State of the nation: Reasons for Nigerians anger — Ango Abdullahi

Elder Statesman, and former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria, Professor Ango Abdullahi, 86, is an accomplished academic, administrator, and convener of the Northern Elders Forum, NEF.

The former representative of Zaria West constituency of Kaduna State is known to be out-spoken on many national issues and beyond. In this encounter, he answers questions on the state of the nation among other varying issues.

On removal of fuel subsidy, hardship and introduction of palliatives by the government

Well, you have mentioned that the removal of fuel subsidy caused some economic difficulties for all of us Nigerians. And I suppose you also mentioned that some palliatives have been put in place. The only thing you have not mentioned for me to hear clearly, what palliatives have been put together, or what palliatives have been brought to make life a little easier for Nigerians, so that I can make a comment?

For instance, they increased the minimum wage, gave palliatives to some poor families and elderly people…

I am a very old person. I have not received any palliatives as an old person. Unfortunately, Nigeria has been in difficulty for quite some time. And this difficulty did not start with the current administration. It started some time ago, not too far back, I think five to 10 years ago. A lot of things have been going wrong with the Nigerian economy.

It is not the Nigerian economy as such. It is the Nigerian leadership that has been failing the country in terms of what ought to be done, and what ought to be avoided to make sure that Nigeria remains a very happy country for the people of the country. But unfortunately, this has not happened.

And so, all the things you have mentioned about poverty, about difficulty, about hunger, and so on and so forth are true. This shouldn’t be happening to Nigeria at all, we have no reason to be hungry.

We have no reasons to be poor given the fact that God has endowed this country with resources that have not been endowed in any or most parts of the world. So, the crisis we have been having is a crisis of bad leadership and bad governance, whether now or in the immediate past. Nigerians are unhappy about their country because things have gone wrong, and their livelihood has been so badly affected. Therefore, they have every reason to quite correctly say that the country has failed them. And if the country has failed them, it is not because the country has no resources to do what Nigerians should be happy about, but simply because the leadership has not organized itself in such a way so that the resources of the country would be harnessed and used for the benefit of the country.

So, the issue here is that the crisis you are talking about is a crisis of leadership. And once leadership is wrong, many things will go wrong, as we are having many things going wrong now.

On what leaders can do to address the challenges

When you are talking about leadership, you are talking about individuals by name. I am talking about leadership generally in the country by individuals that are being put in place to manage the affairs of the country in various institutions, starting from the top institutions that are regarded as government to deal with the economy, to deal with the law and the judiciary, individuals put in place to deal with security, to deal with so many other things that have to do with the livelihood and happiness of the people. And this is what I am talking about, leadership.

So, if you are talking about leadership at the political level, it has a major responsibility and a major role to play to make sure that everything works to ensure that the country is stable, the country is happy, the people are happy about their country. So, this is what we are saying. I’m not talking about this government that is only two years old.

I’m talking about governments, at least in the last 10, 15 years, that have not done very well for their country in terms of the leadership they provided, that have made it difficult for the country to grow economically and for the social stability of the country to be ensured.

On allegation that most governors of the 36 states are now living in Abuja instead of their own states

This is part of what we are talking about concerning good governance. If you decide to contest an election to be a councillor, or to be a chairman of a local government, or to go to a state house of assembly, or to go to the Senate or House of Representatives as a representative or as a senator, or to contest as a governor, or eventually contest as the president of the country, you have to have a reason you want those positions. You have accepted that taking those positions means that you have responsibilities to discharge to your constituents.

It appears to me that people just want offices, but they don’t carry the weight or they don’t care about the weight of those offices in terms of discharging the responsibilities within those offices. And this is what is creating bad governance. And if you like, almost a failure of states.

On Local Government autonomy and opposition of some governors

When you are talking about local government autonomy, you are talking about so many things at the same time. A local government can only be created, one local government in this country cannot be created without amending the constitution of this country. First, the procedures must be followed before you agree, finally, that a local government in such and such a place should be created.

Creating a local government means that offices under those local governments have been provided in the constitution. And, of course, they are supposed to discharge their responsibilities under the constitution. And they will need resources to do so.

And they need to have the law or the various laws governing their operations to discharge those responsibilities. But the problem we have now is that we just talk about offices, but we don’t really take a serious view of what these responsibilities are, and whether these responsibilities are fully discharged, and whether they are discharged within the laws of the country. So, the independence of local government is a political gimmick as far as I’m concerned.

There will be no time when there is going to be an independent local government in Nigeria until and unless the Nigerian people in this country are allowed first to have a political system that makes it possible for them to elect their own leaders legitimately within a system that allows them to express freely their wishes or their choices. At the moment, there is none.

When you are talking about local government autonomy and independence and so on, how can a local government chairman or local government councillor be independent today when their election was decided and completely decided by the governors?

The governors decided who would be elected chairman, and the governors would decide who would be elected councillor, and the governors will decide so many things. Because the governors have complete control of the electoral process in the state, there are what they call independent electoral commissions in the states. And when there are elections, these commissions have to do exactly what their governors want.

So, what we have in the councils are choices of governors rather than choices of people. That’s why this so-called independence of local governments is, at the moment, theoretical until we go back to the basics that ensure that people are free to elect their representatives at the local government level. At the moment, they do not have that choice.

Currently, the opposition political parties are in turmoil. They cannot challenge the ruling party. They are all having issues, PDP, Labour Party, and they are already working towards 2027. Do you think they can make any impact?

You are bringing another issue which is similar to the one you raised with the local government. As far as I’m concerned, there is no independent judiciary in the country. When you don’t have an independent judiciary, you cannot have independence in the dispensation of justice in the country. This is an area that must be overhauled completely to make sure that the laws of these countries are upgraded as the constitution stipulates rather than the leaders, whether president or governor or whoever. This is what is happening now.

You have records of cases of courts that have been completely decided by the leaders, whether by president in the past or now, whether by governors in the past or now, and so on.

The opposition can go to court crying, but they should know that the outcome of their complaints will be decided by superior political officers ahead of them.

In order words you have no confidence in the judiciary?

At the moment, I don’t. Because I’m confident that the judiciary is not as independent as it ought to be. Because of the so many lacunas in the processes that bring about the choice of justices of the peace, whether at the state level or at the federal level. Okay.

Do you think Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi can successfully challenge President Bola Tinubu in 2027?

They are free to aspire to do so. They are Nigerians. Every Nigerian, including yourself, can challenge anybody in an election.

Of course, people are free to challenge other contestants. But until we have independent candidates recognized in the country, there wouldn’t be complete freedom of choice in the country. Because if I want to contest in an election, first, I must belong to a political party.

Why should I belong to a political party for my people to elect me? I should be able to present myself, and if people trust me, they should elect me. I don’t have to belong to any party. These are some of the problems we have in the political process that are throwing up leaders that we don’t really trust, or we didn’t, in fact, elect. Rather, it is the system that has forced them on us. So, for free elections or for free choice, we must have independent candidates and free our people from belonging to a political party that they don’t want to belong to.

What is the position of the North in Tinubu’s government?

I’m not in the North. I’m just a Nigerian who can vote anytime. And what do you mean by the position of the North? What do you mean?

Does the North believe that Tinubu will fix Nigeria at the conclusion of his second term in office?

Nigerians know how the current leadership came about. It is claimed that he came through an election. Just imagine what INEC told us before the election, that there were 90 million registered voters in the country.

Yet, at the end of the election, we have a president who got eight million votes out of 90 million registered voters. So, what do you call this process? Either the political parties have failed, or they don’t even exist to the point that they can motivate people to go and vote, or that the people are so frustrated with the system that they would rather not vote at all because they know that their votes will not count.

So, there is a lot that must be done to really reposition Nigeria to be a country that we all wish to be in. We were doing very well at independence. Those of us who were old enough were proud of the Nigeria we had then.

I was a returning officer in the 1959 elections in Zaria. There were political parties. There were independent candidates in so many places. Independent candidates won elections by defeating party candidates and so on and so forth. All this has disappeared now.

So, until we look at the system itself, I don’t think we are going to get out of this problem. I am one of those who believe that the presidential system that we are operating is not working for Nigeria, and it will not work for Nigeria. It was imposed on us by the military because the military even denied us a debate between the parliamentary and presidential system during the transition period. They didn’t allow a debate for us to determine whether we wanted something else other than the presidential system or wanted to create a new electoral process.

They just said we should go and borrow a presidential system from France or from the United States. Eventually, the United States presidential system is what we are practicing, and this doesn’t fit this country. For 25 years, this country has not made progress under this system. Under the parliamentary system, for five or six years, our pioneer leaders did so much in their regions. Awolowo made a lot of progress in the Western region, Azikiwe did the same in the Eastern region, and Sarduana did so much in the Northern region.
So, this is the problem, the system we have borrowed or have been forced to borrow is not working for Nigeria, and it will not work for Nigeria.

Many have been calling for a political solution to Nnamdi Kanu’s detention. What is your take on that?

I’m not a lawyer; I’m a simple citizen that believes in the rule of law. If I offend the law, I believe that the law will deal with me accordingly. In the same way, if Nnamdi Kanu offends the Nigerian law, he should be tried by the Nigerian law. That’s all. I don’t see Kanu’s detention as political, I look at it purely legally and so, they should try and resolve it legally.

How did you feel when during the last #Endbad governance protests some people were calling for the military to take over and were raising the Russian flag?

What was happening was that Nigerians were angry. Nigerians are being frustrated.

They are still angry, and they are still frustrated. They want something other than what they have now, and that’s why people are mentioning all sorts of alternatives. Some were talking about the military, some people were talking about other systems that are working in other countries, etc.

So, you should just take this as an indication that our system is not satisfactory, it is not working, and that we should sit down and take another look at it and see whether we can create something that is more indigenous and more adaptable to the needs of our country.

What do you think is happening around us? Some African countries are exiting from ECOWAS and some of them have been taken over by the military…

What we want is good government, whether it is military or otherwise. Who said that every military government is bad? Who said so? We had good military governments in Nigeria. General Gowon’s government was good.

I was a commissioner during the military in Gowon’s period. They were good. They were working for the people, and they were also protecting the country.

They were not stealing. So, what you want in government is good governance, irrespective of whether somebody is wearing a uniform or not. This nonsense that the civilian government is better than military government is absolute nonsense.

The House of Representatives Constitution Review Panel proposed 31 more states for Nigeria…

For what? (laughs) If three regions worked for Nigeria and then we had 12 states and later on 19 states and now 36 states, and now someone is proposing 67 states, ask them whether that will determine the progress or development of Nigeria because it doesn’t make sense to me. What do they want to do with more states? The current states could not sustain themselves. Only few could pay workers’ salaries and they are asking for more. For what?

Recently the United States was accused of sponsoring and funding Boko Haram but it denied it. What could be the truth?

America will deny anything that they are doing wrong, and this is international politics. America has interests around the world and wherever her interests are threatened, it will fight back.

And this is normal for big countries such as the United States and others. If you find America sponsoring a rebellion or sponsoring protests and so on, it means that her interests are at stake. And the same thing with every other country.

It is up to the country affected to also determine its own interests. The problem with African countries generally is that their leaders don’t define our interests correctly. And in fact, our interests are more determined by our former colonial masters than ourselves.

And that’s why we dance virtually to every tune, depending on the history of our relationship, whether it is a relationship with America, whether it’s a relationship with the UK, wherever and so on. We have not yet, up to now, African countries detached themselves from their colonial past. And this is why we are having so many problems around us.