Erstwhile Managing Director of Nigerian Breweries Limited and immediate past Chairman of National Population Commission (NPC), Festus Odimegwu, is not the typical Nigerian politician that speaks tongue-in-cheek. He rather shoots his arrows straight, especially in dissecting issues weighing the country down, and pointing the way forward. Such is the case in this engaging encounter with IKECHUKWU AMAECHI, OGUWIKE NWACHUKU and EMEKA ALEX DURU, where he analyses President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration and his failed re-election bid, Professor Attahiru Jega’s handling of 2015 elections which he dismissed as a sham, post-election Igbo politics, the Muhammadu Buhari agenda and PDP opposition status, among other issues.
Before the March 28 Presidential election, you were among those that spoke out forcefully that President Goodluck Jonathan was going to lose. What made you appear that certain?
It was analytics; power of deductive reasoning. Some of us went to proper schools. Education is important in the life of individuals and nations. Nigeria has become a country where mediocrity is being celebrated. In the process, some people think that education is not important. There is nothing as useful in a country as its human capital. And the human capital comprises people who are truly educated. When a man is not educated, he is by all intents and purposes, an animal; he is not a human being. To be a human being has a philosophical definition.
A human being must have a body of a human being, the mind that is educated and an ethical soul. Those three components must come together to give you what you call a proper human being. It is not everybody with eyes and nose that is a human being. Most of the caricatures; creatures in Nigeria do not qualify to be human beings because they are not educated.
If you have gone to a university – a premium university where your dignity has been fully restored, and you did humanities, philosophy, religion, power of deductive reasoning, logic theology as we did in our time, even when you were doing sciences, when you come out in the society, you have the power to analyse things critically. Irrespective of what anybody is saying, you can look at things yourself and come to your own conclusions as what the philosophers call the autonomous man which is the point of self-actualisation of a human being. This starts from when you are attached in your mother’s womb. You are purely dependent on your mother when that happens. On the day of the birth that you are cut and you begin to go through the socialisation processes that make a human being to the point of self-actualisation in the process of individuation, you become a god-man; a man that has the qualities of divinity; a man in which the spirit of God in you has found expression.
That was why in old Greek society, when men were really great, they became god-men. They were gods! The same philosophy prevailed in African society. The Igbo theology substantiates the divinity of humanity. So, when you have gone through good schools, you come out and continue to develop yourself on that path of enlightenment, unaffected by the materialistic nonsenses happening around you, or the pretensions of evil men who are not qualified to be called humans, you can have the power to analyse something critically and come to a conclusion that people will call oracular.
I went to good schools; and I can reason. I worked with President Goodluck Jonathan. He is such a big disappointment – a young educated man that was supposed to have a Ph.D, doing things that do not have any sense at all. It was a betrayal of the educated people.
In what ways?
It was betrayal of all the people from the South. What do you mean in asking in what ways? Are you not ashamed of this out-going administration? Every Nigerian should be ashamed of the administration. I worked with the administration and I walked away. I have said so on television. People said I was fired. But I ask, how can he fire me? How can people that are not working fire those that are working? I couldn’t identify myself with what I saw. I raised issues on whether they were in Abuja to shortchange the people. I wrote memos that Jonathan received copies but he never reacted to any of them. If I were the President and anybody working under me wrote such memos, I would call a meeting and get the issues resolved that day. Have you not heard about the issues of corruption? The middle name of this out-going administration is corruption.
This is the most corrupt administration in Nigeria. And the menace is in every ministry and every department. You cannot run a country like that – where you have over 25 million graduates of various classes of degrees without jobs. We have now taken Nigeria to a level where you have children with three masters’ degrees and Ph.D without jobs but it is fools that are cannibalising the country and want us to celebrate them. When you raise issues, they say ‘if you cannot beat them, you join them’. Why must you join fools? In a country where you have rent seekers, business parasitic human beings, political jobbers roaming all over the place, if you do not have some sane people who are still saying the right things, showing the light, the country will be doomed. Luckily some of us have worked in good environments and cannot soil our hands.
But the impression is that if your Permanent Secretary had stolen N450 million, you should still N1 billion. In some ministries, they even have formula of sharing the stolen money including giving the gate man his own share. Corruption has become the most singular thing that is destroying the fabrics of the society.
The President-elect was correct to call it the evil that is destroying Nigeria. Unless you tackle corruption, Nigeria will not go anywhere. You have a federal government that should be having N20 trillion and, as Professor (Charles) Soludo said, N16 trillion is stolen, misapplied or misappropriated and we have just about N4 trillion that members of the National Assembly will waste their whole year talking about and at the end, 90 per cent of it is spent on recurrent expenditure. Incidentally, this is a country where you need, probably $400 billion to address the infrastructure deficit. If you don’t address these, how do you develop the nation? Who would want to belong to such a country?
Were these the issues you raised in the memo?
One single memo in an administration is not enough to address the issues in the country. But we can see the issues in the country every day. Is this country working? The issues are well-known and they have been articulated. While I was working with this government, I could see, from the part where I was, the mess in the country.
Let me tell you the one that is particular to national population. In the election that we just had, President Jonathan knew he couldn’t have won. If he had done anything to say that he won, he would have felt sorry for himself after that. I wrote so before the election. Nigerians wanted change to a level that they wanted anything but Jonathan because he had messed up the system sorely in governance and leadership.
So, it was good that Buhari came through. That is why everybody is happy. But Buhari did not come through because Attahiru Jega (INEC Chairman), did a good work. Jega is very incompetent – grossly incompetent. This is one of the worst elections in the history of Nigeria. In the Electoral Act, there are limits to the amount of money you would spend. But did you see the money people were throwing about? Was Jega not there to supervise those things? That was his role. But he was there seeing no evil, hearing no evil.
Look at the results that came from the states. How was it that in Imo State where the governor, Rochas Okorocha, is of All Progressives Congress (APC), Jonathan would win 98 per cent of the votes cast? It is not possible. How possible was it that in Rivers State where Rotimi Amaechi of APC is the governor, Jonathan would win 99 per cent of votes cast? It should not be possible. But you saw that the trend was like: PDP rig where you think you can rig; APC rig where you think you can. And Jega was just sitting down announcing the baseless results.
From the results we had, you could see that probably it was only in the South West, particularly Lagos, that what people voted was what was counted. The president was lucky that he did nothing to claim that he won, else he would have been sorry for himself because Nigerians would not have taken that. Akin Omoboriowo purportedly won election in Ondo in 1983, but he could not enter the state. Jonathan could have been the most unfortunate man in the world, if due to manipulation, INEC had declared him the winner. He would have been sorry for himself.
So, the best thing for him was to lose the election because Nigerians don’t want him anymore. Nigerians wanted change. PDP knew that. That was why they postponed the election from February 14 to March 28. But before that March 28, they messed up even more by bringing vicious attacks on personalities in ways that were not necessary. I had never seen an election like this – never!
So, the demerits of this out-going administration are so many that we do not need to waste more time discussing them. I think we should now be looking forward, listing out what APC and the President-elect should do. But if they come and do not do them, we should also be talking about them because Nigeria has passed the level of “born-to-rule” or “who owns Nigeria?”. Nigerians are well aware, the social media has brought everybody on. The media, despite its failings in investigative journalism, at least, engages people. So, the era where people could come and do whatever they liked in governance, is gone. As for Buhari I know by reputation, I do not think a man would run for an election four times for the fun of it. But the work he has to do, is huge. I don’t envy him. He will become a hero in Nigeria if he addresses the issues he has to address. There are major issues to be discussed. When Buhari comes, we will put those issues on the table.
Number one is population. Nigeria must have accurate biometric census if anything would work in this country. This is because the problem of Nigeria from 1960 till date is because of false population census. Jega hasn’t got the population census with which to authenticate or otherwise the voters’ register. So, the voters’ registers in the country, for all intents and purposes, are forged. They are based on falsehood. To justify the falsehood, in some places, you saw eight, nine, 10-year-olds given Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs). The word “permanent” cannot be, because it was based on false demographic figures. It was based on forged voters’ register. So, there is nothing permanent about the voters’ cards people have now. When Nigeria conducts an accurate biometric census to really know what the census of the country is – and nobody really knows that for now – then the NPC should establish a population register and the accurate population democratic characterisation from where you can now take those who are above 18 years, and you give them a PVC, that will be verified and authenticated, by national population data. And for this to be on-going accurately, you must establish a vital registration parameter with 21 indices from the 200,000 localities in Nigeria and link it to the static accurate census figure. So, the everyday birth and death, coming in and going out, as well as internal displacements will be updating the register. With this, every day, you can know the population of Nigeria. Some days, it will increase, other days, it will decrease, depending on the rate of immigration or emigration. That is how it is in a civilised country.
That was the programme we wanted to do in NPC, but Jonathan did not want to give it attention because he had thought that during election, PDP would rig from every state. That was why he was more interested in pandering to people like Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso. Where is Kwankwaso today? Those were the people who betrayed him.
The other day, it was announced that Suleiman Abba had been removed as Inspector General of Police (IGP). And I asked: “what did he do?” Don’t you see that Abba’s removal showed bad intention – that he was put there to rig election? A pragmatic president should have left him since he had lost and had conceded defeat. But to have removed him when he had less than two months to go was being mean. A leader cannot be mean; a leader should have broad shoulders. By removing him, the president was saying: I put you to rig for me, but you did not.
So, the election was not free and fair. You cannot see the result and say it was free and fair. There was no election in Akwa Ibom, from what I saw in the media reports. There was no election in Rivers State. Kano could not have had election and Buhari would win 1.9 million. But what was happening was ‘if Enugu brought false figure for Jonathan, Kano would bring false figure for Buhari’.
That is not election. But why everybody is happy is that at the end of the day, it led to change because Nigerians wanted change. But you cannot say that Jega ran a good election. Jega did not conduct better election than Professor Maurice Iwu or the others before him. The man is incompetent.
The issues surrounding the card-readers, not being switched on or not being linked to the system and other discussions could not have come in a system that is well managed. I said it before the elections that Jega should get the results from the polling booths and not just announce anything. But he just did the contrary. People who know would tell you that there was no election. In the whole of South East and South South, the figures were written for Jonathan. Also, in most of the North East and North West, the figures were written for Buhari.
It was probably in some states in the North Central and South West that you could see what looked like real voting or contest. That was because of the inefficiency of Jega and his INEC and ultimately, the inefficiency and incompetence of President Jonathan, who was supposed to be supervising them.
When I read about 10-year-old children given PVC, I blamed the president. His security agents are supposed to be everywhere. Where were they when Jega was giving nine-year-olds PVC? Where was he when they were using false voters’ registers? Jega came to ask me for data to update the voters’ register and I told him there was none; that Nigeria had never done census before and that I did not want what NPC was doing to be linked to politics; but we could help him in some ways to give him something reasonable by calling people to brainstorm but there was no figure. I reported this to President Jonathan but he did not do anything about it. He was rather pandering to people he thought would rig him back to office.
When you are a leader, do the right thing because if you do the wrong thing, one day, it will catch up with you, like the wrong voters’ register has caught up with President Jonathan. The things I told him that he did not give attention to were the things that caught up with him. I am surprised that he was surprised that they caught up with him. For me, it was very clear. When you consider the figures on the PVC that were distributed in the six zones, it was clear that what I said was exactly what happened. Leadership is serious business; it is for trained people. And it is a burden. If you are a real leader you can take decisions that are painful to you as a person but you will still take them because of the best interest of your people.
But Jonathan would not do that. He sees leadership from the beauty of the office and not doing the hard job. Look at the reported cases of stealing, petrol and kerosene subsidy scandals and the missing money in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Look at the issue of the organised stealing of crude oil. That was why the security of the coast line was taken away from the Nigeria Navy and given to militants who are part of this organised stealing. All these are going on and everybody is keeping quiet.
You have a National Assembly that does not know how much the members are earning. Why should a Nigerian legislator earn more than an American president? You monetised things for civil servants yet you go with a convoy of more than 20 cars. Some of these people had no car before they went to Abuja. You have private jets everywhere for people without second addresses. At a time, even, Jonathan saw the number of private jets as an indication that the Nigerian economy was buoyant. Look at that!
In some countries, mere accusations against you would make people avoid you. But here, they would honour you with national award. A country that is doing that, has no future. If you have future, you begin to clean the Augean Stable and begin to create models.
It is these models that Buhari should mobilise to go and save Nigeria. If he goes ahead with compromised people, he would not achieve anything because those people can easily be reminded of their past. Nigeria has good people. We should find those good people and put them to serve the country for everybody to be happy.
If called upon, would you offer yourself for service?
What do you mean by if called upon? If you even ask me, I will tell you the jobs that I can do. Why shouldn’t I? There are no many people that are as trained as me. Nigeria doesn’t have many CEOs (Chief Executive Officers), leaders that are as trained as me. People like us don’t come cheap. But I can work without salary and I will not take bribe. I will change Nigeria from there. You don’t have to be president to change Nigeria. There is a ministry you will give me and I will create 25,000 jobs in five years. This is not World Bank grammar. I am talking of operations. But you will need data to plan, manage and control. So, if they call me, why shouldn’t I go? How many people are as trained as me? Am I not intelligent? We have to provide our first eleven and make them models, if not Nigeria will collapse on the heads of these people. No nation survives on falsehood. If what is happening continues for the next 10 years, people cannot move freely on our streets.
We need people who can serve the nation and are happy they are serving. I am an en employer of labour. I don’t need to be employed. But I can serve my nation without salary.
You have spoken about corruption, but the thinking out there is that most people surrounding the president-elect are perceived to be corrupt…
You people should be stating things clearly. Let me take Bola Tinubu and Rotimi Amaechi for example. There may be other people you have in mind. Tinubu has never been the president of Nigeria. He has never managed our NNPC, nor had he been Petroleum Minister. Tinubu just ran a state. Let us assume he had made money running the state, what should be done is to take Lagos from where Tinubu met it and look at where it is now; look at what Tinubu has done as a man, setting up APC to save Nigeria from the crooks in PDP and you tell me if you quarrel with him or not. I will not quarrel with him.
They say he is tax collector of Lagos. He set up efficient internal revenue regime. Why couldn’t other states do so? Some states only depend on federation account. Lagos has no oil. The money in Lagos was created by somebody and it started from Tinubu. He created the internally-generated revenue that Lagos currently has.
Let us say in doing that, he even took 20 per cent, what did he do with the money? He survived PDP Tsunami in 2003, helped other states in South West to recover, extended it to Edo and some other places, now he has saved us from PDP. In my article ,I said God has forgiven him everything, including his Original Sin.
So, is he your role model?
It is not an issue of role model. Is he an effective political leader? The answer is yes. What about the people who had taken our money outside the country and did not do anything with it? If 90 per cent of those taking our money outside Nigeria can bring the money back, you may not have poverty in Nigeria. I have no problem at all with Tinubu. He is an effective political leader. Buhari is lucky to partner with him, just as he is lucky to partner with Buhari. They really complement each other.
I know Amaechi fairly well. We are not on one-on-one basis, but I have analysed him very well. For a governor in the South South to look Jonathan in the face and say I don’t agree with what you are doing shows the stuff he is made of. Only men do such things. For that alone, I respect him. Again, why is he quarrelling with the president? He said they took oil wells belonging to his state and gave them to Bayelsa and that his people were shortchanged. That is his responsibility. Look at his allocation and go and check what he has done in education and infrastructure. Compare these to the situation in Akwa Ibom, his neighbours. Won’t you score him very well? We have to be pragmatic. Reality is not idealism. You make a success of life by combining the good, the bad and the ugly. Certain bad are acceptable, certain ugly are acceptable to blend with the good. But there are certain people who are evil. The fact that such people as Tinubu, Amaechi, Ogbonnaya Onu and others teamed up with Buhari and created APC to save Nigeria from the evil arrogance of PDP should be commended. For any party, individual and any force that lifted PDP away from Nigeria, God will prepare a special place in heaven.
You seem to have completely condemned those in PDP while lionising those in APC
I would never support corruption in any way and by anybody. Ninety-nine per cent of corruption in Nigeria happens when you don’t have an effective president. There is an inspirational component in leadership and you will see it when Buhari assumes office. If Buhari is inaugurated and his body language alone shows complete abhorrence of corruption as he has been saying, all the 36 state governors will be lifted up. Even if the governors enjoy immunity, by the time their corrupt acquaintances start getting jailed, they will know that there will be no hiding place for them after office. A good president can wipe out corruption from Nigeria.
The president is not the first among equals for nothing. He is not number one in protocols for nothing. The President of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is the sovereign, personification and embodiment of the Nigerian state. What he does is very important. If you have a good president, the National Assembly cannot be corrupt. If you have a good president, the corruption in the judiciary will be cleared in six months because he appoints the judges.
You can clean Nigeria up in one year by democratic means. And all that will start from the president. In democracy, you have rule of law. Cases last in courts because we don’t have a president who wants to fight corruption. A good president will uplift every institution in Nigeria.
That is why strong institutions only come after strong leaders. Strong institutions don’t make themselves. It is people who make institutions and put the mechanisms and culture to sustain the institutions. What Jerry Rawlings did in Ghana is still effective in the country, till date.
Here, you have criminals who buy private jets and are flying them. Sadly enough, the president would make friends with them. You will see him in their gathering.
Leadership solves all problems. If Buhari becomes President of Nigeria on May 29, and he wants a formula on how he would re-engineer Nigeria in all the states, judiciary, legislature, local government, I will give him. He just requires to do one or two things to get it right. Nigerians are good people; if not, we won’t survive the locust in the hands of PDP for 16 years. Nigerians are enterprising and hard working. They only need a president that will set the direction where the nation will be fair to everybody. If this is done, I believe that in 20 years’ time, you can make Nigeria a first world country. I have a strategic architecture for that. PDP has set this country backwards.
But we have not tasted the APC.
We have not tasted the APC, but Nigerians clamoured for change. The change has come. We should give them a chance. That is all we are saying. We know what they can do to make Nigeria great. If they do so, Nigerians will agree that the change has come. We know the change we want. We also know what we don’t want. If they abandon the change they promised us and start doing another thing, after four years, we throw them out. That is why it is important that we must get our population census right; we must get a proper permanent register because what is issued now is not permanent. It can’t be permanent because it was based on false demographic data. When we set up all those foundations, any government that doesn’t do well, you vote it out.
That is just what has happened to President Jonathan – a man that went to school without shoes; who had opportunities to make Nigeria good for other children who do not have shoes, so that tomorrow they may be presidents of Nigeria. But he messed up the chances he had.
That was what happened to Ikedi Ohakim, the then Imo State governor, in 2011. He got to office and forgot his humble background. Four years after, the people paid him in his own coins.
There must be leadership lesson in all of these instances. You win because people trust you. When you are there, maintain the trust of the people – serve. The biggest thing a man can do is to serve his fellow citizens.
So, we need to give APC chance. It promised us change because the current situation is not good. When they come, if they serve well, we will acknowledge it. If they do not do well, we will tell them. Nigeria has gone beyond the level where anybody can mess it up. That is why democracy is good.