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By Sunday Ani
Chief Owolabi Salis contested for the Lagos State gubernatorial race on the platform of Alliance For Democracy (AD) in 2023. In this interview, he spoke on various issues including the state of the nation.
How do you appraise the state of the nation?
What else do I say?That’s an obviously open page that even the blind cannot only see but read and the dead groping in their graves. It had never been as worse as this. Of course, the underprivileged masses, are the worse off. People are dying daily not because they are sick but rather because of hunger. What you have now, especially among the hosts of the underprivileged are living ghosts. It’s such a very pathetic experience. Words indeed fail me to adequately express my feelings.
As things are presently, how do we get out of the woods?
Of course, it’s for government to do something and urgently too. Very urgently I repeat. The patience of the poor should not be taken for granted. I’m saying this because hunger breeds violence, of course, we are all familiar with the common saying that a hungry man is an angry man.
This is why I’m using this medium to make
a passionate call on the nation’s ruler, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to find an urgent and immediate means of grappling with the increasingly degenerating hardship in the country in order to save the poor from the excruciating throes of hunger, poverty and squalor, suffocating their daily existence because I keep having this fear that the increasingly degenerating hardship might pave way for a violent revolution or coup d’etat or an irrepressible wave of anarchy or insurrection that could imperil national peace and put a dramatic halt on the continued existence of the incumbent administration since hunger is the foremost harbinger of violent crises.
The ‘Arab spring’ which swept ruthlessly like a contagion to unseat hitherto secured governments in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and Libya, should be fresh enough in memory.
But do you think that such forms of violence could happen in the Nigerian context?
Haba! Why not?
Looking back into the past, one credibly recalls that quite a good number of revolutions that took place in history was due to hunger, arising from the unbearable cost of food. For instance, the unbearable cost of bread, the common man’s staple, ignitéd the French revolution just as the soaring inflationary spiral in Ghana engendered a massive wave of discontent and emigration of Ghanaians from their country, leading to successive spate of coups, until the arrival of Rawlings. Moreover, who would have expected something like the dastardly EndSars protest? Although we do not pray for any form of violence but that doesn’t mean we should unnecessarily continue to take things for granted or take the patience or the suffering of the impoverished masses for granted.
But the mess we are presently going through is not the making of the Tinubu-led administration.
While it’s true that the prevalent impasse was not the making of the incumbent Tinubu administration but rather an inherited burden especially from the two successive past administrations, it still behoves on Mr. President in keeping with his electoral promises upon which he was given the popular mandate of presidency by progress-loving Nigerians, to seek desperate and urgent solutions to them. That is the very hallmark of leadership and the essential burden of responsibility that goes with it, rather than perennial fault-finding. Imagine what Ghana went through for decades and how they became a thing of the past, following the intervention of Rawlings. Imagine the world economic depression of the late 1920s and the extremely terrible effect, yet Delano Roosevelt never because of that, wallowed in crocodile tears. Rather, with studied and methodical approach, he was able to ride on top of it.That is what we are talking about.
As a highly reputable lawyer, Finance and Management technocrat, highly esteemed in the American society, what specific advice would you proffer to effectively bring about a turn-around?
In view of the acutely scarce resources that the government is facing, my advice to Mr President as an effective cost-cutting measure and strategy is that he should not contend unnecessarily with many things which he may not be able to see through, given the prevailing paucity of funds. Rather, I would urge him to concentrate and cast his focus on few but highly strategic sectors like agriculture, security and power supply.
Indeed, if it is only in the area of agriculture, security and power supply that his government is able to bequeath a lasting legacy, he will go down in the annals of history as one of the greatest Nigerian leaders.
The issue at stake should not be left to the Minister of Agriculture alone, rather, let the Federal Executive Council embark on a collaborative synergy to brainstorm vigorously on emergency save-our-soul measures, which becomes crucial, critical and urgent, in the drive at agricultural self-sufficiency. This administration must think out of the box, exploring both orthodox and unorthodox approach to contend with the teething problems the nation and its people are going through. Let’s go back to history, and we would realise that China under Mao Tse Tung had a strong agricultural background before embarking in earnest on industrialisation.
And talking of the state of security, we are all living witnesses.The situation is unprecedentedly so appalling and horrible that even farmers are acutely scared to step into their farms for fears that kidnappers or terrorists might swoop on them.Thus, while they are denied access to their source of survival, the nation, especially the helpless poor, also suffer from the resultant drought of hunger and scarcity.
Ironically, the soaring numbers of criminals who today, are irredeemably immersed in armed robbery, kidnapping, highwire frauds, human rituals, and terrorism,were in the first place, forced into it by hardship occasioned by hunger.
Five hundred years ago, the British political philosopher,Thomas Hobbes, in his narration, popularly titled “The State Of Nature” described life, in the earliest human society as ‘short, nasty and brutish’
Lamentably, Nigeria today in a supposed era of civilised modernity is even worse than the Hobbesian “State of Nature.” It is unfortunate that while the president, ministers, top government functionaries, lawmakers and elite all have the means to protect themselves with adequate security measures, the poor and the down-trodden are the very ones who are defencelessly laid bare at the receiving end of the depredatory ravages of cultists, ritualists, terrorists, kidnappers and armed robbers.
But this should not continue like that as their armour of protection would fail them one day. I mean the privileged rich and the governing elite because even Abuja, the supposed headquarters of the federation, has today become so porous and vulnerable more than ever before as criminals have besieged virtually all nooks and crannies of the city.
The increasingly grievous security situation has perennially imperiled foreign investments as foreign investors are severely discouraged in staking their lives and fortune in the midst of the unconducive atmosphere currently prevailing, just as a good number of them have even packed up, for the same reason. As a patriotic Nigerian, I am not happy with the prevailing situation because as a widely travelled man, with network of friends and business partners among the whites, I have had a hell of a time trying to convince them to invest in my country, Nigeria. Unfortunately often times, I found myself helplessly defeated whenever they raised the nagging issue of insecurity.
And to compound the situation is the equally abysmal state of power supply. Mr president should spring into action by giving what it takes for a restoration to unhindered full throttle supply of electricity both day and night, because how do you talk of industrialisation, and technological break through, without giving the question of power supply, the premium importance it deserves.
With an unhindered supply of electricity, industries will operate to full capacity utilisation, which in turn will inspire foreign investors to stake their lives and resources towards a profitable investment in the country.
The result as accruing from the foregoing, is of course bound to unfold in a predictable rise in employment and increased profitability for the small and medium scale entrepreneurs who hitherto could not afford the unbearable cost of operating by power generators.
The problem may necessarily not be so insurmountable as we may think. In a nutshell, the point being made is for Mr.President to co-ordinate and systematize his vision into a coherent and workable body of policy by proceeding from the point of affordability, which as in this context border on agriculture, full electricity supply and maximum security because of their positively all-encompassing multiplier effect in triggering and activating other sectors for maximum growth and development.
Last year, you contested for governorship under the platform of the Alliance For Democracy, what plans have you for the 2027 election?
The year 2027 belongs to God. For now, let’s collaborate in addressing the parlous state of the nation. Let’s concentrate on the nitty gritty of governance, let’s leave out the futile selfish and banal issue of politicking.
