Nigeria@60 Interview: Edo election should be used as model for future elections – Sen Osunbor

…says Nigeria needs to diversify economy now

…the El-Rufai C’ttee on true federalism has answered questions on devolution of power

…Nigerian political parties need to be properly organised

…the political recruitment process has to be tilted to favour emerging young political leaders

…insists Nigeria needs policy on population

Former Governor of Edo State, Senator Oserheimen Aigberodion Osunbor, a Professor of Law, former Dean, Faculty of Law, Lagos State University, former Chairman Nigeria Law Reform Commission, NLRC, a two time Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, member Board of Trustees, BoT of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in this chat with TheNewGuru.com, TNG’s Regional Editor, Emman Ovuakporie bared his mind on various national issues, ranging from Nigeria’s 60th independence celebration, recently concluded Edo guber election, devolution of power, Nigeria’s democracy in the last 20years, excerpts.

How would you assess Nigeria’s political space in the last 20years?

The Multi-party system has been thriving in Nigeria for the last 20years starting with three political parties, PDP, All Peoples Party, APP and Alliance for Democracy, AD.

With time the new political parties grew phenomenally to well over 91 participating in the 2019 general elections.

But before then, by 2007/2008 Nigeria appeared to be tilting to a one party state when the PDP controlled 28 to 29 states out of 36 states of the federation.

This led to PDP’s impunity to the extent that the PDP national chairman arrogantly proclaimed that PDP will be in power for the next 60years. The 60years turned out to be 16. That arrogance led to a lot of abuse in the system until the PDP yoke was broken by APC in 2015 to the relief of many.

What Nigerians are yearning for now is that the leadership selection will encourage the emergence of a younger crop of political leadership as this will encourage a younger crop of political leaders who needed to be considered because the leadership recruitment process has not favoured the younger politicians but that has also begun to change with Mr President assenting to the Not Too Young To Run Bill which is now an Act of the National Assembly .

We have not seen much impact of that bill but as time goes on, I believe that we will begin to see more and more young crop of politicians ascending to positions of political leadership in Nigeria.

Another notable feature of the political landscape is the participation of women. We are seeing more and more women becoming very active in politics even though the numbers that have won elections to the national assembly still falls below the so called Beijing Conference 35% affirmation. We are improving and we are making progress.

We have had female politicians being elected as deputy governors of states. We have even had females participating in governorship elections; it is only a matter of time that the political space will admit more and more of this new type of politicians; one, younger crop of political leadership and secondly more and more female participation in the politics of Nigeria.

For the next 20years I hope that we are going to witness a lot more progress than we recorded in the last 20years.

What is your view on the restructuring of the Nigerian federation?

Well, my views are largely informed by my participation in the All Progressives Congress (APC) committee on true federalism. You would recall that in the year 2017 the national leadership of the party put in place the Governor El-Rufai led committee on true federalism. We made far reaching recommendations in the course of that exercise which was really informed by the clamour for true federalism or some people would say restructuring.

So we addressed a number of issues that we gathered from memoranda, representations which were made to the committee in the six geopolitical zones of the country and we aggregated together these suggestions and proposals, and made our recommendations to the party.

Let me talk about the issue of devolution. When people talk about restructuring, they are in fact saying that the states have to be stronger in order that they can play the role that is expected of them as federating units in Nigeria. As of now they are very weak and many of them, virtually all of them cannot really stand firmly on their own as federating units.

So we recommended devolution of certain functions from the federal to the state government and concomitantly as you are devolving functions of powers, you also devolve the financial resources so that the states will be more financially empowered to be able to perform those functions.

We looked at the issue of state police and for me the logic is very simple. Most of our laws particularly criminal laws are state offences whether it is stealing, kidnapping, forgery you name it, these are all state offences, only a few are federal offences. For instance the ones created under the EFCC Act; offences against the currency and so on.

Immigration offences, banking offences, those are federal offences but other general offences are state offences.

But it is an anomaly that the states that create these offences are unable to enforce those laws through their police because the states don’t control the police.

So you have an anomaly where a state house of assembly creates an offence but has no police to enforce that offence, it will have to rely on the federal police and if the federal police is not so disposed they cannot assist the states to enforce its own laws. That is a serious anomaly and an aberration in a federation. So that was the logic and other reasons that made us to recommend state police which is different from community policing.

Another recommendation that I can talk about is the provision for the merger of states. There is a lot of clamour that states we want to be able to organize ourselves; we have heard that clamour among states. For instance, we have the Amotekun among the south western States, you have the BRACED among the south south states and they organise from time to time. Of course you have the northern governors forum and even the Ohaneze in the southeast the governors of that zone they meet from time to time to identify commonalities amongst the states.

So we felt that if a group of states feels strongly that they need to merge, why can’t they merge because they are already doing so through this other arrangement that I talked about. So if they want to take it further let them take it further, harness their resources together and be able to build for instance railways.

As it is now, apart from one or two states, states cannot embark on the construction of railways which by the way we also feel it should be devolved from the federal to the states. But if there is a merger among states or pooling of resources among states it is doable.

So we feel there is a merit in allowing some kind of merger amongst who willingly through a referendum agree that this is what they want to do because it is not just a few politicians, vocal politicians dictating this for the people. The people have to through a referendum decide whether or not they want to go back to a merger.

I said this because I am mindful of the fact that even amongst these geopolitical zones, there are States who don’t want to go back to the old regional system because they suffered a lot of marginalisation under the old regional system, so don’t compel them to go back to that regional system.

But the people are free to decide through a referendum that for these purposes we want to pool our resources together and forge ahead as one provided that this does not constitute a threat to national stability nor infringe on the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. So long as those threats are not there, states should be free to enter into mergers.

And also with another provisory that if you do so as a state decide to merge you cannot unmerge easily, it will take at least another 20years or 25years before you can exit what you did with your eyes wide open you decided to go into and this is to ensure that people will consider it very seriously.

Do we as a state want to merge with this other state and if the people so wish they can go ahead but once you are in it, you cannot get out until maybe another future crop of politicians would have emerged by which time those who pushed the process would have retired from the scene.

These are my views and I believe that sooner or later Nigeria will see the merits in the recommendations that we made and implement at least some of them if not all of them.

Do you see your party the APC implementing this report because it does seem that the man at the helm of affairs is not favourably disposed towards restructuring or power devolution.

Well, you said it may seem but he has not said so. He gave his support to the exercise when we did and in fact our chairman Governor El-Rufai had series of meetings with Mr President while this exercise was ongoing and the national chairman at the time Chief John Odigie Oyegun also briefed the president from time to time. So I wouldn’t jump into the conclusion that he doesn’t want to implement it. I believe that at the appropriate time those recommendations will be looked at and the needful would be done.

In the next few hours Nigeria will be 60years. Do you think Nigeria has something to really celebrate?

Yes, I think we have every reason to celebrate. It is just like somebody attaining the age of 60 and you are asking the person whether he has anything to celebrate. For the fact that you are alive at all is enough to thank God for, it is a good reason to be thankful to God because many who were born the same time you were born 60years ago have gone, they are not alive anymore; so for God Almighty to spare your life as a human being to attain 60 gives cause for celebration.

By celebration I don’t mean rolling out the drums and bringing bottles of Champaign and drinking but a moment of reflection. They said if you cast your mind back and see what God had done for you, you would have every reason to be thankful.

Nigeria went through a difficult, bitter 30months civil war and came out of it, how many countries have been able to survive that. In 1960 I think in Nigeria we had only one university, maybe the University of Nigeria was being conceived at that time and one or two other universities. Now we have over 150 universities in Nigeria, doesn’t that call for celebration?

The level of literacy in 1960 was very low compared to what it is now, that in my view calls for celebration. In 1960 Guinea worm was very endemic in Nigeria. In fact I recall as a child going to hospital and saw Guinea worm coming out of somebody’s body, very unsightly thing at that time but thankfully Nigeria has been rid of Guinea worm. There are some children today that have never seen Guinea worm. Not to talk of polio this had also been eradicated from Nigeria. This calls for celebration.

And if you look at the infrastructure in Nigeria, the number of airports, roads and of recent railways was extended beyond the point at which the British left it at independence. All these years not one kilometre was added to the rail tracks that the British left but now railways are been extended across the length and breadth of Nigeria, that in my view calls for celebration.

In 1960 people in the Niger Delta area, at that time Isaac Adaka Boro spearheading the struggle, they were struggling for freedom amongst others, even my people in the Midwest we were clamouring for freedom. Joseph Taka in Tiv land was clamouring for freedom, all those struggles have to a large extent ended.

All these and many more in my view are reasons why Nigeria should be thankful to God that we have made progress. As people would say not to the extent, as you compare the progress we have made and the resources that have accrued to Nigeria over these years, you will be pained to realise that a lot of it was frittered away. So how we wish we were able to make more judicious use of the resources that have come our way since 1960.

But it is not a reason to despair. As I said we are learning from the bitter lessons of the past, more and more crop of younger Nigerians with a passion for development are showing interest in politics and participating in the process and I believe that God willing they will be able to avoid the mistakes which the older generation of politicians made.

Mind you, some of these politicians were in their 20’s and 30’s when all of a sudden the nation was thrust on them. They were young men and young women so they were bound to make mistakes but now we have older people with more experience, more education, more broad minded, better travelled and with the age of internet we have a lot more access to information about good governance. I believe that with a combination of all these, the years ahead would be better than the years before.

Economically, Nigeria seems to be nose diving into economic stress; what is your take on this?

Well, you said the state of the economy is in distress and every enlightened Nigerian knows the reason for this. The reason is our over dependence on crude oil as our source of foreign exchange earnings because Nigeria is an import dependent country.

A lot of the things we need including the camera you are using are all imported and we buy this with foreign exchange and the main source of our foreign earnings is crude oil and whenever there has been a dislocation in the international market for crude oil Nigeria’s economy suffers greatly

Of recent there have been a number of negative developments internationally; the glut in the international oil market with Saudi Arabia, Russia, threatening to flood the market with excess crude oil supply which will mean that the price of crude will fall.

But over and above all those factors is COVID-19 pandemic for which reason most of the world economy shut down for several months that means that the buyers of our crude oil were not able to buy oil.

In fact at a time the price of crude oil was minus two dollars. At a time crude was selling for about 28dollars a barrel but at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic crude oil was now minus two. I was imagining how do you get to minus two.

The reason for this is that brokers, international oil brokers that really buy this crude and they charter ocean tanker and for every day that their crude is on the tanker they pay a lot of money for hiring those tankers. So the longer those tankers were on the ocean with your crude oil, the more you will be paying to the owner of the tanker.

So people were now begging for buyers to take the oil off them. I pay you two dollars to please empty the oil from the tanker in order to minimise my loss of 20,000 dollars a day for chartering the tanker.

So these are some of the things that have affected the Nigeria’s economy and it re-enforces the need for us to re-diversify and go into other solid minerals that abound in this country and agriculture and it is a good thing that this government is emphasising agriculture and they are giving all kinds of incentives for the farmers to be able to grow the foods that we consume in this country and if not even export to other countries.

But talking about the economy, I want to speak on an issue which not many people are conscious about or are willing to speak publicly about and that is our population.

People are saying that by 2050 Nigeria will be the most populous country in the world and we are a predominantly poor country. As of now Nigeria is said to be the poverty capital of the world as they so described.

While government is doing its best to lift people out of poverty, the sad situation is that while 1million people are being lifted out of poverty, about 3million new babies are being born into poverty and the mystery of nature, is that it is the poorest people that have the largest number of children, maybe it is the way God used to balance it or maybe the poor don’t have too much to bother themselves and they have only one source of pleasure. But the result of that is that you have poverty being multiplied in Nigeria at a faster rate than economic recovery.

I am sure that the government is aware of this problem, it is an existential problem for Nigeria, the issue of over population.

You know that the economy is growing at less than 2% per annum but the population is growing at least at 3% per annum. So at any point in time the economy is under stress not because government is not doing anything but that the number of mouths that government have to cater for, the number of people that government needs to build houses for, build schools for, is outstripping the resources available to government.

And as the population is increasing it is increasing the pool of criminals because some of these people who grew up without the love of their parents, without compassion, cannot have compassion on anybody because they feel the society has been unfair to them, so they have no mercy standing on the highway and opening fire on any vehicle that is passing because they feel that society has been unfair to them.

So no matter how much the government is doing in order to ameliorate the economic situations of those people unless we tackle the problem from the foundation, from its roots, we are not going to get it right.

So we like to hope that government will intensify its efforts at economic diversification, economic recovery but the time has come to face squarely the looming danger of population explosion in Nigeria.

I am not prepared at this stage to use the expression population control because people can read so many things into that including the method which was adopted by China and that method served the Chinese people very well. Now China is a model that even rivals the US and even in the process of overtaking US but they had the discipline to plan for the future of their country and part of that plan was planning about the population of China.

They are even planning now to export some of the excess population to developing countries including African countries that means they had a policy. What is the population policy of Nigeria? I think the time has come for us to sit down and begin to fashion out a population policy for Nigeria.

What is your impression of the performance of your party the APC in the last governorship election in Edo state?

Well the election has come and gone but for me the most important thing is that our worse fears did not materialise. There was fear in the minds of many people that the election would be bloody, there would be massive violence but that didn’t happen, thanks be to God.

Instead the election has been adjudged to be free, fair and credible and has been so adjudged by no less a person than Mr President himself Mohammadu Buhari. Observers both local and international have also unanimously affirmed that the election was peaceful, free, fair and credible and that makes me proud as a person.

I have had occasions not less than two or three times to admonish everybody concern to go about the business of Edo election in a very cautious manner in order that we have a happy outcome both for my party the APC and for the people of Edo state.

While I cannot say that it was a very happy outcome for APC but I can comfort myself that it was a happy outcome for the people of Edo state and it is going to be a model which other states of the federation would emulate in years to come.

I appealed in one of my press interviews to INEC to ensure that Edo state governorship election does not count as one of the inconclusive elections that we witnessed in some parts of the country and thankfully the elections were so smooth that INEC didn’t have to contend with the embarrassment of inconclusive elections.

And for the future of the APC I think this is the time to get back to the drawing board and remodel and redesign the way forward for APC. Society is getting increasingly modernised, the youths are getting more and more sophisticated thanks again to the power of the social media and modern ICT.

This means therefore that the political party administration in Nigeria has to rise above its present level. People are conscious of due process now, people are very conscious of the rule of law, people are very mindful of the constitutional roles of the leadership of the party and even the membership of the party, from top to bottom or should I say from the ward level to the national level.

Political parties in Nigeria have to be organised now taking into cognisance the constitutional roles of the various organs of the party and the need to respect those various organs of the party.

So we need sound political party administration because a government is a product of a political party. If a political party is weak, the government that it produces cannot be stronger, cannot be better, it will inherently suffer some of the shortcomings of the political party.

So for me for the future, political parties should aim to put their best foot forward, to put their best people forward not just in the party but once they do it in the party it will also ensure that in governance they put their best people forward. The future of democracy in Nigeria deserves nothing less than that.

Advertisement