Chief Goddy Uwazurike, lawyer and former president-general of Aka-Ikenga, the intellectual think-tank of the pan-Igbo cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, is dissatisfied with the present state of Nigeria.
He was a delegate at the 2014 Constitutional Conference. In this interview with Assistant Politics Editor, Daniel Kanu, he speaks on critical national issues including restructuring, quit notice to Ndigbo, 2014 Confab report, Nnamdi Kanu and the IPOB challenge as well as his damning verdict on the APC leadership
Excerpt
How do you view the reinforced Quit Notice to Ndigbo to leave northern Nigeria by the Arewa Youth?
I think I will call them people who are engaged in a dance macabre; those people who want to be merchants of death and agents of the devil. Where ever you allow those type of people to strive they stir their devilish part that seems to destroy. Those people are blood suckers; their leader Suleiman, in his 60s, is a grandfather; and pretending to be a young man. The other one who lives in Agege or is it Oshodi, whose parents are from Northern Ghana, is pretending to be a leader.
In other words, they are procured by certain interests to respond to Ndigbo and to destabilise our stay there.
Who are they to order Ndigbo to move? Where do they come from? Those people who are pretending to be Northern leaders are they representing Benue State? Are they representing Southern Kaduna? Can they go to Gombe, Adamawa or Taraba to make such statement? These are people who were hired by other people, quartered in a hotel, flown in from different places for a single purpose: Come and pretend to be youths, come and pretend to be agents of destruction, come and incite a people against the other.
I heard the governor of Borno State speaking and I was laughing, the gloves are off, some of their articulate backers have spoken. We have some who cannot express themselves but whose only job is to destabilise. The only thing I will say is for them to remember that one of them is in power. Nobody fights if he is in power; you fight to get power. So when you fight to get power you do not destabilise the base. In a street language you cannot debase your base.Could you examine Nnamdi Kanu and the IPOB challenge in the South East?
Events bring out people; an issue comes out that leads to discussion. There has been a lot of injustice; there has been a lot of iniquity going on in this country. The near total absence of a level playing ground is what has produced Nnamdi Kanu and he is a representative of the downtrodden of those who have been hoping and waiting that there will be a solution to their problems. Whether he speaks or not he represents a certain state of mind which you, with all your understanding; you will be wrong to go against. You can only seek to see how you can manage the situation. You cannot obstruct Nnamdi Kanu in any Igbo speaking area today; you cannot stand up against him. If you think he is wrong in what he is doing get up and say so. Biafra is there in the heart of every Igbo man; that is the basic truth. All you need do is to tap it. But the difference is what to do about it. Some will say they want secession, some will say internal autonomy, some will say recognition while some say they want a level playing ground, which is an offshoot of restructuring. And even if secession is allowed or happens, it’s still restructuring. It is this fear that those in power has about restructuring and devolution of power that has made the National Assembly to vote the way they did. No matter how they want to paint it, Nnamdi Kanu has stimulated a discussion in this country. The question is: who are we? Where are we in this country? Are we here voluntarily or some people just made us one nation? The average Yoruba person will tell you: I want Oduduwa Republic that he did not vote for Nigeria. In 1914 Ndigbo did not. We have different mentality, the North and in the South. The average Fulani man may not argue with you but that does not mean he agrees with you. The Yoruba man may respect you now and bow down for you the next minute he turns around to kick. The Igbo man can even stand up and start shouting before he gets ready. These are idiosyncrasies, peculiarities of different groups so whenever we meet, these things are bound to collide. So Nnamdi Kanu has stimulated a discussion and you can’t ignore it.
It appears the intelligentsia in the South East are not in his support group or do you think otherwise?
The truth is that the youths in this country, in any part of the world, actually dictates a lot.
It is a failure of the older generation that has made the youths to stand up but it is what the youth will do with that power that is the problem.
Nnamdi Kanu just came out of prison. He is still going on a thank-you tour. I don’t think he has had any time to discuss with different kinds of people. As it is today, it is difficult to go and dictate to him what you want but only to discuss and persuade, how far it can go or cannot go is another thing. Remember the saying that what causes a problem is when an elder sees something happening and says nothing and the other saying is when a youth hears something and does not obey. So this is the problem we have now.
Many of us are in discussion with the young people; we are talking with them and I tell them that if war breaks out today people of my age group will not go to war rather those who go to war are their own age group. The same thing with those who do sports, they are the youth, what of the armed robbers? They are the youths. What of the students in the university? They are the youths, what of demonstrators? They are mostly the youths. The blood of a young man is always burning. It is only a young man who will see a person that has a gun and he will still go ahead confronting him with bare hands. One great Igbo leader Omenuko Odum from Arondizuogu wrote in his book that “it is he who does not know that war means death that runs to war to go and fight a war”.
If you think deeply you know that in Igbo land, people like him are also walking in a tight rope, holding back the youths and giving them hope will be okay. You need to look at the issue they are raising and see how you can tackle it without heating up the system. Let me leave the question there.
You were among the delegates that produced the 2014 national conference document, how do you feel the way the document is treated at the moment?
I think this administration has decided not to even look at it and I am not surprised because at the National Conference, some people who lost on all the points they came with said that we assure you that we are coming to power and when we come to power we are not going to look at this document, we are going to throw it away. Luckily President Goodluck Jonathan and his administration accepted it as a working document for the administration. It was submitted to the National Assembly. In other words, with the new government they are supposed to have started with it but you know human beings quite often allow peculiar things to affect their reasoning.
In other words, the idiosyncrasy of this administration is really stopping it from seeing what is so obvious.
How can you be floundering in the darkness when you have a torchlight that is still active in your hands? We have all kinds of problems facing this country and the solutions, most of them, are proffered by eminent men and women who for four months sat down to prepare and plan. During that process, for four months we had people like the oldest judge in this country, a former President of Court of Appeal, who had been in the Supreme Court, down to the youngest. We had people who have been in about four or five constitutional conferences, even before independence. We had highly educated people as well as those who were not highly educated; those that expressed themselves in pidgin English but passed across pungent points you cannot ignore.
We had 22 volumes of the report, very comprehensive and you want to ignore such a priceless document, too bad for the country.
Most Nigerians are talking about restructuring today, do you think it’s necessary?
It was a very fundamental aspect of our sitting and I remember at the time everybody, all delegates were expected to speak or address the entire conference on the issue. I said reduce the powers of the federal, increase the powers of the state government, reduce the funding of the federal, and increase the funding of the state and then some of the things the federal government has been doing, including drilling borehole in my backyard, I said that should be left for the state, that the FG should concentrate on things like telecoms, finance including the CBN, all military matters and defence, all immigration and foreign affairs, and we can have broad policies on health etc. but they must work hard on the areas exclusive to them. What is the business of the FG with water resources, agriculture is essentially a state affair anything going on in Abuja is ceremonial.
We said that any state that feels that it is too weak to stand on its own can apply to collapse with neighbouring state and if you remember this last meeting of the governors from the South West, I monitored their proceedings. What they did was exactly what we proposed at the National Conference. They adopted the national conference indirectly without naming it National Conference as their objective. All they agreed on: Regional autonomy, Regional corporation on security, finance and food matters, on education and others were all that we discussed.
They have adopted it as a way to go. And I hope all the others will do the same.
What would a restructuring entail?
Restructuring means that a police man from Katsina State will not be posted to my own local government, in the first place; he cannot speak my language, he does not understand my native behaviour, and he can’t even be a competent witness because a witness must say everything he has seen.
As a person I do not think that any officer below the rank of ASP should be posted away from their region (I mean the six geo-political region). The superior officers can be posted but those officers who mingle with the rank and file must be able to speak the native language.
Restructuring for me means, we (the people) controlling our own resources. In other words, if oil is found in Imo the state will be in-charge of that oil and pay tax to the federal government. For me restructuring means true federalism. This idea of everybody looking up to Abuja is wrong. Let every state or region develop at its pace, don’t expect the man from Zamfara to develop at the same pace as the man from Lagos. That also goes for Labour, in other words, minimum wage today is yet to be carried out by all the states yet we are thinking of increasing. Lagos can afford it but can Zamfara do that? Can Osun State do that when they still have many months of arrears to pay? Can Imo state do that?
We must not forget that restructuring of the mind is also important and critical. This is because no matter how long or how far you have done the restructuring without having the right people it will fail.
There should be rule of law that must be obeyed, separation of powers must be respected.
We also talked about the nature of the political parties, their commands, why they shouldn’t or should receive funds and what their motivation should be etc.
We discussed all these things and more in the Confab. If they are serious they must consult the Confab document.
What do you make of the argument that the absence of a good leader is the reason for the agitations for restructuring?
It’s difficult to say a good leader because you don’t know how they elect a good leader. The only thing I will say is don’t elect anybody who has a baggage. When a leader sees the constitution and says it is the constitution that guides him or her, that is the beginning because the person swore by the constitution, to uphold it. If you ignore the constitution as a leader it’s a breach of the oath. If the constitution says there must be federal character in all your appointments what do you do, you ignore it? It’s a breach of the constitution.
I only wish the National Assembly will now have a law that says anybody who has breached his oath of office will be disqualified from holding any further office, which for me will help. I know we have the code of conduct tribunal but it has a limited application and a very myopic way of approaching issues. People fill their forms to get there and it is only when your political opponent remembers you that he goes to fish it out. It’s something that is supposed to be procedural.
What would you say on the statement by former governor of Sokoto State, Attahiru Bafarawa, that Nigeria does not need restructuring rather if we need any, it is our mind, orientation and the way we choose our leaders?
You know people react to current issues. The current agitation right now is called restructuring in all parts of the country and I know Bafarawa being a former governor belongs to a certain sect. He has presided over things, he has seen both sides but often they see from a narrow and myopic views. If the lens is myopic it will see things in a certain way. If your lens is opaque you see no evil you hear no evil and that is what is going on today in this country. They don’t understand the problem of the man on the street.
Let me even start with Labour. The N18.000 (eighteen thousand naira) minimum wage has been there before President Buhari came to power and one of the promises of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is to increase it; has it done so? No. A bag of rice that was probably seven thousand naira before Buhari took over, the man with eighteen thousand naira can comfortably say I will buy a bag and in the next two months I will not buy rice and the family will be happy but can a man who is earning eighteen thousand buy a bag of rice anymore? No. I am not talking of other things. I am only talking of rice as a metaphor. So if Bafarawa does not think of restructuring he does not know that the man in Lagos lives a costlier life than the man in Sokoto. And that is sad.
Who do you think are afraid of restructuring?
Those who control power. Let me put it this way: those in power today fought to get power; they were not prepared for governance. It is governance that will make this country to be restructured. They have the power, they have the yam and they have the knife and you know that the day this country is restructured there will be a healthy competition as it was in the 60s with all the regions engaging in positive and healthy competition that was a catalyst for development and each at their own pace. They were not depending on oil, everyone was depending on its own, maximizing what nature bestowed to them and working out areas of priority in their needs. For instance, there was a competition in education going round. Ahmaddu Bello seeing that they were late starters took the challenge up. The Eastern region was also a late starter but it frog-jumped and moved quickly. The Western region was there in the fore-front and they were looking behind its back seeing the Eastern region catching up and even taken over and then the Northern region coming from a distance. So those in power are actually holding us in a stranglehold and anything that threatens their position in power they will oppose it including restructuring.
What is your verdict on the President Buhari-led All Progressives Party leadership in the country?
From the beginning I have always seen APC as a party of strange bird fellows. We have those who are ascetic in their belief. We have those who are materialistic and all sort of mix. When all these things mix together there is always a problem.
There is no meeting point in the APC, the entire manifestos, their entire constitution had been disregarded by those who hold power? A party in power does convention every year, so we are yet to see one since 2015. There has been a non-elective convention and the one they did recently as regards election was mere selection; they just wrote down names. In simple language we are being ruled by a cabal that does not believe in democracy. APC has failed Nigerians.