By Daniel Kanu
Respected academic and 2015 presidential candidate of the KOWA Party, Prof Remi Sonaiyan in this exclusive chat with Sunday Sun speaks on Nigeria’s reality, the failure of governance, 2023 challenge and president Nigeria needs, security challenge and the need for a radical shift in the coming elections, among others. Excerpt:
We have few days to officially kick-off the campaign by all the political parties. Looking at the political climate, what do you see, do you have anything to worry about concerning the coming elections?
The thing is that I don’t like to project that I know what will happen, I don’t. If some people have a gift of knowing that something will happen before it actually happens, personally, I don’t have that gift. I won’t be anxious of discerning the political development. I will rather wait and see. What I chose to do rather is to engage with people and try to convince all of us on the need to do things right. That is my own orientation, I don’t predict that this is how things will go, that people will be violent or people will not be violent. I spend my time saying, please let us ensure that we carry things out properly, that we conduct ourselves properly as things should be conducted. That is my own general orientation, so I don’t have what some may call fears.
Is it that you don’t have the fear of the security challenge negatively affecting the coming election or like the alarm that has just been raised by the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) that the INEC server was hacked or has been tampered with among other issues?
Then the remedy to such issues is not to worry or have fear rather it is or should be taking things up. That is what I am saying that we are supposed to do, if we have information that certain things are happening that may endanger the election. What are our options? Is it to worry and go and hide ourselves in our homes, saying that me, I am not going out oooh, I don’t know what will happen or to organise ourselves and go and challenge INEC? That they should please come and explain to us on what is happening. Has your server been hacked? Have you found out who hacked it? We must enter a new era of awareness as citizens, so running away, hiding our heads in our houses that there might be violence and things like; that is not the way to go. How does that help us as a country? How does it develop us? How does it give us the kind of government that we want? People should be talking about the office of a citizen as the highest office in the land. It is in our power to determine how things will be and it is not by running away and hiding our heads.
The state of insecurity has continued unabated, it has remained consistent and even getting worse by the day…?
(Cut’s in) It shows it has not been properly tackled the way it should be. If it has been tackled the way it should be there would have been noticeable improvement, it would have improved and we should not be in this situation anymore where people are still being abducted, communities are being attacked and invaded and their blood wasted. We still have situations where you read from the news that 50 people are killed here, 50 people abducted there etc. As long as those things continue to happen and at the rate that they are happening, it’s evidence that the government at every level is not getting a good hand, a good grip on the security, they are not doing it well, it’s obvious. If you have the right orientation and you deal with an issue you must begin to see results, positive results. They will tell us and keep saying that insecurity is reducing in the land and all that, but at the same time we keep getting all the painful news of what is happening, the killings, people being abducted, the banditry, the sacking, displacement of villages, cattle rustlings etc? When things like these atrocities still happen, you can’t force Nigerians to believe that things are getting better when our experience tells us the contrary.
Some critics are condemning the government over Nigeria’s dwindling economy, but most times the government spokespersons give excuse that the situation is a global situation…?
(Cut’s in) Well, they are always globalising, even the security issue too was globalised that we (Nigeria) are not the only one. Yes we are not the only one, Russia is attacking Ukraine so Ukraine has a lot of security and economic challenges, but certainly, that is not the kind of situation that we are in right now and what we are hearing, what we are witnessing is that it is unfettered corruption that is affecting us in Nigeria. How do you explain the thousands of barrels of oil theft? What was the number that was circulated recently. Of course, a lot are being stolen. How can such number of barrels of oil leave the shores of Nigeria in a country that has the Navy, military, Airforce, Customs, Police? It’s ridiculous, how can that happen without the connivance or security compromise? We are not talking about a few trailers escaping through the bush of our borders, but using massive ship to take the oil away and you say the security is not aware? A ship is not a small canoe that you may ignore, so let them not keep deceiving us, we are not fools and let them not keep making fools of us at the international level as well. I recall that at The Niche lecture which I attended recently Mr Babatunde Fashola (Minister for Works) who was the Guest Speaker said we (Nigerians) should be careful how we paint our country, that we should not be saying things that are disparaging about our country, running down our government etc. Nobody is running down the government rather the government is doing a good job of running down itself. Nobody needs to run down our government. If a government announces to the world, for instance, that this is the quantity or barrel of oil that it is supposed to export and then we are getting the news of the oil theft that we are getting, and the quantity we are supposed to export is being stolen, do you think that the international community will take such a government seriously? When our school girls are kidnapped and they stay seven, eight years in the bush and they are not rescued, does anybody need to run down such a government? We see what others are doing if their citizens are kidnapped or whatever thing that happens to them we see the extent to which they go out to rescue them. In our own case the government will come out and say it’s an unfortunate situation and that’s the end of it. They vote in more money to the military, to the police, to all the security agencies yet it does not mean that all that money results in anything positive. So, nobody needs to run down the government if you are performing. Of course, everybody knows how government ought to perform and you are not doing it and you are saying they are running you (the government) down. How many countries in the world have their universities on shutdown due to a strike for over seven months and they are unable to resolve the matter? And what have we seen? Have we seen a concerted efforts to sincerely solve this problem at the highest level? The President of South Africa (Ramaphosa) went to London for the Queens burial and the plan was that he will go from London to New York for the UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) meeting, but he went back to South Africa and never went straight to NY because there was a power challenge, an emergency regarding power in South Africa and he should not be seen that while you have a serious issue at home you are busy roaming the world. Our own leaders do not have that kind of sense of duty and commitment to duty. So we are not abusing them, we are stating what we see, and the whole world knows how to interpret that.
The presidential candidates of all the political parties are now known to Nigerians or have been made public and you have been in that position before as a presidential candidate. How do you rate the candidates, do they have the capacity to take this country to the next level?
Personally, I have made my choice known. It is on twitter, on social media and I have expressed it to different people. Considering the people we have, I am putting my bet on Mr Peter Obi, I am going with him. The issue is: I am not going with him with the expectation of him being a messiah or something like that, no. What I am looking for right now is an individual who will simply turn us away from this part of destruction that we have been following and turn the country around towards the right part.That is what I am looking for in terms of competence, in terms of capacity, in terms of character. The other front runners, they have been part of this old system which has not profited Nigeria. So, I cannot pitch my tent on their side because what we need now is a new orientation. Of course, Mr. Obi has been a governor before in Anambra, but we are saying given the choices that we have before us he is the one that is most likely to turn things around for Nigerians.
As one that has run for the highest office in the land, the presidency, what do you see as the way forward for Nigeria?
Leadership is so important and that is why this 2023 elections are critical because if people approach it with the same sentiment of ethnicity and religion etc, not wanting to rock the boat nothing will change. But we must take example from things that we see happening around the world. Many nation’s are beginning to make radical choices, clean departure from what they have known before. This is because their survival depends on it, so we don’t want people who will continue the same thing, business as usual. I believe that a good leadership, a leader who is able to inspire people will make a difference. Of course, the leader can’t do everything by himself or herself. All these noise about one leader, one individual cannot do everything by themselves, but the leader can set the tone and inspire the people by the things that they say, by the things that they do, and even by the example of their personal life. For instance, all these flamboyant kind of lifestyle of our leaders, big, big cars, big and massive houses, living as if they are picking money from the ground, lavishing it on personal ceremonies, on frivolities, when you know that over 90 million of your population are living in poverty. How does that make sense to anybody? So we want leaders who will choose a simple lifestyle deliberately for the sake of the generality of the citizens of this country.
Don’t you think that the presidential system of government that Nigeria is practicing is a big minus, very expensive among others. Some are suggesting the parliamentary system?
What I said about wastefulness is affecting it, we are running a system that is too expensive and people are earning salaries that don’t make sense like our legislators. They say that their salary is small but the allowances, what is the meaning of that? They are stealing from us. I have spoken and written about this at different fora. Senegal, I think in 2012 decided to scrap their Senate and they scrapped it. Why, because they had floods in their country and they needed money to re-settle the people who were affected by the flood, and to clean up the areas and things like that. They decided they were not going to borrow again, but for us, we don’t mind borrowing, we keep borrowing and borrowing. We borrow for anything and we are not seeing the results of the borrowings. Senegal decided that they were not going to borrow, that they will look inside and see what they can do. They decided that their bicameral system was no longer necessary, that one of them should go, so they scrapped their Senate. That is part of the radical changes I am talking about that some countries seem to be bold enough to make. But in Nigeria, we are not bold enough, we are not courageous in the face of serious challenges to make the kind of radical shift that will change our situation for the better. People have been talking about restructuring, restructuring and restructuring, the current president (Buhari) promised to look into it, to look into the report of the 2014 National Conference, but what has he done?
Do you think that Nigerians have been adequately mobilised for 2023 elections ?
The citizens are trying to get mobilised, but I tell you as many others have equally observed, poverty has been weaponized. When you deliberately, and I say it advisedly, when you deliberately make your citizens poor most of their energy will be spent fighting poverty, looking for food to eat. Most Nigerians are spending all their energy looking for what to eat, looking for food, so all this issue on politics is secondary to them. They have to first of all be kept alive, that is the issue.