AKEEM Agbaje, a legal practitioner and governorship aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2019 and 2023 elections, in this interview with WALE AKINSELURE, examines the performance of the party in last election, the constitution amendment bills recently signed by President Muhammadu Buhari, among other issues
Compared to your performance in the March 25 elections, your party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State didn’t do so well in the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections?
I don’t think we did that badly. We have three senators, tentatively we have nine House of Representatives’ members which was just about what he had in 2019, with an additional senator. Also, if you look at the internal issues we had, leading to the elections, I think getting over 250,000 votes is quite significant. It is our wish that we could have done better but considering the events leading up to the elections, I think we did fairly well. The party was not configured to address the local politics, so to speak. It is the process of determining candidates that the party should address. The party, at the point of primaries, has to bear in mind that we will do elections. The primary is the internal election and the election is the next stage. It is a value chain; you look at the beginning and the end. Who are the candidates you are presenting? What are the processing for presenting them? Basically, the party should resist the urge to impose candidates. The party should ask if the candidate is credible, if the person is marketable not that the party hierarchy in Abuja will just randomly impose candidates without evaluating the situation locally.
Bearing in mind the several challenges of the nation, what should the president-elect prioritise upon assumption of office?
The most critical thing is the political will to address these issues. The country is blessed with knowledgeable people that understand what our problems are. We have moved beyond the stage of what is the Nigerian problem, everybody knows what the challenges are but it is lack of political will, lack of setting the right priorities. We are spending trillions on fuel subsidy; almost a quarter of our budget goes to fuel subsidy, that is illogical. Let us move away from the fact that we are an oil-producing nation that shouldn’t be importing fuel. But, should we be spending a substantial chunk of our budget on subsidising consumption of fuel? It stifles other critical areas that need funding like education, health. It is the political will and then setting the right priorities.
Should fuel subsidy go before President Muhammadu Buhari leaves office?
It should go before he leaves office so that he does not create problem for the incoming government from day one and they need to engage Labour appropriately. I don’t see why Labour says fuel subsidy should not be removed. It is crippling the economy and it is the masses that suffer more. This view that automatically if you remove subsidy the prices of goods will go up, do we have a realistic volume of petrol we are consuming? Are we subsiding the masses or encouraging the smugglers? In Ghana, they buy Nigerian fuel. We can attribute it to our porous borders. If the cost of petrol is the market cost, it is a disincentive for smuggling.
The emergence of Tinubu is being challenged. One of the arguments of the Labour Party candidate is that Tinubu failed to have 25 percent of votes in Abuja hence should not have been declared winner of the election. What does the law say regarding the status of Abuja?
I am not aware of any provision of law that makes 25 percent of Abuja votes a critical factor. What the law says is that you must win 25 percent in 24 states including Abuja. Abuja is regarded as a state not that Abuja is the benchmark for the 25 percent. It is sufficient if you meet that criteria in all the other states excluding Abuja.
The vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Datti Ahmed has said it will be illegal for the president-elect to be inaugurated on May 29. Can the tribunal stall the inauguration of Tinubu as president?
The inauguration will happen because the tribunal process cannot be completed until after inauguration. It is a 180-day cycle. They haven’t started trial now. Trial won’t start until mid-April thereabouts, they have to call their witnesses, so inauguration will happen. We are just bad losers in Nigeria.
There is the talk about a possible Interim National Government (ING). What does the law say about such happening?
There is no law in Nigeria that recognizes interim government. It is only in one instance that we have had interim government. The Ernest Shonekan situation was as a result of June 12, to defuse the tension at that time. Also, Shonekan was a military government. There is no constitutional provision for interim government. Also, Shonekan was a military government and the military was the Alpha and Omega of the constitution at that time, so, easily they could pass a decree to validate that decision for Interim government. Which legislative organ will do that now?
The president recently signed into law 16 constitutional amendment bills which devolved more powers to States including power to generate and transmit electricity, run railways. How should states make use of these amendments?
In terms of these amendments as it relates to electricity, railways, it is not automatic. You must establish institutions that will regulate all of these activities. The constitution allows it but which regulatory agency will be saddled with the responsibility of setting the guidelines for all these activities. Electricity is not something somebody wakes up and starts laying cables, putting a generator somewhere. There are regulatory requirements for all these activities. Each state or region can decide to have a single regulator just like we have the security network. The first is to have a regulator to standardise who can do what, how they can do it.
One amendment that state houses of assembly did not pass is that of local government autonomy. Is this a setback for our democratic process?
The question of autonomy for local government is a bit academic. The constitution recognizes each local government. The area in question is financial autonomy but it goes beyond financial autonomy. In the current local government structure, we have, within a certain grade of their staff, the senior cadre are collectively engaged by the state, their posting and discipline is subject to control by the state. If we are talking of full autonomy, they become independent government on their own, at their own local level and will not be subject to control of the state government. What people are clamouring for in terms of autonomy is financial but the autonomy required is full autonomy to function as a government at their own level. They can take decisions at their own level.
To improve our electoral and, by extension, our democratic process, some clamour for a two-party system as against the current multiparty system. Do you share in such view?
With the total absence of internal democracy in all the parties, we can’t have a two-party system. It is not helpful. It is better we have multiparty system as we have now. But, what our democratic process needs is for internal democracy in all the parties. If we don’t address that, our democracy will not grow.
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