A coalition of major political forces propped up the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as a Third Force to challenge the All progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 cycle of elections. Its founder and national chairman, Chief Ralph Okey-Nwosu, speaks with KUNLE ODEREMI on the leadership question in Nigeria, the roles of governors and legislative arm of government at all levels.
YOU have consistently decried the way Nigerian leaders have literally mismanaged the country in spite of its abundant human and material endowments. What can you say about the prevailing socioeconomic and political situation in the land today?
It has been decay upon decay. We are going down in all forms. I said since 2015, x-raying the state of the nation under the All Progressives Congress (APC), it has been a tale of woes. One would wonder if they are deliberate. One would wonder where they are driving to. Before President Muhammadu Buhari left power, everybody was saying anybody would be better. All of a sudden now, we have somebody from Lagos. A very cosmopolitan state and things are still worse, especially his cowboy tactics. So, things are bad. The economy is horrible; the security challenge, unemployment, everything is going down with us. Every indicator of human happiness or prosperity is going down. So, investors are running way. But I don’t want to get to the recent protest against hardship, bad governance and hunger. Imagine the Olympics game held in Paris, France, Nigerian youths went there and everything was haphazard. So, how can any Nigerian compete under that kind of situation, where there was no preparation for the crucial global tournament? And before the Olympics, the youth space was where most of the good things that happened to this country were coming from. For any government to be completely insensitive of the space is disheartening. There have been some international sports engagements that Nigeria could not attend because there was no budget provision. Look, the people who have been given Nigeria any form of positive impact come from that space. Think about athletics; think about football! At the same time, government in this country is undermining the youth space completely. We could not secure a place on the medals’ table at the Olympics Game, a country of more than 200 million people, a country with a vibrant population of youths and talents, compared to any other country. It has never been like this in the past.
Now, you come to state security. This security challenge has been there all along. So, what is happening? I have always said this and I will continue to say it, that the day the attitude the president came up with, from day one that subsidy is gone without getting into office, is improper. You want to ruin the lives of more than 230 million Nigerians just like that! Leadership is not a cowboy show. In the oil and gas sector, OPEC gave Nigeria two million barrels per day quota on crude production. We have not been able to meet up. So, when you increase petrol price by 500 per cent from day one, all that money that you saved from the subsidy removal, all we hear is that federal allocations to state and local governments have gone up, and so on. You go to states, you don’t see the impact of the so-called boom in allocations due to subsidy removal. No society makes progress by running a palliative government. Even the so-called palliatives government is doling out it is still money shared to the boys; they send the money to the governors; they send it to other elected persons to go to their constituencies, yet nothing gets to the real people at the grassroots. So, there is hunger in the land. There is poverty, unemployment and despondency and dejection among the citizens. Therefore, the hope of a renewed hope and better tomorrow is completely gone.
The contention of those in the saddle is that most of the current challenges were already on the ground before they assumed office in May last year, that they inherited both assets and liabilities from previous administrations in the country?
That statement is laughable. Why will I campaign to be the next president if I do not have the capacity to improve the lots of the people? Does it mean that I campaign simply because I want to make things more difficult for the people, to leave things in the sorry and despicable state and condition they are? After a year in the office and there is no paradigm shift in the state of affairs, they should go and tell those tales to the Marines. Even if things are difficult and for a new leader in place, there are steps you would take and everybody would have hope. But the little hope they had that government is going to change from Buhari to another person has been dimmed. For me, it is particularly annoying. You saw the secret of where we were; you see the secret where this country is and with good quality people, character, integrity, competence, pedigree and everything positive, from all parts of Nigeria; outside and within and you allowed the people to be suffering because of parochialism. I mean the president and his handlers are parochial.
How?
They seem to have the fear, and I don’t know where the fear is coming from, because there are people both within Nigeria and the Diaspora who the person in charge could have engaged. But, all of a sudden all we saw was getting Lagos cronies and so on. And, look at where we are! I didn’t know that the president could be this parochial.
But he has a top-notch member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the person of Mr Nyesom Wike as a minister, including non-members of the APC in the conscious attempt by the president to have and run an all-inclusive government.
I said we have quality Nigerians both living in the country and outside Nigeria; I’m not talking about party. And then, when we even go there [issue of party)] he is still parochial, because he is bringing Wike to the agenda to grab power, contain power and control power across Nigeria, and not about good governance. It is still parochialism. We have a large spectrum of Nigerians with great and fertile minds; Nigerians with skills; Nigerians with knowledge in the country and in the Diaspora. Since we are in a dire strait, such as we are now, you would have expected any open-minded person to get the best people on board. So, the parochialism is still showing; it centres on power; it is not centred on anything like tribalism. But I’m talking about the parochialism that is centred on power, holding onto power, holding onto the lives of more than 200 million Nigerians.
The protest by the youth has come and gone with the demands of the organizers now in the public domain. To what extent have the governments at all levels embarked on pragmatic measures to meet those core demands bordering on good governance, so to speak? Recall that the president said government has listened to the cry of the protesters.
I was only waiting for you to land. You said the protest has come and gone. What we have seen is just a tip of the iceberg. The type of hunger we have in this country, the type of desperation, the type of hopelessness across the country, the protest is not over. A hungry man is an angry man. A hungry millions of people, you cannot contain them. Hunger is not what palliatives can solve. You don’t run a palliative economy. There has to be an elaborate programme well thought out and the kind of persons to implement it must be people that are men of character and integrity. These are people you will see onboard and Nigerians will feel, maybe, something good will happen. Such persons invoke public confidence and trust.
The president rolled out a number of measures, both short and long-term ones, meant to bring succour to citizenry. Are you saying those measures are cosmetic and possibly ineffectual?
Tinubu’s broadcast did not address the issues raised as presented by the protesters and even the people who did not publicly protest, especially on the current anger, hunger, economic strangulation in the land. The entire Presidency is still grandstanding. Why this is so, I can’t understand because the money you spent calling the traditional rulers, calling the National Assembly, governors, calling other sets of individuals that there should be no protest, if you pool such resources and funds together, deployed them to addressing the demands, they would have gone a long way. There are people you will bring on board and Nigerians would say there is hope and within two or three months, the results would manifest and show. This government has not resolved to do things differently. Look at the scandalous thing that happened. You spent more than N27 billion naira to build a house when the economy is in a dire strait but you tell Nigerians to continue to make sacrifice and be patient. You ask the people to tighten their belts, while the people in the executive and the legislative arms of government are living in profligacy. The Presidency could summarily decide to increase the price of petrol by 500 per cent and they are having difficulty in increasing the salaries of poor workers by a mere 100 per cent. If you could increase the pump price of fuel by such an atrocious percentage, then you should increase the salary by the same percentage and margin. Or, on the other hand, if you have decided to do otherwise, then nobody in government should earn 10 times above the minimum salary of workers. Yes, we are all human beings. The cleaner on the road and other peasants patronize the same market. They have children just like the president, governors, members, lawmakers and political appointees across the board. How do you justify what senator or members of the House of Representatives or people in the Presidency get as pay package? How can you comprehend a situation where a minister, a governor has a convoy of nothing less than four of five vehicles and they use public money to fuel those vehicles? There is no trimming down to show that they know things are bad and that they are dealing with it from every corner.
Nigerians seem to concentrate more on the centre in their criticism of governments. Are you satisfied with the way governors have been administering their states in terms of quality service delivery?
I have always said that the governors are horrible. At the state level, you have people who have become Imperial Majesties. They are no longer elected governors; they have become imperial majesties; they want to put their hands in everything. They seize the local government accounts and determine who becomes a local government chairman. Meanwhile, all the chairmen and councillors have not been elected. So, the election or democracy stops with only them (governors). When they are in the office, at all the other tiers of government, there is no election, no democracy in full. That’s number one. Now, almost all the governors want to control all the major institutions in the society. Go to my state, Anambra, for instance, the governor wants to control the traditional institution; he wants to be the leader of the traditional institution. He wants to be the leader of the church institutions; he wants to control everything about them. He wants to be the one in charge of the market associations, town union organisations, just name the sector of human endeavour? This is all because of self-interest and the urge to hold on to power and use the power to do nothing impactful and the next thing is to tell the people that he is giving them palliatives. They have forgotten that before any of them became governor, the people have existed. So, what we have is an ecosystem of rot; an ecosystem of rottenness.
The state Houses of Assembly have the power of checks and balances through oversight function. Do you perceive them as toothless bulldogs?
Governance at the state level has degenerated to the imperial majesty status and that is why putting governors to become president is very dangerous, because of the way the governors have cultured the attitude. It is one of the reasons the centre now is the way it is. Remember that Tinubu came into the Presidency with the attitude of a ‘strong governor,’ who as able to control Lagos State for eight years and after that, controls Lagos and puts everybody after him. He came with that attitude of grab power, and that is what is causing all the frictions. Governors are terrible as far as leading this country is concerned. They want to control everything. Tinubu was a strong governor. Having come to power at the centre, he is now trying to control everything. He is giving much money to the governors, but he tries to put control on them.
But there are states with a mixture of members cutting across three or more political parties. Do the same assumption and logic subsist as you have just highlighted?
The state Houses of Assembly have been reduced. I said the state governors are imperial majesties in almost everything. Just like the National Assembly, for instance, you saw the whole members, about 90 per cent of them, standing up when President Tinubu came there and they all said: ‘On your mandate we stand.’ At the Red Chambers! That is one. Then, you see that the manner they got elected, the culture now is so corrupted that if you are in the ecosystem of politics and you still have your head sane, then these people need to be praised and honoured. More so, if you are among those who are elected, you are in the National Assembly and you keep your head straight, then you [deserve] special commendation. If there is no compromise [among all members], why would your constituents be suffering and some people now say they want to buy one vehicle for N180 million, which I can assure you is worth about N250 million, and all of them signed the calamity of woes. So, the culture is horrible. At the national level, it is dangerous. When you have governors who have operated with so much impunity like the royal majesty, when such persons take over as president, they would deploy so much resources to put the leadership they can control. You know that the APC mantra four years back is that once you leave the political party where you are and come into APC, your sins are forgiven. That was the lifeline some of the notable members of the party took and then nobody talks about the questionable things they did in the past; nobody talks about their baggage again. Now, the mantra in APC is if you see what is happening and you say it the way it is, you are ostracized.
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