An attribute that even the harshest critic of Professor Ben Nwabueze, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), would readily concede to him is the courage to speak out his mind, no matter the odds. This, he manifests in this robust interview with Managing Director, IKECHUKWU AMAECHI, and Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, as he takes a critical look at President Muhammadu Buhari’s election and the sentiments that facilitated the enthronement of his administration. He also talks on corruption in the land and the need to extend the probe of past governments beyond the Goodluck Jonathan era. Below are excerpts.
Not much had been heard from you since the March/April general elections. How would you analyse the polls, especially the processes and outcome?
I have been in a dilemma since the election and the dilemma is the greatest that I have had in my life. I will tell you at once what I mean by the dilemma. Before the election, as I believe everybody knew, I was opposed to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a ruling party. I was vehemently opposed to the party. I am not a politician, I don’t belong to any political party but considering the way the PDP as a government had conducted its affairs in this country, I came to the conclusion that the PDP was the greatest evil facing this country and what we as a country needed above everything else was to change the ruling party. That was my position. And you will see in a chapter in my book, How Obasanjo subverted the rule of law and democracy in Nigeria, where I dealt with former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s plan to perpetuate the rule of the PDP. I said that the perpetuation of the rule of the PDP in Nigeria would be the greatest evil, the greatest danger facing this country. He believed that the PDP would govern Nigeria in perpetuity. That was his belief and he worked so hard towards that plan. Fortunately, that plan was foiled.
I was looking forward to a change from PDP to another governing party. That was my dream. Now the realisation of that dream through the election in 2015 posed a dilemma: how do you change the PDP without changing its flagbearer? Without changing the president governing under the PDP? It was a great problem. I wanted the PDP changed but how do you separate the PDP from the president? They seem to me inseparable. So, if you are going to achieve that change of replacing the PDP with another ruling party, it must necessarily affect its president. It’s a dilemma.
So, why the dilemma? Could it be that you thought Jonathan had done well as a president while PDP had done badly as a ruling party?
Quite early as you will remember, I thought that the best way out of the dilemma was for President Goodluck Jonathan not to contest and I made it clear in a public statement which was carried in the newspapers. Some praised me, some were condemning me for what I said. Some said I was so dogmatic, some said why was I so bitter.
Even Jonathan has not forgiven me for that up till now. He is still nursing some grudges against me for my views. But when I made the statement, I explained the reasons why I was giving him such advice. I said it was what I would do if I were in his position. I maintained what I said. Of course, whatever happened to the PDP would happen to Mr. President. It would have been a terrible thing for this country if we were to continue to be governed by the PDP.
You said Obasanjo wanted to perpetuate PDP rule?
Yes, in that chapter on How Obasanjo subverted the rule of law and democracy, I gave an account of my conversation with him (Obasanjo) when I was Secretary-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo. I met with him from time to time and this was one of the issues that he and I discussed. He cited the example of Germany, that one party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had governed the country for 36 years and that if that happened in Germany, one of the bastions of Western Democracy, why shouldn’t it happen here, and that why should it be a crime here for the PDP to rule forever. But even the CDU example that he was giving was not correct because the CDU did not govern for 36 years at a stretch. It governed for 26, and the Christian Democrats took over and governed for I think 16 years before their coalition headed by Angela Merkel. He argued and was adamant, combined with his plan to elongate his own tenure which was to perpetuate his third term agenda. If he had got that, he would have stayed on for life. That was the plan.
Still in the same book, there is a chapter on his plan to perpetuate the rule of his party. You would see an account of that plan and all its implications for the country. Fortunately, both plans failed. So, you now see my dilemma: I wanted the PDP changed at all cost if this country was to survive and be what we want it to be.
It was Obasanjo’s evil plan that rubbed off on the PDP because he was the PDP at the time. What he said was what PDP stood for and even when he retired, he still made himself leader of the party for life. He still made himself Chairman of the BOT and all governors under the party took instructions from him. He manipulated everything. His manipulation brought Umaru Yar’Adua and Jonathan to power, so the evil continued.
In all sincerity, Jonathan is not a bad man but he is definitely weak in my estimation and his capacity to rule Nigeria was questionable. So I was faced with this dilemma as many other Nigerians as well as the organisations that I lead – The Patriots, The Igbo Leaders of Thought, The Project Nigeria, etc. – were faced with this dilemma: the choice between PDP and another party which to us was imperative. If you are going to remove the PDP what do you do about Jonathan as its leader? Then came the question of choice between Jonathan and Buhari. If Jonathan must be there because he is the leader of the PDP, how do you choose? How do you choose between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and PDP? How do you choose between Buhari and Jonathan? The choices between the PDP and APC got complicated for me and for many people. We had all pinned our hope for this change we all clamoured. The election of March 2015 was based on the desire of Nigerians for change. Everybody wanted a change but a change to what, between PDP and APC? We thought APC was going to be the salvation for us, but the politics of APC got so complicated right from the time of the formation, the merger of the parties that formed it. The complications climaxed by the primaries of the APC for the choice of their presidential candidate, making it very problematic.
How and why?
You had, in APC, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a Muslim but a moderate one, not a fundamentalist. I know him very well because I was his lawyer. I led a team of lawyers, Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and junior lawyers in all his cases. The challenge was that, yes, there must be change from PDP to APC with all that were involved – religious affiliations, the religious divide, which is the greatest problem that this country has. There is no other problem facing Nigeria worse than the religious divide. I said to myself, okay, if there is going to be this change from PDP to APC, we have somebody who can steer a middle course in the religious divide and that was Atiku.
The APC primary election showed something totally different. Atiku scored 954 votes and Buhari scored 3,430 votes. Why? Didn’t that suggest something to you? Didn’t that have some implication, that the votes were largely Muslim votes from the North? I am talking about the primaries. Why this preference of Buhari over Atiku? Why such wide margin? My reading and interpretation of the result of the primaries was that the voters who were primarily Muslims, were looking for somebody who could be relied upon to implement the Muslim agenda.
What made you think so?
Buhari had made statements in the past about his identification with the Muslim agenda. The statements were quoted in the newspapers before the election. And Nigerians are all aware of it. So, that became frightening and created a dilemma. I wanted a change. I thought that APC would give us the change and now APC was giving us a candidate that had identified himself with this Muslim agenda.
How could this country achieve the needed transformation under such a leader? It’s going to be a big problem. We discussed this at length with The Patriots, with the Igbo Leaders of Thought, with Project Nigeria. How could that be? Of course, it’s no more a choice. There was no possibility of somebody else representing APC. So we had to accept it but it’s another source of dilemma.
So, who is your ideal Nigerian president? What qualifications should he have?
Apart from this religious dilemma, I wanted a President of Nigeria with necessary qualifications, not only educational qualification, the intellectual credential. I wrote and published one article, ‘Qualification for the President of Nigeria’. It appeared in a number of newspapers. I said this, considering the country with all its complex problems, nobody who has not been through the walls of a university can really grapple effectively with the problems; they are so complex and require certain minimum intellectual capacity which only a university graduate can first understand and then begin to grapple with. The military, with all their training, are not equipped to solve the political problems of governing a country as complex as Nigeria. I have always said it. Also in May, in my recent speech during the conferment of an award to me, I harped on this under the caption, ‘The poverty of intellectualism in Nigeria’. It is part of the problem that we have; it’s a dilemma. Even with all his fine qualifications in military schools, is Buhari the kind of man that we want to solve the problems of Nigeria? I came out in conclusion, with all the organisations that I lead, that we needed something higher than the school certificate which was the thing produced to the public – that he went to secondary school in Katsina and had Cambridge School Certificate. That was all that we know. That was part of my dilemma.
The other problem, also part of the dilemma was; could this country really, meaningfully and effectively transit to real democracy with a former military man, a former Head of the Federal Military Government as President? Can you see the incompatibility? Obasanjo demonstrated this during his eight-year rule. He established what is described as constitutional dictatorship. He couldn’t shed his military background, his background as military commander, his background as Head of the Federal Military Government invested by the constitution with absolute power, overnight. It was impossible. The reason why we have not effectively transited to effective democracy was because of that. In the eight-year rule of Obasanjo, he made it impossible because he was ruling not as a democrat but as a dictator, even though operating under constitutional democracy. The Nigeria Constitution establishes constitutional democracy, yet it was possible to subvert, pervert the constitution to support a dictatorship, which was what we had.
That is why I said that so long as this country is being governed by a former military general, former Head of the Federal Military Government, it cannot achieve the objective of constitutional democracy. We can’t; it’s not possible, in my view. And so, what do we do with a new military general, former Head of the Federal Military Government? We wanted a change, everybody wanted a change but Nigerians did not understand the implications?
Does that mean you don’t believe Buhari when he says he is a convert to democracy?
Buhari since his election has declared himself a multi-party democrat. I made a cutting on what he said in an interview carried in one of the newspapers, broadcast live on BBC Hausa Service, Voice of America Hausa Service, NTA Hausa Service on May 2, 2015.
He said and let me quote him a bit: “Today there are 18 countries in the former Soviet Union. That was when I believed that the multi-party democratic system is a superior form of governance and that is why I joined democracy. We have made a big stride this year and I assure you, God willing, if we survive the next four years, Nigerians will be in a position to confidently raise their heads up that they elected their own leaders. They will choose those that they want as their representatives from local governments, states to the centre. I will fight for free, fair and credible elections because that is why I remain in politics.” This is what he said but how much does it reflect the reality? We have to give him a chance. Let events unfold and we will see over time whether it is really feasible for a man with his background, his credentials to transform from military dictator which he was, to multi-party democrat which he claims to be today. We have to give him a chance knowing that he is going to operate under a complex religious divide.
But I am personally in a dilemma of making a choice between him and Jonathan. Look at the appointments he has made so far. Out of the 17 appointments, 14 are from the North and none from the South East. Even among the Service Chiefs, none is from the South East. Then we have the problem of the transfer of the Boko Haram prisoners to prisons in the South East (Ekwulobia). They said Jonathan approved it; but it was not implemented under Jonathan.
The Buhari administration recently said it will only probe the immediate past administration. Do you think there is need for a probe, and shouldn’t such a probe go beyond the administration of Jonathan?
The issue of probing is another great dilemma for me. The question of probing the past is a serious dilemma. I just learnt that the president said he will be concerned with probing the immediate past government. We must remind ourselves of what Jonathan said about probing only his tenure, which will amount to witch-hunt. It is a tricky issue. I believe the vast majority of Nigerians think that there can be no proper effective change unless corruption is effectively dealt with, not only for the present and for the future but also in dealing with the past. We all are yearning that Nigeria needs a new beginning and the question of probe is at the heart of it. I know that probing past governments is not an easy matter, you will be on it for years. It is not something that ends in a year or two.
But no probe that leaves Obasanjo out means anything because that is where corruption recorded its greatest height.
You cannot tell me that you are giving Nigeria a new beginning if you don’t probe Obasanjo’s administration. I agree with Jonathan that if you are going to probe and there should be probe however long it will take, but if we are sincere that we are going to probe, then we should probe all the past regimes not Jonathan alone; at least you must start from Obasanjo. No probe that leaves out the Obasanjo regime means anything. Why should you probe only Jonathan? Jonathan is right that this will look like a witch-hunt. If you probe only one past government without Obasanjo, it is a witch-hunt. And to me there is no abiding lesson as far as stopping corruption is concerned. I know that the Obasanjo regime was corrupt and that Obasanjo personally was clever using surrogates here and there, building palace on the mountain. He was using surrogates to contribute money for his university and his library. Those who were reported to have voted millions for those projects did they vote it because of their love for Obasanjo as a person? How many billions was involved in all those projects. When one talks about some of these issues one gets angry. If Buhari is going to probe only Jonathan, as far as I am concerned it means nothing.