Dr Junaid Mohammed, a frontline Northern politician and member of the National Assembly in the Second Republic, speaks with KOLA OYELERE on President Muhammadu Buhari’s perceived slow pace, the call for a national economic summit, and sundry issues. Excerpts:
-*How would you analyse events in the country
since the 2015 general election and why?*-
I think it is very difficult to analyze anything within
the short period of time this present government
came into power. To me, eight months is too early to
assess the success or failure of any administration.
The reality we are confronted with is that, no matter
how good your programmes are, no matter how
competent the people you bring into government
are, and no matter how sincere and well-meaning
they are, when you begin a new administration, you
automatically inherit the good, the bad and the ugly.
You inherit the consequences of mismanagement,
corruption, impunity and what have you.
What is confronting this administration is simply that
there was division within the party, the government
and the Presidency. However, when you are going
into an election, it is not enough to plan to win, you
have to prepare yourself very well, so that within a
short possible time, you can take care of the garbage
of the past and prepare to tackle your new
administration. I think the government is learning;
they are learning the hard way, and sadly.
Even if there were no issues and no challenges from
the government, the fact is that the emergence of
this government coincided with oil prices collapse.
Some countries are in recession and Nigeria is
fundamentally an oil-producing country. We rely on
oil for most of our internal dollar
denominationatory revenues and when those who
buy our oil cease to do so, the economy will not be
favourable, coupled with the fact that we have
massive corruption institutionalised in the system.
Therefore, nobody should have expected anything
different.
As if that was not enough, we have a major security
crisis in the North-East, and security challenges
particularly in the North-Central and North-West,
even down South, too. We have been taught that
whenever you have prolonged security crisis,
economic crisis will invariably follow. In addition to
the Boko Haram problem in the North-East, we have
a major economic crisis nationwide and the two are
a very deadly combination. But, I believe that, with
the goodwill and the cooperation of Nigerians,
things will soon normalise.
-*Are you not disturbed by what some individuals
perceive as the slow pace of the Buhari
administration?*-
Policy issues depend on the style of an individual.
Buhari has his own style. It will not be all that right
to say his administration is too slow. We are talking
of a population of 180 million. If you want to rush,
you will eventually rush yourself into a disaster. One
thing you have to take into consideration is that
when you are inheriting a government, you are not
inheriting a plain or clean slate. And if you want to
rush, you may find yourself in a complete mess. It is
now eight months since this administration came on
board, and we are just seeing slight changes, the
removal of heads of some parastatals. Some of
them have been given ample time to sabotage the
programme of the administration. I have not seen or
heard any convincing reasons why it needed to take
so long to remove some of the head of the
parastatals
A lot of damage has been done through waiting for
eight months before sacking those that were
appointed by the past administration, because most
of them were there simply to satisfy personal
agenda. Closely linked to that, the president and his
party must be seen to be reading from the same
page. I am not persuaded that the president has
been able to carry his party along; if he cannot
convince his party, he cannot convince me, outside
his party, and that is very important.
As a senior citizen, what do you think is
responsible for the culture of impunity, or if you
like, corruption among public officials?
My personal take off on this is that anytime you
leave people who are corrupt without holding them
to account for their atrocities, next time, if there is
need to deal with such people, you will have a bigger
and harder mess to clean up. I think a lot of what
has been happening has to do with the coup-detat
organised by General Ibrahim Babaginda in 1985. It
was staged to protect some major officials and
members of the political class who were very close
to him.
For 30 years, there had been no attempt whatsoever
to get to the root of corruption and deal with it with
a serious mind. If the present war on corruption is
truncated, then next time around, whoever wants to
try it will experience more difficulties.
We have to do it right now, otherwise it is going to
be very difficulty for us to deal with corruption in
Nigeria in future, because it is becoming a
institutionalised in the country. It is expected that
whoever is getting into office is going to be corrupt,
that he is going to steal, and unless something is
done to reverse this, we are going to get into a
bigger mess in the future.
Besides, in the past, from 1979 to 1984, at least the
judiciary could be relied upon. But at the moment,
the judiciary is the number one enemy of the
average Nigerian. I think we have one of the most
perverse, one of the most shameless and too
stupidly corrupt judiciary in the World. You can see
that the task is seven times more painful to
undertake simply because the so-called hope of
common man is now the worst. The war on
corruption has to be fought and if Nigerians can do
it, President Buhari can do it.
How best can the country tackle the menace, as
some have advocated plea bargain for looters,
while others canvassed for special courts to try
suspects?
I think those who invoke the American system and
allow people who are privileged to plea bargain are
asking for the destruction of this country. I don’t
believe people who have been proved to have done
something wrong should be allowed to get away,
simply because they can part with money they stole.
Plea bargain package is uncalled for. If that should
be the case, there is no hope for dealing with
corruption in Nigeria. There is no way somebody
who has stolen billions of naira can be allowed to go
scot free, simply by giving one billion or half of a
billion, while somebody who steals a goat is sent to
years imprisonment. Secondly, it is alien to the
principle of English Common Law, which we
inherited.
As a former parliamentarian, do you believe the
Legislature can absolve itself from the reign of
impunity/sleaze in the land?
We have a system, from my own observation,
whereby corruption and impunity within the
legislature are now the two basic problems that are
facing this country. In fact, we can deal with the civil
service corruption any day, because it operates with
known rules. However, in the case of corruption in
the National Assembly, it is covered by certain
understanding. They blackmail the executive to
collect money, and bribes from agencies of
government.
Everything about the National Assembly is optic,
nothing transparent. Their salaries are not known,
but their allowances are budgeted for and they also
believe they have a divine right to collect money and
to jack the budget up, or bring it down if it does not
do their bidding. It is a very serious trouble and I
don’t see how we can get to address this situation
now.
Getting to grips with the issue of corruption within
the legislature will depend on how we can get an
effective party system. For example, I believe the All
Progressives Congress (APC) can do this by
disciplining its own members, making sure that
those who were not behaving well are sacked. Even
if they can get by with this corrupt judiciary, at least
they would know that they will never be able to get
back to the National Assembly during the next
election.
As far as I am concerned, there must be a party
system. I do not believe the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) can ever be discipline because, by its
definition, it is a party of big people and if you were
there, it is like a company of equal contribution
because nobody can hold you for any shortcoming.
But I believe APC is a different political party.
Therefore, it should be seen to be different by
making sure it disciplined.
In the case of the judiciary, it has to be the
collective efforts of all Nigerians because what I am
seeing now is something I have never seen in my
life. A High Court Judge, not even a Court of Appeal
Judge, holding the Supreme Court to ransom
through ill-motivated judgment, and behaving as if
they are above the law itself. I believe that next time
if there is a violent of trouble in Nigeria, I will not
want to see the judiciary spared. If blood has to be
shed, it must include the blood of everybody who is
corrupt.
Would you advocate a reform in the existing
party system in the country, given the
experience of the 2015 polls and the aftermath,
including the gale of defections by some
politicians?
I don’t believe we need any serious reform within
the party system in order to curtail defection. No,
you can still use the existing situation and bring
about meaningful result, by making sure that
anybody who under any circumstances decides to
defect from one party to another party should
vacate the office he is holding. We should not allow
members of the National Assembly to simply
legislate any law for their own convenience, whether
to stay in a party or not. I think that is the only way
to instill decency in the polity. I think that is the only
way to curtail this. This does not require any major
reform: all you need to do is to make sure that the
laws are strictly applied and that they are also very
fundamentally seen to be true and fair.
On the other hand, we need to decide if we want to
continue with the presidential system or not. The
presidential system can be said to bring stability. But
it has enormous negatives. The major negative is
that it is much more prone to corruption than the
parliamentary system. We have to look at very
serious ways of curbing corruption, otherwise it will
finish the system and finish the country itself. I am
so persuaded that, in terms of accountability,
bringing the Prime Minister who is the head of
government from the legislature is very important,
and we are more likely to call him to order as well
call other ministers who misbehave to order. We
need to discuss whether we can afford the
presidential system, given the way the legislature
has been behaving since 1999 to date. Are we sure
we can leave the destiny of this country in the hands
of these lawmakers? They need to be called to order
at everyday. If those who are supposed to call the
executive to order are themselves irresponsible, I
think we have to take a hard look and see what is
happening and see whether we can continue with
this .
Is the principle of zoning still relevant after
more than 16 years of civil rule in Nigeria since
1999?
I am not sure if am the correct person to answer the
question, because I have never believed in the
zoning system. I don’t believe it can work for the
country, nor solve any of the problems we have.
Today, we have the problems of insecurity,
economic mismanagement, problems within the
political class and, most especially, that of the
judiciary. All the problems this country is
confronting, can you tell me which one has been
solved by the zoning system?
The zoning and rotational system did not start with
this dispensation. It started with the Second
Republic, but you can see all along from the defunct
National Party of Nigeria (NPN) to the PDP, it has
been marred by impunity, rascality, dishonesty.
The power rotated from former President Olusegun
Obasanjo from the South, to Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua
in the North, and then went to the South again, with
former President Goodluck Jonathan. I am yet to
point out one thing the zoning system has done. The
problem is that the political class is prepared to play
with tribalism and religious intolerance, even
creating and inventing constitutional crisis just to
stay in power. The issue which the zoning system is
meant to take care of has not been spelt out to me.
Ask those people who believe in it to tell us what has
been achieved by it. Nigeria has become a far more
disunited country.
What is your position on the existence of ethnics
based associations? Is it not a confirmation that
Nigerians need to take another look at those
issues some stakeholders in the Nigerian project
consider as grey areas making up the National
Question?
What is the grey area? Ethnic-based political
association or pressure groups are there and they
openly tell us what they do. Afenifere will tell us
they want to have the unity of the Yoruba. In their
own calculation, maybe the unity of the Yoruba is
more important than the unity of Nigeria. I think it
will be much more cost-effective to have the unity of
Nigeria instead of Hausas, Yorubas, Igbos, or some
of middle-level ethnic groups.
The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) believes in the
unity of Northerners. It is still qualitative superior,
because the North is not one ethnic group. The
largest number of ethnic groups in Nigeria is in the
North. I can tell you that a state like Adamawa has
about 82 ethnic groups, Taraba has about 72 ethnic
groups, so you can see that if they were able to
arrive at a formulation and allow them to have a
pressure group, the ACF is nothing but a business
pressure group.
We, maybe, likely have a transition from ACF to a
national unity forum , than just have a tribal unity
forum. If you look at them critically, you will find out
that the so-called Ohanaeze group is not for the
interest of the Igbo. It is just for the interest of the
Igbo elite, who believe that whatever they say, must
be accommodated into the Nigerian situation, and
that if they do not achieve this, they will go and pay
out Nnamdi Kanu or Ralph Uwazurike, and blackmail
the government .
I believe that this is not an idea you can legislate on,
saying that that you are banning Ohanaeze,
Afeniferere or ACF. I think it requires time and
education for people to realise that we are better
off in this country if we remain one united entity.
What is your view on the call for a national
economic summit being canvassed for by
Professor Wole Soyinka?
I would have been more supportive and encouraged
if Professor Soyinka is an economist. However, he
has never been involved in the governance of any
political party or any government of the part of this
country. I am a bit unimpressed by the bogus call for
an economic summit because, at the end of the day,
what the team will do is to look for the various
variables and variable economic alternatives. That
can be done without forming a bogus summit or
conference.
I have been involved in this kind of conference in
the past 20 years. This high falutin debating chamber
has not added any value to development in Nigeria.
The last national conference was a disgrace: people
simply came with ideas, they stayed with the ideas,
and after the conference, they constituted
themselves into second sects. They turned many
things upside down. The issues that were discussed
and rejected were smuggled through the back door.
That is not my idea of any economy summit.
The national conference was a waste. Those who are
calling for the implementation of its report do not
know what they are talking about because, how do
you implement a fraud? I thank God we were there;
we will not allow that to happen. It will never be
implemented. If they want another conference, let
them go and call another one and spend billions of
public money. There is no way we can have an
economic conference. It is a disaster and the person
that is canvassing for the conference is not an
economist . He has never managed anything in
government. The only time Professor Soyinka was in
government was when he was the chairman of the
Road Safety Corps and he ended up in a scandal.
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