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JULY 2, 2007 VOL. 21, NO. 12 |
‘Yar’Adua’s Government Prone to Collapse’
Critics of the Umaru Yar'Adua administration contend that there is no difference between it and the out-gone Obasanjo government, what is your opinion on this? The same political party begat Obasanjo’s government, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP. Every Nigerian knows what that party connotes and what it denotes. The people don’t matter, they don’t count. It is the leadership of the PDP and their cronies in government that matter. So, when you are comparing Obasanjo’s administration with Yar’Adua governance of this country, one common denominator is that the forces and programmes of the PDP take front burner and not the back burner. Otherwise, it would not have been easy for Obasanjo, a departing Head of State to impose hardship on Nigerian people by increasing the fuel pump price from N65 to N75, and increasing the Values Added Tax, VAT by 100 per cent. Even, one had thought that if Yar’Adua had not accepted he (Obasanjo)would not have imposed those damaging, painful and agonising policies. As they say, birds of the same feather flock together. But they never expected that this labour front, that the labour organisations in Nigeria would work together. You will recall that during the seven years of Adams Oshiomhole's leadership it was not easy to have two labour bodies work together. The Obasanjo administration brought a divide-and- rule tactics, so whenever a strike was called to resist fuel price increase under Obasanjo’s government (which inherited a fuel pump price of N20 per litre and ended up with this catastrophic N75 per litre), Oshiomhole’s NLC will always limit its strike to three or five days. But the first signal was on May 1 this year where the two central blocs, the NLC and the Trade Union Congress, TUC, marched side by side on Workers Day. But because the PDP was enmeshed in a scandalous election, they did not take the message seriously and they thought that with Yar’Adua it would be business-as-usual. But when Yar’Adua saw that fire was coming from the two blocs, he quickly conceded to organised labour some of the demands. In TUC, we have the PENGASAN and the NUPENG joining forces together with other labour bodies, most of them in the NLC. So you have the combination of all the labour strengths in the two groups. Today (the first day of the strike), we have lost 220million dollars and we have lost a lot of changes which is being envisaged by the Yar’Adua government even before the strike started. But he’s still showing braggadocio, by just reducing the price of petrol to N70 per litre. How do you see that response by the Federal Government? By tomorrow (last Thursday, June 21) it will dawn on him that labour means business and that his administration will collapse if he’s not careful about the combination of the NLC and TUC. It is not about petrol being supplied to ordinary people on the street, oil will not be lifted, oil operations will stop, nefarious bunkering will stop. We are the third largest supplier of oil to the United States of America, you know what that means, because 60 per cent of the American oil comes from the outside, the most powerful nation in the world and Nigeria has a share in that supply to the United State and the economy of the United States. There is no single drop of oil in Japan. Japan and Germany rely on oil from outside, after United States we have Japan and after Japan we have Germany – those are the three strongest economies in the world. Russia has its own oil. Can Yar’Adua, a man whose election is illegitimate, a man whose administration is stuttering, a man who is begging the opposition, right, left and centre, a man whose future is not determined, a man who is begging his co-contestants in the election to please forgive him, a man who is saying he wants to review the entire voting system in this country, a man who cannot even announce his cabinet yet, can he afford to stop the flow of oil from Nigeria to the international market? He can do it in the domestic market, but he cannot afford to toy with the international market. All I am asking from the TUC and NLC is to be steadfast, united, determined and not to give way, it’s a matter of days before Yar’Adua begs for resolution. The government is saying that the labour action is political? That is an after-thought, absolute rubbish, what Americans call bullshit, balderdash. What is political in the economic survival of Nigerians? What is political in a situation where poverty spreads by this increase? What is political in the reduction of the means of livelihood? What is political when you are not able to feed your family? What is political when the price of a tuber of yam you feed on skyrockets to high heavens? Seek ye (first) the kingdom of the stomach and other things will be added unto you. So, anybody talking about politics is talking nonsense. Can NLC just ask you to go on strike without strong economic reasons that affect every Nigerian? Oil permeate every sector of Nigerian life. Fuel and petroleum products permeate every aspect of our existence. If you wake up in the morning you need fuel, to even pump water into your bedroom you need fuel, to cook with kerosine to feed your family, you need fuel. What is it that you want in your life that fuel will not take a chunk? Is that politics? That is economic survival and it is quite different from political persuasion, situation or position. And that is the danger in having a man like Kingibe in government. This is not about diplomacy, it is not about wayoism, but about stark reality of human existence. Economic life of the people is crucial to the people, but politics is not. So, anybody who is reading politics to this must have his brain examined by a psychiatrist because he has left the road for the bush, he has left the track for the water. What do you say about the process that led to the emergence of David Mark as Senate President and Patricia Etteh as speaker of the House of Representatives? We will have the worst leadership ever in the National Assembly with David Mark as Senate President. Etteh, of course, may be a woman but not the right woman, she doesn’t have what it takes for that office. She doesn’t understand the mechanism of power. The fact that she has been in the House of Representatives two terms is not enough meat of substance for her election; it shouldn’t be, I don’t see the lady radiating capacity for this job, I don’t see her possessing the fibre for this job, I don’t see her having the mental ability for this job. I don’t see her absorbing the tension that comes with this job, because being a member of the House of Representatives is different from being in a position to lead the House. You know when many things are arranged from the back door and just imposed because of the number of the PDP, PDP itself will soon realise that this lady cannot do the job. She is not strong for this job because she doesn’t have the strength. I mean when you are talking of a lady holding a public office, she must be resolute like Margaret Thatcher, she is not. She must have uncompromising position on principle. What principle does she have? I don’t know, just because she is a lady and that’s all. Even her lady folk will realise that she’s a liability unto them. And then David Mark, another tragedy to the Senate. The past will haunt this man from office, there is no doubt about this. Are you going to talk of the 1993 election, or you want to talk of his scandal in London, the press had exposed so many things about this man, a breach of the Code of Conduct, I don’t even know what the EFCC is waiting for that he has not been arraigned by the Code of Conduct Tribunal. There are so many areas of David Mark that will disable him from being the Senate President. I am afraid it will be miracle if he doesn’t bow out soon from the senate presidency. This brings us to the issue of the EFCC. Critics of the commission are saying they are not satisfied with the way it is going about its investigations as it concerns some former governors. They are saying that the EFCC is treating them with kid gloves. Do you think the power of the commission has been whittled down, or it is being compromised? I looked for an handkerchief when I saw governors on the television saying that they were invited by the EFCC and they left the EFCC. When I saw Dariye saying that he flew in and went to EFCC and was allowed to come back to his own house, when I saw Nnamani who flew in from America, who could not participate in the inaugural session of the National Assembly, saying that he was invited and was asked to go. When I saw that the case against Orji Uzor Kalu, where Theodore Orji is one of those arrested and was asked to go, when I saw Tinubu being arraigned before the Code of Conduct Tribunal for having 16 accounts abroad and nothing has happened after May 29, I longed for handkerchief to wipe my face, I see that we are snailing in the treatment of matters relating to corruption in this country after May 29. I thought we said we were looking for Dariye and Dariye showed up, I thought the next thing was to charge him to court, I thought they were looking for Nnamani. I thought they should charge him to court. The dynamism, the passion with which EFCC worked before May 29 appeared to have slowed down, and I don’t know what went wrong, except that the Ribadu I know really wants to work, Ribadu that I know wants to ensure total compliance with section 15 subsection 5 of the constitution of Nigeria. The Ribadu that I know wants to continue in the determined courage that he exhibited before May 29, but alas, I believe that Baba Standstill, Yar’Adua, Baba go slow as he is now being described in Abuja is responsible for the slow pace of the EFCC. Recently, scandal broke out in the Nigeria Police, do you think that something is endemically wrong with the institution? There is a bug in the police, anybody that goes out there is bitten by this bug. That bug is corruption and I think Ehindero has to explain whether he has been bitten by that bug or not. I watched him on television few days ago in his home town when he was being welcomed back home by the Oba of his town. He denied the allegation. But I think that should not be enough, I think he should hold a press conference, World Press Conference and tell us what happened. Unless he does this, I am afraid his reputation will remain in tatters.. We know you did not agree with the recent Supreme Court verdict on the Peter Obi case. What is the constitutional and political implication of that judgment? My position has always been that we have structural defects in the constitution of Nigeria. In section 230, the constitution says that there shall be a Chief Justice and 21 Supreme Court judges. Section 234 says that to constitute the Supreme Court there shall be five judges and only in three matter shall be deciding the decision of the Supreme Court: One, in its original jurisdiction under section 232; two, the matter relating to the interpretation and determination of the constitution; three, in appeals from chapter four on human rights, we have seven members of the Supreme Court. I am not happy about that structure, that is the highest court of the land. Five out of 22 described under the constitution decide the fate of Nigeria. Seven out of 22 will decide the constitutional life of this country. Five out of 22 is less than two-third. Today, out of the 22 prescribed by the constitution there are 16 Justices. Even then, seven out of 16 is still less than half. Five out of 16 is less than one-third. Ordinarily, as is practiced in many important countries of the world, all the justices of the Supreme Court sit together in determining a constitutional case of this nature like that of Obi's tenure. In Japan, there are 15 justices of their Grand Bench, that is the Supreme Court of Japan. They all sit together in all constitutional matters. In America, there are nine justices of the Supreme Court and they all sit together in every case. In South Africa here, a young democracy, there are 11 justices of their constitutional court, that is the highest court in South Africa, followed by the Supreme Court. When they decided the case of one Akwamefume regarding death penalty, all the justices of the court sat together and decided that death penalty should not be allowed in South Africa. What I am saying at the moment is that for God’s sake, let us look at the structure of the Supreme Court and change it, its not good for our democracy. And this is what we are having, so many important cases have been decided since last year, so many of fundamental dimension. But they were decided by a minority. Two-third of the justices have been looking because we have to pick five, seven when it’s constitutional, the rest will just be there, they can’t decide, that’s not good for our democracy. So, we must appreciate that if we are having a constitutional democracy it must permeates every arm of government. You can’t practise democracy in the National Assembly, practise democracy in the Executive and leave the judiciary, the highest court of the land, the structure is not right. It is not right for this country, we have to change it. Having said that, you know I disagreed with the Supreme Court in my opinion, I mean I have always supported Obi, when he was about to be impeached, I supported him, I issued so many statements that what they were doing in the State Assembly was wrong, because there was no gross misconduct on the part of Obi, so what is your problem with him, except that the PDP has majority people in the House. Election was conducted in 2003, he won but was robbed by (Dr. Chris) Ngige and PDP. He later went to the election tribunal established by section 285 of the constitution, he got his petition and he succeeded. Ngige appealed to the Court of Appeal but Obi emerged as winner after more than three years. Obi was to contest the last election in 2007 but was disqualified. So, I believe that being an election matter, Obi should take his petition straight to the 2007 election petition tribunal at Awka. Plead that election should not have been held at all based on the matter established by Section 285 of the constitution. If it is disallowed, then he goes to the Court of Appeal under Section 246 of the constitution. Section 246 subsection 3 of the constitution says the Court of Appeal shall have the final authority, so all matters relating to State Asssembly election, National Assembly election and governorship election are with the Court of Appeal by virtue of section 246 subsection 3 of the constitution; it doesn’t get to the Supreme Court. Presidential election starts from the Court of Appeal and ends in the Supreme Court. So the constitution has defined duties and functions and I believe the Supreme Court is not above the law, it was established by the constitution of Nigeria. And when the case came before the Court of Appeal from the High Court, the court said no, this is not a matter that must come straights to us, go to the election tribunal. Then he went elsewhere and ended up in the Supreme Court. Even then, there are questions to ask: One, when the matter was being attended to at the Supreme Court before the election, why did the Supreme Court not stop INEC from conducting election in Anambra? They didn’t stop it and INEC went ahead. One, the election was conducted with huge sums of money, that’s not even an issue.Two, they set up election tribunal, they were sworn-in by the Chief Justice, all the members. I think there must be clarity and certainty in our law. Now, look at the implication that has now arisen. The first implication is that, apart from jurisdiction, Anambra people are essentially disenfranchised until 2010. By the judgment of the Supreme Court they were not part of the 2007 elections, anything they did, the votes they cast, all are null and void. Two, next election is 2011, so there is no way in the diary of Anambra State, its gubernatorial election will ever agree with any other state in Nigeria. 2010 Obi leaves, 2011 another election is conducted, it’s not going to be the same any longer with the general election. The word in the constitution is general election and the power given to INEC is to conduct, supervise and to undertake general election in the entire country. So, the general elections is over. No more general election. Two, all these election tribunals, where you have complaints all over in all parts of the federation, one can sit for one year and when judgment is given, or if they change the governor, then one person takes over and his term begins from there. Let’s say they finish the whole election petitions by 2008 in three states, add four we have 2012. So maybe three months after the general elections we are holding election in three other places and so on. This is a continuous election till whatever time. The significant thing is that, we know how Nigerians defraud at election time; if there is going to be one election in Nigeria today, let’s say there is going to be one governorship election in Anambra, the riggers will arrange people from various parts of the South east. PDP can do it, by the time you know it the voters will be more than the population of the state, and there will be another situation in our hands. So the whole electoral system will change for the worst, not for the better. Then again, God forbid that to happen, here is Obi, I am not sure how many people he has in the State House of Asssembly, if he has anybody at all, I think 95 per cent of them are PDP. With the venon and the acrimony attached to politics in Nigeria, the Supreme Court judgment cannot prevent impeachment, it cannot. Even when the situation was not as tense as this, look at the swinging barber's chair type of change of governorship in Anambra. It is the worst thing. And you throw the people into electoral confusion. So, if he’s impeached today, what happens to the judgement of the Supreme Court and you have a situation whereby the Supreme Court says somebody should be there until 2010, and in 2007 or 2008 he’s removed so what becomes of that place. And the fourth reason is that I am not comfortable with the attitude of the Supreme Court in many cases like the Obi case. Here is our decision, we’ll give reasons later, it’s final court yes, I don’t dispute that, people went to court on Thursday, June 14, a judgement was delivered, Obi wins and Uba to vacate power, with disregard to the tribunal but I am not comfortable with the judgment of the Supreme Court that says this is our verdict, we give reasons for it later. Concerning the Niger Delta, recently Asari Dokubo was released but many people are saying that there are many issues to be addressed in the area besides Dokubo’s release? Niger Delta, the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. The Niger Delta is the hewer of Nigeria’s wood and the drawers of Nigeria’s water of economy. If you ask of our economic existence, 97 per cent of the wealth of this country comes from there, 89 per cent of the income is derived from there. The 46 billion dollars that is kept in foreign reserve, 42 out of the 46 billion comes from Niger Delta, it was realised from the sweat of the people of the Niger Delta. But since 1950 when oil was found in Oloibiri their lives have not changed. Niger Delta is a minority area, the Willinks Commission of Inquiry of 1967 warned that everything possible must be done to realise the aspiration and wishes of the minorities. Because we failed to do what was right, a young man called Isaac Boro, on January 10, 1966 together with two of his colleagues were fed up with the poverty and decided to excise the Niger Delta out of Nigeria and formed a Niger Delta government but they were arrested and kept in Port Harcourt for treason; they were to be hanged and they were brought to the Supreme Court and the death penalty was converted to life imprisonment. When the civil war broke out in 1967, Boro was released to fight in the civil war, he died a mysterious death, he was shot from behind. We don’t know whether it was the Nigerian forces or Biafran soldiers that killed him. What I am saying is that at the time Boro was fighting the cause of Niger Delta people, a young man called Asari Dokubo was just one-and-a-half years old; he was born in 1964, he wasn’t old enough to know what Boro was doing. Then came a man, an intellectual, Ken Saro Wiwa. Ken Saro Wiwa, I knew him so well, he did not use force to fight for the Ogoni people – microcosm of the Niger Delta. The Federal Government lied against him under Abacha and in 1995 he constituted a useless kangaroo tribunal, I was the lead counsel and again Ken Saro-Wiwa and nine others who were lied against by the regime of General Sani Abacha were on November 10, 1995 executed by Abacha by hanging. Not only did they hang them, they dehumanised their spirit and poured acid on their dead bodies. And one young man rose again called Dokubo-Asari. At the time Dokubo was arrested by the Obasanjo regime, hostage-taking was not in vogue, militancy was not at a hostage- taking level at all, it was after they arrested Dokubo that it became a fad. They saw the futility of their action. When you go back to history and look at the way the Federal Government has treated the problem of Niger Delta. On April 1, 1961 the Tafawa Balewa government established what they called Niger Delta Development Board(NDDB), it achieved nothing. August 3, 1976, Olusegun Obasanjo's military government established Niger Delta Basin Development Commission (NDBDC), it sank money to it for contractors and for the board members but nothing was gained by the Niger Delta. Then came July 3, 1992 a man called Babangida established Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), and they sank money into it for the business men and their cohorts and running dog; it achieved nothing. The struggling continued. Then finally in 2000, Obasanjo change that one again to Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), brought (Onyema) Ugochukwu to head it, money was flowing, nothing for the Niger Deltan, the poverty only multiplied. The only thing to do is to declare that area as emergency disaster area, free education for everybody under the sun in the Niger Delta. Free education for everybody in the Niger Delta, let hospitals, schools litter the whole place and let there be employment opporutnities galore. And where people are not employed, line them up at the end of the month and let them be paid what we call social security, which we call unemployment benefit, which the constitution in section 16 said should be done not only to the people of the Niger Delta, but for all those that are unemployed in this country. And above all let there be infrastructure like good roads, water and electricity. Do you know that only recently Bayelsa was connected to the national grid? Do you know that while a litre of petrol is sold here for N65 or N75, in Yenagoa, Bayelsa it is sold for N150. So what we are saying is that the only way to address the Niger Delta problem is constituting a sovereign national conference. Let us have a sovereign national conference. We have 774 local governments in the country, let each local government elect one delegate, not on party basis, we don’t want political parties. And when we have 774 delegates, they will radiate and reflect all the ethnic groups, all the tribes we have in Nigeria. If you take anybody from Calabar he must be Efik's ‘if you take anybody from Uturu in Abia and you take somebody from a local government he has to be an Igbo man; if you elect anybody in my state, Ondo, he must be a Yoruba, if anybody represents a local government in Maiduguri he has to be a Kanuri, if somebody represent a local government in Sokoto, he has to be an Hausa or Fulani. Dito all over the country, if you go to Oturkpo in Benue State, he has to be an Idoma and so on and so forth. That is the first set of delegates. The second set has to be from the interest groups, the lawyers, through the NBA, journalists through the NUJ, the students through NANS, the farmers, the traditional rulers, everybody, let them meet to form a sovereign national conference to chart a way for this country. We all meet there, not to govern Nigeria but to find solution to Nigeria’s problem. We can be there for one or two years. The fundamental rights of the people which are outside the constitution of today, the economic rights: right to life, right to education, so that if you want to send your children to school and you don’t have money, you will just approach your local government, please provide for my children, it’s my fundemental human right. What they give us today is freedom of expression, right to express yourself, a poor man who doesent’ know where the next meal is coming from, how can he express himself? You have no right to housing, in fact, the housing money available to you cannot be enough to rent a house for living as they do in good democracies across the world. Then they say you have fundamental human rights. A man who is dying a slow death does not remember anything about fundamental rights. So all these essential fundamental rights will be made economic rights. It is only through the sovereign national conference that this can be done, and have a new constitution for Nigeria. And after all the deliberations the new constitution will be referred to the people in a referendum, we have never heard a referendum in deciding our future in this country. In 1914 when the British came they imposed a constitution on us. They imposed the Clifford constitution of 1921 on us. They imposed the Richards constitution of 1946 on us. In 1951, they imposed the McPherson constitution on us. 1958 James Robertson constitution was imposed on us. In 1963, the Republican constitution was imposed on us. Obasanjo imposed a presidential system of government on us in 1979. Now, Babangida did his own from left to right, right to left until everything crashed in 1993. And then Abacha came but he died. Abdlusalam imposed the 1999 constitution on us. So we have lived a whole life of imposition and imposition! It is only a sovereign national conference that can solve the problems of the Niger Delta, and I don’t think of any security in Nigeria until there is security in the Niger Delta. |
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