Poverty, insurgency and the way forward, by Bolaji Akinyemi. Vanguard. 27.5.12

 

*Says Jonathan should be allowed to govern​

*Ministry of Northern Affairs? Perish the thought’

*Insists solution to unemployment is all around us

*`Boko Haram is part of a global movement’

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By Jide Ajani
Just before the presidential primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, some time around October 2010, while discussing with Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, he disclosed, rather prophetically, that President Goodluck Jonathan would likely get the party’s presidential ticket – not minding the hoopla surrounding a consensus candidate from the North.  He went further to say that the challenge of a Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for progressive Change, CPC, may not be enough to stand in the way of Jonathan clinching the presidential election.  But he added a bombshell, to the effect that Jonathan may not be allowed to effectively govern Nigeria because some people who feel cheated would make life difficult for him.
Well, this is one year since Jonathan took office as elected President on his own steam.  Was Akinyemi right to have given that prognostication? Perhaps yes.
The question was openly thrown at him and he responded in this interview.
Akinyemi also brought fresh (well, not so fresh after all) perspectives to the issue of unemployment; and gave an insight into governance and how not to act as a leader.
On the issue of creating a Ministry of Northern Affairs because of the insurgency in that part of the country, Akinyemi pooh-poohs the idea.  Excerpts:
Let us look at the issue of Boko Haram!
It would be sheer arrogance on my part to say I have a solution and it would be sheer sophistry on the part of anybody to claim to have a solution to the Boko Haram issue. It is not a local issue.
It is part of a global movement.  I dare say – and I expect my fellow intellectuals to tear my idea to shreds if they disagree with what I’m saying – that I have not heard of or seen any insurgency that has been successfully contained when such is operating from its own environment, is it in Chechnya, Somalia, Afghanistan!  If you talk about Africa they may say it is because we are incompetent so let us talk about their own. The drug movement in Latin America is an insurgency on its own; have they been able to address it.
Insurgency could have different manifestations you know.  The only area where they’ve been able to successfully handle it is a situation whereby the insurgency is not operating in its own environment.  So, the Americans and the British and the Europeans can deal with the Al-Qaeda in their own area because it is easy to spot a non- black American or Latino but the fact that they themselves have not been able to extinguish it successfully is because they have a sizable community of people where Al-Qaeda operatives can mingle with.
I’ve heard of the half-baked IRA solution and I was listening to McGuiness the other day where the IRA knew that it could not defeat the British and the British also realized that it could not just extinguish the IRA, then talks entered proper mode.
Therefore, we must get to the point where Boko Haram would realize that the Nigerian nation is capable of absorbing the shocks and therefore, it can not defeat the nation; just as the federal government too should come to the realization that it can not defeat Boko Haram with brute force alone, for it to make sense that there must be talks.  In the case of the IRA and the British, they were talking and playing cat and mouse game while the bombings continued.  It makes sense for the federal government to say let us talk but all those conditions of release all our people, pull out the troops would not work.  No way for that.  That is not the way to go.
If you were the President and Commander-in-Chief and people are haranguing you to pull out the troops from their area, that the militarization is hurting their people, how would you handle that?
Let me tell you this, if I were the President and some leaders are saying I should pull my troops out, I’ll simply pull those troops out and leave them to face Boko Haram on their own.
‘You want the troops out’?  Yes, I’ll pull the troops out.
They think those troops enjoy being in the rain and under the sun?  In spite of the training the troops too panic.  They also feel threatened.  Look at what happened to the police!  You then come out and say your area has been over-garrisoned.  You want them out I’ll opal them out and then within one week, the same people will come back to beg for these troops to come back.  You know it is convenient to sit in the comfort of Abuja or Lagos and just talk and criticize a government that is trying to do something.  Well, may be that is why I am not the president.
What would you say about the proposed creation of a Ministry of Northern Affairs?
Let me be very, very clear about my position:  I think the concept of a Ministry of Northern Affairs is a solution that would even create more explosive problems at the end of the day.  This is an idea that came from the United States of America, from the concept that the problem that led to Boko Haram, basically poverty, is unique to the North.  As I’ve said at many forums before, poverty is not unique to the North – go to Abonema, go to Ajegunle, go to Benin, go to Ibadan, go to Jos, go to any part of this country, poverty among the youths is written bold and clear so I don’t see a Northern poverty.  I see poverty among Nigerian youths.  Obviously what you need to address poverty in my village would be different from what you need to address poverty in Port Harcourt or Kano or Abonema or Kafanchan; but it is still poverty that is crying out for attention.
At this point let me say it was an error of judgment to have created a Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and this is what is now leading people to the dead end of creating a Ministry of Northern Affairs.
I have a problem with that idea too because it has the potentials to create a situation whereby insurgency in other parts of the country could force such a proposal on government again, like the youths in Igbo land creating serious problem and then we run to the same solution: Ministry of Igbo or Eastern Affairs?
Exactly!  As if you were reading my mind. When you then cannibalize Nigeria into ministry of every region, what would be left of the federal government?  Has the federal government ever asked itself what would be left of it when it continues down these paths?  Does that mean the Ministry of Works would not have anything to do in the Niger Delta region again?  Or Ministry of water resources, or ministry of agriculture, or ministry of environment – does that mean they have nothing to do in the Niger Delta region?  The whole idea is very funny.  Surprisingly, such a move would lead to disintegration by cannibalizing Nigeria because by so doing you are then giving them the opportunity to continue to make such ridiculous demands on government.
The situation is made worse by the fact that as of necessity, the Ministry of Niger Delta must be manned by a Niger Delta person just as the Ministry of Northern Affairs too would be manned by a Northerner; then a Ministry of South West Affairs would be manned by a Yoruba man.  This is the same way they ended up with the issue of reserving some ministries for a particular section of the country.  For me, don’t go down that road.  Even the NDDC was supposed to be an interventionist agency created at that time to address peculiar issues in the Niger Delta.  Something like that was created by Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa but it has taken so many names like OMPADEC and other such names but after 40 years of that concept of intervention, we are still screaming of poverty, it means that approach may not be the right one.  I have championed that cause for long but I am not a gun-carrying or bomb-throwing militant but I believe in the cause of the Niger delta people and I have championed it at an intellectual level.  But if we continue with this type of dead end approach of creating ministries for problems or regions we are not ready.  We would merely create more problems that would be difficult to address
The level of unemployment in Nigeria has become so alarming?  There is so much everywhere to be done yet people are not employed?
Look, this is something I spoke about some time in the year 2000. I made a blueprint available on the issue of unemployment. I made a point that my solution may appear simplistic and that it was not an idea original to me, that I was borrowing it from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  At a time when most Americans where out of job, the economy going through so much stress and he was facing a revolution, there was the need to just get Americans to work again even if it meant digging up ditches and filling it again.  He came up with what he called the NEW DEAL.
I told them to look at the environ mental degradation facing the country and that the solution to the problem was staring every one of us in the face. I was ignored.  I know the type of things that were said in the corridors of power in Abuja, about how illiterate my idea was.
Please what is Fashola doing in Lagos today?  I just saw another advert in the papers by the Osun State Government about the Asejire/Owena road, people are being asked to come and bid.  I am not saying either Fashola or Aregbesola is borrowing my idea because ideas have been in this world for hundreds of years.  I just admire them.  Setting up a disciplined organisation with different targets – whether it is beautification or fire-fighting – these things soak up the youths from the streets and it gives them a sense of purpose and a sense of mission in life.  You’ve converted those people to apostles of government because they now have a stake in the success of that government.
I also said at that time that desertification is there.  All that we could have done is carve out acres per person whom you would pay to be planting trees to take care of desertification because these people who have nothing to do have become willing tools for insurgency.  The tree planters would get employment.
We keep voting millions of  naira every year to ministry of employment but the question to ask is how many jobs have been created?  These people can set up mini companies, not very big ones that would make them take up some of these jobs in the area of road maintenance, agriculture and these small areas of intervention.  We don’t have to always wait for the big companies.  We can engage these people in the area of road maintenance, with supervisors.  Look at the Lagos/Ibadan expressway.  You can adopt this approach and put supervisors. There would be levels of monitoring and supervision.  We can make things work through delegation of authority.  Rather than fill a pothole when it is so called, we wait until the pothole becomes a gully so that we can award the big contracts.  People in the ministry too engage in nepotism so that their people and friends are the ones who would get these contracts.  Potholes can be filled between 24 and 48 hours and we would be doing two things at the same time: Filling the potholes and getting people engaged.  Yes the big companies can construct the roads but maintenance, if properly done would save us the trauma of road accidents caused by bad roads.
You can give the big construction companies road construction contracts; nobody is arguing that but in terms of maintenance, we can decentralize.
Your views on unemployment or employment generations and the reference to Fashola and Aregbesola may be apt.  But even the Alliance for Democracy, AD, and the Afenifere leadership did not swing into action early enough, why?
Before you get me wrong, I am not Aregbesola’s megaphone of Fashola’s megaphone but when I see something good, I commend.
Having said that, and I think you just hit the nail on the head:  Why did the Afenifere people not do this since 1999?  Why must it be now?  So, this is not just a condemnation of the Jonathan administration.
If what Aregbesola and Fashola and Rotimi Amaechi in Rivers (I haven’t been to Rivers but people say things are changing for the better) and Rahman Mimiko in Ondo State (and Amaechi and Mimiko are of PDP and Labour Party), are positive enough for commendation, why were these things not done since 1999?  Why did we have to waste almost nine years?  The resources had always been there.  When Obasanjo was there, oil prices were high and the nation got more money so like you asked, I don’t also know why we waited for so long before doing the right things.  So we don’t both know why.
You’ve been in government before.  What is that thing that makes otherwise intelligent and purposeful individuals go into government and become less productive and even begin to speak tongue-in-cheek?
It depends on the leadership and its vision and drive and when I say that mean the governor or the president.  If you have a president that has drive and who is not shy to surround himself with very intelligent or even more intelligent people, then you are likely to get an administration that is charged and prepared to move.  I’ve said it before, that when people say I was successful as a foreign affairs minister, I immediately tell them that the leader contributed to the success.
This is not about sycophancy.  No!  I served under Ibrahim Babangida and he made us understand that we needed new, fresh and progressive ideas.  He didn’t want to hear ‘this is how we’re used to doing it’.  He believes that there should be new ideas.  He believed that a leader needed to show leadership and courage.  Taking a decision means giving hope.  Even if the decision is wrong, reverse yourself and try something else.  You need to show leadership and surround yourself with people of ideas and not to want to either surround yourself with people who would be content to say ‘yes sir’ or you want to be the one to keep taking all the glory in the land.  That is not the way to go.  But if you don’t mind your ministers being thought successful or brilliant, even you the leader would benefit from the glory.  Look at Fashola and what he is doing; he doesn’t mind Tunji Bello going up and down but it is a credit to Fashola that he has a Tunji Bello and there are instances like that.
That is the way government works – you watch the body language of your leader and act accordingly or you leave him with his job. The buck stops on the table of the leader either as President or governor or council chairman.
From all you have said we can locate an Obasanjo and a Goodluck Jonathan. One year from May 29, last year, how do you think Nigerians feel from what you’ve been observing?
Either out of frustration or the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, Nigerians have just decided to swing with the current.  Nigerians just want to survive.
The people have surrendered the authority of governance so the leader is supposed to lead them.
Nigerians appear confused because they expect the leader to lead and move them down the road of salvation.  There is nothing the people are going to do except to try to make a success of their lives and what do you then have?  People begin to cut corners:  The mechanic cheats you because he believes you, too, are going to cheat somebody else and the cycle goes on.  Even from the pulpit, some people no longer expect salvation in some instances because in some churches, the pastor would rather buy a state of the art car instead of building a hospital and employing church members who are doctors.  There was this music from a Ghanaian artiste about church members getting poorer and pastors getting richer
We can talk about it now because you said I should keep it confidential.  You said President Jonathan may not have any problem getting the PDP presidential ticket and that he may even go ahead to win the presidential elections.  Your fears then, which appear to be clear and present now, was that he may have difficulties holding the country together, especially on account of the perceived truncation of the zoning arrangement of the PDP.  Today, what are the thoughts on your mind regarding what I’ve just enumerated?
Well, I feel rather sad that we miss opportunities to address anticipated problems until those problems have attained magnitude that it tests the will of government.
At that time when we spoke and I insisted that we were merely looking at Nigeria together and discussing, I came to the conclusion that what the federal government needed to do at that time was to set up a Nigerian Eminent Persons Group, made up of non-governmental people who had influence in their areas, in their neighbourhood, in their states in their zones; people who are respected; people who command respect and attention in their areas and who have the gravitas to help moderate conflict.
I said so at that time.  If you’ve got those people together, those are the people who would – because they would not be seen as government people – be able to moderate what we’ve now faced in the last one year.  I suggested traditional rulers, the intellectual elites; I suggested publishers and I also made it clear that the communication would have to be two ways.  People trust you so they talk to you and the government must also trust you for you to talk to government; and because you are not dealing with people as individuals but as a group, with members networking.  If you don’t want to talk to the federal government or state government but because members of that area are in that group and because you have respected elders in that group, those people may then even become your interlocutors with government.
The National Council of States, NCS, should have been able to take care of that but it is a partisan body!
I suppose the whole idea then was also that the NCS was there but as you rightly pointed out, the concept of the NCS is such that half of them are government people and they are practicing politicians and that immediately negates the idea.
The concern would be that how more eminent can people be when we have an NCS.
When defining a concept, you can not remove that from what you want that concept to achieve.  Somebody who could be eminent in addressing religious conflict may not be eminent in addressing questions of intra-trade disagreement amongst groups; somebody could be eminent in dealing with a face off between some communities may not be eminent enough in dealing with conflicts between Muslims and Christians, may not be so eminent in dealing with a conflict between Fulani herdsmen and farmers over grazing rights and the destruction of crops.
It’s the same issue we have when people are talking about national conference and people just say the national assembly is there.  A national assembly that is there on partisan basis would not be expected to address fundamental issues on which those partisan antagonisms rest. No!
That was last year!  Do we still need an Eminent Persons Group now?
I think today we still need an Eminent Persons Group.
But the 2015 succession issue is there creating its own distraction.  Just three weeks ago, the President tried to let people know that FOR NOW 2015 was not on his mind and some people have come out to attack him that why should he qualify it; that why is it not on his mind NOW? If you were President Jonathan and you were thrown up the way he was, and people are already trying to harangue you, what would you be telling Nigerians?
I don’t want to address that specific question at all because my position has been very, very basic but unfortunately, it is going to be subject to be subject to misinterpretation and even before now it was misinterpreted.  We do not have a sense of history in this country.
People would forget that it was in an address to Yoruba Tennis Club, either in 1999 or 200 and the title of that paper was ON ZONING, POWER ROTATION AND ALL OTHER ABRACADABRA and I said it very clearly that I don’t believe in zoning and I don’t believe in power rotation – mind you, a Yoruba man was president at that time.
If we have clean and transparent elections, it would be irrelevant who rules Nigeria. So if the wrong person comes in and proves incompetent the people can then vote him out at the next elections but this concept of zoning limits the choice; I said so; and I said that what has led to this is because elections were never free and fair and people came to the conclusion that since we can not get the type of leadership that we want through the electoral process and that the electoral process in Nigeria ratifies decisions and selection that had been made elsewhere.  I said it at that time; Obasanjo was the President at that time.  So I don’t want to be distracted from addressing fundamental issues by now dealing with consequences of concepts I don’t believe in.
We’ve been advised by the western powers to address the challenges confronting the nation – social, economic, religious, political – and that if we don’t we may be toying with disintegration.  From your experience and knowledge, would you say we are addressing those challenges appropriately?
My position has always been that we owe the United States a debt of gratitude by making those alarming wake up calls to concentrate our minds on the things that need to be done to avoid the calamity that they have identified for us.  The Yorubas had a proverb that Ogun aso tele ki’pa’ro (a foretold war does not kill a cripple).
That was what was said before but it has now been modified to say Ogun aso tele ki’pa’ro to ba gbon (that is a foretold war does not kill a cripple that is wise).  If the cripple is wise, he would have scampered to safety before the war, to avoid being caught in the war.  But if he is dumb and doesn’t believe there is going to be a war or he decides to crucify the messenger rather than face the message, he would see for himself.
My question is: Are these issues being addressed?
I would say yes, the issues are being addressed; they are being addressed.
But what is that look on your face?
(Laughs) Yes the issues are being addressed but not with the urgency that they demand.
I have addressed one of them, question of unemployment.  That is a time bomb.  If you address that issue alone, people would just say who really cares about who rules us.  Then there is the problem of corruption.  The judiciary is not being helpful.
The way and manner the government is going about it is not being helpful and the political elites are also a problem.  We know now the strategy of derailing any anti-corruption measure:  get bail for your client and make sure the case never really comes up for hearing by bringing up motions and objections.  People say bail is constitutional.
But we’ve amended the constitution twice so why not cancel bail.  Nobody wants to rot away in detention.  If there is no bail the cases would be dealt with expeditiously because no one wants to remain in jail indefinitely.  It would even be the politician who would say please get this trial over with and even if the man is found guilty, he knows his detention would be part of the prison term.  The government knows this; the national assembly members know this.  Are they doing anything about it?  No.
The judiciary also has refused to be helpful.  Tackle that.  If you tackle unemployment and corruption, the issue of who rules this country would become secondary.
Okay, why should Nigerians trust their leaders?  An example: When a government says it is removing subsidy to help the people whereas before the fact of subsidy removal, there was a massive fraud that had been committed?  So, why should the people trust their leaders?
The principle of social contract in governance has been as ancient as the creation of my community.  The leadership says that I would do A B C D, in exchange that people would do their part.
Who moves first?
Let’s go back to the Bible but I’m sure it would be in the Quaran.  God first made the first move. He got the Israelites out of Egypt, gave them manna, protected them from the Egyptian Army and then God said now, if you carry our My Commandments, it would be well with you.  God moved first.  Government must move first to provide for the people and in response, the people will now pay taxes, become obedient to government and become obedient to the laws that the government has made.
You might even say that the people moved first by surrendering their will to government, giving government the power, in exchange for good governance.
Government ought to have put other things in place before removing subsidy. We didn’t need a national assembly to investigate.  Government had said it was removing subsidy because of its inability to deal with the corruption of the importers – an admission of impotence.  Secondly, government said it can not police the borders, because the imported products are re-exported and since government admitted that it can not stop these twin evils, Nigerians should now carry the burden.  In removing the subsidy, you don’t remove the burden of the wastage.
What that means is that either way the people are getting screwed.
What the probe has simply done is to give us names of these people; we knew there was massive corruption all along but the probe has given us figures and names.
If this probe is going to be handled the same way other probes had been handled, then please let’s not waste our time because from what we’re seeing and hearing, 10years from now we would still be talking about this subsidy matter – 10 years from now.
Our judicial system is such that…?
Okay let us even look at the lawyers handling some of these cases too, are they being helpful?  Why should a lawyer go to court and say its Police witnesses are not available?
Why?  Was it that you asked for the Police to make them available and you were turned down?  When was the request made to the Police if I may ask?  Before we start blaming the Police, we should find out when the request for the Police witnesses to appear was made.  Sooner or later, the judicial system would have to make clear whether it has been designed to either help stave off a revolution or actually help to facilitate it with the way things are being done.
The judges and the lawyers should understand that if there is a revolution in this country, they, too, would be consumed because in other parts of the world where it has happened, judges too were not spared. The people are watching and they know what is happening.