Daniel Kanu
Elder (Dr) Umah Eleazu will soon celebrate his 90th birthday. The elder statesman, political scientist, policy analyst, and a former presidential aspirant has seen it all. In this encounter with Sunday Sun he made certain revelations on why Nigeria does not seem to be working the way it should.
He also spoke on COVID-19 pandemic, what the Federal Government is not getting right as well as other issues concerning restructuring and President Buhari’s real agenda which he said is different from the APC agenda. Excerpt:
What is your impression so far about the COVID-19 experience and its management by the government?
Well, we are staying at home, washing our hands and keeping a safe distance from people in the house, that is what we are advised to do, social distancing and all that. My family and I are trying very hard to ensure we observe all rules on COVID-19, and then you leave the rest to God. This is something that has taken everybody unawares and nobody will assume that he knows much about it except probably, people in the health sector that could give us all the scientific mumble-jumble about how Coronavirus came about. But how we tackle it is what makes leaders, that is how you know a leader who will stand up in the face of crisis and make decisions quickly. And not only making a decision quickly, but then assemble the resources, the force that is behind assembling the resources, distributing the resources, and making sure that you protect your people. That is where I don’t think that the government is doing enough. Except as I said earlier that this thing took them, in fact, everybody by surprise, that’s one aspect of it. But it is equally situations as this that produce great leaders by their actions. Some time ago, I wrote a paper that is published in the book I published in 2011; it’s called: “FAILED DREAMS”. A country like ours, leadership should be able to have a general overview of all the sub-systems that make up the country, which makes it function. Now just take the health sector. As I am sitting here in Lagos my heart is in my village, Ohafia ( in Abia State), why? Probably it is the same thing in your village (referring to the reporter). There is no clinic in my village with a qualified doctor, 50 per cent of the people leaving in rural areas in my village still treat themselves with leaves and roots because they can’t go to the hospital to easily get the needed tablets. If you find a doctor who went to Nsukka (University of Nigeria), or Ibadan (University College Hospital) or wherever they will give you the prescription to go and buy and then you don’t see the chemist where to buy it. So, why I am saying that my heart is in the village is that imagine if this pandemic hits the people in the village? Do they understand what you are saying about social distancing, covering your mouth and nose, etc which you can get by contact. Some states, including my state, are saying people should not come out, they have put the dusk to down order, so it means in the day time they can move about, but not in the night, what does that say to you? They don’t understand the critical issues like social distancing and all that which can easily be passed through contact. So, the system in Nigeria that should handle this kind of emergency is simply not there. And this is something that should have been built in when this thing hasn’t happened. How many teaching hospitals do we have in Nigeria? We don’t work with statistics in Nigeria. So, let me just say that at the last count that almost every university has a teaching hospital, even when the said teaching hospital is just one clinic that was converted because it is near where the university is and they take it over and say it’s their teaching hospital, or the teaching hospital is 70 miles away from the university. Okay, let’s take the major ones that prides itself as the first generation ones….UCH, Ife, UNTH, ABU, this were the older universities that set up proper teaching hospitals, none of them has an adjoining pharmacological research centre, the only one you can say is manageable but not still up to date, I hear about it but I have never seen it is the one owned by an individual Prof Maurice Iwu and the week the news of the innovation blew up was the week EFCC went to catch Iwu to say that he has one stupid case sometime ago which he must answer to. This is the time we should get people like Prof Iwu and his like, put them in one place let them think out how we can solve some of these problems, encourage them to get into their laboratory, and get something unique out for us. Ordinary Senegal was able to find a simple way of solving the problem. We need to be proactive.
Do you think that the continued lockdown is necessary?
For me, I think it is necessary. It is the measure some other countries are also applying. But I think that the issue of palliative and welfare of the people is not receiving the needed attention. It is an area government must look into.
There is always this move by different regions in the country as well as individuals that Nigeria needs to be restructured. Do you think this call will still be necessary if we have the right type of leadership?
Where will you get the good leader? Where? Even if there are people who are good leaders and have a following because you are not a leader unless people are following you. This is a point that should be made clear. You are not a leader unless people are following you. And my followers will follow me and if they come we talk about, we need restructuring. Another group will follow another of their leader and they talk about restructuring. Another group will follow, let’s say Nnamdi Kanu and they say, we need self-determination, another group will follow another person and will make their demand. Okay, where does all our talking go to? Who are we talking to? We are talking to ourselves, aren’t we? So, whether we have restructuring or self-determination or none at all, what the leaders should do for us now is to bring people together and say, what is the problem? Ndigbo what is your problem? Boko Haram what is your problem? MEND (Niger-Delta) what is your problem? Benue what is your problem? All of us have problems, so when we have assembled the myriads of problems that are creating this bad blood in Nigeria then we say how do we now sort out these problems and then solve them one by one. Is there one silver bullet that will solve all of them or do we have to have a collection of problems to solve them? There is no venue now for anybody to air his views in a way that will become part of decision making. My specialty in those days is policy analysis and that is what I have done for Obasanjo when he was the military head of state, when he was a civilian head of state, everywhere I have worked even when I was working for UNDP, I helped people design policies. If you don’t have a policy you cannot achieve anything. You, first of all, have a policy, policy direction, and then implementation processes. Since we started talking about this restructuring has anybody in the government said anything worthwhile listening to?
Including Jonathan’s Confab of 2014?
Something was done at that Confab. Have you seen the report? But there was no implementation of anything. Jonathan put it towards the end of his tenure. Talk about leadership. If as soon as they issued or released the report, while they are preparing for the election, if I were on his seat, I will as the leader say look, for this election that we are going into we want people to vote on it, that this is the new thing I am giving to the nation, that I want a referendum on the issue, make it an election issue and say, I have spent not less than N2 billion, gathered Nigerians from all parts of the country and this is the report they got and you make it a referendum issue. There is a paper I wrote on part of it some time ago, I said when they talk about failed leaders that is where President Jonathan failed. You appointed a commission and the commission worked assiduously and I understand they spent over N2 billion and they produced a report and you now say, okay it’s there for the next regime to implement when you know you have so many enemies who will not allow you to win, he (President Jonathan) should have put his foot down at the time that he was on that seat, tackle the problem for the country and probably if he had done that he would have won. That is how we test leaders, so we spent all the money and the document is gathering dust somewhere in Aso Rock or in the secretariat and Buhari says he is not going to look at it. So, that one is gone down the drain. The document is there which could have solved some of the problems we still have now.
How would you assess the APC government under President Buhari?
Do you know what Buhari is doing? What Buhari is doing is quite different from what APC said they will do and that is a problem within the party. Secondly, as a leadership class, that is those leading the APC they are divided because there is division among the APC leaders they cannot pursue any unified interest on behalf of the people, that has left Buhari and his clique in Aso Rock to do just what they want to do. And if you ask me Buhari is doing very well in terms of what he wanted to do, that is to turn Nigeria into an Islamic state. All indications point to this fact. Look at his agricultural policy, for instance, what does it consist of? RUGA, ranching, grazing that is what interests him and whether you like it or not he is implementing it. If you say you don’t have land in the East he will implement it in the North where his interest lies. While people are talking about restructuring do you know he is also cleverly restructuring Nigeria?
How?
He is busy restructuring the demography of Nigeria not the geo-politics unknown to many people. You know there is a great difference. When you have restructured the demography of Nigeria and then some years down the line you say you want to have self-determination you will run into the problem of who is a citizen of this or that place. The RUGA comes with so many things that you are ignorant about. If for instance, we say we want it in my country home, Ohafia, it is not Ohafia people who are going to be there. Who will be there? It is the Fulani, his people. Wherever they establish RUGA it is the Fulani that is going to be there and even as we speak they are already everywhere, it’s an agenda. They know the bushes in your area more than you do. The danger is that after infiltrating your zone you cannot again rise as a body in the area in the future because they will equally claim to be part of the place having stayed there over the years. They will cause confusion for you if you dare ignore them then. There is danger ahead. I feel sad watching this deception from government and even our people in the APC are behaving as if all is well. And the funny thing is that when you raise your voice they shout you down and pretend that all is well.
So you are saying that Buhari’s agenda is being implemented indirectly?
Not indirectly, but directly because they are no longer hiding it. That is what I called restructuring the demography of Nigeria, so the people now inhabiting my place or your place are not just your people alone again, but Fulanis who will in future claim equal ownership of your land. It’s a time-bomb.
Don’t you think there is a contradiction when the Southeast talk about getting the Nigerian president of Southeast extraction in 2023 and at the same time calling for secession for Biafra?
Those who are calling for the two is a contradiction, those who are calling for one it’s not a contradiction. There was a time I thought that if there was a platform let us agree on this restructuring so that we can have each region, I am not talking about states, I mean regions that enclose a whole ethnic group. Let regions define their own. Yoruba, Edo-speaking areas, Kanuri’s, then Fulani to properly define theirs. They (Fulani) have already mixed up with Hausa people so it is difficult now for Hausa and Fulani to separate because the land on which they are in the North are Hausa land, Fulani has no land in Nigeria, but they have tried to dominate the Hausas and what they did to Hausa states is what they want to do to the rest of Nigeria. So, the ones that you are seeing in the Southeast or Southwest etc, are the advance party, like when Uthman Danfodia came, he was just an advance party of the rest. Because people are not studying history anymore and we don’t do research on our problem, all these things keep hanging and that is why we can’t solve our problems. We are ignorant of some critical issues or we chose to pretend over them and deceive those that do not know.
So where do you stand as an individual? Nigerian president from the Southeast or call for Biafra?
If you want to be president, president of which country? If an Igbo man becomes the president he will fail, that is, if he remains alive and not killed the next day. There is an agreement that a certain criterion is needed to become the president of Nigeria. I will expose that in my coming book, so I will leave that out here. It will shock you when you know this agreement and why we are the way we are as far as the leadership of this country is concerned. Why do you think they stopped M.K.O Abiola from being president? I was a presidential aspirant during the SDP, NRC dispensation in 1992 and I know a lot about the politics of Nigeria both as a political scientist, and participant and why our problem will persist. There is so much deceit in the system. But wait until you read my book. I thought some of us by our exposure and training had what it takes to build Nigeria, but the reality dawned on me when I stepped out to run for the president. All the information I hope to share in my coming book, the reality, and the deceit you may want to know. It’s a long story, but an interesting one that Nigerians will want to know. I came to contest for the president because I thought that truly they were looking for new faces to rescue the country. And you know I worked with them from Murtala Mohammed to Obasanjo to Buhari. I spelled out why I want to be President of Nigeria, but I came to realize that even if I had won they would have done the same thing they did to Abiola to me.