JOHN Cardinal Onaiyekan, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja does not need much introduction. A former President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN) and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, he has al­ways spoken his mind about the situation in the country. Having assumed the role of a gadfly for the country, he does not hesitate in speaking out against unpopu­lar policies of government. In this interview, with BOLAJI TUNJI, the cleric speaks on the one year of President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, the anti-corruption crusade and the recent petrol pump price increase, among other issues. Excerpts…

It’s over a year of Presi­dent Muhammadu Bu­hari’s administration, how would you assess the jour­ney so far?

For quite some time, we have said we should be patient and give the administration some time.Even government has asked us to be patient and I think we should still be patient. But what seems obvi­ous and of which one had hope is that after a year, things would have been clearer than they are right now. I’m saying, that is the hope. At the same time knowing how delicate and complex the issue of governance can be, especially with Nigeria, we still need to be patient. A few positions taken by govern­ment appear to be in the right di­rection, the only problem is that the details, the objectives that the gov­ernment wants to achieve should still be clearly defined. I want to believe that the present govern­ment did some home works during the electoral campaigns and made some promises to Nigerians. It is not too clear, whether they foresaw how complex the reality on the ground would be, which is all the more reason we need to give then more time. The only thing about giving people more time is that you don’t have all the time. We have only a four-year term during which government must prove to us that we are right to trust them with power. One year is gone, soon the second year would be here and af­ter the third year, we will start prepar­ing for another election. I would like to believe that after this year, they would be in a better position to roll out critical and strategic programmes which will indeed justify the prom­ises they have made to us on the need to be patient.

Criticisms have trailed the administration that govern­ment does not have a clear cut economic blueprint, would you agree with that position?

I’m not an economist. Therefore I’m not in a position to say whether the government has a clear cut eco­nomic blue print or not. The much I know, especially with regards to the modern economy especially in terms of political economy, is that it is not easy to determine certain things. It is one thing to have an economic policy and idea, it is another thing to ensure the policies and ideas are carried out. At the end of the day, what the ma­jority of Nigerians, like me, are ask­ing the government is; what is the quality of life we are getting from our government? That is what Nigerians are asking. I don’t think Nigerians are asking for a pie in the sky, they are not asking government to work miracles. Nigerians are expecting that the minimum standard of living would be forthcoming from any gov­ernment. In the area of economics, there’s something we should not for­get is that whoever came to govern­ment in this past year with the price of oil going from $100 to a barrel to $30 to a barrel would have quite a lot of problems with the arithmetic. The question is, how do you get Nigeri­ans to absorb the effect of this diffi­cult arithmetic? You can only man­age the fund that is available to you. The place of oil income in the Nige­rian economy is very, very predomi­nant. What we are then saying is that until we are able to do what we said we will; which is to diversify, and do it effectively, we will be at the mercy of whatever the oil price is. All I am saying is that if things are not mov­ing as fast as we expect, or things are not what it should be, it could be due to bad management, it could also be due to the arithmetic of our income. Depending on who you are, our posi­tion to the government in power is, one’s answer may be one way or the other. Having said that, we should not forget that there are many Afri­can nations that do not have oil and have managed to run their affairs fairly decently. May be the biggest problem is that the present govern­ment has inherited a nation and an apparatus that was used to $100 per barrel of oil but is finding it difficult to adjust to $30 a barrel currently . I am only speculating because once it comes to the economy, one needs to have the bigger picture or the right figures and statistics which are not available to me.

A few months ago, you advised the government on the anti-corruption war. Would you say that govern­ment and the anti-corrup­tion agencies are doing it the right way considering the criticism that the war is tilted against those believed to have served the country well and officials of the im­mediate past administra­tion?

First and foremost, everybody seems to agree that there is or there was an intolerable level of corruption in the country. And that something should be done about it. But when it comes to actually facing it, it is not what you can settle by just round­ing up a few people. Government should not allow people to have a feeling that the war on corruption is about targeting certain people. That will defeat the war against corrup­tion. My feelings about this whole thing is based on my understanding of the fact that the kind of corruption in Nigeria was systemic, endemic. While I’m not saying that people who took money should be al­lowed to go free, I would have felt that the emphasis should be on the system. Reorganize the system of governance in the country in such a way that it would not be an easy thing for anybody to steal millions and billions of naira because of the position he or she had held in gov­ernment . Find a way to block all the holes in the system. Insist that the structures that regulate the af­fair of governance especially the financial aspect is adhered to in such a way that you don’t have to be a saint to be able to remain honest. In many countries of the world, a lot of money is moving around, and there are a few people who are also corrupt there, you are corrupt at your own risk. You can be caught. My fear is that since we have this situation of endemic cor­ruption, there is nobody, who was anybody who has taken part in the affairs of this nation in the past twenty years, if you scratch small, there’s no way you wouldn’t find something. That being the case, the way we deal with the so-called corrupt people needs to be careful­ly addressed, so as not to appear, as we are hearing witch-hunting nowadays. Why do you pounce on one person and leave others? I be­lieve if it were possible for govern­ment to adopt a different attitude that would find a way on the one hand working on the system and on the other hand, making it pos­sible for certain cases of blatant, heavy stealing to be handled in a way that if you agree you have stolen so much, bring the money back. This may appear naive, but if you are going the legal way with­out considering how people can refund the stolen monies, it will take a long time. Time, it was, dur­ing the military regime when you round people up and lock them up until they confess. You would agree with me that, that was not too good for the country and it cannot happen now. Now, we are running a system of, you are innocent un­til proven guilty and I think what that means is that, we admit that it is better for a guilty man to go free than an innocent man to be un­justly condemned. That is the prin­ciple now. How far we are going to succeed with that, I don’t know. You will recall that even during the (Goodluck) Jonathan admin­istration, there were a whole lot of scandals breaking. It was almost a regular affair, happening every two months. But those scandals were not in any way dealt with, before you finish with one, another would come. So many things were swept under the carpet. Can we as a nation continue living with this without making too many people enemies of the nation? Here comes the issue you raised about people who had served the nation well. Of course, you find out that the people who are high in govern­ment are the ones who had the opportunity to either make or steal so much money. So, you will have a situation of someone who has served the country well but could also have helped himself very, very generously. We have to see how to balance it. If we have a situ­ation where someone had stepped on powerful toes while in govern­ment but he is being unjustly pun­ished. I would have thought that this would be a concern of government that this does not happen.

Taking you back and based on what you have said, would you say the cor­ruption war is targeted at certain people, taking the case of the former Head of Service, (Stephen) Oron­saye, who is facing trial?

I did not say the anti-corruption war is targeted against anybody, but I am saying that the impression is created for the simple reason that whoever is corrupt and whoever is not? That is the issue we have not resolved. I am looking forward to a situation of someone high up in government, like the person you have mentioned, faced the trials and ends up being vindicated and I will say, this is the type of person that we should celebrate and make a hero and put his statue in front of the Na­tional Assembly. Here is a Nigerian who had the opportunity to be cor­rupt, but was not. We cannot do that until he goes through trial. When I talk about structures, we are to in­clude not only how business should be conducted in the civil service but how the law should be administered . The scenario of 100 lawyers invad­ing a court over one case, that is ri­diculous . We should find a way to prevent such charade. We have to see that judges are in position to do their works without intimidation, without harassment. We are talk­ing of separation of powers, without anybody telling them what to do. When we see the way some of the cases are going, one becomes a bit worried. Some of the judges have also come out to say that they were under strong influences, that they are not free to do their work. How many of them can resist any influ­ence from above and from different places? We are back to the rules and to how things are done properly. I would have hoped that the whole process of dealing with the cases of corruption can be dispensed with without too much rigmarole and we still ensure that justice was done.

Nigeria has been de­scribed recently as ‘fantas­tically corrupt’ by the British Prime Minister. To many Ni­gerians, President Buhari’s response came as a sur­prise, as he said all he want­ed was for looted money to be repatriated. What’s your reaction to this?

We heard when the British PM said that Nigeria is fantastically cor­rupt. We all heard it. But ever be­fore he said so, we have also been saying the same about our country. Even our government has been say­ing so about our country. So there is nothing new in what he said that we have not said about ourself. The only aspect of it, which some of us have been saying, is that it takes two to tango. The stolen monies are not kept in our banks, but are used to acquire property in those countries.

Large part of it is kept abroad and kept in those countries where we have so much noise about hon­esty and good governance in Ni­geria. And it is not possible to say governments in those countries are unaware of these things. A German once told me that if he takes more than 10000 Euros to lodge in the bank, he would be made to explain where he got such huge sum before it could be accepted. He now can’t understand how a nobody can come from Nigeria with a suitcase full of money and deposits millions of euro in the bank and nobody asks ques­tions.

So if Mr. President wants to go beyond rhetorics, and seriously in­sist that those countries where our monies are hidden, if they want to continue to remain our friends, they should refund those monies. Some people will say it is about the banks not the government, but we know very well that when govern­ment wants to pursue certain funds, it’s very simple. A good example is America, after 9/11, America de­cided to focus on any money com­ing from the Arab nations and the independence of the banks didn’t apply. Meaning that when it suits them, they know what to do. They need to be told that situation in Ni­geria is so desperate that we can’t continue keeping our money, oiling their economy when so many of our people are unemployed.

Having said that, I don’t think any of those countries really wants to let go of the monies. It is not as if our people took the money there and they dug the ground for them to keep the money. No. The money is in their economy, running their factories and their business. The Nigerian who kept his money is just collecting a small dividend compared to what they are using the money for over there. That’s why it is so sad. So, we shouldn’t be surprised if those countries are not keen to let go. I am waiting to see whether (Barack) Obama, (Da­vid) Cameron, (Angela) Merkel or any of those western countries would buy into our request to re­turn that money.

With dwindling revenue, what do you think govern­ment should be doing…?

One of the things we are already aware of, is that the cost of gover­nance is very high. Take for instance our National Assembly. What they take home is higher than that of their American counterparts and they do not see anything wrong in that. This is where I think the gov­ernment should move, to reduce the cost of governance. It won’t be easy. But they can’t be telling us to tighten our belts while they are loosening theirs. The National As­sembly is still going on with busi­ness as usual, they are still going on a budget of a barrel of oil at $150. I just learnt they bought some ve­hicles at a cost of N30 million each. And these are the people who are supposed to make laws for the com­mon man, when they do not know the meaning of poverty.