Professor of International Law and Jurisprudence, Akin Oyebode has said that based on experience, nothing would shock him about Nigeria. In this interview with OBIDIKE JERRY, he said the nation is at the precipice.
The final EU-Election observation commission, National Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute reports on 2019 general elections said the 2019 poll fell short of standards set in 2015. They identified a lot of institutional and operational deficiencies. The reports urged Nigerians to chart a way forward for our democracy. Do you share the views expressed by these external election observer bodies?
Well, as a past election monitor myself, last being in Madagascar, I know the role of observers; they are to observe. They make statements reflecting their impression in their final report. But that report is not binding on anyone. It is just a reflection of the feelings of foreign observers. Foreign observers do not pontificate and make judgmental statements as such without being accused of violating the integrity and national independence of the countries concerned. So, with due respect to the EU, NDI, NRI, and other observers, they have done their job. It is for us now to use it as far as we want. And so, this holier than thou approach especially by Western observers, smacks of paternalism. They are so paternalistic. It is not the place or role of do-gooders from the West to declare the propriety or impropriety or the integrity or lack of it, of the electoral process. We grant them the indulgence of being more experienced in terms of Western style democracy but they should be very circumspect and mindful of stepping on toes in countries where they had been invited. It is almost like a guest commenting on the quality of food which he had been served by his host. It is unethical. It is a little bit untidy. So, quite sincerely, we thank them for their coming and for their observations but we are not bound as an independent country by all that they observed. So, the fault really is in those who invited them, not in the people who were invited because we must ask ourselves how many times have Western countries, Europe and North America sought our opinion in terms of their electoral process, democratic process and what have you? So, my submission is that we should just note what they have said and not feel threatened or harangued by these people who claim to want to teach us how to behave.
In terms of their observations, do you share some of their fears concerning our democracy? For instance, they complained the over militarization of the process and the rest of it.
That point is well taken but they must know that we are a different level of development. Ideally, soldiers or military have no business with the electoral process but then you will remember that the president in his speech said anybody who does anything that is untoward like snatching ballot boxes or doing things that are inimical to the electoral process, aimed at maybe setting the country on fire, might be playing with his life. It is the Commander in-Chief, who gave them that order to ensure that the electoral process is not tampered with or otherwise compromised by those who do not wish Nigeria well. I know I was interviewed after that statement by the president and I said yes, it was liable to being misunderstood because it gave the impression that President Buhari was not himself sufficiently democratic by calling on soldiers almost to treat violators of the electoral process like armed robbers-shoot at site. But then you must know where we were coming from especially where the opposition party had been threatening hell and brimstone over the elections. So, Buhari had the duty to preserve law and order and the sanctity of the electoral process. I think that is what happened.
There’s also this issue of abuse of the power of incumbency both at the federal and state levels also in that report. And this, according to them, will not help in deepening our democracy. What do you have to say to that?
Well, a number of people had even suggested that a year or two before the elections, the incumbent office holders should hand over power to a transitional or interim arrangement in order to ensure there’s a level playing field for the contenders. So, they should not be exercising governmental powers/political authority whilst the electoral process is being played out. So quite sincerely, everything for me reflects the level of development or should I say underdevelopment of Nigeria because we are not yet an advanced democracy. We still have a steep learning curve and because of that, it might not be totally in order to compare the Nigerian or African democratic practice with what applies in Europe and North America. So, I think the rest of the world should view with understanding of the problematics of conduct of elections within what you can call an emerging democracy just like you have an emerging market. That is my reading of it. Let us recognize where we are in terms of socio-economic and especially political development so that we don’t throw away the baby with the bathwater.
Some Nigerians have said the issue of whether the INEC has Server or not is beyond APC and PDP. That it is about our democracy. Do you share that view?
Again, after I came back from Madagascar, I was on television and people asked what do I suggest to cure the ills and inadequacies of the electoral process in Nigeria and for me, the silver bullet was electronic voting, electronic transmission and collation so that we don’t need to wait forever for results to be declared. You notice in Europe, elections are conducted and by evening time, we have the results. You know in Europe, they have exit polls, they have projections in terms of public opinion polls, all sorts of things that ensure the electoral process is smooth.
And even in Ghana, elections are done during working hours/office time?
Well, you have to look at the sociology of every country. What is good in Ghana might not necessarily work here. Eight million people can’t be compared with 200 million people here. This last election, we were supposed to have had 84 million registered voters. At the end of the day, we had 34percent turnout. So, we have to really understand where we are coming from. You see, by the time we have ironed out creases in the cloth, then the system could be put on autopilot. I understand what you mean. What INEC explained is that they did a test run on using servers in Osun, Anambra and some other places and at the end of the day they could not because the amendment to the electoral act had not been signed into law. The extant law did not allow for electronic voting, transmission or collation. Those who are saying INEC had some servers, maybe they are talking of what they hoped existed, mere wishful thinking. Our people say if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. So, one has to be very careful of the claims by politicians. You remember what the Soviet Union President /Chairman, Khrushchev once said, politicians are people who promise to build bridges where there are no rivers. So, politicians when they are looking for power would stop at nothing.
But even the same Soviet President said election is won at the collation, that is, those that collate results manipulate the figures?
No, that’s Stalin before Khrushchev, that is, the most powerful variable in the equation is those who count the votes. Not those who vote because those who count have the power of be all and end all of the electoral process. So, what I am saying really is that like one of my teachers used to say, wash with cynical acid whatever politicians say because you can’t trust them. You will be a fool if you accept hook, line, sinker. The be all and end all of Nigerian politics, I understand maybe what you call INEC chairman, because whatever he declares is the law, is what binds the rest of us.
Except the court says otherwise?
But we live in a peculiar social environment where the courts made themselves the alternatives to voters. You vote for somebody, the losers go to court, the court now says the man either who did not contest the election or who was muscled out should now assume the position either of governor or legislator. Look at what happened in a place like Zamfara, look at what happened in Adamawa. So, this is a peculiar situation that we are passing through right now. And we can’t continue to play the fool. One does not like what is happening but do we have any choice but to let the judiciary be the final arbiter even in political dispute. The jury is still out on whether that is a better situation than holding fast to the decision of the electorate. Once the people speak elsewhere, that becomes binding but in Nigeria, it seems like especially from the tragicomedy of Zamfara, you have minority now wanting to lord it over the majority. A party that scored about half a million votes is now in power over a party that scored more than one million votes. Certainly, there’s something that sounds very untidy and inelegant about such a scenario.
That’s also speaks to impunity in the house of APC?
No, I am not discussing the circumstance, merit or otherwise. I am just saying it doesn’t sound right that the courts should be substituted for the electorate. I am not going into the merit or the way and manner the candidates were chosen. In Lagos, you remember that the primaries were said to go direct, some wanted indirect. Again, all those are manifestations of political underdevelopment. If the system were stable, there won’t be a choice, you would know before you run for office that this is the way. You know, it just tells me that Nigeria’s democratic system is still a work in progress. We have not finalised the issues in terms of how we are going to play the game.
Do we need a radical president?
No. We want somebody of action. Remember we used to call Jakande action governor. Buhari is an old man. He said he is 76 but people think he is much older. But even if he is just 76 he could still be dynamic. If you go to America, the leading contender among the Democrats, Joe Biden, the former vice president is 76 and you see the agility with which he has been prosecuting his bid. Look at President Donald Trump, he is 72 and he speaks softly but carries a big stick. So age might really be a determinant of how active, or how militant or how dynamic a leader can be. But in Nigeria setting, we seem to be bedeviled with gerontocracy-rulership/leadership by the elderly. I did not vote in these last elections. I was commentator on a national television but not just that because I thought that the choice for Nigerians in 2019 was that between tweedy doll and tweedy don, choice between six and half a dozen. You had two Fulani candidates on the front line-that is, the leading candidates. So that left me with no choice and many Nigerians sat at home and that’s why the turnout was so low. It was not an exciting contest. It would have been a different thing if we had somebody like Young Progressive Party candidate, Professor Kingsley Muoghalu. I knew him when he was in the Central Bank, I know his antecedents and how articulate he is. So, if you had a guy like that, that would have presented a different scenario for the promise of Nigeria. Atiku is 72. The choice between him and Buhari who says he is 76 is a non-choice. When you look at the antecedents of Atiku Abubakar himself, they are not too encouraging because if you know the persona, you can envisage his capability and capacity. So, I don’t feel that I have lost anything not insisting on voting because the choice as I said was a non-choice. But I think by 2023 we might have a chance when there’s a stack difference between the candidates and Nigerians can now exercise their rights to go to Heaven the way they want.
In PMB’s inaugural speech he said he has this wish to move 100million Nigerians out of poverty and made reference to China, India, and Indonesia, countries he claims had done it in the past. Do you think, judging from what you’ve seen in the past four years, that he has that capacity?
This is another example of wishful thinking and trying to give the impression that he has the capacity to turn around Nigeria. Well, if wishes were horses as I said earlier on, beggars would fly. They would not just ride but fly. But looking at the record of Buhari, Yoruba would say, Morning shows the Day. That when you look at a bowl of pounded yam, you know whether when you eat it you will be satisfied with the feeling. So, knowing where Buhari is coming from, I take his statement with a big pinch of salt. If you go to China and you see what the Chinese have achieved within 30 years, (China used to be very poor, there’s still poor places in the rural areas in China), but China today is a superpower and China has settled issues. The issues of development within 30 years, I mean you go to a city like Shanghai or you go to Su chu or any of the Chinese cities, you see what China is capable of. When you are on top of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai and you look at the landscape of that city, for me it beggars description. It is much more exciting than Manhattan in New York. India is not a fully successful story. There’s still a lot of poverty on the streets in India, people even defecating openly and all that but India is a nuclear power and all that. So to expect a turnaround within the next 10 years, what I mean if you know the cost or the price that some other countries paid to be where they are today, you will know that Nigeria is not ready. Nigeria is a never, never, land. We have great aspirations which we never fulfill and people write Nigeria off but we always manage to pull back from the precipice, from the gorge, from the ravine, we have another compromise. So, nothing would shock me about Nigeria and as I said, we have to be cynical of these leaders who make promises. Now that speech for me was an anti-climax. We expected his speech on May 29, 2019 but for reasons best known to Buhari, he didn’t say a word. In fact, I was on television again, to discuss the event of 29th and I said it was a missed opportunity but his handlers tried to cut their losses by combining what you can call his score card (inaugural) and celebration of democracy day. So in the end neither the inauguration nor June 12 celebration was satisfied. But I would blame his speech writers because no president writes his own speech. So those who answer to the president, his policies are to blame for that fiasco.
In the next four years of PMB Nigerians have been trying to set agenda for him or their expectations of the president. In your own thinking what do you think or which areas are of utmost importance to you for the president to focus on?
For me really in terms of priorities, I think unemployment is the frontal issue that needs to be combated but you cannot cut down on the rising unemployment without doing something to the economy in terms of reinventing or reworking or reconfiguration of the Nigerian economy. Nigeria is still a mono-culture economy-we sell oil and gas from which we derive revenue to prosecute our industrialization agenda. Now you notice that we have not made enough progress in foreign direct investment. We need input from other countries to move Nigeria forward. We’ve not succeeded there and Nigeria remains a country which inhabits the largest number of people living under the poverty line. People call us the poverty capital of the world. So, Buhari has his work cut out for him in terms of reorganizing Nigerian economy in order to provide employment for the teeming millions of young people. The unemployment rate I hear is 23percent. I hear also that when you add unemployment and underemployment, you get about 40percent. If you can stem the tide of unemployment, Nigeria would have made a considerable progress. You cannot have full employment with the power situation we have in the country. In other words, we have to do something about power. Right now, everybody is his own local government providing the basic amenities-electricity, water, etc- that should be provided by government. So, as far as I am concerned, once you settle the power problem, I think a lot of traction would have been effected within the Nigerian economy. So, I would take unemployment, power as the topmost priorities. There are other issues that he is pursuing, corruption, and then of course, security, but it seems that the president has promised more than he can deliver. I would say as a tested and trusted general who promised to be on top of Boko Haram as a matter of topmost priority, we’ve since found out Boko Haram might have been degraded but they are not vanquished. Only recently, they killed soldiers and ransacked the military base in Bornu as reported in the news. And now you have the complications of banditry in Zamfara, in Katsina, the home state of the president, then in the South you have marauders masquerading as herdsmen. So we are in serious crisis, a crisis of national survival.
Even recently the Chief Of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Buratai, was blaming soldiers in the frontline for lack of discipline and not showing full commitment?
Well, if Gold rust, what do you expect iron to do? These people are trained to defend the country. They signed away their lives, to protect the nation. So, if soldiers can’t confront ragtag people with AK-47 and whatever, then Nigeria’s future is called into question. So I would say that we really have to be mindful of the portent mortality of the Nigerian state. You see, if we are not very careful, Nigeria could just drop dead and we go our separate ways.
That would be too bad
Yes, because of the lack of capacity by those who are paid to defend us. So, definitely the matter of survival of Nigeria is a matter of serious priority.
I think Senator (Prof) Sola Adeyeye said recently at the floor of the Senate that our constitution is our problem. That this constitution cannot lead us anywhere meaningful, that it cannot give us, etc. Do you subscribe to that?
I saw that phenomenal intervention by Shola Adeyeye and I think he was dead on target. The constitution we have is decree 24 of 1999 forced down our throat by Gen. Adbulsalam Abubakar and his confederates telling a big lie about itself like Patriots reminded us. We never met anywhere or at any time to adopt the constitution which now is being pushed down our throat. The military constitution is not a federal constitution. At best it can be described as a quasi-federal constitution. There are 68 items on the exclusive list -items like registration of birth, issuance of driving licence. A federation is an arrangement under which you have division of powers between the federal branch and the constituent units under which no member is superior to the others and there’s agreement by the other units to share powers among themselves. The military came and bastardized the Nigerian Federalism because federalism and militarism are odd bedmates. You see, the soldiers can’t allow a situation where there will be diffusion of authority, of power between the so-called Federal Government and the states that you can call the constituent units. So, I was so happy when the president said he has to address the question of true federalism. We say how long did it take him to see the light? But having made that statement, have you seen any movement along those lines?
Even the issue of state police that came out of that statement, governors cannot reach consensus/agreement on its implementation?
Not just some governors; I remember very well that during the 2014 Confab that many of the members from the northern part of the country saw and thought there was nothing wrong with our constitution. My opening speech at the Confab was on the infelicity of Nigerian federal setup and that constitution. And my friends from the North shouted me down and wanted to bully me into submission. They didn’t know who they were dealing with. I refused to swallow my vomit. I stated my position but not in same elegance and forthrightness as Sola Adeyeye. What I am saying is that there are people in this country who recognize that the path to the freedom of Nigeria is by doing away with this Abdulsalam constitution. The Abdulsalam constitution borrowed a lot of traction from the Obasanjo constitution. You see, I am using those names advisedly. In the colonial constitutions, we either talk of Littleton, Richardson, Macpherson, etc. When we talk of 1979 constitution without recognizing that it was an imposition, Obasanjo brought 14 amendments singularly into that constitution. So, you can say that it was Obasanjo constitution just like Abdulsalam without any apologies, he just got 25 people together to write a constitution for Nigeria and passed it into law by way of a decree. So what you call the constitution of Nigeria is a military decree, Decree 24. So what I am saying is a very serious matter because at the Confab we ended up with a suggestion as to how to cure the infelicities of the present arrangement. But PMB came on board and just threw away over 600 suggestions that the Confab made to rescue Nigeria because if Nigeria had taken a fresh look and translated or implemented the suggestions by that Confab, many of the problems we are confronted with today would have been taken care of.