Daniel Kanu
Adeseye Ogunlewe was elected Senator on the platform of Alliance for Democracy (AD) in 1999 to represent the Lagos East Constituency and was later appointed Minister of Works from July 2003 to March 2006.
In this interview with Sunday Sun, he spoke on the nation’s 21 years of uninterrupted democracy, security challenges, zoning, among other sensitive issues. Excerpt:
How would you assess 21 years of the nation’s uninterrupted democratic march?
Unfortunately for us, we didn’t adopt the appropriate political structure that is suitable for our national unity, so it is difficult for us to move ahead as a nation and develop our people. My view is that our type of political democracy has overtaken economic development to the extent that politics and democracy consume almost 75 per cent of all our income, whereas economic development takes only about 25 per cent, no nation can grow up that way, so which one do you take, economic development or political development? The political development that we have adopted is anti-unity of Nigeria, unsuitable for our national development and it will destroy this country in the future. With the kind of political system, we have chosen we can never grow, we can’t go far with our type of system. Look at some countries that have grown fast like Dubai, all the Emirates, China, etc they don’t rely on democracy, it is economic development that is their priority and they can now develop themselves according to national plan, but our type of democracy is for every four or eight years you start another plan. Another person will come into office and start another plan, so there is a lot of inconsistencies in our national planning and that is detrimental to our human resource development. That is why you have 100 million people that are in poverty and it will increase unless we sit down and address this issue there is no way we can survive it. Our own democracy is over-bloated.
So, which system do you think that we should adopt?
We need to sit down and deliberate on a system that will bring unity to us like the parliamentary system. The parliamentary system is not just a one-man show. What we do here is that we only vote for the president, every other person is appointed by that president, so that is why everybody is rooting for the centre so that once you become the president you are all in all. In a parliamentary democracy, every member is part of the executive so there is a tendency for us to have national unity. If you go to our nearby neighbour, Ghana, a Ghanaian will not talk about; say “I am from the North or I am from East, but will tell you I am a Ghanaian.” Ours is not like that because we have laid too much emphasis on the presidential system, which to my mind is too autocratic, it’s like a military government, one-man show, one person determines at the national level, at the state level, one individual determines everything and there is this tendency for high-level corruption, which is not good for us at all. So, we have to re-address our issue; are we going to go for economic planning or political misadventure and that is what we have now. Look the number of people that are milking the system, how many governors? How many national Assembly members? How many House of Assembly members? How many Judiciary in the 36 states? How many councillors? How many chairmen? And they consume over 75 per cent of all the resources of the country. How much money do you need to contest an election as a president? if you don’t have over N100 billion you cannot. How much money do you need to contest as a governor? And this is what is causing a lot of corruption because if you are not corrupt where are you going to get money to be a governor? You need a minimum of N20 billion. What are you going to sell to get N20 billion, so you either carry cocaine or you are a drug addict or you make sure you steal part of our oil wealth to make money. The truth here is that our democracy is too expensive, the elections are damn too expensive and it is destroying us. At the middle of the problem INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) will say they need, let’s say, N80 billion, or they need N100 billion, if you don’t give them election cannot go on, the Federal Government will at all costs bring out the money and you ask yourself for what purpose? This N80 or N100 billion we don’t even spend it on education or health services, but you can spend it on INEC, so that what can happen?
How do you feel concerning the security challenges in the country?
Once you don’t train your children, when they don’t have hope in your country they resort to banditry. Who is taking care of them? How many children do we have out of school? Where is the national security welfare? If I don’t have a work who is going to feed me? So everybody is to himself in Nigeria and God for all. A bandit and a corrupt person who is better, are they not the same? The bandit is only doing it by killing people, but the other person is also killing people by stealing money. Where a governor will be entitled to N500 million every month for security vote, which security is he spending N500 million? And what do we get in return? And this money is not accountable, you cannot query it, you cannot audit it, so calculate it in a month for four years or eight years and tell me what do you think the governor needs to work again for in his life. We must sit down to address critical issues, our country is bound to collapse one day, there is no way we can survive it. Our involvement and expenditure on democracy is too much. It is as if once there is democracy then there is national development, no, there can be national development without democracy. There are so many other countries that have grown up and doing well and they don’t even know anything about democracy. Our system does not allow for national planning, it does not allow consistent planning because once another government comes you start all over again. We have over 17,000 abandoned projects throughout the federation, how can a country grow that way?
Some say the problem is not with the system, but the actors…?
(Cuts in) It is the system that is giving room for the corruption; it is the democracy that we are practicing that is our albatross and will destroy us. It has no correlation between national development and political development. We concentrate too much on political development to the neglect of national development which will place the economy on the right standing, improve it, and grow it. There is inconsistency in our economic planning because any government that comes will have its own economic agenda as if the previous government is not part of Nigeria again; they start all over again, so there is no consistency in national planning.
Some regions have started creating security networks to protect their zones. Do you key into such moves?
It is the structure of our police that is not assisting us. When we were younger we had C.I.D, this CID, they were the ones that know everybody that is living in any community, so they do a lot to ensure that the people were protected, but that one is no more there now. They have turned the police into a political system, so where you post somebody from the North to Lagos, for instance, and the person doesn’t understand the language, he does not understand the culture of the people, he doesn’t know anybody there, etc, how can he police well? So, we are saying, okay, let us say between this grade and this grade will be domesticated, will be indigenous to that community so that they can police well, but they will not agree. How can you put a policeman that doesn’t speak your language, doesn’t know the people, he has not been there and you think he can perform well? He will never perform well, so there must be a re-adjustment and community policing who is going to fund that one? It’s so difficult to achieve? And when you don’t handle the issue of security well, when the lives of the people are threatened the option left may be to resort to self-help.
Col. Abubakar Umar recently wrote an open letter alleging that President Mohammadu Buhari was being lopsided in his appointments. How do you react to such allegation?
If you don’t include all the parts of Nigeria in your appointment they will feel alienated, it is natural. What we normally do, there are certain level of security operatives like the Custom, Nigeria Police, Immigration, Road Safety, etc all those ones you share them, they shouldn’t come from one ethnic group. There is NPA, Shippers Council, NIMASA, you share them, that is the way to bring everybody on board, but where you don’t care and you put everybody from one zone, how do you now bring about national integration? It is natural they feel alienated, there must be a re-jig there is no doubt that all and it could be done easily. All you need do is to share them among the zones. If you don’t they will see it as if you are neglecting them and they will kick.
Most Nigerians are of the view that the country is deeply divided in recent times than ever before. Do you share in such perception?
The division is a product of the structure that we operate, the type of power and authority we give to an individual, a governor, or a president without any form of restraint or consultation. So, that type of system will cause disunity in the country. If it’s a parliamentary system there is no way everybody will not sit down to do the job because all the ministers will be part of the government, but the ministers now are just appointees of the president and only one person detects everything that happens. So, to my mind, that is not good for our national development. It is not good for a multi-dimensional group like Nigeria. There is no way we can survive with the presidential system, no way.
Where, which political zone do you want the presidency to rotate to in 2023 because the North is still interested?
It is because of the power of the presidency, the position has enormous power, he is the most powerful person in the whole world so that is why it is attractive. If we go on this way there is no hope for the country in the future I can assure you. Let us change the system, let us sit down and re-evaluate what we have been able to achieve in these 21 years of uninterrupted democratic journey. All the money that we have got has it not gone into the current expenditure, into funding the structure? If we spend that money on national development you can guess where we can be. But despite everything that we are witnessing, we still have to give it to Buhari because it will be difficult to find another man like him because he takes decisions that one will never expect any Nigerian leader to take due to what they want to be in future. Buhari doesn’t have any ambition to be something in the future other than to be a Nigerian. For him, it is Nigeria first, he doesn’t care much about what to become in the future like some others will want to. But if they zone the presidency to the Southwest, we know who to give it to and that should be Bola Tinubu because he has the capacity to know what to do.
But Buhari is receiving bashing from Nigerians, for instance, on his lopsided appointments?
We have already talked about that; I am now talking about the positive part of the man. The truth is that the man is doing what one never expected he will do. I was excited about this pipeline (gas), that is going from Ajaokuta to Abuja to Kaduna to Kano and we can have 110, 120 megawatts of electricity production. If he can do that one on this axis (West/East) too, Nigeria will be picking up, the electricity that will be available for those who want to develop will be there. It requires a lot of thinking for one person to think that way; it is excellent, let’s give it to him. Our system is unhelpful for our national development, it’s too expensive, it’s too wasteful, its too large and it does not guarantee national development. To my mind, we should spend more money on our economic development than we spend on political development. All our brain is on our politics, not national development, we spend only about 20 per cent on national development whereas we spend over 80 per cent on political development, election, INEC, salary, overhead cost, etc, too many of them and if you add all of them together they are not up to 1 million but those 1 million consume 80 per cent of our resources.
How would you react to the government’s handling of COVID-19 pandemic?
I think they have improved on the handling of the pandemic after the initial wobbling they realised that it’s not the federal authority that will do it for us; it is community-based involvement. Our public health system is dysfunctional; we don’t have quality people anymore in our public health facilities, primary health care, believe it or not in this country the best doctors in Nigeria are in public health. The basis of any form of good health services is in primary health care, but we have neglected it, we don’t even care about it and instead of us to concentrate on it now we are concentrating on teaching hospitals, multiplying teaching hospitals that are referral hospitals. They should return to primary health care, all issues concerning COVID-19, train community health officers so that can handle the pandemic issues. We cannot handle it from the top. But as I said the government is on top of it, but they should look into improving the primary health centres. That is the way to go.