That the Nigerian state is not working is a fact known to all Nigerians. In the second part of this interview with Mr Olu Otunla, a retired ambassador and one who holds very strong ideas on issues, the retired diplomat is really bitter about the way things have turned out in the country. He thinks the state has failed and will continue to sink unless someone steps in to bring the people together to fashion out new ways of doing things. To him, Obasanjo, a man he worked with closely between, 1975 and 1979 has derailed. He believes the only way out now, to save the country from imminent collapse is a national conference where there would be equal representation of the nationalities. His views are interesting, they are bold, they are strong.
They are as passionate as they are rational. Reading through, you are likely to see him as an articulate, angry 65 year old. No matter where you stand on the debate for re-inventing Nigeria, you are likely to see this as a useful addition to the corpus of literature and views on coupling Nigeria together once again. Ambassador Otunla- he hates titles- spoke with Bolade Omonijo, Paul Odili and Percy Owaiye. Excerpts:
Looking at the debate on the national conference and the arguments going back and forth about how it should be organised, it would appear that there is confusion?
Technically, there is no confusion. We can organise a conference. The out-going British colonial government organised conferences which led to the emergence of political parties and Nigeria at independence. The confusion is contrived by those who think they have a lot to lose, let’s face it, by those who are comfortable with failure-because some people are comfortable with failure. Some people are comfortable with chaos. Arije ni madaru, as the Yoruba’s say.
They are happy with Nigeria as it is. They are loading and loading their trucks with money- with money coming from the oil producing states. It doesn’t bother them that we are probably not getting half of the proceeds from that oil, but whatever they are getting is enough and they are not complaining. People like that are comfortable; I am not comfortable with a failing state - to use your term.
So technically- I have a position on this which I submitted to the Movement for National Reformation (MNR) way back 1988.
That Abubakar must go, and whoever comes in must organise a conference. In fact, throughout the Abacha period, I was working with people like the late Ambassador Jolly Tanko Yusuf. In Kaduna, we were having quiet meetings - I don’t call them secret meetings- on how to put the conference on the ground, in spite of Abacha. We were going to have a conference on culture, that was the way we were going. But the idea was that the in-coming government would organise a conference, the way the British colonial government did, to prepare a new constitution. And we always too easily or deliberately forget that the Abacha/Abubakar Constitution is an illegality- go and look at most of the newspaper articles, most of the informed opinions then agreed that that constitution was an illegality.
It remained so for a few of us. All its arrogation of sovereignty to itself is convenient, and I can’t live with it.
But this government, if it means well for Nigeria should organise, put together the administrative capacity for a conference. And this is where the debate is going to be: What kind of conference? How do you compose the delegates? I am a democrat.
I would want those elements that were taken one by one and co-opted into an imperial Nigeria to be given an opportunity to send delegates. At that time in the 19th century, it was their Obas who signed off these large pieces of land until Sokoto was taken militarily in 1903, and Lugard said, alright, it is ours now by right of conquest. When the British took Ijebu-Ode in 1892, they also said the same thing. That is always the language of imperialists, whatever they take by force has become theirs.
Today, the Obas would not be the ones to send delegates because we can organise elections. People can vie for the support of their constituents, they would provide platforms. And the Yoruba, the Izon, the Kemberi, name it, if I have my way would provide equal number of delegates to such a conference. The Yoruba, and the Ibibio and the Hausa being so large can provide for the deficiency of equality by having a large troop of advisers, if they want them. But such a conference has to be on the basis of parity. Each nationality has to enjoy parity at the conference, large or small. Because the domestic issues of how many tribes or sub-sets each nationality has should be left for each nationality to decide.
I also want to react to those who think that is not the best way and that such conference should be composed of this professional, that association or the other, because that is an embarrassing suggestion in this age. It would be thoroughly undemocratic. And we cannot fight oppression with undemocratic methods. We are trying to make Nigeria a democratic nation, and an undemocratic assembly cannot prepare the way for that. So, I think that assembly can work until 2009, 2010, because we must give it a time frame. By that date a constitution must emerge. Nobody- and this is where the sovereignty thing always amuses me - that people can ignorantly or wickedly assume that it means a rival government. A national conference is not what the French advised their former friends in Africa to do and called constitutional conference.
The French are rather smart imperialists, they never wanted to take their hands off the pie. They knew, and they still know, that they would not gain from democratic set-ups in their former colonies. So they continued to foist it on them, and the elite have been thoroughly acculturated. At least, here we don’t openly take instruction from Downing Street anymore. So we should organise our lives the way it most suites us.
I started by saying I am not apologetic about being a Yoruba. And whatever happens to that Yoruba nation touches me. And so I have a feeling that the Yoruba people want to redefine, to redesign Nigeria. That is what the National conference of nationalities is all about. The delegates should be democratically elected and there should be parity at the conference.
The argument for a federal set-up and all what not, all those are the technicalities involved and I have my position on that. But fundamentally, we should go to a conference because the present arrangement is not working. I always tell people - I have not done a scientific research - but if you went to the National Assembly and asked for the nationalities of the members there, you might be shocked to find that over 40 per cent of the nationalities in Nigeria have been disenfranchised. The people who cannot go there and find, like I will do, an Adepoju or an Adesina there. And so, emotionally, we have lost them and we must deal with that.
But you have not factored in the reluctance of the authorities to allow any conference of whatever shade or hold...
Sir, I will interrupt you. I am not asking anyone to allow anything. When it is my right, it is not anything I am asking anyone to allow me to do. I do not have a monopoly of violence today, but one thing I can see is that this state that has a monopoly of violence today is itself collapsing, slowly, not visibly so yet, because, it does not enjoy full legitimacy, it does not enjoy the attractiveness that a citizenry - there are no citizens in Nigeria as it were - just subjects. That is why everybody can do whatever they like once they have the facade of having been elected into office. Walk about with $80,000, ride rough-shod over everybody, throw the police at you at every corner.
If we were citizens, we would react against that. But we are not, we are cowed by violence. That is why you can talk to me about ‘allow’. If you were a British journalist, you won’t ask if Mr Blair would ‘allow’? It is collapsing on its own weight. So by the same logic, an alternative must emerge. What kind, is what we are talking about. There would come a time when people, allow or not allow, will organise. As I said, under Abacha, terrible as it was, we were organising, right under his nose in Kaduna - myself, Tanko Yussuf and a few others.
There is this other leg of the argument. The pre-independence conferences, Aburi, constitutional conference under Abacha... that the problem is not a conference. That Nigerians have agreed on what to do with Nigeria. And that to that extent, this new call for a constitutional conference is a recipe for confusion. How do you react?
There is confusion. If there wasn’t, we won’t be talking about a conference. The structures are not working. It is very easy to reduce this to leadership as if you can go and manufacture leadership somewhere and put them in place and everything would be alright, no. The problem is how you recruit your editor, your printer, your reporter - they all determine the quality of your newspaper. Same with a state.
The preferment method in this failing state leads logically only in one direction — failure — and the threat of total collapse and chaos. There are people who cannot for one second imagine the idea — and Obasanjo is one of them. And I hear people say that if Nigeria were to become chaotic, 5 million, will flow in one direction, 10 million in another direction. As if China that is almost 100 times the size of our population didn’t have revolution, lots of individual suffering. And that is why one does not pointedly preach violence, because one has read and one has seen little bits here and there and the consequences of a collapse.
But to come back, I don’t think what we are talking today is the same thing as what Abacha did. And we are saying that the present structure which we started with has been tinkered with since 1960, almost changed beyond recognition from what we started with. The conglomerate, federal- because it is no more than a conglomerate-that the arrangement here are no longer federal. And that is why I say the details, the mechanics - we won’t quarrel about that. I would be for a federal system of government which arises out of my faith in self-determination, and that is why I am saying it should be a conference of nationalities.
If the Yoruba were to constitute an Oduduwa Republic today, I would be saying the same thing to them. There are 23 or 24 elements in there, and to act in a manner that excludes one or two of them is to act unjustly and undemocratically. The same thing for Nigeria.
The existing system does not allow for self-determination, it does not allow for equal participation, it does not allow for sub-national integrity. It perfects hegemonism. We all talk about the caliphate - that is the most obvious hegemonist nation in this state, but all those who participate with it are also hegemonists, whether they are Igbo, Izon, whatever. They are no less hegemonists.
These are the kind of people who are comfortable, it allows them to commit all kinds of crime, knowing that they won’t get punished. So the nearest to it was the pre-independence conference, and of course that threaded with nationalism and that was why it was successful. But there is a lot of insincerity today, and that is why people are rejecting the obvious solution.
The military failed because tinkering failed. When the military emerged as a ‘modern’ and ‘modernising’ force as in Egypt, as in Korea, as in Latin America, everybody thought that it will distance itself from the corrupting influences, but it just became part of the problem instead of finding solutions.
So the constitutional arrangement through which people were selected- because those selecting them knew their positions and threw in a few cantankerous elements, threw in a few agitators; but they knew that the body they selected, they could teleguide them to go in one direction or another. And that happened, and they had the reserve power of tampering with their work, and they used it all the time, whether in the form of white or yellow paper. That is why the conference we are demanding today will be sovereign to the extent that no other body, except through a referendum of the people, would have a right to accept or reject it.
I don’t want a constitution written and the incumbent government sits, knocks it off and changes things as it has been in the past. And I hope it addresses your point - these two elements.
A conference of nationalities - I would want an honest Nigerian who would say my people do not want to be at a conference to decide how they live with other people. And I would like to see an honest Nigerian who would say, yes, once that constitution has been written, some people can sit and tinker with it. We want the result of that conference to go to a referendum. Once we accept two principles - self-determination and democracy in all that we do, the others can be sorted out very easily. If the assembled nationalities and their delegates approve of a federalist structure, they would have it. If they approve of a centralist government, they would have it.
They would put it to a referendum, and that would be it. And there is the extreme position that must be allowed for - and Ethiopia experimented with it- and it didn’t crack the nation. If you don’t want to be part of the nation, you can go- the right to opt out. That is part of the present Ethiopian constitution.
And you don’t mind that?
I don’t have a problem with it. As I said to you, Nigeria is a fantastic experiment. If it is working I want to be part of it. If it doesn’t work, I don’t want to be a part of it. It is so bad today that I am harassed when I travel because I carry a Nigerian passport - the dignities and courtesies I used to get are no longer there.
What is the fun? I can’t go to a bank and transact business because I carry the label of being a Nigerian, I am a psuspect. And it is going to get worse now when your governors are walking about - and it is not only about Dariye - everybody is stashing money outside. What has the president done about it. He used to brag to me that he didn’t have an external account, so why is he surrounding himself with people who have it.
Where is the code of conduct? Where is the one he set up - anti-corruption, whatever you call it? Why is he calling himself the president of a republic where policemen demand openly? It is a Force of less than 200,000 people, he can’t control them? The indignity - foreigners see it! And you want me to go out as a Nigerian so that people can laugh at me? Citizenship demands responsibility of whoever is in control of state to manage it well. And Obasanjo is not managing this country well, and I am embarrassed for him!
Look at it from his own angle. He can say I left a saner place in 1979 and by the time I came back the rot had taken over the place, and it would take some time to clear?
I will tell him, if he puts that to me: didn’t you know that before you accepted?
But somebody has to do it!
No. It doesn’t have to be Obasanjo. And if he did not do it, we would have gone to a conference. If he had said, ‘I can’t handle this’ - and some of us told him - you can’t handle this, quote me. I told him - he can’t handle it. And he is not proving me wrong.
He said he would restore electricity to a good level, he hasn’t. The roads are still what they are; the educational structures are bad, they remain so; corruption still rules the waves. He has two or three years to still prove me wrong - he didn’t have to do it. That is the kind of reductionist argument that doesn’t wash very well- somebody has to do it. If it can’t be done, it can’t be done. And if the problem can not be solved, you adopt another approach. And that other approach was the national conference.
President Obasanjo’s position in that arises out of a fear he has that if you put nationalities together, it would only lead in one direction, and that is an unscientific and irrational position based on nothing but the fear that yes, he fought a war, and people died, and he killed and he was not killed. And I respect his fear, but his fear cannot dominate the minds of 130 million Nigerians or decide their fate. The very least he can do is put the question in the market place, and let him persuade others that this fear is real and is shared by other Nigerians.
There is nothing stopping President Obasanjo from organising a referendum on the issue of the national conference. I am assuming that it would not be exposed to the accusation of rigging as his own election has been, and the election of many others. My driver was telling me that in the ward where he contested for councillorship, his box and other contestants’ boxes were carried away by PDP men carrying guns, that is what he told me, I wasn’t there. If at that level, that happened to a poor young man - ofcourse, I tickle him that if he succeeded, he too would be stealing in his council, because that is what governance is about these days - looting! So, President Obasanjo has easy and workable routes to travel on. Let him put the idea in the market place.
That is what democracy is about. He tours the world pretending that he is a democrat, and that he is building a democratic government, but I call it sham. What we have is a democratic sham - it has all the appearances, but nothing else. In reality, it is the absence of it.
Suppose he says that, well, he accepted in good faith to lead this country, believing that people like you would he there to assist him, and that to that extent you have failed too...
Well, since you are referring to me, there is no way he could have counted on me as a rational being. I told him: ‘don’t, it is a bad job, let’s go to a conference’. But leaving me out of it, soon after it appeared that he was going to be the PDP candidate, he set up a number of committees to prepare positions and papers on policies, what has he done with it? I didn’t see one of the people who were good enough to write those policies in his cabinet, where are they? He didn’t appoint anyone of them as his adviser- I stand to be corrected. So where is the good faith- because you talk about good faith. I don’t know what happens to a person when he has been incarcerated. When you talk of 1979, this is not the Obasanjo of 1979. He was a military man, but he was not exactly a bully - he is a bully now. He can’t be challenged, his behaviour is becoming more and more erratic. Could this be as a result of being incarcerated? I don’t know.
I find the argument about equal representation interesting, but what do you say in a democracy to the Yoruba who have, say, 30 million people having equal representation as say the Tiv of 2 million?
Alright. This has been put to me before and I don’t have a problem with it. In fact, one morning, I was at breakfast, with a number of people in Baba Kingibe’s house in Abuja, and this was during Abacha - and people who think that government can totally suppress, no government can totally suppress, the Nazis did not totally suppress, some of us were still doing things - and this matter came up, and I said, if you accept the principle of self-determination, and you either accept it or you don’t.
If you think because of your number, you are superior in matters Nigerian to an Ijaw man, then you are not respecting that principle anymore. And if it is a democratic solution to that awkward problem - maybe you say, unjust - maybe, it is unjust that 40 million people should have one seat on a council as 1,000 people, but that is at one level.
That is why at the MNR we worked hard and thought about it, and came out with the same position that there should be an upper house of nationalities- and I fought very hard for this. Instead of this awful Senate that you have that bears no relationship to anybody, but just an opportunity for people to loot. And if you go there, call them senator, I don’t care.
If you are a senator, you are senator representing Yoruba people, nobody is going to buy from you a rejection of Yoruba position. You can’t or you won’t be there. But the lower house which is what democracy is really about will still be there on demographic terms.
Every population of 50,000, 1 million, irrespective, would have a representative. And the Yoruba would have numerical strength there, and that is where really the day to day management and control over money would be. We are not imagining something out of the world! The difference between our Upper House of Nationalities and similar unjust bodies like the House of Lords in Britain is that these people would also be elected by their own people. So you have a double democratic principle in place there, the democracy of self-determination and the democracy of being elected into the Upper House. And of course, the balance is electing the Lower House where the work of the nation is done or should be done.
Some commentators believe that the social and pro-democracy forces made a strategic error by contesting the elections under Abubakar after the demise of Abacha, not insisting that the nation go into a conference. What is your view now, with benefit of hindsight?
I think you are right there. Logically, it is a beautiful position but morally it stands debunked.
Okay sir, I want to take us back to the conference. Would you rather have a sovereign conference or just a conference?
Sovereign, not sovereign, whatever label... I think anyone who knows me will tell you that Nigeria is a rather label- obsessed country. If you are not a doctor, you are an evangelist... it is so ridiculous now that everybody shops for a label. Everybody is renowned and they are not known two miles down the road.
We have become totally debased at the level of our externalities. So label, I don’t go on about; the content is what I am after. And content as long as when a constitution emerges from this conference, it is subject only to popular referendum and new elections will be based on the mechanics of that new constitution. What one is objecting to- and all those who are insisting on the sovereign national conference - is no more than that. That an incumbent administration cannot take the document in and rewrite it.
I was supervising the reading of my uncle’s will recently in Ilesha, and the first thing I told the lawyer was that nobody was going to rewrite the will - whether the man was insane or fit, we would follow the letter and the spirit of the will. For the same argument, whatever emerges from that conference should not be subject to any cosmetic or substantive change by anybody except the people of Nigeria through a referendum. As someone who has been involved in administration, I know that when you are writing questions for a referendum you can load things, but I am afraid you can’t insist on perfection in designing.
I have read a study: Inventing a Nation- the Making of the American Constitution and it is full of sheaves and shoves. Mr Washington is asked how did you sleep today, and he says don’t let the French in, don’t copy that one; and that is how the constitution emerged. In fact, the first federal chief judge John Jay did not accept it. All the others, the Jeffersons and co. worked and worked until they made it work, and it is still working because they are ready to tinker with it. They have a president today who would like to throw out many things, but he can’t. He has put his ideas in the market place, and that is what is lacking here. We are in the hands of gangsters who present things... they talk about liberalisation, deregulation, but if you don’t deregulate ideas, you are wasting time. These are people who are locked into the obsession of controlling.
We have seen the Nigerian electoral system at work, if we are going to elect delegates through a legislative method to the proposed conference, are we going to rely on this electoral commission?
I am afraid we are not going to manufacture people who would do the right thing, we would have to take the dip. We would have to dive in, there is no alternative. I am not for asking the United Nations to come and conduct elections here. INEC is there, and if they get the right signal, they would conduct a good election. And that is why I asked earlier, does President Obasanjo know that policemen collect N20 or he doesn’t know? Of course, office holders travel in darkened cars in this country, maybe they don’t know. But we live with it everyday.
The people concerned tell you they are not paid, ‘Baba give us something’, and so on. That is neither here nor there. There is no government that can emerge in this country that can be more desperate or more fascist than Hitler’s Germany. But it failed in the end- it failed.
Despotism always fails. People attribute Abacha’s sudden disappearance to all sorts of things, but even if he didn’t die, he would make more and more mistakes, more and more enemies... the morning I was told he died, I was in amazed. I live in a family compound in Ilesha...old women who I thought didn’t give a damn were cursing him, and I stood on my veranda and just shook my head.
But despotism doesn’t bother me. Each time we moved in one direction or the other against Abacha and didn’t succeed, I kept saying to myself that this man would turn every football field in this country into a prison. That was the reality some of us saw, and that I could have been one of those put in such a place.
So, if President Obasanjo or whoever succeeds him in 2007 wants to go desperate and despotic and deny the right to self-determination and democracy in this country, they would be doing themselves one disfavour - there would be no development. I see a relationship between decolonisation, democratisation and development, without one in that sequence you are not going to get prosperity.
If you don’t decolonise- and that is what all this is about- in our statute books today, there are so many obnoxious, and odious and awful colonial legislation, or mimicking of it. If you don’t throw them out, and I take it, that one of things the conference would be doing is free the Nigerian and make a citizen of him in every way - his right to think, speak freely, his right to write however odious whatever he writes is, so long as there are not enough people to support him, let him write, let him say. That is what democracy is about. And of course, his right to expect his state to organise a good quality of life for him. My quality of life has gone from 10 to 2.
There hasn’t been power in this house since last night. Diesel is more expensive than petrol in Nigeria, kerosine is more expensive... the state has failed. You say it is still failing, because you live in another country and your experiences are different from mine. I don’t have institutional support, I am on my own, and the state has failed me in organising a good quality of life at the level I think I am entitled to.
I have to get a generator, I have to buy diesel when I can find it. There are four refineries that aren’t working. We can’t find enough electricity in this country, and when we find it, we can’t distribute it. I think this state can be better managed. President Obasanjo knows that, whatever is hampering him, I don’t know.
There is nothing impossible about managing Nigeria. If you set the signals - Nigerians in fact, are very good at reading signals- if they know that you are not going to be corrupt, they won’t. And all President Obasanjo and his administration needs to do - and we have talked about this many years ago - I suggested a ridiculous thing in 1978 and he killed it- that we should have a monitoring unit of ordinary citizens, like you Mr Omonijo (referring to one of his interviewers) who we would change and rotate regularly.
We would give you a piece of paper that you are a monitor, wherever you are in your neighbourhood, or you are travelling, you can intervene on behalf of the state to stop an awkward act, a corrupt act, and when people know, they will sit up. He killed it by submitting it to a committee he chose which he knew would go his own way. So all this WAI and so on, they are not new things, we thought about them. But it didn’t suit certain people to have corruption removed in this country and it still doesn’t suit them.
And corruption is part of the human condition, Mr Lee Kwan Yu dealt with it amongst his people by making one example of the man who recruited him for his party, the man they thought was closest to him. Information was brought that the man was receiving kick-back. He showed it to him, and said to him,‘ I would prosecute you, sir’.
The man went home and committed suicide. And that clipped corruption. But we have never punished anybody, in fact, we think it is the birthright of public officeholders - to enter with N1 and come out with N1,000! How can you be a minister and come out with a big house. I have seen people taken to be military governors - this is a Lt Colonel who is making ends meet on a meagre salary - and by the day people are sent from the state to take him, they come with 10 cars, and by time he has lorded it over them for sometime, he thinks he is entitled to 10 cars. And this corruption is institutionalised. And Obasanjo has not done anything, to even move in against it.
There was a year in London when they were pumping in pirated movies into England. As soon as the thing was shot in Hollywood, its pirated video was in London. They just looked at the people who were responsible for this business and grabbed one shop, and the judge fined that company almost 1 million dollar. That is the way you check that sort of thing, and he said if they don’t desist, he would jail them.
If you grab somebody like me - I am used to the comforts of life - and you accuse me properly and send me to Kirikiri, and I know you will, boy, I won’t do it. I won’t want to be a prisoner. But the so-called ruling class, big men in this country know for 99% of the time that no one is going to touch them.
That people frightened Afolabi (late Minister of Internal Affairs) hasn’t changed anything. He got a state funeral. President Obasanjo who accused this man of stealing attended his funeral. Where is his integrity? Where is his leadership? He is the founder of the African Leadership Forum, he can’t demonstrate it? Something must be wrong somewhere.
The terrible thing about President Obasanjo is that in the period of his service as a public officer and in politics, he so re-educated himself that he cannot stand before me and claim ignorance of all that he is doing now - he is not ignorant. It either suits him, or his handlers, but I am afraid his integrity has been thoroughly weakened. If I wasn’t around and I was told some of things he has been accused of, I would be ashamed. And I am really ashamed of him.
