Chief Olabode George, a retired Commodore in the Nigerian Navy was a former military governor of Ondo State and National Deputy Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview with CHIDI OBINECHE, he speaks on the state of the nation, crises in the PDP, as well as how to solve the many challenges confronting the nation.
There is so much tension in the country, arising from insecurity, corruption, suffering economy, bad governance and separatist agitations. What is your take?
I have seen both sides. I saw the military side and I have seen the civilian side. The system we are running is not working. We will be deceiving ourselves by saying all is well. All is not well. We have friends all over the country. We are complaining now in the South that young people who have graduated have no jobs, nothing doing and no future. Let us devolve power to the states. That was the decision of the National Conference in 2014. If you devolve power to the states, the government will be much closer to the people. People will not bother about the way things are running. We will be sending a certain percentage to the centre (Abuja) to maintain the national government. But the way we are now, with 19 states in the North, 17 in the South, there is no way we can change the constitution or make progress in anything.
Going back to the status quo before thinking of the changes you envisage, will it not lead to disintegration and war? The North certainly will not agree as has been demonstrated so far
I am very happy that I listened to some friends from the North that also have the same views that I have. A certain gentleman from the North stated explicitly at a conference that the amalgamation has run out. He said, let us sit down and fashion out the way we should live together. We have tried this for a long time and it is not working. We have been patching, and patching, weaving and manipulating. Let’s get back to the table. Everybody is saying 2023 as if it will save the country. Let’s sit down and really assess the current situation of Nigeria. Anything outside that, we are deceiving ourselves. Nigeria is not working. You can see how angry everyone is. Inter tribal conflicts have got to its zenith.
What went wrong?
It is because of the way this current government has handled Nigeria. It is the way it has handled the issue of national unity. In the past, we were patching and moving on. The way it has handled the distribution of political positions without balance, equity and justice is the trigger. It made nonsense of the federal character constitutional provisions and the Federal Character Commission. Check out all the positions, strategic positions, everything went to the North and a tiny segment of the north took everything. It is cronyism in action as never before. The Fulani herdsmen are rampaging, killing, maiming, destroying and raping our women and the government is keeping a blind eye. Is this the first time we are encountering Fulani herdsmen in the South? No. This is not the first time. You cannot come to my house and try to dislodge me. It cannot work. When you do that, then you are looking for trouble. Look at Nigeria today. We went to the Olympics, where is Nigeria? There is total retardation in all facets of national life. Today, the G8 Group of Nations will meet and no mention of Nigeria. Before, they will invite some strategic countries and Nigeria will be there. The liberation of South Africa, Nigeria was at the forefront. I remember, I was in military service and they took a percentage of our salaries as our contributions to the liberation of South Africa. Look at the role we played in Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. So where are we now? Where is that giant of Africa? This system is not working, and it can never work. We have tried it now for 21 years.
General Ibrahim Babangida said the other day that the problem of insecurity in Nigeria is leadership. According to him, when you get the right leadership, insecurity will disappear.
I agree with him entirely. Once you take off that leadership and have a president of the whole Nigeria, things will pan out differently. If you don’t reflect national aura in the leadership of Nigeria, you are creating a problem. I listened to the governor of Katsina State the other time complaining. So, the feeling is everywhere. The crisis of banditry is making him sad. So, if the home base of the president is complaining, how about others? To travel around Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, Kaduna, Kano etc is hell.
Beyond meeting to start Nigeria afresh, what should happen? Should those who want to go, go?
Look, when you get back to the table, we will have the opportunity to tell ourselves some home truth. Let us tell the truth to power. Why should we be afraid to tell the truth at this point? We have been patching, patching and patching. It has come to the crescendo now that we must tell ourselves some good home truth. If the system is not working, what do we do? If we keep quiet, then we are shifting and kicking the counter to the road and it will not work. Look at the state of the economy. Even the rich are crying. Are you secured in your areas? Who is safe?
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) recently said the killing of Christians in the northern part of the country is now an industry. Do you agree with CAN?
That is their observation. I know that there are many crises there, which we see in videos in the social media. If they are not factual, somebody should have responded to say they are not true. The kind of image we are building is making the nation to be an international pariah. Which businessman will be happy and ready to bring his investments to Nigeria? Why would they come here? The only stories you hear are on kidnappings, abductions, killings, Christian-Muslim fight, Boko haram, Fulani herdsmen killing people. That is the story you hear. We are nose-diving dangerously and it will affect future generations of Nigerians. We must sit down as members of this union and resolve these crises.
Who should make the move to unite the disparate entities in Nigeria?. Who will bell the cat?
I think there was time some retired military generals at the very top level, who are even higher than us, were trying to make a move to meet with the president. I don’t know what came out of it. But it has to be from the president himself. He does not listen to people. That is the problem.
What of the National Council of States? Can the body force something?
The National Council of States will tell you the National Assembly. It is the National Assembly that can actually ring the bell. But from the records, I doubt if that can be done. Those in the National Assembly are still young people; they have the constitutional powers to right the wrongs in the system. Check their records and the method of their ascendancy to power. You have 19 states in the North and 17 in the South. What they are doing now is to say we have the numbers in the National Assembly. Let us take it to the National Assembly and they will say those in favour of this say aye, and those not in favour say nay. The guy presiding will take his gavel and slam on the table and pronounce: “the Ayes have it,” regardless of the outcome. If you look at the Senatorial Districts and House of Representatives Districts, they weigh heavily towards the North. In terms of local governments, they have the highest. Look at Lagos, it has 20 local governments and it is the most populous state. Look at Kano, it has 44 local governments and Jigawa was excised from it. Now when you distribute national resources, who gets more? Those are issues that are not fair, and we cannot continue like this. I am appealing to everyone who genuinely loves this country to intervene. Let us sit down and tell ourselves some home truth. There must be equity; there must be justice; there must be fairness. Who decided when he was to be born that he wanted to be born a Fulani man, a Yoruba man, an Igbo man? You have no control on it. And don’t you ever harbour the thought that there will be no exit for you someday. Things that happen to human beings that are bad, you can’t keep them in perpetuity. There is this friction all over, and I know as an engineer, when there is friction, there will be fire. Please, I am appealing, let us come to the right road and I believe we can start with the report of the National Conference in 2014. Let us go back there and dissect the report. That will tell us the areas that are causing friction.
How do you relate the current issues of insecurity in Nigeria to what happened in Central Africa Republic, where the Fulani seized power but were eventually uprooted and sent out? And it is said that they migrated to Nigeria to add to the issues at hand.
I have a friend, my best friend. He is a Fulani man. He doesn’t behave like this. In fact, he is married to an Igbo woman. He is married to women from other tribes. His outlook is national. He lives in peace with everyone. What is the essence that in the 21st century, you will tell somebody that you are going there to take over his land? What is the meaning of that? I am 76 years old, going to 77. Since I was a kid, Fulani people have been bringing their cows to sell in Lagos. When they finish selling in Lagos, they sell us the urine of the cows and that was like Ammonia. In those days, we had this convulsion and once you bought it, you would hang it in the kitchen and it was used to resuscitate convulsion victims. The weather in the South and the grass are good for their cows. They had the cows; we had the grasses and weather. It was a situation of exchange of resources and camaraderie. Can’t this spirit force us to unite? What is this madness in saying they want to capture here? So when they capture it, we will go where? It doesn’t make any political sense, It doesn’t make any practical sense, it doesn’t make any judicial sense. The camaraderie that they were building up has collapsed. There is severe anger now. The tribal friction is getting so high and it can explode. Why? Why? What do you gain? You are living in your house; I am living in my house. Now you want to appropriate my house to yours. There will be problem. Make no mistake about it. This is the 21st century. You want us to end up like Somalia, Syria, Lebanon? No.
We are in a democracy, but there are insinuations that dictatorship is here now. Are you not afraid?
I want to beg the electorate. They are seeing it now. They were elected by the people, supposedly. The INEC announced the results. It is the support of the people that made him president. If you get there, if it was genuinely won, will you disregard the electorate that put you in power? The beauty of democracy is that after every three or four years, you renew your mandate. I have said before, the electioneering process in this country is a joke. They were supposed to have brought in the electronic voting system in the process; it has been shut down now. Are we not preparing a keg of gunpowder for the future? You see, in advanced democracies, when you vote, within 24 hours, results are out. Our own will be waiting. They will carry the results by hand to the collation centre. What a joke! Nigeria is not well managed. The system of managing it is not modern. It is archaic and at the same time, you are telling people, let us go for elections in 2023. I believe the president will have a very good chapter on the pages of history if he decides to revisit this system of governance before he leaves office. He should look back and say I have left a good mark after leaving office. The system we are using is not working. He still has about two years in office to rise above this petty level and do something for Nigeria. The tensions, anger on all sides have reached a zenith. He can do it. The National Assembly people, when he sends a bill to them to review the on- going situation, they should do it speedily. Their names will be on a golden plaque.
Your Party, the PDP is embroiled in crises. Should the chairman, Uche Secondus go as demanded by a faction?
That is an interesting question. Their management style has become so personalized and archaic. People have become very despondent about our party. There is anger. Our image has become very bad. They trample on us. It is in our constitution that if a member of the Working Committee leaves or dies, the full Executive at that level will meet and decide to elect a person from his zone to takeover that position until their term expires. It is very clear. We had the experience here. They disobeyed the constitution, discountenanced it. We wrote letters to them, but they didn’t budge. They said they wanted to come and do a congress. You don’t have to do a congress. They exco met and appointed somebody. He throws his weight around- the National Chairman, as if it is a private party. We wrote letters, cited the sections in the constitution, but they will not hear of it. We had to go to court and the court ruled that they were wrong; that it is in our constitution. They still went ahead and defied the court. What an errant madness! I spent ten years as a member of the National Working Committee of our party; I have never seen this kind of thing. If you want to save the party, the constitution must be obeyed. Their tenure ends by the end of the year and I am not bothered if they stay. I have been calling my colleagues to let reason prevail. If they want to stay, there is a procedure. Set up a National Convention Committee. They take over the running of the congresses, all the way to the national convention. That is the easiest and most legal way of resolving the crises. Right now, even amongst them in the National Working Committee, they are saying they have resigned. The confidence is lost.
Don’t you think the perennial crises in PDP will make the party lose the 2023 election, which is very close?
We still have time for that. Twenty-four hours in politics is very long. The people have been watching. They are seeing the mess the All Progressives Congress (APC) has put us in. APC is not a political party; it is a mere congregation of strange bedfellows. When I hear of people jumping ship and jumping into APC, I say aah! We have the opportunity right now to bounce back and manage our affairs. If you have more than two people congregating, there will be differences. We must rise above pettiness and resolve issues brilliantly. For me, going to court over this crisis is not reasonable. Resigning from office is not the solution. Set up a National Convention Committee. These characters, led by Secondus, cannot lead us anywhere.