EMEKA ETIABA, legal practitioner and former governorship aspirant in Anambra State, in this encounter with Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, speaks on kidnapped Chibok girls, Boko Haram menace and the confab, among other issues
Reaction to #BringBackOurGirls campaign
Emeka Etiaba
The global campaign has been quite commendable. The truth is that if you don’t say ‘here am I’, nobody will know where you are. We came up with that idea and the whole world has chorused it. So it is commendable. For me, all the concerted efforts are good and welcome. Of course, as any other thing you do in life, you must be able to watch, to know when to match the brake and when to move on. It is good to remind the nation that our children are held out in the forest or anywhere they are held out. But again, it is also important to know that to bring them back is not to bring them back dead; it is to bring them back hale and hearty. If that must be the position, we do not expect the military to just barge into them and begin to shoot the insurgents. Using that type of force will be counter-productive because the insurgents may try to maim those children. So we must strike a balance between application of force and being able to apply intelligence in what we do. So far, it has been a good work because we have to be mindful of the implication of insisting that it must be now and now.
Nigerian soldiers capable of containing the terrorists
It will be unfair to say that the Nigerian army does not have the capacity. As some commentators have said, this is not the usual conventional war where one group is on one side and the other group on the other side. This is warfare where even the people you live and dine with unknown to you are members of Boko Haram. So, who do you begin to fight? Until you catch them in action, you do not know who Boko Haram members are. They have so permeated the society that you don’t really know who is or not a member. If you know your opponents, then you know how to fight them; but the insurgents are not known. Even within the military, there are people who have shown they have sympathy for the Boko Haram sect. So how do you unleash them against Boko Haram members? It is more like a house divided, and unfortunately people think it’s about the present dispensation. It is not about the federal government because I tell people that if you decide to burn down the country because you don’t like President Goodluck Jonathan’s face, when another president comes from another zone, insurgents will start again from another part of the country. No section has monopoly of violence. So, what it means is that Nigeria will forever be at war. What it means is that, rather than deploying our resources to good use, we will be using it to kill ourselves, to fight insurgency. People have to be wise to know that it is not about whoever that is in power, it is about the country.
Presence of foreign powers in Nigeria
People assume so much and wrongfully too. Nigeria’s sovereignty is being challenged and attacked as it were. If this is allowed to go on, maybe in another six months, there will be no sovereignty. So where do we go from there? We have gone on peace-keeping mission in other countries, did we steal their sovereignty? We went and we came back. The Americans are here, not with their troops, for intelligence gathering and assistance. How does it affect our sovereignty? For me, anything to crush this insurgency should be encouraged.
National conference ending up a talk-shop
I have always believed that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Whatever I answer now is academic, until we see what comes out of the national conference. For example, if they go there and rubber-stamp the state of affairs as it is today, of course the people who don’t want change will say it’s a wonderful confab. If there are very radical changes, the people who want changes will say, awesome and will praise it; but the people who do not want change will kick against it. So let’s see what comes out first. But as far as I am concerned, the confab is going on well. The debates are very robust and the people there are selfless. But what could become of it either by way of legitimacy or referendum or by way of anything will determine it when we get to the bridge.
Destination of confab decisions
That is a big problem. Referendum may be good because Nigerians are waiting for change. But in the National Assembly, my feeling is that the result will actually be frustrated because what we have in the confab as the resolution will offend members of the National Assembly. I think it is wrong to tell the National Assembly to veto what has been discussed.
Concern for 2015
I am not afraid of it; it will come and go. Our people have now realised that the courts are the final determinants of any election process, and our courts have always risen to the occasion. The elections will come and go; there will be election petitions and final determinations will come.
Funding of judiciary
It is not an opinion; it is a fact that the judiciary is not funded well. In the last three years, the budget of the judiciary has been on downward trend and still we are employing more judges, more judicial officers, more cases are coming to court, more lawyers are churned out from the Law School etc. So it is terrible. Thank God for the judgment we got recently from the High Court in Abuja which made a pronouncement to the effect that judiciary budget must no longer go through the executive; their monies will now be drawn on first line charge basis.
