Former President-General of Aka Ikenga-Ikenga, Ohanaeze Ndigbo intellectual think-tank, and 2014 Constitution Conference delegate, Goddy Uwazurike, in this interview with Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, speaks on topical national issues including restructuring, 2014 confab report, Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB challenge as well as APC leadership
Nnamdi Kanu and the IPOB challenge in the South East
Events bring out people. An issue comes out that leads to discussion. There has been a lot of injustice, there has been a lot of iniquity going on in this country. The near total absence of a level playing ground is what has produced Nnamdi Kanu and he is a representative of the downtrodden; those who have been hoping and waiting that there would be solution to their problems.
Whether he speaks or not, he represents a certain state of mind which you, with all your understanding, will be wrong to go against. You can only seek to see how you can manage the situation.
You cannot obstruct Nnamdi Kanu in any Igbo speaking area today. You cannot stand up against him. If you think he is wrong in what he is doing get up and say so. Biafra is there in the heart of every Igbo man. That is the basic truth. All you need do, is to tap into it. But the difference is what to do about it. Some will say they want secession, some will say internal autonomy, some will say recognition while some say they want a level playing ground which is an offshoot of restructuring. Even if secession is allowed or happens, it’s still restructuring.
It is this fear that those in power have about restructuring and devolution of power that made the National Assembly to vote the way they did. No matter how they want to paint it, Nnamdi Kanu has stimulated a discussion in this country.
The questions are; who are we? Where are we in this country? Are we here voluntarily or some people just made us one nation?
The average Yoruba person will tell you: ‘I want Oduduwa Republic’; that he did not vote for Nigeria in 1914. Ndigbo did not. We have different mentality, the North and the South. The average Fulani man may not argue with you but that does not mean he agrees with you. The Yoruba man may respect you now and bow down for you the next minute he turns around to kick. The Igbo man can even stand up and start shouting before he gets ready. These are idiosyncrasies, peculiarities of different groups. So, whenever we meet these, things are bound to collide. So, Nnamdi Kanu has stimulated a discussion and you can’t ignore it.
South East intelligentsia not in support of Kanu and IPOB
The truth is that the youths in this country, in any part of the world actually dictate a lot. It is a failure of the older generation that has made the youths to stand up. But it is what the youth will do with that power that is the problem.
Since Nnamdi Kanu came out of prison he has been going on a thank-you tour. I don’t think he has had any time to discuss with different kinds of people. As it is today it is difficult to go and dictate to him what you want but only to discuss and persuade. How far it can go or cannot go, is another thing. Remember the saying that what causes a problem is when an elder sees something happening and says nothing and the other saying is when a youth hears something and does not obey. So this is the problem we have now.
Many of us are in discussion with the young people, we are talking with them. I tell them that if war breaks out today, people of my age group will not go to war rather those who go to war are their own age group. It is the same thing with those who do sports. They are the youth. What about the armed robbers? They are the youths. What about the students in the university? They are the youths. What about demonstrators? They are mostly the youths. The blood of a young man is always burning.
It is only a young man who will see a person that has a gun and will still go ahead confronting him with bare hands. One great Igbo leader Omenuko Odum from Arondizuogu wrote in his book that “it is he who does not know that war means death that runs to war to go and fight a war”.
If you think deeply, you know that in Igbo land, people like him are also walking on a tightrope. Holding back the youths and giving them hope will be okay. You need to look at the issues they are raising and see how you can tackle them without heating up the system. Let me leave the question there.
2014 national conference document and government’s disposition
I think this administration has decided not to even look at it and I am not surprised because at the national conference, some people who lost on all the points they came with, said, ‘we assure you that we are coming to power and when we come to power, we are not going to look at this document, we are going to throw it away’.
Luckily President Goodluck Jonathan and his administration accepted it as a working document for the administration. It was submitted to the National Assembly. In other words, with the new government they are supposed to have started with it but you know human beings, being what they are, quite often allow peculiar things to affect their reasoning. In other words, the idiosyncrasy of this administration is really stopping it from seeing what is so obvious.
How can you be floundering in the darkness when you have a torchlight that is still active in your hands? We have all kinds of problems facing this country. Most of the solutions were proffered by eminent men and women who for four months, sat down day and night to prepare and plan. During that process, we had people like the oldest judge in this country, a former President of Court of Appeal. We had people who have been in about four or five constitution conferences, even before independence. We had highly educated people as well as those who were not highly educated, those that expressed themselves in Pidgin English but passed across pungent points you could not ignore.
We had 22 volumes of the report, very comprehensive. And you want to ignore such a priceless document? Too bad for the country.
Most Nigerians talking about restructuring
It was a very fundamental aspect of our sitting and I remember at the time everybody, all delegates were expected to speak or address the entire conference on the issue. I said reduce the powers of the federal, increase the powers of the state government, reduce the funding of the federal, and increase the funding of the state and then some of the things the federal government has been doing including drilling borehole in my backyard, should be left for the state; that the FG should concentrate on things like telecoms, finance including the CBN, all military matters and defence, all immigration and foreign affairs. We can have broad policies on health etc. But they must work hard on the areas exclusive to them. What is the business of the FG with water resources? Agriculture is essentially a state affair.
We said that any sate that feels that it is too weak to stand on its own can apply to collapse with neighboring state.
If you remember the last meeting of the governors from the South West, I monitored their proceedings, what they did was exactly what we proposed at the national conference. They adopted the national conference report indirectly, without naming it national conference as their objective. All they agreed on: regional autonomy, Regional Corporation on security, finance and food matters, education and others, were all that we discussed. They have adopted it as a way to go. And I hope all the others will do the same.
For you what would a restructuring entail?
Restructuring means that a Police man from Katsina State will not be posted to my own local government. In the first place, he cannot speak my language, he does not understand my native behaviour, and he can’t even be a competent witness because a witness must say everything he has seen.
As a person, I do not think that any officer below the rank of ASP should be posted away from their region (I mean the six geo-political region). The superior officers can be posted but those officers who mingle with the rank and file must be able to speak the native language.
Restructuring for me means, we (the people) controlling our own resources. In other words, if oil is found in Imo state, the state will be in charge of that oil and pay tax to the federal government.
For me, restructuring means true federalism. This idea of everybody looking up to Abuja is wrong. Let every state or region develop at its pace. Don’t expect the man from Zamfara to develop at the same pace as the man from Lagos.
That also goes for Labour. In other words, minimum wage today is yet to be carried out by all the states, yet we are thinking of increasing. Lagos can afford it but can Zamfara do that? Can Osun state do that when they still have many months of arrears to pay? Can Imo state do that?
We must not forget that restructuring of the mind is also important and critical. This is because no matter how long or how far you have done the restructuring without having the right people, it will fail.
There should be rule of law that must be obeyed. Separation of powers must be respected.
We also talked about the nature of the political parties, their commands, why they should or shouldn’t receive funds and what their motivation should be etc. We discussed all these things and more in the confab. If they are serious they must consult the confab document.
Absence of a good leader, reason for the agitations for restructuring?
It’s difficult to say a good leader because you don’t know how they elect a good leader. The only thing I will say is don’t elect anybody who has a baggage. When a leader sees the constitution and says it is the constitution that guides him or her, that is the beginning because the person swore by the constitution, to uphold it. If you ignore the constitution as a leader it’s a breach of the oath. If the constitution says there must be federal character in all your appointments what do you do, you ignore it? It’s a breach of the constitution.
I only wish the National Assembly will now have a law that says anybody who has breached his oath of office will be disqualified from holding any further office, which for me will help. I know we have the Code of Conduct Tribunal but it has a limited application and a very myopic way of approaching issues. People fill their forms to get there and it is only when your political opponent remembers you that he goes to fish it out. It’s something that is supposed to be procedural.
Statement by former governor of Sokoto State Attahiru Bafarawa that Nigeria does not need restructuring but re-orientation of mind and ways in choosing leaders
You know people react to current issues. The current agitation right now is called restructuring in all parts of the country and I know Bafarawa being a former governor, had presided over things. He has seen both sides but may have seen them from narrow and myopic views. If the lens is myopic, it will see things in a certain way. If your lens is opaque, you see no evil, you hear no evil. That is what is going on today in this country. They don’t understand the problem of the man on the street.
Let me even start with Labour. The N18.000 (Eighteen Thousand Naira) minimum wage had been there before President Buhari came to power and one of the promises of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was to increase it. Has it done so? No. A bag of rice that was probably Seven Thousand Naira before Buhari took over, cannot be bought by the man with Eighteen Thousand Naira.
I am not talking of other things. I am only talking of rice as a metaphor. So, if Bafarawa does not think of restructuring, he does not know that the man in Lagos lives a costlier life than the man in Sokoto. And that is sad.
Those afraid of restructuring?
Those who control power. Let me put it this way: those in power today fought to get power but they were not prepared for governance. It is those in governance that will make this country be restructured. They have the power, they have the yam and they have the knife. You know that the day this country is restructured, there will be a healthy competition as it was in the 60s with all the regions engaging in positive and healthy competition. That was a catalyst for development by each region at its own pace. They were not depending on oil. Everyone was depending on its own, maximizing what nature bestowed on it and working out areas of priority in its needs.
For instance there was a competition in education going round. Ahmadu Bello seeing that they (North) were late starters, took the challenge up. The Eastern Region was also a late starter but it frog-jumped and moved quickly. The Western Region was there in the fore-front and they were looking behind its back seeing the Eastern region catching up and even taking over and then the Northern Region coming from a distance.
So, those in power are actually holding us in a stranglehold. Anything that threatens their position in power they will oppose it, including restructuring.
President Buhari-led All Progressives Congress administration
From the beginning I have always seen APC as a party of strange bedfellows. We have those who are ascetic in their belief, we have those who are materialistic and all sorts of mix. When all these things mix, there is always problem. There is no meeting point in the APC. The entire manifesto, their entire constitution had been disregarded by those who hold power.
In simple language, we are being ruled by a cabal that does not believe in democracy. APC has failed Nigerians.