Yar’Adua playing politics with Nigeria
By OLUSOLA BALOGUN

Nwosu

National Chairman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Ralphs Okey Nwosu, believes a lot of things are wrong in Nigeria and, according to him, he is particularly worried that President Umaru Yar’Adua is playing politics with nation building. Speaking on a wide range of issues in this interview, he expresses concern that the federal government was interfering in the affairs of Local Government Development Council Areas (LCDAs) created by the Lagos State government. Excerpts…

What is your reaction to the unfolding crisis between the Federal Government and Lagos State over the creation of Local Government Development Council Areas?
I thought the matter had been resolved. I know there is a Supreme Court ruling on it and I remember that the Apex Court rebuked the federal government when they attempted to go back asking for a review of the judgment. I wonder why the government is going back to that path now. It is disturbing. If there is a court ruling, you expect any government to follow the pronouncement. People are in government not to do their own will but the will of those that put them in office. I think Lagos has a very good case.

To think about it; why is the Federal government interested in the number of local governments that the people of Lagos think is ideal for the proper administration of the state? I would have thought they should encourage the state government to take actions that will lead to delivery of good governance and positive impact on the lives of the people. That is what the government is doing and I thought that should be encouraged and not discouraged.

Lagos has a population of over 17 million people and they have just 57 local governments. That is not too much considering that 37 of those councils are not drawing funds from the federal purse, yet they are performing. We are seeing their impact. I don’t think that is too much. As far as the Nigerian situation is concerned, it is not too much. If Lagos government feels that for ease of administration, they need 57 and they were able to pass it through the House as law, so be it. The federal government has challenged that before and Lagos won; I think it is in bad faith for any person to try to reverse what the people of the state want and what has secured judicial backing.

Do you consider the development as a fresh challenge to the nation’s controversial federal structure?
We always have serious problems with our federalism. It is not Yar’Adua that started that. But we need to understand that we cannot be such a big country and want to administer it as if it is a small local government. Those at the top want to administer it as if it is a small place. It is self- serving for the PDP; people like me will wish that politics is not mixed with governance. Most of these things are just politics and unfortunately, nation building cannot be mixed with politics. It might lead to disaster. We can’t administer this country with a local government mentality. The President should pay attention to core issues that will affect every body like defence, security and international relations. He should not allow some people to make him mix governance with politics.

Are you comfortable with defections by political office holders? Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State recently defected to the PDP following in the steps of Mahmuda Shinkafi and Isa Yuguda.
The fact that Ohakim finally made official his membership of the PDP is not new to some of us. He has always been a member of the PDP; he thinks and acts PDP. He does not see any ideological difference between the PPA and PDP.

I can also tell you that most other governors are having PDP in mind. I will want to make an exception to one or two individuals. They include (Babatunde) Fashola in Lagos and you can see the difference and (Ibrahim) Shekarau in Kano too. The two are always trying to serve the people better while the federal government is trying to force them to the status quo. All the other remaining ANPP governors are PDP; they are all striving hard to impress the PDP. All the PPA governors are PDP. The only APGA governor we have, Peter Obi, is struggling hard to impress the PDP. He is struggling to be accepted by PDP because of second term. Obi is sending emissaries all around to be accepted by the PDP. They have disdain for democracy and the constitution. We need to have a rethink to be able to redirect the flow of our democracy. In ADC, we are radically different from what you see in other parties.
What you see with elected governors abandoning their party and moving to another is the disdain that our people have for the electorate. It shows the disdain they have to constitutionalism. It is unfortunate.

Do you consider the development as a lesson to party leaders to be wary of whom to adopt as flag bearers?
It is no lesson to anybody yet. I don’t see much dividing lines between the parties. But I see that our political leaders have disdain for the people, which is why you hear some of them say I don’t need the people to win an election. These things need to happen so that the people will get annoyed and react to take over the government themselves. We need the people to rise up and protect themselves. I see God directing this course. God wants us to get up and react so that we can take over our destinies in our hands.

Are you talking of revolution?
It can be of any sort. The reaction can be of any sort. The tanker drivers, for instance, could refuse to work saying the person that is declared winner of an election is not the person they voted for. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and market women could decide to boycott office and shops for the reason that the one they voted for did not win; if they say they are protecting that our democracy is being desecrated and their power to choose is being eroded, the person in office will run away. It cannot necessarily be a revolution to tear the country apart. It could be the people deciding to protest wholeheartedly over an evil they see is happening.

Would a mega party arrangement pose effective challenge to the PDP in 2011?
I don’t think that is the biggest problems of the country. I know some parties in Europe that have less than 500 members and open their offices just few times in a week but had produced presidents. It depends on their programme for the people. But in the case of Nigeria, it depends on the people making sure that their votes count. We need to let the votes of the people count. Once that is done, a Wole Soyinka can win an election in Nigeria.

How can the federal government resolve the Niger Delta crisis? Do you think the amnesty arrangement will solve the problem?
Niger Delta poses a political and leadership problem to Nigeria and we must be ready to address it squarely. Our leaders are not thinking. We have a cake-sharing attitude towards Nigeria. No one will run his business the way they run the country. They will not run their own private businesses the way they run the country. They are not patriotic. What they are doing is just lip-service. We have states in the Niger Delta but the federal government is trying to control things there. That is wrong. I hear some people say that a lot of money goes to the states and what do the state governments do with it; that thinking is wrong. It is like questioning me what I do with the wealth of my father. Whose business is it? It is for the people of the area to protest if they feel their leaders are not ruling them well.

By the way, who are the leaders ruling in the Niger Delta? They were imposed on the people of the area by the federal government. The votes of the people do not count. So, you find out that everything is moving around and is from Abuja. That must be corrected. The federal government must free the states as much as possible. Our survival does not depend on oil. With over 150 million people, Nigeria remains a strong force in the world. Unfortunately, our leaders do not see it. All these Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and similar organizations are mere palliatives. How do you explain that the major oil institutes in the country are not sited at the place where oil is found?

I am a patriot, but I see the federal government as trying to assume more jobs than it can handle. Unfortunately, the one they are to do, they cannot do well. Let us allow the Niger Delta states to work. It will be better for us. If we tell the Niger Delta states to take their oil and send some percentage of the earning to the federal level, we will all be better for it.

MEND recently attacked Atlas Cove in Lagos in protest against the same issue of marginalisation. But some people believe that it took its agitation too far. Do you share that belief?
Militancy by the Niger Deltans is created by bad administration and governance in the country. Once there is bad attitude from the top, it flows down and you never know how far it can go. Coming to Atlas Cove is regrettable, but at the same time, you can see a lot more disaster in the horizon and it is all coming from bad leadership

Some people link bad leadership to corruption that is rampant in the country. We have the EFCC and ICPC. Do you think these anti-graft bodies are effective?
The two agencies have their roles, but the political leaders are the ones frustrating them. If the political leaders do not want them to function, they won’t function. They are the formation of the political leader. They cannot be optimally effective with insincere political leaders in place. Most of the corruption is coming from the top government echelon and you don’t expect some infant agencies to do more than they are doing now, more so when it is the corrupt leaders that put them there and can remove them at will. These are infant agencies and it will take serious political will for them to function effectively.

Do you see a future in the entity called Nigeria? You sound very pessimistic.
The entity called Nigeria is a great idea but unfortunately, our past leaders have made it to remain just an idea. The people in government are not trying to hold it together, and the way to hold it together is not by forcing it but allowing the entities to breathe and see why they must be together. It is by allowing some degree of freedom. If you don’t allow them freedom, they will suffocate and you have this type of militancy we are seeing. The entity called Nigeria is a great idea. Can it work? Yes, it can work, but our leaders need to be sincere and stop paying lip service to issues that are germane to national development.

Your party has men of great ideas but you could not make impact in the 2007 election. What happened?
There was no election in 2007 and that really bothers me and should bother every well meaning Nigerian. Maybe, we won’t have produced the President or any governor but we would at least be able to know the level of acceptance of our party. We did not have opportunity for Nigerians to rate us. Those that are saddled with the election ensured that votes of the people were not what they announced. We should have been able to at least know that 10 percent or 20 percent of the people like the idea and the agenda of the party. You said we have men of ideas but we would have loved to hear it through the ballot box; those saddled with that task did not allow that to happen and it is unfortunate that we cannot even rate the acceptance of our party. They just allocated votes. Everything we have now is false record and false mandate.

The government is making moves to reform the electoral laws but at a slow pace. How will you advise the government to go about it?
What the government is doing is just paying lip service. No sincerity in it at all. The government is involved in deception. When they talk of electoral reform, they are only trying to validate their mandate and when you confront them to see, you realize they are not serious. They appointed some people to do a job of looking for ways of getting it right in our election. They did not include politicians saying they don’t want it to be tainted with politics. And after those people finished, they appointed their own party men to review it and realized it won’t be in the interest of their party; the same government put it aside. They wasted the resources of the people in the process. I hope you can see the deception ion it now. They are merely trying to perpetuate themselves in office and so any reform they are talking about is just lip service.

Do you have any fears for the 2011 polls given the background that the government is allegedly not sincere with electoral reforms?
I have a lot of fears. The authorities must learn from a lot of things that are happening all over the world. Obama came to Africa and went to Ghana; you will see the effect of that visit in two years time. You don’t need so many people to build a country. The government must wake up and correct these things.

Some people have said if we fail to get it right in 2011, there might be problems? What is the ADC doing to ensure that we get it right?
ADC is not in government, and in this country, it is those in government that do things. We are enlightening Nigerians on their rights. As to what will happen in 2011, it depends on those in office. If the policemen are still going to connive with some people to carry ballot boxes, what can the ADC do? We can only enlighten the people by calling for a rethink and to be patriotic. We have gone around all the local governments in Nigeria preaching that the people should let their votes count and they should defend their rights. We have gone round to tell the people about our programmes. No party that done that.

What has been the impact of that enlightenment?
The Nigerian people are desirous but after what happened in 2007, they are discouraged. See what happened in Ekiti after the court ordered a rerun; a lot of people want to be part of it but they have to leave town on election day when they saw a war situation. That is dangerous for us as a nation.

How dangerous?
If we have a national election and it is converted to a war situation like we have in Ekiti, what do you think will happen? Nigeria is a good country with bad leaders. There are more cars on Nigerian roads than in Europe but we don’t have a car assembly plant here. Assuming we produce 40 percent of the cars, we won’t have this high level of unemployment; we eat a lot of things that we don’t produce. Our leaders don’t think. Any place where young men and women are not employed will degenerate. The youth will do things. The society will breed armed robbers, kidnappers and criminals as we are seeing now. I was in Anambra the other day and I saw a lot of young men roaming the streets doing nothing. No wonder criminals are taking over that state.

But Peter Obi is reported to be working and trying to change things.
How many people in your office want to go to Anambra? Everybody wants to go to Calabar. People want to come to Lagos to come and see what is happening here. That is an indicator of development and when people are running away from a place, it is an indicator that the place is failing no matter the level of publicity that is being mounted to the contrary. The man on the seat is not doing anything. When you see someone showcasing his achievement every time in the media, watch that man closely. He is either a fraud or a conman. That is what we have in Anambra. They produce albums to show people they are working. I don’t know whether Fashola has done any of those albums they do, yet you go around and you see changes in the environment and the roads. The one producing albums is the one that is not doing anything. Good work doesn’t hide.