Former Minister of Petroleum, Professor Tamunoemi Sokari David-West, was one of the 50 men that drafted the 1979 Constitution. In this interview with Senior Correspondent, ISHAYA IBRAHIM, he says, among other national issues, the recent national conference has worsened Nigeria’s ethnic politics. Excerpts…
Do you think any of the resolutions of the recent national conference will see the light of day?
Tam David-WestRight from the beginning, I said that the confab is a waste of resources. Now that they have finished, whether I have changed my mind? I have not. It is a waste of time and money. My position has been that we don’t need another conference for us to know how to live together. If after 100 years, Nigerians have not found the modus vivendi to live together, no amount of conference will achieve that, except Nigerians themselves change their orientation and psyche.
We have got over six conferences. It would have been cheaper and faster if Jonathan had set up a panel of knowledgeable Nigerians – and they are many that are not tribalistic, that are not sectional, but believe in the Nigerian experiment – just few of them, a maximum 20 people, to go to the archives and bring out the over six of such conferences’ reports that are in government’s cabinet gathering dust and cobwebs, look at them and synthesise what they have recommended over the years.
Now they have wasted money. They voted N12 billion for this useless exercise. And I am ashamed of them that they are going to be given N12 million each at the end of the exercise. Why should government pay Nigerians to come together and brainstorm on how we can make this country better? But they went there not only quarrelling about money, but also about food; that food is late or not enough.
There are very good people in the conference that I respect. The chairman, of course, is an eminent Nigerian. But there are others that I cannot put my penny on; people that I call mere labels but less content – big names. I have interacted with some of them at various levels, especially as we were making the 1979 Constitution. Some of them I had interacted with at the university level, at the social level. They are big names – very good public relations (PR) personalities. But when it comes to content, nothing!
Now they have finished. The document is as good as useless. The same thing happened to the Oputa Panel. Justice (Chukwudifu) Oputa, a great man, was my teacher in school –a fantastic man. I have one of his last interviews on the Oputa Panel. He said “they wasted our time”. There was no enabling law that set up the Oputa Panel. The law of Nigeria is blind to its existence. Whatever they have done is useless; nobody can use it.
The same thing for this conference. There is no enabling law that set up Jonathan’s confab. Some of them suggested to President Goodluck Jonathan to send a bill for an enabling law. He didn’t. Nwabueze said so too. Jonathan didn’t. But Nwabueze still participated.
Nwabueze didn’t participate.
He was away on health grounds, but nominated somebody to represent him at the conference. If somebody is representing you, you are there. We did 1979 Constitution; we were 49 people. Papa Awolowo declined. Nobody paid us a kobo to produce that document. We got memoranda from the general public within and outside the country. And we had a lot of memoranda on what the 1979 Constitution should be.
Presidential system was chosen by Nigerians and not by the military. Over 80 per cent of Nigerians within and outside the country wanted presidential system. Anybody that says that presidential system was imposed on us by the military is a liar. I still have Murtala Mohammed’s inaugural speech. He said: Gentlemen, suggest anything in view of our past experience from zero party to multi party; suggest anything that will move Nigeria forward.
Presidential system was opted for by the Nigerian public, both within and outside the country. About 80 per cent of the memoranda we received, hundreds of them, preferred presidential system. Maybe it is because we were disappointed with the parliamentary system. It is like the situation where you don’t like your wife, and you divorce her. The next person you married turns out to be worse. It is not expensive. But Nigerians have made it expensive. Somebody wrote and it is true, that a Nigerian senator can employ Barack Obama four times.
Before you came, I checked my thoughts with some lawyers. I phoned a SAN (Senior Advocate of Nigeria) and three other brilliant lawyers. I said, these are my views about this conference report; if I am wrong, please correct me because I may be wrong. First, I said, the confab has ended and the document is useless because there is nothing that can be done with that document because the law of Nigeria is blind to its existence. There is no enabling law that set it up. They agreed.
How will Jonathan salvage this? Very sloppy, he puts the cart before the horse. National Assembly should have made a law ab initio setting up this confab. But since they have not done it, the only way is to send all the recommendations to the National Assembly. It can then make a law in retrospect to sanctify it. Without that, nobody can do any business with the recommendations. There must be a law. And who makes the law? The National Assembly. So, this document must go to the National Assembly to deliberate and see whether, in fact, it is advisable to make a law to consider it. Or they can take the recommendations one by one and see whether they can accept them.
The other option is to hold a plebiscite, which is more cumbersome. This document, as it stands, is useless. I am talking as a virologist. But I am not ignorant. Thirty minutes before you arrived here, a SAN was on phone with me on this issue. Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria. This document has not got the blessing of the sovereign people of Nigeria. But National Assembly represents the people of Nigeria. They are there as a body recognised by law. So, the document must go to them. Without that, it is useless.
Without prejudice to the validity or otherwise of the confab document, do you think the delegates did a good job in their recommendations.
I’ll discuss the recommendations intellectually and for the purpose of discussion. Some of the recommendations are good and some are not good. They talk about state police. State police is contradictory; it is conflicting. I don’t think that you can have two parallel police arrangement. Either you have national police or state police. In America, you have the National Guard, while the states have their police. Now, is Nigeria’s political culture safe for state police? You cannot have state police in an undisciplined political system. Attractive as it may be, you find that by the time you get state police, in which the governor is the boss, they will use that police for political purpose more than for national good. That is why I don’t like state police. We’ve tried it before and we all know the consequences.
I think they also talked about compulsory military service. Yes and no. There is nothing they have said here that is new. Compulsory military service has been said long ago. You cannot have all those in an undisciplined system. By the time you get compulsory military service, you are going to create more armed robbers in every nook and cranny of this country. All these beautiful things should not be taken in isolation of the system we operate in.
Without political discipline and personal discipline, all these things will crumble. If you have political discipline and you have more people that are thinking about Nigeria and not about themselves or their ethnic groups, this can exist. So, compulsory military service, attractive on the surface, but for Nigerian setting, is dangerous. The same thing with state police.
Creation of state is a very interesting thing. But confab has no power whatsoever to suggest creation of state. Do we need more states in Nigeria? I said no and I will give you the reason. We have 36 states, and a population of 170 million. Now, even if you make every village a state, there will still be minority. States can only be created if they are viable. If they are not viable, they are talking nonsense.
What the confab has done, to me, is unreasonable. They have forgotten the controversy over two-third of 19. Thanks to Babangida and more especially to Sani Abacha; they created 36 states, divisible by three. Now if you add 18 and 36, that is 54 abi? Is it divisible by three? So they are suggesting creation of states without considering the two-third controversy.
That now brings us to another contradiction. You cannot have two parallel constitutions. The 1979 Constitution as amended is still the extant Nigerian constitution. So, if you suggest anything in the confab that is fundamentally different from that constitution, you are wasting your time. It must go through constitution amendment. And you can only amend any article of the constitution, if after you finish your rigmarole in Abuja and 24 Houses of Assembly approve it. Without that, you are wasting your time.
That takes me to the great Rotimi Williams. He warned us not to mention the names of the states in the constitution. He said if you mention the names of the states, you cannot add any state or remove it without constitution amendment, and that means going through the amendment clause. Now, the great man has been vindicated. Confab has recommended for additional states. Now, what is the purpose of recommendation when it is useless? If you recommend something to somebody, the person can either accept the recommendation or throw it out or accept it in part. Your recommendation cannot go anywhere.
Let us assume that Jonathan has decided to create 18 states. He has no power to do that by law. In any case, 24 states must approve. And two-third of where you want to create this state must approve that you can cut us off. He cannot escape going through that clause.
Another thing I will address is that the confab has made ethnic politics more severe than ever before. It has produced more ethnic division, ethnic animosity than ever before. I’ll show you two newspaper cuttings to prove that. Daily Sun of August 13, 2014, page 26 reads: We pushed through 90 per cent of Igbo agenda at confab – Ohanaeze scribe. When Dr Joe Nworgu, secretary-general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, was going to Abuja to submit the confab document, they asked him how Ndigbo fared there. He said “Ah! We pushed through 90 per cent of what we wanted.” Are you there to represent Igbo or you are there to represent Nigeria? That is why I said the confab has created more problems for Nigeria than when it started. This secretary-general is telling me that he went to Abuja to push through Igbo agenda, not what is good for Nigeria. I have not finished. The second one is in Daily Sun of August 17, 2014, page 60 read: Confab: Fireworks that made core Northern delegates minority. And what are they saying in that report? They said the South South, South East and South West teamed up to make the Northern people minority in the confab. Is that why they went there? The confab is useless. I’ll like to believe that all of them are honourable men. So, they should refund all the money they have taken from government.
There must be something in the conference recommendations that you like.
They say if you defect to another party, your seat will be declared vacant. I like that. You know why? Aminu Kano is no longer with us. But two of the people who served with me in the subcommittee of election and legal process during the 1979 Constitution drafting will bear me witness. When we met in Kano, Bola Ige and Professor Dodley (both of blessed memory), as well as Ayadinu were there. We were the committee that set up the electoral process, dynamics and morality of election. In my paper in Kano in the subcommittee meeting, I said any elected member who changes party on the floor should go back to his constituency and contest again. Bola Ige, may his soul rest in peace, was the only one that opposed me. He disagreed. As I am saying this, the two members who are in the North will bear me witness. But it was expunged in Lagos. That is why we have this crisis. If that Aminu Kano’s committee recommendation had sailed through in Lagos, it would have been in the constitution. It is a moral issue. If you change your party, you go back to your people and ask for their votes again. But that does not make the confab a good one. It is a confab that can destroy Nigeria.
Are the endorsements Jonathan has been getting sign that he will coast home to victory in 2015?
Jonathan is a very intelligent man, but it will be very foolish of him to take these endorsements as anything. A lot of paid people are advertising in the papers. One of them is even stupid enough to compare Jonathan with Mandela, with Martin Luther King? Stupid! How could you? The advert said Martin Luther King did it, Mandela did it… There is nothing that made Jonathan to compare with any of them. Many groups have been formed. Pro-Jonathan this, pro-Jonathan that. All of them are sycophants, looking for Jonathan’s money.
Can endorsements be translated into votes, I doubt it. I said it before; the total votes Jonathan got from Ijaw area was 24 per cent. The remaining 76 per cent came from other areas – North, West and East. Jonathan should know that the ethnic bigots around him, the so-called super Ijaw, some of them are half Ijaw; I call them patch-patch Ijaw. They are deceiving him. He should be very careful. Machiavelli said this of flatterers. He said let your flatterers know that you will not be hurt when they tell you truth. If you don’t do that you are finished.
Were you disappointed as Nuhu Ribadu defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)?
No, I expected it. And a lot of people in APC expected it.
For how long have they been expecting it?
Long ago! You see, fortunately again and by the grace of God, I was among the people that set up APC. I was a member of the merger committee. There were people in our midst that we knew were there not with their heart and soul. If not, how can somebody who in our meetings made beautiful speeches – beautiful to listen to and beautiful in content – afterwards leave the APC experiment to go and be minister, after being governor.
Are you referring to the former Kano State Governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso?
I don’t know. But you cannot be governor for eight years and be comfortable to be minister, for goodness sake! Haba! There must be some honour. You cannot be governor of a state, even if it is a small state, for eight years and after that you change your party, so that they can give you a job of minister. Don’t you see it as a disgrace, as an insult?
As a governor, you recommend people to Abuja to be ministers. So, all these defections don’t bother me at all. I have never carried a party card. But when I checked with the core APC people, they said happy riddance. I said no, it is not happy riddance; it is a very sorry situation for Nigeria.
Okay, he has defected, hopefully to get the ticket to contest the Adamawa State governorship election? All these people who are defecting, what are their chances? Their chances are slim on the calculation. My mother used to say that as a Nigerian, if you go to a Whiteman and start to abuse another Nigerian, they would listen to you and give you tea. But after you leave, they will say: that is a useless man. They won’t have confidence in you.
Ribadu is a great name. Marwa is a great name. But can they achieve their dream in the PDP? Their chances are slim. Why? There are some PDP people that have been there, nursing that ambition. You don’t come from outside and impose your ambition on them. They will tell you that governorship is not for sale. They are going to be faced with credibility problem, integrity problem. And their enemies within the PDP will use it against them. Their enemies outside PDP will also exploit that against them.
So, the chances of Ribadu or Mohammed Marwa being governor of Adamawa State are slim to me. I may be wrong, but let the time come.
There is another thing they have to consider. Nyako, who was removed as governor of Adamawa through spurious means, still has his supporters and sympathisers. They are still licking their wounds. So, what have Ribadu and Marwa got to gain? They are going to fight against PDP members that have been there from the beginning saying: no, you cannot come and take our ticket. They are going to face Nyako’s people. So, what is there chance?
Why did you say you actually expected Ribadu’s defection to PDP?
I cannot go into details, but some public statements, Freudian slips. Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh. Sometimes you may say something which you don’t expect to say, it just slipped out. All I can say is that 2015 will be very interesting.
The governor of Nasarawa State escaped impeachment. But we gathered that the House of Assembly members are making another attempt to oust him. What do you make of that?
They are going to fail. He is so popular. The people’s power is more than militarisation. The new one they are starting is a nullity. They cannot use the same charges against him because a competent panel set up at their instant has cleared him.
There was an assassination attempt on Muhammadu Buhari. Many have said that if the assailants had succeeded, Nigeria would have been thrown into chaos. Do you share that opinion?
Yes, it is true. But Mujahid Asari Dokubo was talking nonsense. He said it was Buhari that planned to assassinate himself. How can he talk like that? Irresponsible! He planted the bomb to destroy his own entourage? If anything happens to Buhari, whether you like him or not, the conflagration will be such that no amount of water can quench it.
In your book, The ‘Sixteen Sins’ of Buhari, some say you are subjective.
They should shut up. I challenge them to show me where I was subjective.
That you didn’t mention the preferential treatment given to President Shehu Shagari who was detained in a guest house, while Alex Ekwueme, his vice, was detained in Kirikiri.
I agree that it looks unjust and inequitable, though I didn’t discuss it. But if I were to discuss it in the book, I would say that justice treats equal things equally and treats unequal things unequally. Shagari was president, Ekwueme was vice president. Ekwueme existed because Shagari existed. The constitution is clear. The constitution has no provision for vice presidential candidate to contest. The presidential candidate selects vice president.