He contested the last Ondo State governorship election on the ticket of then Action Congress of Nigeria. Currently in All Progressives Congress (APC), human rights lawyer, Tunji Abayomi, tells Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, his grouse with President Goodluck Jonathan over the on-going national conference, the rot in the judiciary, reasons behind the APC roadmap initiative, among other issues.
Tunji AbayomiYour party, All Progressive Congress (APC), has rolled out its roadmap for a new Nigeria. What actually informed the idea?
I think the whole essence is to establish principles that will guide governance under the APC and also to establish the party’s vision with some level of clarity, and differentiate the party’s ideals from that of other parties, especially the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The roadmap essentially focuses on the citizens of Nigeria, the issues that confront them. You will see that there is a lot of emphasis on employment, which is a major problem in the country, and also some kind of welfarism. Some people have criticised the decision to give N5,000 to the poorest of the citizens, saying that it is small; but the truth is that in this country, most of the poor don’t even have N5,000 in a month. Most of the people criticising the move don’t fully understand the precarious status of human beings in Nigeria. The level of poverty is gross and ungodly, and I think no serious party can actually disregard that; they actually need to do something about it. You have to lift people up to a certain level, so that they can carry their burden. I think what APC is trying to do is to at least establish something to begin with.
Do you think APC has the wherewithal to carry out this need-meeting agenda?
It depends on the presidential candidate and the people that will work with him. But in terms of the ideals of the party, the party more or less is following, you may say, the philosophy of Obafemi Awolowo to lay out the first principles, the guiding principles that will lead the governance or government of Nigeria. If the leadership is serious and then the political leaders are guided and committed to those ideals such as education, health, infrastructure, employment, agriculture etc., there will definitely be a positive change to development. The party is aware that it is facing the challenge of competition. So, I believe that in order to continue to win the affection of the people, it will have to do well and discharge governance effectively to the benefit of our people.
There is this allegation against your party that it does not observe internal democracy. How true is this, because many believe you were also a victim?
In the past, there were basis to make that kind of complaint because of the dominance of certain beliefs. In the past, it was based on the belief that if you had primaries, it could disrupt the system and it was not entirely unreasonable that selection should be made instead of election. The anxiety of the past was that when you go into strict election, some people could hijack the process. For example, the rich people could buy favour as well as votes and at the end you have wrong candidates. So there was a sense in it. There is also the issue that if you don’t have your party primary and you just select, you injure the party because the problem with it is that there is no fair contest. As I have always said about our party and I keep repeating it, anybody who wins must win justly and anybody that loses must lose fairly. The only way you can sustain affection in a political party is to have justice. I think it was Wole Soyinka that said “Justice is the first condition of humanity”. So if a party can achieve maximum justice, then it will be on the right track. There are various ways you can achieve that sense of justice.
When we were running for governorship in Ondo, for instance, one option available was to have all the candidates vote to say: If I am not selected, which other candidate will the person prefer? So, you will vote for somebody else except yourself, and at the end of the exercise, you tabulate the votes and see who has the largest vote and then you choose. But if you don’t do some of those things and you simply go ahead and appoint, it tends to disrupt and destroy a party, because people resent injustice. As at today, one of the central issues in the APC that I know was strongly argued and firmly established is internal democracy and that is already working, for example in Ondo. I believe that under the APC, due process will be followed. Now, there is internal democracy and the right party discipline.
Some judges were recently indicted and removed from office. Does it not bother you that most people may no longer see the court as the last hope of the common man?
I have anxiety over what is happening. There are great judges in Nigeria, but I also have to tell you that there are lots of judges diminishing the image of the judiciary because a lot of courts are susceptible to money manipulation, influence manipulation and government manipulation in Nigeria. When you have such growing disorder in this country, there will be a problem. We are sadly moving away from a situation where we can depend on impartial justice.
What is your opinion on the Constitutional Conference?
I have been in the forefront of discussions on Constitutional Conference and it is interesting that you called it Constitutional Conference. The President didn’t call it Constitution Conference; he calls it National Conference. My worry is what the President wants to do or achieve with it. Does he want to amend the existing military constitution that we say is illegitimate and wrong because it emerged without authority and legitimacy, and was foisted on the people of Nigeria? Does the President want to give Nigeria a new constitution? Now, if the President intends, like he appears, to be suggesting that he wants to amend the Constitution, then he has started wrongly because every Constitution prescribes internally how it will be amended. On the other hand, if the interest of the President is to give Nigerians a constitution, well he has started properly, but again wrongly. The idea of a conference is okay, but he has started wrongly because we now have a situation where in that conference he appointed over 140 people directly or indirectly. Now, my question is: If the President can only cast one vote in an election, why should he cast over 140 votes in a national conference that is to determine or restructure Nigeria? It means something is wrong. The other issue is that the executive power of the President is vested in him for the purposes of executing the law and the Constitution. He does not have the power to summon a national conference and use public money for that purpose without a law enabling him to do such. That is why I went to court. I am asking the court to determine whether the President can convoke the National Conference without any enabling law passed by the National Assembly.
On the other hand, I agree that a constitutional conference is essential because Nigerians must agree on the terms of their relationship, and this nation has had 10 constitutions and none of those constitutions is a constitution of the people, by the people and for the people. It is never a government that gives a nation a constitution; rather it is the constitution that gives a nation its government. It is never the content of a constitution that validates it; it is the procedure of making a constitution that validates it, and in Nigeria it is the government that gave us the Constitution,which is wrong. In one of my papers, I presented 10 fundamental legitimacy problems. There is organic problem, and I think this is why we also have a problem in this nation; problem of development. If you look at Nigeria, as at 1960, we were ahead of Malaysia, even India to a certain extent.
Like I said, this nation, for example, had television before France and women suffrage preceded a number of even some western countries. There were other developments that pushed the nation ahead of its contemporaries. The nation was a nation of the future in 1960, one of the leading nations of the world prospectively.But we have lost that future. Today, this nation has no water; there is no city in Nigeria that has water.There is no 100km of road in Nigeria without problems. You cannot find any public hospital where you will feel secured to take your children to; there is no primary school or scarcely any primary school where the elite can put their children. The education system has basically collapsed, as we now send all our children abroad. Nigeria is one of the most productive centres for the hospitals in India, and we were ahead of India few years ago. So the nation is actually in a bad shape. I believe one of the reasons we are where we are is because the organic structure for the nation is problematic, very problematic. You take every sector, it is just a problem. Boko Haram is an evidence of the problem of this nation. When I was detained in Jos Prisons when we were fighting for democracy in 1996, I predicted at that time that the North would have problem because of the unskilled young people, the almajiri, moving about. These were very energetic young people of 14 years and above. These children have grown up and cannot continue to carry bowls about; so now they have gun power and they are challenging the system that threw them up. They are rushing into the Boko Haram group because they have nothing to hold on to. So there is a problem in Nigeria that needs serious attention. The problem in the North is a growing problem all over Nigeria because the population of young people that are unemployed in this country is frightening. So there is a problem with governance and there is need to have a national constitutional conference to agree on how we are to be governed.
Some critics say there is hidden agenda by President Jonathan to have a National Conference. Do you share such view?
The reason people are raising alarm that there is hidden agenda is that we do not know the intention of Mr. President. People are talking about hidden agenda because they don’t know where he wants to go. Initially, he said the outcome of the conference would be submitted to the National Assembly and people were asking what he was talking about with such statement. If you say you will submit it to the National Assembly, you have made nonsense of the entire exercise. Also, if you say the conference will decide on what to do with the document, there must be some level of conviction for people to believe you. So, for now, the people are unsure of what will happen; the reason they are feeling there is hidden agenda. So the President owes it as a duty to let us know what he wants. To my mind, we are just going to talk and it is of no consequence. It is almost a waste of time.
Most Nigerians seem to be worried on whether Jonathan should run in 2015 or not. While the North is warning that if Jonathan runs, they will make the country ungovernable for him, Niger Delta militants are saying if he does not run, they will go back to the creeks. Do you see any danger ahead?
I don’t think running or not running should have anything to do with militancy in the South or Boko Haram, in my view. You cannot say that President Jonathan must run; that is wrong. You cannot say he must not run; that is wrong. The decision to run or not to run is not an ethnic issue under the Constitution and under the law; it is an individual decision in a political party. Now the next question we have to ask is:Has President Jonathan a right under the law to run? If he has right under the law to run, then he could run or he could decide not to run. That is his decision. In my view, he has a right to run under the law. So, he can run. Nobody can say he shouldn’t run. You can run to lose.
What then is the way forward for Nigeria?
The way forward for Nigeria is to have a constitution of the people by the people. It is not this crowd that we now have that will make a constitution. It is a small group that makes constitution, but a large group approves it. The American constitution was written by just 55 people and was sent to the various states for adoption. I do not know what President Jonathan really wants. I am confused too about his ideals, intentions, mission and vision.
We learnt you have withdrawn the case against the President on the convocation of the National Conference, what happened?
No, I have not withdrawn the case; I only withdrew the interlocutory injunction.