Buhari no longer in control – Mailafia, ADC presidential candidate

…‘How to tackle crime, economic crisis’

Obadiah Mailafia is a development economist, former deputy governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and the 2019 presidential candidate of African Democratic Congress, ADC. In this interview with Akanni Alaka, the ADC presidential candidate spoke about the 2019 elections, insecurity and failure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to support his candidature even after endorsing his party among other issues.

 

Why do you think people like you who were regarded as the ‘third force candidates’ on the ballot of the last presidential election performed below expectations of Nigerians?

For some of us, it was the very first time ever that we were throwing our hat into the rings of politics and it was a great learning process. For me personally, I learnt a lot – first, about our country, about people, especially people in politics. I learnt also, surprisingly, about myself. I learnt about my strength, my weaknesses and my constraints. I learnt that it was a great country that God has bestowed upon us – with immense resources, highly energetic and creative people and a strong nation with ancient cultures and civilisations all put together.

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You know it was Albert Einstein, who famously said that God does not play dice with the universe – that is to say God does not play lottery with nature, the universe. So, God did not make a mistake in putting us together, as one country. Our diversity is supposed to be a source of strength, not a source of weakness. But I learnt that the country has enormous challenges.

The first is poverty. We have become the poverty capital of the world with 88 million Nigerians internationally classified as destitute poor. And this is almost half of our population. I also learnt that there is too much unemployment in this country, especially among the youths. We have mortgaged the future of the youths in this country and it is very sad. Their parents suffered to send them to school and they finished – three, five years, no job, no hope. What do you expect them to do? And if you are their parents, how would you feel? Somebody that you trained, 30 years, he is still at home, he can’t feed himself. So, we have created very terrible system.

Part of why some of us entered politics is that we believe that these problems can be solved through applications of reason and creativity by the leadership. And we don’t think that those who are there now have both the intellectual capital as well as the moral capital to solve these problems. But you see, the problem is that we didn’t have the heart to steal the people’s money to go and hide it somewhere and be dangling it before them during election to buy their votes.

And so, nobody listened to us. And I am hoping that a time is coming when people, especially the youths – I put my trust in the youths, will one day wake up and say ‘enough is enough, let’s take out country back by fire, by thunder.’

You said poverty among Nigerians is one of the reasons changing from the status quo may be difficult and you have also said the people governing us now don’t even have the competence to take us out of the myriad of problems we are in. So, how do we solve these problems?

Poverty is not a problem you solve by directly attacking it. Why? Because poverty itself is not a disease. It is symptom of a disease. When you have malaria, it will manifest as fever, pain,  high temperature- all of these are symptoms of malaria. Poverty is a symptom of backwardness, it is a symptom of corruption, corruption, lack of investment in human capital, infrastructure.

So, if we do just two things, we can reduce poverty by 20 per cent. Number one, securing the common peace – if we create a government that the people know is a tough government that will not tolerate chaos – guns everywhere, insecurity everywhere, they are killing people, killing children, kidnapping – if you can tackle that one alone and provide electricity, you will reduce poverty by 20 per cent. If people have a government they can trust and they know that that government is working for them and is committed to peace and justice, they will sit up. All these insecurities will reduce.

You talk of government that will not ‘tolerate chaos,’ and one of the things people expected when President Buhari was first elected into office in 2015 was that as a former Army General, he would put his foot down to tackle the myriad of security challenges, confronting the country. But with the ongoing killings across the country, that has not happened. In your own view, would you say the government is tolerating chaos or what do you really think is happening?

I didn’t say he is tolerating chaos.

But what has happened?

I don’t know, but to be honest with you, they have lost focus. If they have a focus and a concrete plan for the country, a lot of these problems will not be taking place. They are no longer in control, that is the truth of the matter. I mean, this Kaduna-Abuja road, on a daily basis, kidnapping is going on. The killings in Southern Kaduna, especially in Kajuru Local Government, in Birnin Gwari – recently, I heard they buried over 300 people.

I know the government has said it is going to ban mining in a place like Zamfara, because a lot of these crises are as a result of resource conflicts, but these actions are coming very late in the day. We needed these things to be tackled from day one. The first duty of government is to secure the common peace.  You keep the peace and find out what you can do for the people.

But in that elementary responsibility we have failed. Look at the kidnappings going on and recently, bullion van was attacked, robbed, daily killings on the road, not to talk of the carnage of our highways. We have the worst carnage record in the world. So, Nigeria has become a land of sorrows and tears. That is the truth of the matter.

What are the ways out of these security challenges?

There is a way out. First of all, let the government be committed – a government that is committed to the welfare of the people, their safety and their lives. Number two, we now have to close our borders for a while. A lot of those people coming here are foreigners. Those of us who speak Hausa know it when we hear Hausa Kano, Zauzau, Jos, Sokoto being spoken, we know the sounds and the accents.

But a lot of these Hausa we are hearing from these people coming in are very raw Hausa – it is Hausa from Mali, Chad and other places. So, a lot of them are not Nigerians and they cross our border with sophisticated arms. They come here, kill people, kidnap people, do whatever they like and they go back. What kind of country will accept that? So, close the borders; that’s number one.

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Number two, we should take a census of all foreigners residing in the country and they should all carry identity cards, so that we can easily identify them in a situation where there is violence. And Nigeria is the only country where anybody can come from anywhere and the next day, he can do whatever he or she likes and get away with it. See, even if you are an Hausa man from Kano, try going to Niger – the way they will harass you, you will feel sorry for yourself.

So, why are we tolerating it? And I know that there are some unfortunate characters that do these things because they believe that that way it will boost the population of the North, so that in any election, they will become the electoral majority. But they don’t know the harm they are doing to our country in that process. We are doing great harm to our country.

Recently, during a trip outside the country, the president spoke about the need to re-establish the cattle routes of the 60s, as a way of curbing the clashes between farmers and herders, which have claimed thousands of lives in recent times. You are from Nasarawa, which is in the Middle Belt of the North-central where most of the clashes occurred. Would you say the proposal for re-establishment of the grazing route is a realistic option for solving the problem of farmers/herdsmen clashes, given what you know about these areas?

Let’s agree on one thing and that is that we need to find a solution to the herdsmen/farmers issue or conflict. But it is not easy to imagine that the grazing routes of the 60s can still apply today. For one, demographics have taken over – both on the part of the herdsmen and on the parts of the farmers. All those grazing routes have been taken over by settled communities. Number two; all lands in Nigeria are ancestral lands. There is no corner of Nigeria that is freeman’s land whether in the North, South, East of West.

All our lands, before the White man came belonged to the people, who live on it. And even by the Lands Use Act, all the lands belong to the people who live on it; they are ancestral, communal lands. The governor of the state holds them on behalf of the people and from time to time, the government may have cause to take over people’s land in consultation with the people and for which they must be given full compensation. So, when they are talking of grazing routes, I don’t know whose ancestral land they are going to take and it will be subject to those people accepting.

As far as I know, the Fulani have no land in the Middle Belt; they have no ancestral land in the Middle Belt. So, I don’t know whose land will be given to them, that is the issue. Ranching is a possibility. In fact, in the 60s, ranching was also tried, but the Fulani said they didn’t like it. They said they needed to be moving around, that that is their culture from time immemorial. But if you want to be moving around, you must be able to secure and safeguard the route from which you will be moving around because there has to be give and take on everybody’s part.

And the give and take is that they themselves must be willing to adjust their way of life. It is no longer a good thing to be moving up and down without putting your child in school; without looking after your family and with all the risks. Even scientifically, when cows move around, their values reduce by 50 per cent, when cows stay in one place, they conserve energy, they become fat, they will be giving more milk and then, tse-tse fly will not be eating their skin, because when tse-tse fly eats their skin, the skin becomes of little value to the international market.

The people, who deal in hides and skin need the skin to be perfect, with no scratches on them and that is what they used to make expensive shoes, bags and so on. The farmers also need to adjust; we need to be a little more generous. I know it has been a very bitter experience, but we should be ready to forgive, to live and let live. But those people too must be ready to adjust their ways of life. You cannot be trespassing on people’s land, your cows eating their crops, you bring out guns and kill them, kill their wives, kill their children. This is what has been happening every single day in the Middle Belt for the last 10 years. So, it is a totally untenable state of affairs.

You are also a man of figures as an economist. Looking at the figures turned in, especially for the presidential election in which you participated, how credible would you say those figures are?

Immediately the presidential elections were announced, within a week, I sent a congratulatory message to President Muhammadu Buhari. The elections were egregious; the figures that they give look too astonishing. But for me, I said for the sake of our country and the survival of our democracy, it was time for me to cut my losses and move on. That has been my position. I can tell you that the ADC under my leadership did not take part in vote rigging.

We sent strong instructions to all our members never to be involved in vote buying, never to be involved in thuggery, never to be involved in violence. In fact, (former President) Goodluck and myself may not have anything in common. But I also believe like him that my ambition is not worth the blood of anybody. My ambition is not worth the life of any young man because he has a father too, parents that love him, so I don’t want his blood to be shed because of me. But for the others, I wish I could say the same thing. All of them were involved in thuggery and that is very bad.

Some months before the election, former president Olusegun Obasanjo endorsed ADC, promising to support the party during the election. But he later went on to endorse former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of PDP. Were you disappointed that the former president did not carry through his initial support for the ADC to the period of the election?

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is a man that I respect and I will continue to respect him, as an elder statesman. But Baba disappointed us. Baba disappointed me when I needed him most and I felt like a son that has been rejected by his own daddy because he was our patron. He was with us throughout. Well, according to Baba, he said he was not looking for the best, but for the one who can fight Buhari and succeed. And Baba did not think that I am experienced enough to take on a Goliath, but I told him that I am a David that can take out Goliath. But he didn’t seem to believe me. But if they had supported me the way they promised, in fact, we would have given a very big surprise in this country.

But did you contact him after he expressed his support for Atiku…

I have been to Ota to see him. We talked at length and he reassured us. But elders, as we know, they are the only ones who are allowed to change their minds. Actually, daddy disappointed us, but that is in the past also.

So, will you remain in politics?

I am still a technocrat and I am still relatively young – the fact that I graduated when I was 21 years, got my PhD at an early age doesn’t mean that I am now an elder. I am a technocrat; I only entered politics by accident. I am a development economist, financial expert, anything involving technical works in economics and solving problems practically is my forte. Aristotle said those that can claim not to be interested in politics are either gods or beasts. In other words, if you are a human being, you can never say I am not interested in politics.

All of us must be interested in politics because that is what decides the fate of millions of our people. So, I will always be interested in politics, but whether I will put myself forward to stand for election is another thing. But this last election has highlighted the gap that exists in our national politics – that we need a new kind of progressive politics based on the third force that is beyond the paradigm of recycled politicians, who believe in godfathers, bribing people with money – because when they bribe you with money, when they win, they will never care about you until the next four years when they will come and bribe you again.

We want to move out of that kind of politics and to do so, we need to groom a new generation of leaders, who think Nigerians first before themselves. And I am that kind of leader. I have told people I am the servant leader that this country is waiting for and I’m not joking.

The president has been elected for a second term. What are the things that you will want him to do that he was not doing before in this his second term?

To be very honest with you, I have very high regards for President Buhari as a person. One thing is clear, he is not corrupt and he is against corruption. But it is one thing to be against corruption; it is another thing to device an effective system to fight against corruption. The most effective approach should be institutional and systemic – instead of firefighting. Put in place a system that could fight corruption from the very expenditure level, of movement of cash flow and let there be audit for every department and agency of government.

Double the budget of the office of the Auditor General of the Federation, put them in charge of every agency of government. Why don’t you tackle the problem before you wait for a governor to be out of his immunity, then, you now keep chasing him all about? It is a wrong system and it is archaic. Number two, we have no excuse for the kind of insecurity we are having in our country. It is scandalous and it is unacceptable.

Everything must be done to put an end to it. Yes, some good efforts with Boko Haram, but we are still not yet out of the woods yet. It appears to be a Phoenix – a kind of animal that when you kill it, it will rise again. So, it’s a kind of Phoenix and we need to kill it from the roots, cut off its head. We have just been hitting the tail, we have not cut off the head. And all these kidnappings going on, we must put an end to it. Number three, the economy – we are not there yet. We don’t really have an economic team. An economic team must be led by the president himself for it to be very effective.

What is your impression of the Government’s Economic Growth and Recovery Programme, ERGP?

Well, I was consulted on the ERGP and I even commented on the draft. At that time, I pointed out that it is not just the plan, but the implementation framework that is even more important. And I have been proven right. The implementation has been very weak to the extent that nobody even remembers that there is an ERGP. Competency and institutional effectiveness, we don’t really have it.

With very little money, we can still implement things and get them to work. The civil service is very important, but nobody has been talking about civil service reforms. Can you say the civil servants of today and the ones we have in the seventies are the same? The quality is not the same. So, that’s the problem. And we need a five-year economic development plan for the country – and not just economics, but urban and regional planning integrated into an economic development plan.

We need a holistic plan to make our cities more livable, to provide infrastructure, to model for the demand for electricity, sanitation, and the rest of them. This is the only way the country can grow and make progress.

Where do you stand on the issue of restructuring, which some Nigerians are still clamouring for?

I have studied that question for quite a while. I have studied all the books that Chief Obafemi Awolowo wrote, especially on federalism and constitutional reforms. I don’t think we need more than eight regions in this country – four in the North and maybe, four in the South. And these regions should be semi-autonomous – they should have their own constitution, they should have their own economy, they should have their own education system. This was what happened in the 1960s and the regions were competing against one another in a healthy way.

Each premier wanted to be the best for his region. It was a healthy rivalry. We need to go back to that system. Right now, the cost of governance is very high. We have 36 states, all of them have their civil service systems and civil servants, you have to pay for them and the bicameral legislature, you have to pay for many people. And it is a very expensive system in which we are using 70 per cent of our revenue for recurrent expenditure and only 30 per cent is going to capital expenditure.

In Asia – China, Singapore, Malaysia, the Asian Pacific countries, the exact opposite is what obtains – they spend 70 on capital expenditure and only 30 per cent on the recurrent and that is why they are growing so fast. If you spend all your money on consumption, you will never grow. It is when you invest capital that you have long term growth and you generate more income; it makes a dent on poverty and creates jobs for millions of youths.

So, I think this is the way to go. And I don’t think that we need a bicameral system of legislature, we just need one legislative house and even at the state level, it can be part time. In the 60s, it was like that at the regional level. That’s why people like Professor Iya Abubakar, as a professor in Ahmadu Bello University, was also a member of Northern House of Assembly. Whenever they are having meeting, he will excuse himself from the lectures, go for the meeting and go back. He was a member of Parliament and he was a professor at the same time and that was why you got the best to go to the parliament then because they could keep their jobs as lawyers, doctors and still serve in the legislature.

How would you rate the performance of the Independence National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the just concluded elections?

INEC worked under very difficult circumstances. Let’s not forget that INEC is made up of human beings with their own imperfections, interests and so on. And INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu is a former schoolmate of mine. We studied at Oxford together and I know him to be a very competent person and a person of high standard and morality. He is an effective technocrat and a first class historian and I know that he has done his best.

But some of them say they themselves were intimidated. If they bring soldiers, DSS with guns and order you to change results, there is nothing you can do. Can you argue with somebody who has a gun? So, some of them complained quietly that that was what happened. So, there is more to the story than what appeared on the surface and I think in the due course of time, the full story shall be revealed.

How do we curb this win at all cost, do-or-die attitude of our politicians, which some people believed were at the root of the violence that marred the elections?

The do-or-die is because a lot of those who called themselves politicians don’t have any other career. So, for them, politics is a do-or-die because, literally, you make it or you die, they don’t have any other means of livelihood. If they lose, it is like you have taken their garri out of their mouth. That’s why they are ready to kill for it. We need people who have something outside politics, who can survive without politics. We need people who will go in there just to serve, not because they are looking for something.

What is your view on this issue of rotation of the presidency, because some people are arguing that it doesn’t matter, that the presidency can remain in the North in 2023?

I have heard that kind of argument that the last election has shown that the North has a clear electoral majority and, therefore, they should not surrender power to the South. I think that’s an unfortunate statement because even the APC is an alliance between mainly the North and the South-west. We should know that people need alliances for the sake of our nationhood; we have to rotate this power. In fact, left to me, if we restructure the country, in the new constitution, we should have a rotational presidency.

Switzerland people have it enshrined in their constitution and that’s why you don’t even know who is the president of the Switzerland, because they rotate it every year. But the country is the richest country in the world. That does not stop them from being rich.

They are so diverse and very sensitive about who rules them. They don’t want any part of the country to continue to dominate, so they rotate it. I’m not saying we should rotate it annually like Switzerland, but we can say, maybe, the one-term of five years and after that, let it return to the next region. And we need an Electoral College like they do in America where it is not just any crafty human being who can now mobilise masses and force himself and now become the president. That way, you can have a nonentity who is totally unqualified becoming president, just because he has been able to hoodwink the majority.

In America, they instituted the Electoral College so that other people will vet whoever emerges. We need people of substance to rule the country.  When Chief Obafemi Awolowo died in 1987, The Times Obituary in London declared that here is a man who could have been president of any country in the western world, including America, Britain and Germany – that Awolowo could have ruled those countries successfully. We need men like that now.