the things flow. So, if it is a Yoruba-led government, it excludes every other person; if it is an Hausa-led government or Igbo-led the same thing. The only way we can make things work is to bring everybody on the table. Afterall, Jonathan favoured the Igbo, but what Igbos did he favour? The political elite. I was going from Onitsha to Enugu last week; I remembered that as a student in 1972, I have been on that road it is still under construction because the governor has no control. The Minister of Works controls it from Abuja. Fashola sits in Abuja talking about electrical power across Nigeria, whereas if they decentralise it, people can take on power even at the local government level. In Apapa Local Government Area of Lagos State, we can create a private sector initiative to power up Apapa, but is not possible because we don’t have the political authority. So, we need to have a discussion about how to change this narrative. And that discussion is not restructuring, that’s my point. It is about this geographical expression called Nigeria, how can we get it to work? If we can get it to work, then what do we want to make of it?
On whether or not there are things to draw from the 2014 National Assembly, yes, but first of all, we must discuss whether we want to be Nigerians. The late Bola Ige encapsulated the issue in two questions: Do we want to be Nigerians? That question was not answered by the National Conference. The second question is, if we want to be Nigerians, how? The second was addressed at the National Assembly; the first is where the problem lies.
