Chief Olabode George is the former Deputy National Chairman and member, Board of Trustees of the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party. In this interactive session with AYO ESAN, he speaks on the 20 years of uninterrupted democratic rule in the country among other issues. Excerpts:
Nigeria recently marked 20 years of uninterrupted democracy. How has the country fared since 1999?
Our nation has reached an epochal stage this time, in the year of our Lord 2019. Our democracy is now 20 years old; 20 years of successive, uninterrupted continuity and maturation. This, by any standard or stretch of historical interpretation, ought to be celebrated if we were in normal times. Unfortunately, we are not in normal times. This is a period of ferment or tumult. Our nation is not at ease.
What are your reasons for this?
We are all ill-defined, ill-shaped, broken into a thousand pieces. The democratic purity is dangerously distorted, bruised, disfigured, savaged, hurled to the brink of a ruinous precipice. Our once glorious and beautiful mosaic of cultural plurality and sectarian diversity are being mangled, forfeited on the altar of infantile partisan and parochial divisions. Alas, this nation is without ethical leadership, without honour, without credible vision, lacking in purposeful articulation. The scourge of nepotism, the poisonous bile of tribal triumphalism, the hate infested curse of provincial fixities are now gaining grounds everywhere, defining the thematic aberrations of our times.
Let us be truthful and frank: our nation is embattled, scourged and savaged by the virtual selfishness of our collective elites. We are all guilty for the present ravaged state of our troubled nation. The ogre created by the selfishness of the few has come to haunt us all.
But beyond the harsh confines of ethnic divisions, beyond the savageries of partisan furore, we are yet confronted by the murderous furies of bandits and faceless herdsmen who continuously subject every inch of this nation to a vast killing field where none can claim a refuge of undisturbed safety and guaranteed protective cordon.
Now both the rich and the poor are easy targets. The dividing lines are now blurred, indistinguishable, flung upon the whims and the reckless inflictions of murderous bandits who negotiate with no one except when the price is right.Alas we are now in a conundrum. Our nation is affrighted, thrown upon a suspended animation. We are hindered and halted in a cul de sac. Nothing seems bright and sunny anymore.
But there must be a better way. We must return to the path of fairness and enlightened equity. We must return to the path of balanced ingredients of democratic purity where the logical essence of checks and balances prevail among the tripodal branches of the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary.
Justice must prevail over partiality, inequity and unfairness. The enlightened society can only be established when everyone, regardless of tribe and tongue, is treated fairly in the Nigerian commonwealth. This is my position. This is where I stand. I thank you all for listening.
In specific words, have we moved forward as a nation, have we retrogressed or are we stagnant?
The argument has been that the PDP has been there for 16 years and APC has just spent four years; who do we blame for our woes? If we don’t look at the past, we won’t appreciate where we are. Since we started the First Republic in 1960, to the crisis in the Western region in 1962. Papa Awolowo was jailed in that year. By and large, the crisis went on and we entered the civil war. If we don’t learn any lesson from that, we will not be able to appreciate the present situation. What most of people of your age will have seen with the military administration was the General Abdulsalam Abubakar handing over power to the civilian. If you have somebody who has hunchback and carries a load on his head, you will notice that wherever he stands, the load is pointing to one side. If you say try and adjust this load, he says no. If you look at him from his leg you will see what is amiss. By the time I explained the problem of that time, you will be able to appreciate whether we are really moving forward, or we have been playing Michael Jackson music backward.
In 1960, we got independence and we have true federalism. At the centre we have the Prime Minister, the Premiers were also there in the regions and were powerful because they managed resources of their regions for the benefit of their people, which is the real definition of democracy. If you look at the three major regions at that time, in the North we have majority tribes and the minorities, in the East we have the majority tribes and the minorities, we now called them South-South. North Central was the minority in the north. In the South West we have also the majority and the minority. Eventually they extracted Mid-West from the Western region. Let’s look at it, the Premier sat in Ibadan for Western region, it extended all the way to Adekunle what we called Boundary, that was the extent of the Western region and Idi-Oro in Mushin and Fadeyi, the whole of Lekki, Epe and Ikorodu were part of the Western Region. And somebody sat in Ibadan as premier. Now the impact, some of us benefitted, though I came from the little extracted Lagos Island. We all benefitted from the management style of the Premier of the Western Region. The same thing in the East and the North. Everybody developed based on the resources available to them. Now my Professor of Engineering, the late Ayodele Awojobi said when there is a definition, you don’t tamper with that definition, because the basic is the basic. What is the definition of politics? It is the management of resources of that area for the benefit of the people. So, let’s put that at the back of our mind.
Now with all the crises that started in the Western Region, that could have been well managed, we lost the opportunity. Eventually, Chukwuma Nzeogwu struck in the North, and when the dust settled, everybody looked through and said who killed who? Ironsi came and I remembered the military is an organisation that is unique because of its structure. It is always top to bottom. Once an order is given at the top, you queued on it all the way to the bottom. That is not democracy, democracy must flow from the bottom to the top. This is because the people are affected, they elect those that will represent them, to administer their resources for the benefit of the people. Under the military, whatever you require in your unit, an order is given up there. God will save you if you don’t listen and line up. But when the military came in 1966, I won’t go into the details of who did what. We are talking about the administration of this nation; it was the hierarchical order. They said they would now run the country as that. Initially, the problems that were major in the first republic were issues that have to do with various minority groups in each of the regions. Every region was developing according to its needs, and resources were available. Then, you were able to give a token to the federal government to maintain the borders, foreign policy and others. You will see where we deviated now. Every resource from all areas now comes to the centre and the centre became extremely attractive. When Gowon came to power, to solve the minority groups’ problems, he created 12 states to ease that tension. So, creation of 12 states solved the minority problem of the First Republic. We now left that and create problem of a strong centre rather than allowing the states to survive on resources within them. And that is one of the major problems that are yet to be resolved till today.
So, I have seen the two. I am happy I was in the military, where the discipline, the love for the country prevailed; tribal sentiment was not an issue for us. This is because in the military, you don’t say you are going to war and say Yoruba first, Fulani next and then the Igbo; no, your comrade is your comrade. You have one goal. That was Nigeria I grew up to know. Creation of states, creation of local governments was never handled by any civilian administration. Why? The military created all the states, even local governments and you know we have some imbalance; some have more, some have less. And all the resources of the country till today go to Abuja.
Are you saying there are imbalances in the ways the states were created and in how the national resources are being shared?
That was not the concept we inherited as federation of Nigeria. Take one item, Value Added Tax. Lagos produces almost 80 to 85 percent of VAT in this country, but when it goes into the national basket, and is redistributed, what comes back here is about 11 percent. Is that justifiable? So, all the reasons that are given, trying to explain where this mistake started; and unless we go back to do a correction to this, there would never be peace. It is like you are covering a smoke; for how long can you seal your pipes that they won’t leak out. Waiting for the largesse based on the number of local governments in a state cannot work. Lagos and Kano have almost the same population, Kano has 44 local governments, Lagos has 20. Funding of those local governments come from Abuja. The Federal Government gives local governments money for funding. While we will take for 20 local governments, they will take 44, is it justifiable? These are the issues at stake; these are the underbellies of things that are causing ripples. But blinded by the fact that we want to be this and that, occupying this position or the other, we are not talking about this real issue. Why are we alive if truths cannot be told? Ask me now, what do I want to become? I am going to 75, if I cannot say it now, when will I say it? When I am dead?
Some people said the solution is the implementation of the 2014 National Conference’s resolution; others are saying we must have a new constitution. What do you think is the way out of this fundamental problem?
There is a mistake and nobody is addressing the mistake. That National Conference came out with a brilliant solution. Thank God I was there. To my knowledge, every item on the agenda was debated in the full session and at the end, everything was unanimously adopted. What are these? The restructuring issue we are talking about. Some originally said, let’s go back to the old regional governments. That would never pass, tell an Ekiti man now is going back to Ondo or you tell an Osun man he is going back to Ibadan, or a Katsina man, you are going back to Kaduna, it won’t work. Let’s have federated states of Nigeria, let those states remain. Let every state explore the resources of their land for the benefit of their people. We copied the American system, you know we have a state of Miami, that is the smallest state in America, people live there and survive. You cut your clothes according to the available cloth, not according to your size. California is there, the sixth largest economy in the World, massive. Just recently, the national government was saying it was going to cut off all trade with China, but the Governor of California said California will trade with China for the survival of the people of the state. The number of councils, you have (they call their own counties) depends on the state. If you like, create 2000, you will maintain it. But here, everything is controlled by the federal government.
The Federal Government has decided that June 12 is now democracy day in honor of the late Chief MKO Abiola. What is your position on this and will you say the Buhari administration has lived up to the ideals that Abiola died for?
Historically, that makes a lot of sense for us to remember the heroes of the past, those who have been cheated in the past and those who have suffered for our democracy. To remember them; but the benefit is to make sure that the mistakes of the past are no longer repeated. What is in a date? Shifting democracy day to June 12; has it brought food to the table? Has it improved our roads, the manipulation of our elections? The judiciary; has that encouraged them to be just? No matter how you want to write the history, no matter how you want to manipulate it, M.K.O Abiola will feature in a section of that history. But what have we learnt to correct? What has it to do with the price of milk? These are deceitful
things.
