By Sunday Ani
Former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Joe Keshi, has challenged Nigerians and citizens of other West African countries to protest and hold leaders to account. In this interview on Arise TV, he spoke on various issues including reasons for frequent coups in West Africa and how to avert them
Do you think it is a lack of capacity on the part of the leaders not to enthrone good governance in West Africa because these leaders travel out and see how things are done in other parts of the world?
Let me correct you on one thing because I have considerable experience. When our leaders travel, they don’t see. They just go shopping and enjoy themselves. They don’t pay attention to what you think they are seeing. They travel and don’t ask themselves pertinent questions like ‘how did these people get to those levels of development and how can we do the same thing in our countries. So for me, they don’t see. If the people begin to hold their leaders accountable and begin to challenge their leaders; if they begin to go to the streets and demonstrate from morning till night and tell them that they elected them and so they have the obligation to do what they promised; if the citizens will do that for months and months as it is done in other parts of the world, we will begin to get somewhere in Africa. What I am asking citizens to do is not different from what citizens all over the world have done to get to where they are today. Governments all over the world did not start to give citizens democracy dividends; no, the people fought for it. Everything people are enjoying in some parts of the world today were as a result of sacrifices made by the citizens. And that is what we in this country and other parts of Africa have refused to do because our leaders have found a way of dividing us so that we do not come together as citizens of this country and begin to challenge them. We will start a strike in this part of the country, the leaders move to the other parts of the country and mobilise others and say ‘look don’t mind those people, they are doing this or that wrong’. The day citizens come together as one and challenge the authorities of government, a lot of things will start to happen for good but until then, the politicians will continue to manipulate the people for their selfish interests. There is no other better explanation than this. It is not after the election, you relax and begin to complain, no. Today everyone makes all sorts of videos claiming that there is hunger in the country. Begin to organise and hold your leaders responsible. Mobilise yourself to the presidential villa, mobilise yourselves to the various state houses of Assembly; organise and hold them responsible for what they have failed to do as leaders. This is because unfortunately, people in this part of the world contest for office without preparations for the work. For instance, it took President Buhari six months to constitute a cabinet. He promised us angels and ended up giving us devils. If he was completely prepared and had his policies in place, how long does it take to appoint a cabinet? How long does it take to address the people and say this is our road map for the future and begin to implement what they have said? In Nigeria today, we do not have a road map to drive development, all you see is successive appointments and a little bit of information from the Minister of Internal Affairs on this or that. There is no concerted master plan indicating a roadmap to drive development in the next four years in Nigeria. You need to have a roadmap and then you speak to the people and say this is what we plan to do in the next four years. All you see in Nigeria is a few appointments and policies without clear-cut ideas and there is no harmonisation of ideas on where we are going.
As a diplomat, can you link same to the recent attempted coup in Sierra Leone
Recently, when I was speaking to some of my friends over there, we were talking of what happened, we were not sure whether it was a coup. It was like some soldiers, after taking some drinks, decided to go on some crazy adventure. They went after the armory and decided to be releasing prisoners all over the place. But look, what we must face is that some of these actions are as a result of the outcome of the last elections in Sierra Leone. And this goes to say what some of us have been saying about Africa: until we have free, fair and credible elections that satisfies everybody, we will continue to have these kinds of adventurers trying to upstage constitutional order. So it is beholden on the leadership; it’s beholden on those who manage the electoral process to ensure that they deliver honest and credible elections where over ninety percent of the people, even if they are on the losing side, feel satisfied that the prepress is credible enough for them to live with.
But should entering the armory under whatever guise be a way of solving the problem?
No, that shouldn’t be the way of solving the problem. They were just a bunch of disgruntled elements. Coups in Sierra Leone have always taken this dimension but just like their president said, it could be a breach of security. Yes, we could take it as a coup in the making or we go with the president that it was a breach of security, but knowing full well how coups take place in Sierra Leone, we may have a second thought.
But could absence of good governance, apart from other factors be the issue with frequent coups in West Africa?
It is the issue everywhere. It is an issue of leadership and it is also an issue of politicians not doing the right thing. It is an issue of the politicians not living up to what they promised the people. They ask you to tighten up your belt but they themselves live in absolute luxury all the time. They ask you to do one thing and they themselves do some other thing, and the people see some of these things. A situation where the cost of living is going up every day around the world and the politicians are living differently, how do you expect the people to react? How do you expect the disgruntled elements to react? So we must begin to see these things as not only about the election outcomes but it also has so much to do with the failure of leadership. It also has a lot to do with the way leaders and statesmen react to elections. The elections are rigged and leaders who should say, ‘no this should not happen’ congratulate the ‘winners’ who rig elections, who create violence, who kill people for themselves to become leaders. It happens everywhere whether in Sierra Leone, Niger, Mali. We should begin to understand that until we do things well and ensure credibility in our elections, provide the basic needs for the people, things will continue to go bad. We in this part of the world, including Nigeria, should know that all that we are praying to have, the rest of the world had it long ago. Here we are still praying to have water, to have light, to have good roads and even for planes to fly in our country for example. So when we have this kind of situation where things are not working well and the citizens are disgruntled and disillusioned with bad and insensitive government, it is the right of the citizens to change government as often as they want until they elect the government that serves their interest. But when politicians want to entrench themselves into office perpetually, the consequences are what we are experiencing in Sierra Leone. The consequences are what we have in Gabon, the consequences are also what we have in other places like what has been happening in West Africa. The politicians in Africa must understand that they need to be changed in positions of leadership until we get the ones that would put us as their priorities and have the interest of the people at heart and not those of their families and friends.
What do you think can be done differently to change situations in the sub-region?
Good governance of course. There must be transparency and accountability. Sierra Leone was moving towards the experience of Liberia but today Liberia has moved on. An election was recently held in that country and a sitting president was defeated and he graciously, like a great footballer that he was, congratulated the winner. If he wanted to, he could have mobilised state resources to rig the election but sportsmen hardly do that anyway because there is no way you can rig goals. To make it more credible in football today, they have introduced an electronics solution (VAR) to determine credible goals. Through that, attempts have been made in sports to ensure credibility of results; so why can’t we do it when it comes to politics and elections. I sincerely hope things work well for Sierra Leoneans because they have suffered a lot. I was there during their crises and can tell you that they have passed through a lot. They need good leaders to settle the country down. Look, the demands of people of this part of the world is not huge. It is basically good governance. The resources are huge and you can’t be frittering away resources of the people, buying vehicles for members of the National Assembly and buying houses here and there while the cost of living is on the increase and the people are suffering; they will not be happy. It is important we continue to say these things and hope that our leaders here in Nigeria and any other country in the sub-region will listen. But even at that, a military coup is not the answer at the end of the day. At the end of the day whether in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gabon, it is the military that put us in the situations that we are today. We have all had experiences of military governments and they have proven to be not the answer to problems. Military should remain in the barracks and stop being sympathizers to the generality of the citizens. The citizens should begin to hold the leaders to account for them to do the right thing. And the right thing is simple; just to provide a good environment for people to live and be happy. Is that too much a demand to be made on the people leading us?
But organising a protest in this part of the world like Nigeria comes with so much resistance from government who sometimes uses force to disperse protesters. Also, most times, they use court orders to stop such and going ahead after that will mean disobeying their court. Your take on this.
This is where the judiciary is not helpful. There is the constitutional right of the people to demonstrate if they want to demonstrate. It is even the right of the government to protect those who are demonstrating and people who are not demonstrating. It is the right of the people to demonstrate in a democracy and it is the duty of the government, especially the police and other security agencies, to protect the demonstrators and those who are not demonstrating. But the government feels they have the power and they have the court to rule in their favour which is often the case and then of course the people are depressed. It is the right of the people to demonstrate while the police protect them. That is what you see all over the place. Nobody goes to court to stop anybody from demonstrating, it is not done anywhere. The President of America sometimes joined the workers union to demonstrate. So it goes to show what I am saying; the people need to start to organise themselves if they want their country to change. Be it Nigeria, Mali, Guinea; until we begin to stand up to challenge our leaders to do the right thing, things will not change. Any leader who does the right thing will sleep well every night. You don’t have to care about the military coming after your seat. What the people are demanding anywhere around the continent is a good environment where they can live a good life and that is very simple. It is not asking for too much. Just simple things of life that others have. Our leaders travel, they see regular power supply and good transport system. They feel good education and thus send their children there to go and study. But what do they do for education in Nigeria, for example, or even in Sierra Leone? They allow education to rot away while they send their own children abroad to study. So the citizens are just asking for a good environment where they can live happily.
How do you think AU and ECOWAS have gone in stopping coups in West Africa?
African Union and ECOWAS have tried and continue to try but the onus on stopping coups lies with various leaders of the countries in obeying their constitutions. Let me tell you, every constitution talks of the rule of law, good governance and the welfare of the people. Every constitution talks of transparency and accountability. So the leaders have it in their hands to obey the constitution to the latter. It is the failure of successive governments in West Africa that has led to what is happening in West Africa. To a very large extent, it is not about AU and ECOWAS but what the various governments can do to enthrone good governance, transparency and accountability in their various countries. Military are not isolated from what is happening in every country because they are also part of the country and feel the impact of good governance.
Governments all over the world didn’t start to give citizens democracy dividends; no, the people fought for it”
We should begin to understand that until we do things well and ensure credibility in our elections, provide the basic needs for the people, things will continue to go bad.