ANRP presidential candidate laments DESCENT OF NATION’S DEMOCRACY
…..says Bayelsa, Kogi, polls beyond shameful
The Federal Government has for some months now closed the Nigerian borders with our West African neighbours in what it said was part of its bid to stop the smuggling of goods and ensure patronage of goods produced locally. Do you agree that this is the way to encourage local production?
Yes, sometimes, it can be the way to go. You may have to take drastic action in order to force your people to think the right way. Even some of the countries that we look up to have had to do that in the past – notably, in the United States, there is what is called the Tea Party, for example. The Tea Party Movement was used to resist the dumping of tea into the US by the British people. But the issue here is that, one, African countries are trying to do trade among themselves, the AFCTA is coming up and Nigeria ought to have been in the forefront of this idea, but we did not move on time. If that’s the case, the issue is, are we trying just to test the water for now? Are we just experimenting with border closure? Because this is not the time for border closure. That time has passed. It is now time for African countries to trade. One of the rules in AFCTA is what they called rules of origin – to say that, fine, if we are going to open up the system and trade with other African countries, every country needs to know where exactly the good, coming into their territory originates from and how much values have been added before it gets shipped around Africa. Otherwise, we are going to be dumping ground for Europe and these other countries if we are not careful. So, that’s one of the issues. Now, the real contention in this instance of Nigeria is integrity and fairness because we can see that in some parts of the country, there is no restriction per se. A certain gentleman, who is a cousin or nephew to the president, who is in House of Representatives, said that he went out at 2 am to the border in Katsina and he said it was free for all in the borders in that part of the country. However, there is a lockdown in some other parts of the country, especially where traditionally and historically, the business has always been about interaction of people in that area – between one country and another. Though I don’t subscribe to business of smuggling, more than smuggling is being locked down in some parts of the country. And I think that inequity is the major problem that we are facing with this experiment of border closure. Number two – if it’s something that they are going to do within a few weeks, why not? But they seem to almost want to make it a permanent affair. Remember that, again, it is skewed. In some parts of the country, there is no closure per se. There is an understanding to look the other way. In other parts of the country, there is an understanding to brutalise even the citizens of those areas, to make them pay. So, it is highly unfortunate and I think they need to review this. Mind you, we are now going into a stage where globalisation is being reversed. Countries are stepping up barriers. Britain is getting out of the Eurozone and the EU, the United States is bringing in all sorts of tariffs against Chinese products and there is a prediction that there is going to be a global economic downturn next year and every country seems to now be on their own. So, those are some of the issues to consider.
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So, is your concern about the management of the border closure, the way it is being done. You talked about discrimination or that it is even not necessary at all?
I think it is necessary to a certain extent. I’m concerned about the inequity – that is the first thing, the length of time it is taking; the fact that they tend to want to make it an economic policy itself. I am concerned about the falsehoods that are being perpetrated in terms of the gains of the border closure. I am concerned about the fact that the Customs officers, who have always benefited, are still benefiting even more because all they need to do now is to increase their fees – the bribes that they collect. I am concerned about the fact that those who have made so much money from aiding smuggling in the past have not been punished. The Customs went out the other time trying to go into hotels, people’s houses and car shops, stopping people on the road for vehicles you bought even from car dealers. They will tell you to go and pay another duty because the duty that those guys pay was not genuine. Now, the point is, how did the people get the documents from Customs. Their own members, who are the beneficiaries of that corruption – not one has been dealt with. So, they just put the onus on the people and they will say go and pay.
You talked about falsehood being perpetrated, as gains of the border closure. But the government, even the Central Bank Governor, has been talking about the gains, saying the closure of Nigeria’s borders has led to an increase in agricultural production, reduced fuel smuggling and so on. You don’t think those claims are genuine?
No. For example, look at rice – even today it is in the news that in spite of the so-called border closure, the rate at which foreign rice is entering Sokoto or Katsina State, for example, is alarming. In fact, I have a suspicion that some of the rice they say is local rice is actually foreign rice being round-tripped. So, some of these guys have gone to CBN and got billions of naira, as loans and you know that it is not easy to turn around the loans in this country and most people are not even serious. We don’t have a good credit culture. People – when they collect these loans – just think that it is part of their national cake and they just spend it anyhow. Go to Bank of Agric – we have moribund loans. Have Nigerians changed? No, they haven’t changed. Did we import new people from Mars? I don’t think so. Now, these guys have gone to collect so many loans from banks and they have to justify it. So, what does it cost you to bring rice from abroad and front it that this is what we produced? So, you don’t have to pay back or they give you a moratorium again, having mismanaged the money. That’s why I said that a lot of claims by the government, regarding this border closure, are false – not all. A lot of the claims are false because it became politicised and the government needed to show and justify the border closure. But remember that I said sometimes it is important for you to do such a drastic thing. But there has to be a timeline to it and you have to also understand that the African Union has indicated the need to move into an era of free trade among its partners.
Outside of the closure of the border, another key economic instrument was the budget being considered now by the Senate. Having looked at the budget, some analysts say some of the assumptions are not realistic, especially in terms of projected revenue…
You know my position on the budget and the fact that I believe that in the first place, that budget is too small. The city of Johannesburg’s budget is about 64 billion rands this year. They have less than five million people in Johannesburg. People complain about Johannesburg – the high crimes- even some of our people, the other time when we had xenophobia, even opened their mouths to say all sorts of things about South Africa. But you know 64 billion rands is N1.6 trillion. What is Lagos budget? Lagos is barely one billion naira for 21 million people. The South African budget is, at least, six times the Nigerian budget. The budget for this year is 130 billion dollars. The Nigerian budget is less than 30 billion dollars. The issue then becomes, is this the best we can do? Are we really the biggest economy in Africa? Number two, let’s subject it to a per capita basis – the provision that the Nigerian government has for each person this year is about 140 dollars. And that is for everything – your education, security, agriculture, health – divided by 365 days that is about 35 cents per day. So, I maintain my position that the budget is too small and the assumptions are what they are. Again, the problem with the assumptions is that the only assumption that goes into that budget is crude oil. You will see it there – the flagship assumption. Number one, we expect to sell crude oil this year. Number two, how much is the crude oil we want to sell and what’s the likely price of the crude oil? So, the argument is, is it going to be 60 dollars per barrel or 55 dollars next year, as the case may be? But that is arbitrary, though not necessarily unreasonable. But it is arbitrary in the sense that nobody can tell. Now, is this what you should base the budget on? I doubt. Why can’t we have other assumptions? What is the assumption for mining, for example? Do you know that in 2018, they said that Nigeria made zero from mining as a nation? But we have a whole ministry with people being paid money in charge of that sector. We have people who have been saying that they want to turn around that sector. But now, there is innovation – I think they were waking up a bit like the introduction of what they called the Finance Bill. The Finance Bill is what we should have every year. In fact, it used to be like that in this country – it used to be that every year. We will say we are increasing this tax, we are reducing this tax, and we are keeping this. I wonder why we have lost our brains for the past 19, 20 years that we have refused to tweak all these things. When people talk about restructuring, I wrote an article and said that we only stopped restructuring in 1999 or thereabout. Before then, we were tinkering with the allocation formula. Sometime in 2003 or 2005, I think former President Obasanjo did one, trying to tweak the allocation formula. It is what we should look at every year or every three years and say, okay, this thing that we are operating – 56 per cent to the Federal Government, 24 to states, 20 to local governments, is it working? And with the people in mind, is it working for the people? Have the lives of the people become better? I was in a seminar where we have some of the commissioners from the states. The minister of state was also there and this is part of the issues I raised with them. They have to look at it like that because, at the end of the day, it should be about what impact is it having on the people? We can say we want to do trunk road, for example, which is great. Mr. Fashola is talking about this road that will go from Lagos to Algiers and he is saying that they are prioritising it, that under three years, they want to finish the road. Fine, in the same instance, we have a scenario, which I have taken issues with in Ekiti State – between Akure and Ikere Ekiti – the road is now full of craters – it has been like that for about 15 years and they said they managed to get approval from government to go and borrow funds from the African Development Bank to do this road of between 20 and 25 kilometres and put a tollgate on it. So, I am wondering, why are you putting tollgate on a village road? Who is going to pay? Those villagers? Why don’t you talk about this three-years’ road and tell us how much we are going to get from it because it is going to be a road going to Europe? So, those are the issues that every other year, we should be talking about. How does this thing impact on people – whether you are talking of the Finance Bill or the assumptions of the budget? We need to recalibrate the way the budget is being done – to populate it as much as possible with how much is coming in. if we think very hard, we will see salutary ways of making a considerable impact on that budget and driving that budget, like I said, until it gets to 15 trillion, I am not going to be happy. In fact, I am going to continue to review upwards the budget because even at 15 trillion, it is not that much, it is just about 200 dollars per person when in a place like the United States, they are budgeting about 25,000 dollars per human being every year and even in most of Europe, it is also like that.
You talk about tinkering with the budget in terms of revenue to improve the lots of the people as ‘restructuring.’ So, you don’t think that we need to establish an elaborate process of constitutional amendments, people sitting there somewhere to talk and so on to carry out the restructuring of the country?
That’s why they are just wasting their time. It is supposed to be something that we do constantly. It is supposed to be something that is written into the constitution of the Federal Republic that every now and then, we will look at the way we do things, the structure of the country as it pertains to how well it improves the lives of the people. A lot of politicians are also mainstreaming restructuring to benefit themselves. They want political power. Some people are asking for more states for example. But the states that we have now cannot sustain themselves. The governors are there, buying jeeps and feeling funky with themselves, spending money anyhow. Some other politicians are positioning to get their own states in order to have access to that kind of money. Our states, are they working now as we speak? No, they are not. What we should be talking about is that do we want fewer states? But I know because of tribal, religious, political issues they will never agree to that. That’s our wiring for now. We are wired to be prebendal in the way. But we should be saying how we are spending the money that we get? How much authority do our governors have? How much access do they have to public funds? What level of accountability at the federal, state and the local government levels are the people getting? Those are the things that we should be talking about and it should be written into the constitution of the country.
The Buhari administration is already some months into its second term. How would you say the government has done and are you seeing any sign that the government may do things in a different way this time around?
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that. The only thing I see on the horizon in this Finance Bill that they put up, which is good. If you look at the Finance Bill, beyond the fact that they want to increase VAT from 5 per cent to 7.5 per cent, which I kind of support because you cannot have 5 per cent VAT ad infinitum; when even Saudi Arabia, UAE and co which were tax free countries have now put in the same five per cent VAT. But you can see that they also put some incentives in the Finance Bill. Companies that are making a turnover of less than N25 million per annum are now tax-free and also, they are also outside the VAT bracket. Companies that are turning between N25 million and N100 million would now have their taxes reduced to 20 per cent from 30 per cent. And those are very good initiatives. Equally, quick payment or filing of your tax returns entitles you to two or three per cent discount, something like that. So, I see that as an advantage and as a beginning of new thinking. Also, one can look at the Petroleum Sharing Contract that was reviewed because in 1993 under Abacha, we gave the international oil companies too much concession and this ought to have been reviewed since 2008. Unfortunately, Yar’Adua tried, but he couldn’t. He died and I think Buhari has managed to deal with that to an extent. That is even part of the Petroleum Industry Bill. In fact, it is the meat of the Petroleum Industry Bill. So, it is just like the issue of restructuring – instead of having an elaborate discussion about restructuring, build it into the budget. Perhaps, instead of pursuing a gargantuan PIB, which the oil companies have sworn never to allow to see light – maybe this one that they have done is the best that they can do for now because Nigeria has actually shifted largely to production sharing contract away from joint venture, which we couldn’t service anyway. However, corruption still continues. In fact, in some places, more than before. Nigerians now lack a sense of unity and, unfortunately, the president and other leaders that we have are not speaking to our unity. They don’t speak to unity of this country. Or maybe they think they will not sound believable because they have never tuned their minds to that. Nobody is trying to achieve a more cohesive society and economy. Everybody is on his or her own – the ministries still work in silos, the budget every year is still full of pork-barrel projects. Almost every line item in the budget is somebody’s project. The projects are sponsored by politicians and even people in the executive, bureaucracy and so on. They own each item in the budget and they will tell you that this one belongs to this person, that one belongs to that person, this one belongs to this person and that’s what they called padding. Senators and Rep members will say add these billions for me I want to use it for something, if you don’t do it, you are in soup. And they are not the only ones because the moment they asked for such a thing, the person that is adding it would also add his own N200 million. So, basically, there is no accountability. Unfortunately, I don’t know what we are going to do to stop that. But in my opinion, Buhari has disappointed me greatly in that area and we lost something major, which we ought not to have lost. That’s how it is for now.
What about the politics, the practice of true democracy in the country is being rolled back because some are saying the kind of arrests and intimidation of activists like Omoyele Sowore and others and disobedience of court orders going on…
I believe that is correct and I believe that the government should be worried that it is alienating itself further from the people. Disobedience of court orders. For example, why is Sowore still being held if we live in a democracy? Why are you still holding Sowore after how many court orders to release him? I was there when Justice Taiwo Taiwo ordered that Sowore should be released. I was in court also on the day Justice Ojukwu ordered that he should be released on bail, even though the terms of the bail were stringent. So, there is no reason Sowore is still being held. Equally, look at that other guy, a young guy, 21 or 22 or so – a mere student, what did he do?
Is that Bakare?
Yes, what did he do? If you say Sowore is a high profile person, why are you holding a university student? Amnesty International declared them, including Agba Jalingo, prisoners of conscience some days ago. So, the government is operating that kind of jackboot regime and unfortunately, it is like we are back into something that is worse than military era. They are not playing it right at all. People have to be sending letters to Archbishop of Canterbury to say that, ‘Please, Mr. Buhari is your friend; you have to let him know that he is running a fascist government at home.’ The excuses that the DSS has given for still holding on to Sowore is beyond ridiculous. I heard that they said if they release Sowore, somebody could hit him with a car. I said maybe that is their own idea of what they wanted to do. But they should release him first and obey the court order. The DSS is saying that his sureties should come and some of the supporters of the government are actually hailing that. But the point is where in the constitution is it said that after the court has released someone on bail, the DSS will now say that those sureties that the courts have recognised should now go and report to the DSS to be intimidated? Anyway, the government is writing its testimony because the point is nothing lasts forever. The leaders of today will become the non-leaders of tomorrow. Even, if a leader stays there and dies, at some point, there would be that accounting on how he spent his time and how it rubbed off on the people. A king will be remembered by what he did while on the throne and what happened to the people during his time. Again, because we are all mortals – when we get power, we think it will last forever, but nothing lasts forever.
You were a presidential candidate in the 2019 general election and there were complaints about how the election was conducted in terms of the credibility. We just had elections in two states – Kogi and Bayelsa in these last few weeks and there were reports of thugs in police uniform, snatching ballot boxes and complicity between politicians and security agencies to rig the polls. What is your own opinion on these two elections and what is the import for Nigeria’s democracy, 20 years after?
Very clear – that’s why when people were blaming us that ‘these guys, you can’t make any impact, you should have come together, this and that’, I said ‘do you believe that a proper election took place in February 2019?’ The advantage of seeing Kogi and Bayelsa is that we are able to focus on those two states. The off-cycle election provides that advantage of focusing on one or two states. Everybody is tuned to it and could see. It is different from when everybody is focusing on over 30 states and so on. These elections in the two states gave us an idea of what our current politicians believe that elections should mean and it was beyond shameful. We saw security men -police and co- snatching boxes themselves. It is a shame. Even in our election, I made about 4,340 votes. I came 36th in that election, somewhere right in the middle. I believed that I worked more than that. Certainly, I didn’t expect to win, maybe, I expected to have 20,000, 40,000 votes. But my own is, give me my votes, whatever they are. You have defrauded me by not giving me my votes. I expected people like Sowore to have, at least, a million votes. People like Moghalu, Fela should also have close to that. But it was a charade. They just wrote anything they wanted for anybody. Some of the people that didn’t do any work are the ones they gave the votes. The guy that came third didn’t do any work. We didn’t see him anywhere in this country. I think the ADC came fourth – they have their structure, the Obasanjo structure maybe. But the whole thing defies logic and we can see. I shared a post on my Facebook page about the Governor-elect of Bayelsa State. He is incomprehensible. The guy – the so-called David Lyon is incomprehensible. He can’t even say a sentence correctly. So, what then did the people vote for in Bayelsa? What they did vote for in Kogi State in a governor that even a couple of days before the election was seen threatening fire and brimstone and saying that people would not leave the state alive because of politics? I think Nigerians can see that we are not even in a democracy, if you ask me. That’s what I think. And it is a very terrible legacy that General Buhari has brought here because at least, we had that illusion that our votes matter. As I’m talking to you now, I personally will not vote in this country again, except something radical changes and it is clear and obvious to everybody. I have no business queuing up to vote for anybody, including myself. And I have said it before that I am only going to contest once. I have been voting before. And even with the evidence the world has about the election in Kogi State, the president gave commendation to that election and said it was ‘well won.’ Of course, it was ‘well won’ under the burden of the gun or the bullet. We saw people, praising the governor, the people from his area, and saying we are going to win, ‘tatatatata’ and everybody knows it was about the bullets. And right now, as I speak to you, the huge fissure has further broadened in Kogi State between the Ebiras and Igala and, of course, the Okun people have been beaten down again as if they don’t matter. Has General Buhari helped the unity of that state? Even, when we talked about the differences and the problems between Hausa people, Yoruba people, Igbo people – we will always join the Hausa and Fulani people even though they are not the same – but the problems in some of the states of this country in terms of unity is bigger than all of these things that we talked about. In Kogi State there, I learnt that an Igala man cannot marry an Ebira man or woman and vice versa. Your people will not go to the wedding. In Benue State there, the Idoma call the Tiv animals. Has anybody spoken to that? We have elders in this country. We have an 80-year-old man, running the country. Has he spoken to that problem of unity or he is concerned only about winning power by all means, fair and foul? And the country can go to blazes? I think those are the issues. We are not running democracy yet.
What are the implications for us of these new ways of winning elections? Where you know you cannot win, you deploy thugs in police uniforms to go and disrupt the process or snatch ballot boxes and in your own strongholds, you drive away other party agents and embark on massive thumb printing…
Number one is that you can’t call Nigeria a democratic country. Two, we are now under the burden of violence. All of these things will have bigger implications for society clearly and it will get to a point that it will become uncontrollable. Anything can happen to anybody. People will even use guns and violence to settle business disputes and so on. And all of these guns will be left with thugs and involvement of thugs in an election always ends up in dispute. You will see the political thugs saying they promised us this and that and never fulfilled the promise.
A lot of us went into politics. And it was a great experiment. Those who never went into politics and are on the sidelines talking don’t know anything. If three of us meet here for purposes of politics, one person will betray us. It could be the person that called the meeting. When power and money are on the table, you will be shocked what human beings can do, especially in a country like Nigeria where, unfortunately, politics is becoming the only avenue to untold wealth and Nigerians are always looking for untold wealth. Untold wealth, without the story, that is why a lot of our young boys are into Yahoo, Yahoo and all of that. Everybody wants to make billions. There is this other guy, they said he was in Dubai, he is there and he is showing us every day how he bought this Bentley, how he bought this Rolls Royce, almost every day. Not even Bill Gates, not even the Sheikh of Dubai, who is a trillionaire, would be buying Bentley and Rolls Royce every day, different colours and so on. So, we are always looking for that untold wealth. But if you are not doing 419, the only way you can do it is by politics in this country. Now if that is the case, you can see that politics is attracting the worst among us. In Benue State recently, there is one guy, maybe in the House of Reps or their state House of Assembly, who is a very well known kidnapper. After he got there, the police still arrested him for kidnapping. They’ve always been there – remember there was a time a former AIG stood up in the National Assembly during the Obasanjo era and said that ‘some of the people I arrested for 419 are now here, as senators.’ Go and find out- even from your state, most of the people, who are representing you whether in the State House of Assembly or National Assembly are criminals. It is like people need to have a meritorious career in criminality in order for them to run for politics in this country. And those are the people that have access to the money and when they bring the money and spend it, the people collect it and when they get into office, they recoup back 20 times.
Do you believe that the police are helpless, as the IGP sounded when he accepted that thugs in police uniform were behind the hijack of ballot boxes in Kogi and Bayelsa?
The man should just save us the agony of fake policemen. Anyway, there are 80,000 fake policemen even in their own ranks, which they have refused to do anything about. There are few good policemen, but they are limited to the Louis Edet headquarters of the Nigeria Police in Abuja – you will see corporate looking police officers, reasonably sounding people there. But before you became AIG, DIG, IG or whatever, you must have also risen through the ranks and for you to work in Louis Edet, you must have sorted out one thing or another. These things don’t come for free. Police promotion now, you have to bribe somebody. You saw when Channels Television went to Police College in Ikeja and they were sharing a small tilapia inside a very watery soup for 50 people, taking it pinch by pinch. So, when you traumatise people like that and you release them to society, what do you expect? So, I don’t believe the yarns by the Police IG that these thugs are fake policemen. This is a country in which they attach policemen to anybody that can pay. If you have some ‘loose’ money now, and you say you want a policeman, a policeman will follow you here. Just go to the local DPO, you ‘sort’ him out, he will attach somebody to you. He will say at the end of the day, give this guy N5,000 or N10,000. Go to the East, that’s even a custom there. People are going to the village, they take a truckload of policemen. You want to do burial, you take them with you, when they get there they will start shooting and say they are scaring off criminals. So, the police are already very cheap and very easy to obtain, not for the protection of the people, but the protection of politicians and all sorts of charlatans in the society who can pay. The entire police are fake then. They should spare us the agony. What we saw were policemen, who were snatching ballots boxes.
Do you also think INEC is helpless in this poll robbery or do you think it is also complicit in helping politicians to steal votes?
INEC is made up of Nigerians. The people there are also human beings. Except we want to go and import people to come and run INEC, it is invariably what it is. Sometimes, I see that they make some academic efforts, particularly again at the national headquarters. By the time you get to states, ward levels, it is a different game. They even tried; the other time they prosecuted over 100 of their workers. Some of them were sent to jail or money were collected from them and so on. They tried. But it is still about Nigerians. So, I will not put the entire blame on INEC. However, I have an issue with INEC that they also will support some of those ruling party senators, who believe that the biggest problem we have right now is the proliferation of parties. What happened in Kogi and Bayelsa is not from the small parties. In fact, I tell people that these small parties are some of the people that hold the key in this country if we are going to have sanity. Everybody in APC has been in PDP; Everybody in PDP has been in APC. However, I believe that the entire problems are not about INEC, which is also made up of Nigerians. They could certainly do better. They may be complicit to a certain extent. If you have five commissioners, maybe two of them are rogues, who are collecting money on the side. However, one thing that always strikes me is that it’s a bad place to be when you are collecting money that you can’t even spend, that you have to dodge around to even spend. If I’m an INEC commissioner and you are coming to give me something like N300 million, millions of dollars, where would I start? I would go crazy because you can’t spend it. Many of these people in government, when they get all those kind of money, if they buy a house, certainly not in their own name and they only go do inspection in the middle of the night. They called the agents, okay, I’m coming at 2 am or 3 am. What kind of life is that? So, all of those factors will be there, but we should not simplify the problem by making it sound like it is an INEC issue alone. INEC can do a lot better. But we, the people have become toxic and it is a subject of leadership. The leader of the country should be very, very worried about the legacy he is leaving for the country when he is gone.
the bail were stringent. So, there is no reason Sowore is still being held. Equally, look at that other guy, a young guy, 21 or 22 or so – a mere student, what did he do?
Is that Bakare?
Yes, what did he do? If you say Sowore is a high profile person, why are you holding a university student? Amnesty International declared them, including Agba Jalingo, prisoners of conscience some days ago. So, the government is operating that kind of jackboot regime and unfortunately, it is like we are back into something that is worse than military era. They are not playing it right at all. People have to be sending letters to Archbishop of Canterbury to say that, ‘Please, Mr. Buhari is your friend; you have to let him know that he is running a fascist government at home.’ The excuses that the DSS has given for still holding on to Sowore is beyond ridiculous. I heard that they said if they release Sowore, somebody could hit him with a car. I said maybe that is their own idea of what they wanted to do. But they should release him first and obey the court order. The DSS is saying that his sureties should come and some of the supporters of the government are actually hailing that. But the point is where in the constitution is it said that after the court has released someone on bail, the DSS will now say that those sureties that the courts have recognised should now go and report to the DSS to be intimidated? Anyway, the government is writing its testimony because the point is nothing lasts forever. The leaders of today will become the non-leaders of tomorrow. Even, if a leader stays there and dies, at some point, there would be that accounting on how he spent his time and how it rubbed off on the people. A king will be remembered by what he did while on the throne and what happened to the people during his time. Again, because we are all mortals – when we get power, we think it will last forever, but nothing lasts forever.
You were a presidential candidate in the 2019 general election and there were complaints about how the election was conducted in terms of the credibility. We just had elections in two states – Kogi and Bayelsa in these last few weeks and there were reports of thugs in police uniform, snatching ballot boxes and complicity between politicians and security agencies to rig the polls. What is your own opinion on these two elections and what is the import for Nigeria’s democracy, 20 years after?
Very clear – that’s why when people were blaming us that ‘these guys, you can’t make any impact, you should have come together, this and that’, I said ‘do you believe that a proper election took place in February 2019?’ The advantage of seeing Kogi and Bayelsa is that we are able to focus on those two states. The off-cycle election provides that advantage of focusing on one or two states. Everybody is tuned to it and could see. It is different from when everybody is focusing on over 30 states and so on. These elections in the two states gave us an idea of what our current politicians believe that elections should mean and it was beyond shameful. We saw security men -police and co- snatching boxes themselves. It is a shame. Even in our election, I made about 4,340 votes. I came 36th in that election, somewhere right in the middle. I believed that I worked more than that. Certainly, I didn’t expect to win, maybe, I expected to have 20,000, 40,000 votes. But my own is, give me my votes, whatever they are. You have defrauded me by not giving me my votes. I expected people like Sowore to have, at least, a million votes. People like Moghalu, Fela should also have close to that. But it was a charade. They just wrote anything they wanted for anybody. Some of the people that didn’t do any work are the ones they gave the votes. The guy that came third didn’t do any work. We didn’t see him anywhere in this country. I think the ADC came fourth – they have their structure, the Obasanjo structure maybe. But the whole thing defies logic and we can see. I shared a post on my Facebook page about the Governor-elect of Bayelsa State. He is incomprehensible. The guy – the so-called David Lyon is incomprehensible. He can’t even say a sentence correctly. So, what then did the people vote for in Bayelsa? What they did vote for in Kogi State in a governor that even a couple of days before the election was seen threatening fire and brimstone and saying that people would not leave the state alive because of politics? I think Nigerians can see that we are not even in a democracy, if you ask me. That’s what I think. And it is a very terrible legacy that General Buhari has brought here because at least, we had that illusion that our votes matter. As I’m talking to you now, I personally will not vote in this country again, except something radical changes and it is clear and obvious to everybody. I have no business queuing up to vote for anybody, including myself. And I have said it before that I am only going to contest once. I have been voting before. And even with the evidence the world has about the election in Kogi State, the president gave commendation to that election and said it was ‘well won.’ Of course, it was ‘well won’ under the burden of the gun or the bullet. We saw people, praising the governor, the people from his area, and saying we are going to win, ‘tatatatata’ and everybody knows it was about the bullets. And right now, as I speak to you, the huge fissure has further broadened in Kogi State between the Ebiras and Igala and, of course, the Okun people have been beaten down again as if they don’t matter. Has General Buhari helped the unity of that state? Even, when we talked about the differences and the problems between Hausa people, Yoruba people, Igbo people – we will always join the Hausa and Fulani people even though they are not the same – but the problems in some of the states of this country in terms of unity is bigger than all of these things that we talked about. In Kogi State there, I learnt that an Igala man cannot marry an Ebira man or woman and vice versa. Your people will not go to the wedding. In Benue State there, the Idoma call the Tiv animals. Has anybody spoken to that? We have elders in this country. We have an 80-year-old man, running the country. Has he spoken to that problem of unity or he is concerned only about winning power by all means, fair and foul? And the country can go to blazes? I think those are the issues. We are not running democracy yet.
What are the implications for us of these new ways of winning elections? Where you know you cannot win, you deploy thugs in police uniforms to go and disrupt the process or snatch ballot boxes and in your own strongholds, you drive away other party agents and embark on massive thumb printing…
Number one is that you can’t call Nigeria a democratic country. Two, we are now under the burden of violence. All of these things will have bigger implications for society clearly and it will get to a point that it will become uncontrollable. Anything can happen to anybody. People will even use guns and violence to settle business disputes and so on. And all of these guns will be left with thugs and involvement of thugs in an election always ends up in dispute. You will see the political thugs saying they promised us this and that and never fulfilled the promise.
A lot of us went into politics. And it was a great experiment. Those who never went into politics and are on the sidelines talking don’t know anything. If three of us meet here for purposes of politics, one person will betray us. It could be the person that called the meeting. When power and money are on the table, you will be shocked what human beings can do, especially in a country like Nigeria where, unfortunately, politics is becoming the only avenue to untold wealth and Nigerians are always looking for untold wealth. Untold wealth, without the story, that is why a lot of our young boys are into Yahoo, Yahoo and all of that. Everybody wants to make billions. There is this other guy, they said he was in Dubai, he is there and he is showing us every day how he bought this Bentley, how he bought this Rolls Royce, almost every day. Not even Bill Gates, not even the Sheikh of Dubai, who is a trillionaire, would be buying Bentley and Rolls Royce every day, different colours and so on. So, we are always looking for that untold wealth. But if you are not doing 419, the only way you can do it is by politics in this country. Now if that is the case, you can see that politics is attracting the worst among us. In Benue State recently, there is one guy, maybe in the House of Reps or their state House of Assembly, who is a very well known kidnapper. After he got there, the police still arrested him for kidnapping. They’ve always been there – remember there was a time a former AIG stood up in the National Assembly during the Obasanjo era and said that ‘some of the people I arrested for 419 are now here, as senators.’ Go and find out- even from your state, most of the people, who are representing you whether in the State House of Assembly or National Assembly are criminals. It is like people need to have a meritorious career in criminality in order for them to run for politics in this country. And those are the people that have access to the money and when they bring the money and spend it, the people collect it and when they get into office, they recoup back 20 times.
Do you believe that the police are helpless, as the IGP sounded when he accepted that thugs in police uniform were behind the hijack of ballot boxes in Kogi and Bayelsa?
The man should just save us the agony of fake policemen. Anyway, there are 80,000 fake policemen even in their own ranks, which they have refused to do anything about. There are few good policemen, but they are limited to the Louis Edet headquarters of the Nigeria Police in Abuja – you will see corporate looking police officers, reasonably sounding people there. But before you became AIG, DIG, IG or whatever, you must have also risen through the ranks and for you to work in Louis Edet, you must have sorted out one thing or another. These things don’t come for free. Police promotion now, you have to bribe somebody. You saw when Channels Television went to Police College in Ikeja and they were sharing a small tilapia inside a very watery soup for 50 people, taking it pinch by pinch. So, when you traumatise people like that and you release them to society, what do you expect? So, I don’t believe the yarns by the Police IG that these thugs are fake policemen. This is a country in which they attach policemen to anybody that can pay. If you have some ‘loose’ money now, and you say you want a policeman, a policeman will follow you here. Just go to the local DPO, you ‘sort’ him out, he will attach somebody to you. He will say at the end of the day, give this guy N5,000 or N10,000. Go to the East, that’s even a custom there. People are going to the village, they take a truckload of policemen. You want to do burial, you take them with you, when they get there they will start shooting and say they are scaring off criminals. So, the police are already very cheap and very easy to obtain, not for the protection of the people, but the protection of politicians and all sorts of charlatans in the society who can pay. The entire police are fake then. They should spare us the agony. What we saw were policemen, who were snatching ballots boxes.
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Do you also think INEC is helpless in this poll robbery or do you think it is also complicit in helping politicians to steal votes?
INEC is made up of Nigerians. The people there are also human beings. Except we want to go and import people to come and run INEC, it is invariably what it is. Sometimes, I see that they make some academic efforts, particularly again at the national headquarters. By the time you get to states, ward levels, it is a different game. They even tried; the other time they prosecuted over 100 of their workers. Some of them were sent to jail or money were collected from them and so on. They tried. But it is still about Nigerians. So, I will not put the entire blame on INEC. However, I have an issue with INEC that they also will support some of those ruling party senators, who believe that the biggest problem we have right now is the proliferation of parties. What happened in Kogi and Bayelsa is not from the small parties. In fact, I tell people that these small parties are some of the people that hold the key in this country if we are going to have sanity. Everybody in APC has been in PDP; Everybody in PDP has been in APC. However, I believe that the entire problems are not about INEC, which is also made up of Nigerians. They could certainly do better. They may be complicit to a certain extent. If you have five commissioners, maybe two of them are rogues, who are collecting money on the side. However, one thing that always strikes me is that it’s a bad place to be when you are collecting money that you can’t even spend, that you have to dodge around to even spend. If I’m an INEC commissioner and you are coming to give me something like N300 million, millions of dollars, where would I start? I would go crazy because you can’t spend it. Many of these people in government, when they get all those kind of money, if they buy a house, certainly not in their own name and they only go do inspection in the middle of the night. They called the agents, okay, I’m coming at 2 am or 3 am. What kind of life is that? So, all of those factors will be there, but we should not simplify the problem by making it sound like it is an INEC issue alone. INEC can do a lot better. But we, the people have become toxic and it is a subject of leadership. The leader of the country should be very, very worried about the legacy he is leaving for the country when he is gone.
