Lagos-based journalist, lawyer and human rights activist, Chijioke Odom, is the National Director of Campaigns and Strategy of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO). In this interview with Reporter, MARY OGEDENGBE, he talks about Nigeria and the level of rights abuse.
What is the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) about?
Chijioke Odom
CLO is the pioneer human rights organisation in Nigeria. It is two and half decades now in operation. Prior to our coming, there was no civil rights organisation that knew, touched or did anything on human rights. Human rights were alien to Nigeria. And so after nearly three decades in existence, it is only natural that we have become the biggest, largest and the most community-based civil rights group in the country.
In that manner, the CLO group was born in the worst days of military dictatorship in Nigeria, when abuses of human rights were the objective principles of state. There was no voice for the countless masses of Nigeria, no hope for the downtrodden, and no representation to the unrepresented Nigerians. Only the military and their cronies ran the nation the way they wanted. Brutality, extra-judicial killings, detention and killing of journalists, deprivation of all forms and shades of human rights were run.
How is CLO funded?
We get our funding from donor organisations like Freedom House established by the wife of the former American President, Theodore Roosevelt; and the International Republican Institute. These ones are able to look at issues dispassionately.
Have you always been a human rights activist?
I practised journalism for a long time, and by the special grace of God won awards in The Guardian newspaper. As early as 1991, I had become the Defence Editor of The Guardian and then manned several other desks like Features and all that. I had won the Nigerian Merit Award, Commonwealth Journalism Award and the rest of it. I moved on from there and edited titles with ThisDay. From there, I became the pioneer Managing Editor of the Examiner newspaper. I had also been the African Editor of the widest circulating black magazine in the United States, The African Profiles International. I observed first-hand, while I was a State House Correspondent, military brutality and deprivation of human rights.
The human rights community in Nigeria actually came for me while I was Managing Editor of The Anchor newspaper. Based on my record, they knew quite a lot of things that I probably had done. As early as 1978, I had won a scholarship with Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). While in Shell, I observed first-hand the oppression of Nigerians by multinationals. Being an activist, I could not let myself remain silent in the face of oppression just to become the managing director, which they were trying to turn me into, having been through the educational system they sponsored. I think I disappointed them for very good reasons. I organised the first protest in Shell called called “Ego ole” (how much). I mobilised the workers based on the things I had seen.
In The Guardian too, they were looking up to me because I was bringing glory and super stardom to them, winning prizes all over the place. They felt I should just pipe down, but there was great oppression in The Guardian. Two others left The Guardian after a series of protests. The civil society was putting all these together. They had watched me, my pedigree and precedence. They invited me over to help save Nigeria from drifting into perpetual bondage. So, I switched over from journalism to civil society full time.
Do you still practise journalism?
I am combining a lot of things. Just very recently, I served on the editorial board on a whole lot of national newspapers. I do not want to mention names. I also served as the pioneer Managing Editor of a national newspaper called the National Vision and contribute to a whole lot to international journals and programmes. I write for some newspapers in Australia, do syndicated stories, do political analysis on television. I appear on Love World Plus. I have not left journalism; I am still practising, but using different avenues and still doing human rights work.
Over the years, would you say there has been a reduction in the rate of human rights violation in the country?
On the contrary, the opening up of the democratic space brought with it very terrible magnifications of human rights and abuses in Nigeria. This is because under the military regime, the instrument of force or coercion repressed people and therefore brought a seeming order, but it was a peace of the graveyard. Revolt was suppressed in the face of tyranny because of the enormity of sheer force on the ground exemplified by the military in authority. Communities were fermenting from beneath; sectors of the society were sitting like an alcohol shaking in a bottle, but could not burst out. As soon as that instrument of coercion was removed, it burst out and spilled all over the place.
In 2002, as the number two man in CLEEN Foundation (formerly known as Centre for Law Enforcement Education), we did a study on ethnic and religious uprisings in Nigeria and put it all in a book called Hope Betrayed, published overseas. It was sponsored by the World Organisation against Torture based in Paris. They had come here and, over a number of months, we did a whole lot of training for human rights organisations at Gateway Hotel in Ota, Ogun State. We talked to them on monitoring human rights abuses, and top people like Oby Nwankwo (Chief Magistrate in Enugu), Kunle Fagbemi (head of a human rights group in Abuja) et al participated.
When the books arrived Murtala Muhammed Airport, the Customs seized the entire cargo. Their argument was that the then President Olusegun Obasanjo instructed that the books should be impounded. The title of the book directly contradicted his campaign theme for 2003 which is ‘Hope Nigeria’. Do you see human rights abuse?
We went to court and obtained judgment in favour of CLEEN Foundation,; yet the presidency refused to release the book. This was just one part. One would have thought that with civil regime, abuses of such would be a bygone. When people in authority fear freedom of expression, they will also revert to military tactics to stave off whatever effect it may have on them.
Demilitarisation is needed. You hear about military and civilian clashes every other day because the military officers have not learnt to subjugate themselves to civilian authority. The civilians who are in authority have also not learnt to allow the culture of dialogue and exchange of views to underline relations in society.
Would you say what we have currently is a demilitarised democracy?
We do not have a democracy. What we have is a civilian regime. Democracy moves through stages; first, there is pseudo-democracy. That is what we have; we do not have a democracy here at all. Democracy means, the will of the people is supreme. Stomach infrastructure determines who wins an election, including Ekiti State. When that happens and people are concerned with ‘me’ now, and they take it and forget their future, you have the wrong people in office.
Can this be attributed to the level of poverty in the country?
Man can manufacture an excuse for anything he wants to do. It is said that politicians are concerned with the next election and a statesman the next generation. The problem with Nigeria is not the leadership; the bulk of the problem is with the followership, because the people get the type of government they deserve. Democracy you see in those countries was made possible not by leaders, but by people who came together to say this is what we want. What American women went through, Nigerian women have not gone through it, but they stood their ground and said they must have voting rights. Everywhere in the world, when people are passive and docile, they speak a language to the oppressors of power to deal with their destiny the way they want. So if people trade off their tomorrow to be comfortable today, their better tomorrow will never come. Benjamin Franklin said, “those who will trade off essential liberty in order to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”. Your politicians know that you do not have the elasticity; that is why issues come and die because Nigerians cannot sustain them.
Would you ascribe the recurrent abuses of rights to the fact that Nigerians do not know their rights?
Continuous education is not undertaken – constitutional education, civic education or human rights awareness. What is being done at any level is simply been done by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which are dependent on donor funding. Without money, you cannot print Information Enlightenment and Communication (IEC) packages like leaflets and tracts.You cannot even hold workshops.
Some of these things were taught in the primary and secondary schools. But go and check for yourself if these things are still in the current curriculum of Nigerian educational system; they are not there. The reason for this is simple: class interest; the more they let you know your rights, the more they are threatened that you will come to take them off from what wrong they are doing.
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) was established as a paramilitary institution, so that anybody who passes through it will be battle-ready. In Israel, everybody is a reserved soldier, no matter the age. This is why nobody messes with Israel today. The NYSC was conceived in this manner. As platoon commander in 1989 when I served, I told the military authorities who were teaching us then to teach us how to shoot. Do you know what the brigadier told me? He said, “una go mutiny”. So, the politicians who took over one after another kept watering it down till it became a shadow of its former glory. The corps members are now used to supervise elections and are killed in the process. Now, everybody is deployed to the classroom, no matter what you read.
What is your candid opinion about the insurgency in Nigeria?
The military does not have the equipment to face Boko Haram. Since Shehu Shaghari left in December 31, 1993, not one instrument has been bought. When this army went to Mali, their guns could not fire; our Generals were deployed to executive and administrative units. They were sent back to the offices to sign papers because their guns could not fire. So when you hear that 480 troops ‘strayed’ or ‘ran away’ or ‘fled’ or ‘made a tactical retreat into’, depending on who is talking, remember that, first, their wives protested that their husbands must not be sent there. So the men went and as they could not commit suicide, they simply had to flee for their lives.
Between 2008 and 2012, N4.43 trillion had been voted for defence in Nigeria. Where is the money? In 2002, one quarter of Nigeria’s budget went into defence. Where is the money or the equipment? But today, retired Generals are multi billionaires; one of them is actually in court with Fred Chijindu Ajudua, the alleged 419 (fraudster) from Delta State, claiming that Ajidua duped him of about $180 million. Where did the money come from? A retired Inspector General of Police (IGP) told me that though he’s retired, he will continually be the IGP because he has his boys lined up.
What are your projections for 2015 elections?
A lot of things have been said about 2015. There are forces for and against it. What is going to happen in 2015 is a penumbra. It can go either way. Mark my words, I did not say it is going to blow Nigeria over or that Nigeria will come through it unscathed. It depends on what Nigerians make out of it, because the signs have shown themselves early along the road to 2015. Year 2015 will be defined by the stance of the people, by what the people make it to be, because the same old political war horses are going to come out. Do not forget that the first law of life is survival. As the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) comes with all kinds of laws to checkmate rigging, they will also digitalise their own corruption. They will transmute and metamorphose to another level. Most of these things have been discussed already in my book that I have written in CLO.
If Nigerians try to prove as dinosaurs that will not change in the face of change, then they will be extinct because the political class will ride them in 2015. But if they try to change and say they want to monitor their votes and vote people not because of what they have promised, but what they have to offer, then there will be a change.
Do CLO still monitor elections?
There is no election we have not monitored. We pioneered it and taught Nigerians the ropes. CLO is usually the first to be approached because of our wealth of experience.
How come election rigging is still on the high side?
Over the years, we have even come to the issue of semantics; are those of us who have been sent to observe elections election observers or monitors? And so at international conferences at the highest level, we have come to say that we are election observers and not election monitors because a monitor must have some instruments to be able to regulate, moderate and influence. But an observer is simply observing, which is what we do. If you go to observe an election, you are not armed with a gun; you have your pen, paper and digital camera. If they have the votes counted at the polling centres and it is manipulated eventually, there is nothing you can do as an observer, but to report it. That is why we have what we call the ‘situation room’, ‘swift count’. We train people and all our observers all over will send in their reports.
So, before INEC comes up with its report, we would have come up with ours on whether it was free and fair because we are looking at several indices. Elections are not only rigged by manipulation of figures; but siting of voting centres is inclusive.
Civil societies are not as vibrant as they once were. What is the reason for this?
There are a whole lot of reasons civil societies in the current era are not as vibrant as they should be. The first reason is that the activist in the military era did not have a post-military era agenda cut out. At that point, the oppression was too much and all you simply wanted to do was to get the military out of the way. So, because we did not have a post-transition arrangement on how to engage the new government, the new government came and overwhelmed everybody. It caught us all napping.
Again, there were different interests. There were pro-democracy activists who simply wanted democracy; there were real human rights activists who wanted to inaugurate a real sustainable environment where equity, fairness and justice are the order of the day; and there were politicians masquerading as civil society activists, so that when the place opens up, they will latch on to it. All manner of people with different agenda. As soon as it happened, they all went their different ways; only the true activists remained.
