Dr. Fredrick Fasehun is the founder of the Pan-Yoruba Group, Oodua People’s Congress. In this interview with AYO ESAN, he speaks on various issues as they affect the polity. Excerpts:
What’s your assessment of the polity and the economic situation of Nigeria, so far?
When Nigerians voted for President Muhammadu Buhari, they expected him to drive truly positive change, socio-economically and socio-politically. The reverse has unfortunately been the case. The economy is in a shambles, infrastructure dilapidated, insecurity widespread, workers’ salaries are unpredictable and corruption has new merchants among the President’s henchmen. School children have returned to school and parents are uncertain where to source money to fund their children’s education. This era of recession demands the nation to seriously consider taking the burden of school fees off parents by adopting a national policy of free education for all.
Politics wise, the past three years have witnessed an inordinate ambition by the Buhari-led Executive to intimidate, bully and capture the two other arms of government, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The opposition has also been haunted into silence. These unconstitutional moves have overheated the polity and backtracked development. Major national roads are in terrible shapes and impassable. All routes to the Apapa and Tin-Can Ports in Lagos, the nation’s second revenue earner, have become a nightmare with freighters and importers spending weeks to navigate a distance that should take no more than 10 minutes; this single failure has paralysed industries whose imported raw materials and necessary spare-parts are locked down in nightmarish traffic gridlocks between the ports and their destinations. This failure belongs to the President and the Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola.
Upon Fashola’s three-point, super-ministerial appointment by the President, we had predicted that the minister would find it difficult to deliver. Our pessimism has been vindicated. It is time for the Ministry of Works, Power and Housing to be unbundled and manned by three full-fledged ministers with relevant professional backgrounds.
The past three years have witnessed an inordinate ambition by the Buhari-led Executive to intimidate, bully and capture the two other arms of government, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The opposition has also been haunted into silence. These unconstitutional moves have overheated the polity and backtracked development
In your opinion, why have Fulani herdsmen attacks become a recurring decimal under this administration?
Insecurity persists through several sections of the country. However, most worrisome is the systematic and recurring notoriety of killer Fulani herdsmen who days ago once more drew blood in Benue, Taraba, Kaduna and Adamawa states, where they slaughtered indigenes and farmers. As many have observed, there appears to be a case of organised ethnic cleansing against northern minorities and other Nigerian tribes by rampaging Fulani herdsmen and some other militia groups in the North. In the wake of this ugly genocide came the shameless and insensitive pronouncement by the government’s spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, on no less a medium than the BBC, that the Fulani herdsmen were a lesser threat than the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB. It was an uncanny statement. For the government to have this unperturbed attitude to Fulani herdsmen, internationally reputed as the fourth deadliest terrorist organisation in the world, amounts to ignoring a dangerous viper on the bed. Ranking after Boko Haram, ISIL and El-Shabaab on the Global Terrorism Index, armed Fulani militias today constitute the real threat to national unity, with their rapacious evil campaigns throughout the length and breadth of this country. Clearly, the pastoral nomadic lifestyle of the Fulani herdsmen is no longer fashionable; and they must be made to embrace ranching. They should be encouraged to remain in ranches and purchase food for their livestock as is done worldwide.
These killings persist and killers are emboldened by the fact that people get away with murder. No single Fulani herdsman has been made to pay the ultimate price for his crime of murder. Usually, no arrests, no prosecution and endless investigations persist, until the murder trail gets cold and abandoned. This cannot continue. Killers must be brought to book and made to feel the full weight of the law.
Nobody has a monopoly of violence; and in the face of threats to their very survival, people will eventually resort to self-help, a move that can tear this country apart and turn Nigeria into a free-for-all killing field. The military and other security forces must tackle the menace of Fulani militias by declaring a security emergency, disarming Fulani herdsmen and bringing Fulani killers to justice.
What is your assessment of government’s claim that it had conquered Boko Haram?
A few weeks ago, the government announced it would be borrowing $1 billion to fight Boko Haram. It is an irony that the country should need so huge an amount to tackle insurgents that the government said last year it had technically defeated. If Nigeria needs extra-budgetary allocation to that tune, the claim of defeating Boko Haram was a lie, and one wonders if democracy is now the telling of lies to the people. However, we insist that the spending scope of the $1 billion loan must be expanded to include recovering the still missing Chibok girls as well as tackling the raging menace of Fulani herdsmen.
It is a pity that when Nigerians are crying out over being marginalised in Federal Government appointments, the government has the luxury to issue appointments to dead people as Directors and Chairmen of parastatals and establishments. It is an international embarrassment for the government to find it difficult to edit a list it drew up by itself
What is the way out of the lingering fuel scarcity, too?
In selling their CHANGE mantra in the build-up to the 2015 elections, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari and his followers promised not only to stop the importation of petroleum products but to revamp the refineries and reduce the pump price of petrol. Third year running, and with the President himself as Minister of Petroleum, the government has failed woefully to deliver on these promises and the people are being made to pay for government’s ineptitude and insincerity with unending queues at the fuel stations.
Nigerians are tired of the ongoing blame game between government and oil marketers. All Nigerians want is FUEL! An oil-rich nation like Nigeria, owning four national refineries, has no business importing fuel! Buhari has failed as Minister of Petroleum; he simply lacks the health, the capacity and the creativity to manage Nigeria’s biggest revenue resource. He should learn from President Goodluck Jonathan who appointed a substantive Minister of Petroleum with the result that, for six years back-to-back, queues disappeared from petrol stations. Buhari should relinquish the mantle of Minister of Petroleum to a competent and experienced petroleum industrialist whose sole mandate will be to get the refineries operating at full capacity and ensure local production for domestic consumption within three to six months.
What is your assessment of the 2018 budget?
Against the backdrop of the alarm raised internationally of Europe-bound Nigerians undergoing captivity, enslavement and death in Libya, it remains curious why the 2018 budget has ignored any mass employment schemes and plans to create the enabling environment for businesses to thrive. The N7 trillion budget for 2018 does not contain any significant poverty-alleviation proposal or citizens’ empowerment scheme that will drive private participation and make Nigerians remain at home.
A lot of people have been clamouring that Nigeria should be restructured. What is your take on this touchy issue?
In his New Year speech, PMB waxed rhetorical with the matter of socio-political restructuring. As currently constituted, Nigeria needs to be restructured. The current system is not only robbing Peter to pay Paul, it has encouraged audaciousness, ingratitude and indolence on the part of Paul. It is a monkey-dey-work-baboon-dey-chop arrangement that cannot survive. Even in the United Kingdom, which foisted this forced amalgamation of the North and South down the throats of Nigerian ethnic groups, restructuring has taken place with substantial autonomy granted to Wales and Scotland. Right now, Nigeria’s centre is too powerful. The country should return to the pre-military 1963 arrangement agreed by our nation’s founding fathers, with autonomy and devolution of power to the regions and the
states.
How about claims of lopsided public appointments?
President Buhari, like a stubborn mule, has refused to depart from the path he has laid since his government’s inception, with his appointments parochial, insensitive and pro-North. The administration further proved recently that the worst was yet to come with its announcement of boards for establishments. It is a pity that when Nigerians are crying out over being marginalised in Federal Government appointments, the government has the luxury to issue appointments to dead people as Directors and Chairmen of parastatals and establishments. It is an international embarrassment for the government to find it difficult to edit a list it drew up by itself. No further proof is needed that this group of people in power lacks the capacity to drive development in a leading African state like Nigeria. It further exposes the filthy, unserious and mediocre way that government is being run. Things must change in 2018. This divide and rule must stop and Buhari must rule Nigeria as the leader of Nigeria and for Nigeria, not the leader for the North. So help him God.
