Veteran activist and former presidential candidate of National Advance Party (NAP), Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, in this interview with Assistant Editor (South West), MUYIWA OLALEYE, speaks on President Muhammadu Buhari’s handling of the Boko Haram insurgency, national conference recommendations and the country’s federal arrangement which he says is lopsided.
Assessing the Buhari administration
Buhari’s administration is not really new to that of his predecessors. When they took over the government in May, they raised the hope and expectations of all Nigerians that they were going to effect change, that they were going to combat insurgency and fight corruption. But in the case of corruption, the people’s expectations are being shattered by Buhari’s inaction. Every Nigerian knows that corruption had been the bane of this country’s development; a menace that robbed the people of peace and their rights to basic amenities of lives. It is corruption that makes our road jammed, that would make you spend the long hours on the road. It is corruption that robs the people of uninterrupted supply of electricity.
It is corruption that had driven majority of the people of this country into poverty and suffering. It is corruption, because people actually know that the bulk of the country’s money is domiciled in the pockets or in the foreign accounts of few people. It is now becoming so obvious that people in high places, both public and private, cruelly steal with reckless abandon. The evidence is not difficult to muster. Why Buhari has not been able to bring these people out for prosecution is inexplicable. And the expectations of Nigerian people are being dashed.
As I said at a different place, Buhari is like a man riding the back of a tiger. You raised the hope of the people and you failed to deliver; you are similar to a man riding on the back of a tiger.
In the face of obvious evidence, he has not been able to do anything. He came away from some foreign tours and announced publicly that he had the names of the corrupt people. If he had the names of the corrupt people, why didn’t he take action against them? If he had the evidence, why didn’t he take action? That is the question for him to answer. You claim you have the names, you have the evidence; what is stopping you from taking action?
Buhari honestly must have been speaking based on genuine intention. But genuine intention is different from reality. I think he was over the bar, so to speak, when he was definitive to say December he would have crushed terrorism. Terrorism, as I said earlier, is a war. You can’t put a date to when you would finish off a war. No matter how weak you may perceive the adversary, you would be surprised that it is not something you can put a specific date on. In that sense, he was rather simplistic to put a date on it. He should have said well, we are doing our best to contain the terrorists; but putting a definite date is not smart.
We must all be concerned in this problem of terrorism. This is because terrorism is next to war; full scale war, since it kills people indiscriminately. So, really, it should be seen in its right context, that it is some kind of war against the people. And its consequences can be excruciating for the country – refugee problem, displacement of old families. So, the fight against terrorism should be everybody’s concern.
Having said that, however, the government has to lead by holistic and meaningful strategies so that the people can also join in the fight against terrorism.
Some of Buhari’s ministers corrupt
There is nothing wrong rewarding his party members regardless of integrity or morality. There is no doubt about that, except for the fact that he had boasted that he would be ruthless when it comes to the question of integrity. A president under the constitution can nominate anybody for confirmation to his executive. So there was nothing constitutionally wrong in nominating people with questionable characters. However, it was for the Senate, which in itself is populated by funny characters, to confirm or reject his nominees.
The screening exercise was very partisan. It had been along party lines. It had not been along objective criteria, but the constitution allows for that. Even if the Senate confirms a dubious character as minister, if the corrupt fellow escapes the disapproval of the public, then before long, as long as the watchdog, (the press) and the people do not relax, the fellow will ultimately meet his waterloo.
Buhari biased in his administration, especially with election petitions tribunals
In terms of the verdicts of the election petition tribunals, it is true that only two governorship results (now three) have been stepped down, that of Rivers and that of Akwa Ibom (and lately Taraba). In Akwa Ibom, they are talking of a considerable number of local governments which virtually means that the whole governorship thing is to be rerun. And incidentally, those two states are the ones won by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). These are facts.
However, if the grouse of the PDP is that there are APC governorship elections that are incorrectly upheld, they should produce the evidence for the people and the people will react. This is because this country is moving rightly in the direction that the people will have the final say. There is something that is called the sovereignty of the people. We are now moving. Whether those in government realise it or not, we are moving inexorably towards that direction where the people will be ready now to take their destiny into their hands. There are many things that are wrong in this country where the people for years were being donkeyed and they have not been able to throw off the yoke. But make no mistake, because of endemic corruption and persistent oppression of the people, they are now reaching that stage.
If the PDP is saying that justices or the tribunals are skewed towards protecting APC, either in the tribunals or otherwise, they should continue to produce the evidence to the public and the public will definitely act.
National Conference report and non-implementation by the Buhari administration
Well, in fact, I heard Buhari saying he would not consider the report of that conference. I heard him saying so. That is very unfortunate and I hope he would reconsider that statement because to ignore the product of that nationalistic labour would be at the peril of any administration that shut its eyes to that work. To me, the 2014 national conference was the best conference that was ever held in respect of the political and socio-economic condition of the country. Yes, I was a member of that conference and we worked for five to six months, and every aspect of our national corporate existence was examined. We broke into committees to examine various aspects of corporate Nigeria. The product may not be super perfect, but as I said, it goes a long way to confronting and addressing all the thorny issues of corporate Nigeria. Issues like devolution of power, self-determination and the imbalance of the 1999 Constitution which cloaks corrupt public office-holders with criminal immunity were discussed. Nowhere in the world would people tolerate that kind of constitutional cover for rogues in office. We looked into it and removed it. Issues of federal allocation using local governments which is in the Nigerian constitution and which is so inequitable that it robbed some states to provide for other states was also looked into.
Nigeria’s structural position, as it stands now, is a prescription for chaos. The imbalance and inequitable structure is a disaster waiting to happen. The future generation will not tolerate this prescription for chaos much longer. So in order to restructure peacefully without taking to arms, the conference tried to re-invent Nigeria in a way that every nook and cranny of the country will prosper at its own pace. Instead of reliance on one commodity, petrol, the committee in which I served enjoins people to look inward, that there is enough potential for every zone in the country to generate fund for development and enrichment of citizens, instead of every state going to the federal for fund. For instance now, that some states cannot pay salaries but go to the federal government for bail-out is due to constitutional imbalance.
Let each state keep what it produces and let us agree on a percentage that will be given to the federal. Now, the federal takes everything and distributes like Father Christmas. Where on earth is that done? That is why the potential of the people are not being realised and cannot be realised. Under this constitution, they will never be. There will always be brain drain outside because the constitution actually prevents realisation of the potential of the vast area called Nigeria.
All that the conference looked into and more, and addressed all the questions of these dangerous constitutional mines. For any president to say he would not look at it is to say, the least, unfortunate. And already, certain zones of Nigeria are seriously looking into this issue that they are not going to tolerate imbalance federation, that this is not truly a federal system. There were so many things. Even some of us actually proposed confederacy like you have in Switzerland, like you have in Canada, like you have even in Spain where there were what you might call limited self-government. We will still remain the same country but limited self-government for each zone to develop at their own pace.
So care has to be taken because some people are pressing nowadays for limited self-determination.