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•Continued from yesterday
By Chukwudi Nweje
What are your thoughts on the state of the nation under President Bola Tinubu?
I will try my best to answer the ones that I can. One of the things you experience when you receive parcels from DHL, if it was badly handled, they will put a label that says, damaged on delivery. I think Nigeria was damaged on delivery into the current administration, and the challenge of governance, particularly in a place like Africa, is that you wanted to have all the control before you probably spoke out your mind.
That is the way I see the current administration. Again, you see, even though I have lived in England 39 years, I still know some Yoruba proverbs. One of them says, until you have the sword in your hand, you should not be asking for the name of who killed your dad.
I think the current government is new, young. It has not given us a full audit of the previous. I personally think the previous administration spent the money of seven generations to come. I think the previous administration prepared the level of damage that I have never seen. I think the previous administration has created a dichotomous nation, a two-nation situation. We deceive ourselves.
Not knowing he will be President one day, I made my observation, to President Tinubu.
I do not know why I felt I should share it with Tinubu. I landed at Murtala Muhammed International Airport one day and observed the Nigeria Air Force Base. I observed that there was only one C-130 aircraft.
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The C-130 aircraft is a molue, so it meant that the whole of the South, particularly Lagos, has only one aircraft protecting it. Sixty per cent of business done in Nigeria is done in Lagos; 65 per cent of VAT paid in the whole of Nigeria is paid in Lagos. Nigeria has 21 fighter jets. They are all in four Air Force bases in the North.
We all hide our head in the sand because we do not like addressing certain things.
I once asked a four star General to do a paper for me on what he sees as military balance or imbalance of Nigeria. The paper showed that there are nine training places in Nigeria, eight are in the North, and only one is in the South, the Navy, because this is where water is.
Now we even have Navy in Kano.
All I can just say is that the current administration inherited a parcel that was damaged on arrival. It was fair of Tinubu to tell us that things will get very difficult before getting better.
If you ask my opinion, I think this administration is going to do well later. The reason I think so is because I see the indices of doing well, which is, one, having round pegs in round holes.
You have an engineer in charge of the ministry of works, not some person who does not even know anything about civil engineering.
You have crack persons in various key places that will cause the change in the nation. That is the first indication that there is going to be a change.
I do not know much about economics but, in my opinion, part of what should bring a change to the nation should be to stop all these over-empowering of only two, three people and making noise about them.
The highest one person of all these big billionaires can hire is 200,000 people.
Imagine if you take the kind of billions of dollars you have empowered them with and ensure that every small enterprise has access to funding.
In Nigeria, we will emphasize two, three people who have the money and we do not realize how many they employ.
They inherited something that was damaged on arrival. The previous system was one-sided, low-sided. We were very quiet. We were not willing to speak. However, if we do not give this an opportunity and all we do is use the problem created by the previous to judge them, we might just put them in a corner where even any good thing they do, they look wrong.
When you look at all that is happening in Nigeria today, people are leaving the country in droves, do you see hope?
I will speak as a merchant of hope.
I say Nigeria is hopeful. The reason I say Nigeria is hopeful is because I travelled to some other African nations and when I came back, I felt like kissing the ground of Nigeria and I am glad to be a Nigerian. I am glad to be a Nigerian because we are a people who are very effervescent in our dreams and visions and our desires to make it and to achieve.
We are not laid-back people. Yeah, the government may have not backed us, as they should. Nigerians are great people.
Maybe the challenge we have is that we have not seen the kind of system that will help us.
I personally think, going forward, number one, young people who read this paper should get into politics.
The last election, I think was the beginning of the crack of the old brigade. In my opinion, that was a crack. I would say young people should get involved in politics. There is also a need to review the Constitution of Nigeria, which over-empowers certain people. They have almost all control of all funds. We need to visit that. We need to return power to the regions, in my opinion, we should return policing to the region, return power to the regions, return capacity to make decisions to the region, reduce central power; in my opinion, that would make the power come closer to the people.
Many people who are leaving Nigeria leave because they have a picture of El Dorado that Europe is better. Some of them get there and are in trouble. I am a pastor in London, and I cannot count how many we have had to rescue. They sold everything here, and after some time, they will not be able to cope.
To rent one room for a month is N1 million, £1,000 pounds. Since 1989, Margaret Thatcher, the laws have been changed, the system has been changed; everything has been tightened.
I personally think that this rush to Britain, Australia, and Canada is reverse slavery. The first slavery, they came to carry people against their wish. The new slavery, you buy the ticket to go there and when you get there, all you can do if you do not know the system is you get your house to live in.
The only place I know you can really thrive, as a Nigerian is Africa; it is the only place where you can do well. For every Nigerian whom you hear is breaking through in Europe, there are 10,000 who are still doing some odd job.
So sometimes, there are two sides of it.
You know, create a system where somebody has known how to run a system. He knows how to steal the bag. If he does not steal the bag, he knows how to walk his way; he knows that in politics, what money cannot do, more money will do.
There are those who have gone out and they’ve made a difference. If you remove the Nigerian doctors and nurses from states in the United States of America, the medical system will collapse. If you remove the Nigerian doctors from the medical system in the United Kingdom, the system will collapse.
So, one, we need to create the enabling environment here for our people to be able to come back. Two, we need to be able to empower small enterprises. Like I said, instead of empowering three big, two big names, and our musicians are singing about them and they control the system and they are only hiring 100,000.
Imagine if every small enterprise were empowered. And each enterprise that is empowered is hiring four, four, four, four, four, four persons.
We will have millions. We need to change our system. Finally, our government needs to look at five E’s. Electricity, economy, education, the engineering part of our society, and then the environment.
How would you advise president Tinubu on measures to take to address the challenges facing Nigeria?
Number one, it is very clear and obvious that there is a disequilibrium in Nigeria and you cannot blame the person who sees resources leaving his area and going to somewhere else while his place is underdeveloped.
How can the South provide all these resources and remain without infrastructure while you build railway to Niger republic? It does not make sense. Most of the economy of Nigeria is in the southern part of Nigeria.
The people feel negleted, they feel abandoned, and they feel that they are behind.
I think in my opinion, if I were president, or if I was to advise the president, my counsel would be, number one, a high-powered group of people to not just go down and say they are quelling people who have agitations.
The first thing to do is empower people by creating industries and make them guardians of their own economy. You do not destroy what is your own land.
