First of all, I am trying to digest the second act. But the first act took place before I got on the plane that just arrived a few hours ago. And I said oh, here we go again! Alams(Alamieyesiagha) is episode two, this time in reverse (little knowing that there had been act two of episode two and that took place in Maiduguri).
At the time of Alams, I said ?you people who don?t believe in egbe (power to disappearing), this is the time when you will learn. And, if you remember the present head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo, when he went to South Africa one time, when Mandela was still in jail, as a member of the Eminent Persons Group, he said: ?where are we, we Africans, with all our juju, epe, ofo, ase etc?? And so I think we should ask Obasanjo about what vanishing trick was used (Charles Taylor was last seen in Calabar and re-surfaced in Maiduguri). I think you will find that there is some African juju going on which the United Nations will not understand. And whoever broke the chain of command of the ase, we have that person to thank for not letting us look absolute idiots in the eyes of the world. I am just sorry that Milosevic is dead. I would have loved to have a secret tape recorder, when they share the same cell and compare notes, for their crimes against humanity, to see what they have to say to each other.
We hear that the recommendations for the amendment of the constitution will start next week at the National Assembly...
Nigerians should gird themselves for the unthinkable. Because what we?ve learnt again and again in this country is that the unthinkable always happens. And we?ve seen signs, unmistakable signs. Now, PRONACO is going to come up with a constitution. This exercise is geared towards the next election. This is one of the guiding factors for the deadline of the presentation of the document to the nation. And, the people of this nation who?ve been involved in the exercise at various levels will then be asked to decide whether this is preferable to the one which is being imposed on the people and which is being tinkered with by the people. And we invite them to defend their choice. This is a collective effort. If the people of this nation decide that they want to make the mistake of an unthinkable precedent being set, and they are not prepared to get up and fight, then you should understand that they are endangered forever. Because the next person who comes in will write his or her own constitution and that person will say what did you do, what did you say, when the last incumbent re-wrote the constitution? So, for me, there?s no choice. Any attempt to tamper with this constitution for the sake of the prolongation of the tenure of any individual has got to be resisted. And this is the message we?re sending to the nation. But we?re not giving this message empty-handed. We want to be able to say to the people: this is the kind of document, which they can use to protect themselves against this kind of criminal manipulation. So with that document in hand, which is actually coming from the participation of the populace of this nation, we believe the people will defend their own constitution. So, we thought of so many ways in which the so-called third-term agenda can be effective. And believe me, the only ones which can succeed are very fragile. The ones, which are apparent, are also fragile, because I believe we have enough people of integrity in the Legislative Houses (who are not frightened, who can not be blackmailed) to resist it.
But I believe that people who are obsessed with power can do anything. I think that that?s one lesson, which I want the people of this nation to understand. I?ve written about power on many levels, in fact, my next intervention deliberately is coming out at this time, in the next few weeks, and it?s about power. So, we have got to conscientise our people about the possibilities and the probabilities of power. We are witnessing it in our time, I think we better be ready.
If you are to write the story of Nigeria, who are you going to express disappointment with most? Is it Abacha or Obasanjo?
Well, disappointment is a very mild word. Disappointment at somebody is a very innocuous kind of emotion or attitude. I am not into comparisons right now, although I know what you mean exactly. But the term I would use is much stronger than disappointment in comparing the two.
You talked about some scenarios...Do you have an idea of where they are actually going?
It?s rather like calling down disaster on your head by naming the nature of disaster. Let?s just say we don?t want to put ideas in people?s head and also we don?t want counter-preparations to be pre-empted by knowledge of the fact that some of us are thinking ahead of the other side.
What is PRONACO?s reaction and how is it taking up the issue of incarceration, not just of Dr. Fredrick Fasehun, but other ethnic activists?
And for seven days, the nation was at near-standstill for the national census. And despite the two-day extension, the exercise was seemingly marred by lapses, poor logistics and all that, yet the Federal government and its agents went ahead and said the exercise achieved 95 per cent success. Personally, what is your assessment of this exercise?
Let me begin with the second question. I once received in my e-mail a message, which someone sent around to everybody to support the census and so on and so forth. This was a month before the census actually began.
And I replied to this faceless person and said why are you conducting census? What?s the whole point of a census? A census, as an exercise, is not just about numbers. It?s about knowing the nature of who you are, collectively, what you are. The census is a serious exercise. It?s not just to tell people to come out of their doors one day. With all this new satellite things roving all around, you can order, instead of one-week curfew, you can order that everybody must come out of their houses wherever they are for the satelites to take photographs. With those pictures, they can tell you how many people were eating moi moi in a certain spot in the world on that day. So, that?s one way of doing it. If it?s a question of numbers, there are much cheaper ways of doing the census. So, obviously census is not all about number. It?s about who we are. And when this regime decided to carry out a census without details such as ethnic origin, nationalities, religion-these are critical factors even in the organization of a community. When the government runs away from issues like these, it means it?s not being honest or else it?s calling us second-class citizens. That we are not mature enough to handle facts about ourselves.
I find it personally insulting. I don?t know about the rest of the nation. But I find it insulting that you cut off certain parts of our identity in relation to other identities in the nation.
This is what census is about. These facts. How many women, how many children? It?s not just religion and ethnic nationalities alone. These other facts go into the statistics that build up a portrait of a nation. And that?s what census is about in a most profound level. So, from the very beginning, in fact, we debated it in PRONACO, that we?ll stop talking about it. It was simply because we realized that certain sections of the Nigerian community could not understand the issues. They don?t have enough time to educate the Nigerian population about why they should boycott the census.
We decided okay, let them carry on. But it does not mean that we support them in this particular exercise. And, when I received that memo, I wrote whoever it was (I didn?t know him), and I said you are a demographer, you are an expert in this field. Do you really think you are undertaking a fruitful, valuable exercise? He wrote back.
I must say it is nice to receive a courteous response from a civil servant. He said, well isn?t it important at least that we should know how many we are? Well, since his demographic intelligence did not pass that point, I did not reply, I just left it. I didn?t believe a professional demographer would send me that kind of reply, because it simply means he?s committed to it (maybe he has his job to protect as a civil servant). So there?s no point continuing the exchange any longer. So, the exercise from the very beginning was doomed to be unsatisfactory. After all these years, don?t you think that we really owe ourselves the responsibility, the duty of doing a census properly, even if it takes two years from the beginning of planning to the very end? And so, you can add any number of days, you can continue to curfew all of Nigeria for the next three weeks (just leaving a slight gap for Taylor to escape), the census will still be the same. So I am not surprised the slightest.
The first question about Dr. Fasheun. Oh yes. Again PRONACO has made statements about this. It?s a deliberate attempt to gag the ethnic nationalities? voice. Uwazuruike, Dokubo, Fasehun, Gani. It?s no accident that they are charged with offences, which are unbailable.
You see, I was involved in the recent hostage saga, and it?s very very sad that this regime should wait until violent acts like that took place before they engaged in dialogue. What this regime should be doing is involving whatever organizations (civil societies, ethnic nationalities, institutions, NGOs) in a continuing dialogue. Why should government lock up these leaders on the spurious charges of treason? What treason, what did they do exactly? I mean it?s deliberate. Unfortunately, we don?t exacerbate the clash between these groups and the Federal Government.
Q: General Ibrahim Babangida has now declared his intention to run in 2007. What is your reaction to this?
Look, the musical chairs being played by the military, let us make up our minds not to dance to this. Enough is enough. We?ve been insulted right, left and center. What is it? People shoot their way to power, accumulate resources and then use all the resources they accumulated through illegal means to come and dominate our lives. For me, the answer to that is so straight forward that eh...But as they say, Nigeria ronu o (Nigeria think)!
Q: Will PRONACO, when it finishes its sittings, have anything to do with the government? What is your advice to our national legislators over third term and constitutional amendments?
We are not talking to the government. What is being done by PRONACO has nothing to do with this government. Obviously they will receive the conclusions of PRONACO. But nobody at any moment within PRONACO thinks for a moment that this regime or any other will execute, or follow, will suddenly change the existing constitution for the one brought by PRONACO, no. We are addressing ourselves to the people of Nigeria. In fact, we are not addressing ourselves to the people of Nigeria; we are creating a platform for the people of Nigeria to say exactly what they want in freedom, for a change (not hand-picked people by any regime, military or quasi democratic). No. We?re creating for the first time in Nigeria and in many parts of Africa, a platform for the people to say exactly, how they want to be ruled. And, we are synthesizing the various positions, which have been taken by the constituent members of PRONACO, civil societies, as well as ethnic nationalities. So we have no business with the government. In fact, the government, willy-nilly, this present regime is part of PRONACO for the simple reason that we have adopted their own confab conclusion, as one of the papers submitted to PRONACO. It?s there. It?s part of the basic material. What does this government itself think? So the conclusions of the Confab are part and parcel of what we are debating in PRONACO. In other words, the way we came up to these conclusions, we?re sending those conclusion back to the people to use as a basis for their own self-empowerment, self-determination, their own choice of leadership. They would be ones who will say to future candidates ?do you accept these things, which came up this route, or do you not?
For the second question, I will just say to them remember you are going back to that place from where you were elected, so, think twice. You want to go back there, and then think carefully before you take a decision.
Can we assume that you are saying that the census exercise should be cancelled and no results announced? Then, how prepared is PRONACO in terms of funding and other logistics?
No. I never said for a moment the census should be cancelled, because I wasn?t here during the census period. I only arrived this afternoon. But I will say I will not be in the least surprised if this ends up to be another exercise in futility.
And there are ways in which you can check, given the figures, the many parameters by which you can know whether the figures are of any value, validity or they are just rubbish. I?ll leave that to demographers to comment upon. I?m just saying that we?ve been short changed. It?s the same amount of money. It would now be to expand the expenditure to put in those parameters about who we are, not just how many are we. The same exercise, just take a few more seconds to put down those ones, and why did the government choose to renege on this simple civic responsibility? What?s behind it? I mean those who go and cut the throat of other religionists don?t say can I see your census card or identity card? No.
They have their own instant parameters for deciding whether you are due to be made suya on the spot, or to be made something else. So, what exactly is this government afraid of by short changing us? The exclusion of these parameters is an insult to the intelligence of Nigerians.
Prof., you started by talking around the debasement of values in this country and I thought you were going to say that money politics is at the root of the evils that we have at the National Assembly. Many of these people, to the best of my knowledge, may not come back to their base as a result of the wealth they must have acquired in Abuja. There are several aspects to this debasement of our values, which I believe Prof. may want to talk about.
The soul of Nigeria has been heavily corrupted. But we?ve seen enough to know that people only need some kind of avenue for the expression of the more positive side of their personality. We?re hoping that, if I may get personal, one of the reasons we intend to launch a movement is to create, for the younger generation, one platform, which they can use if they are really serious. If you want to be involved in politics, this is a platform. A platform of which you can go to people and say ?listen we don?t have one penny. We don?t have one penny to spend on you. If you come here saying settle us, please go and join PDP or whatever, not this one.?
Third term advocates argue that it is to ensure the continuity of government policies. So what is your view about that?
Eh, which aspect of government policy. Lawlessness? Blackmail? Government by thuggery? So which policies are we talking about? The kind of events we saw in Oyo State? The kind of events we saw in Anambra, with obvious collusion from the very top? So, what policies are they talking about? Is it the policy of economic reforms? Well, I leave the economists to pronounce ultimately on that. All I know is that the joblessness rate in this nation has not diminished. I know it personally. Each time I am leaving Ikeja airport, I say ?ah my pocket is at least remaining the same until I get back.?
And, it?s serious business, so what are we talking about.
Can?t you run for the presidency?
No I?m not interested in running for office. Somebody said to me oh if Obasanjo leaves there?s nobody to take over. It makes me mad when I hear that. That there?s nobody else! It?s been said again and again. During Abacha they said eh but if he leaves the office now, who is going to be there? Jesus Christ! In this country? Anywhere you go, top-level achievement, whether it?s NASA, whether its medical sciences, whether it?s economics and so on, there are good Nigerians everywhere. Even before we came right here, we know it. So, the party has, for instance, a series of options for those whom we will support for office. So, the question of Wole Soyinka doesn?t even come up. In fact, my idea which I intend to put forward to the party when we have our first open meeting, is that we should go further than a partnership, president and running mate, and present to the nation, look this is our ideal cabinet for resuscitating this country.
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