By Chukwudi Nweje
Professor of political economy and founder and convener of Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL), Pat Utomi, in this interview, insists that Nigeria’s most pressing problem at the moment is not the 2023 general elections but for the ethnic nationalities to figure how to live together. Among others, he looks at issues of leadership, growing insecurity in the South East, how he would have handled the situation if he were president and other national issues.
For some time now, we have situations whereby people are wantonly and gruesomely murdered in Northern Nigeria on allegation of blasphemy with the government at the centre and the state where it happened doing nothing. It happened again recently in Sokoto State, where Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a student at the Shehu Shagari College of Education Sokoto was stoned to death and then set ablaze. How do you react to this?
It is a very sad situation we have in this country where the local, political and northern elite have failed to exercise leadership; we have allowed this sad phenomenon to fester and it has ill foreboding for the future of Nigeria. We all know that the primary purpose of government is the protection of lives and property but if people are no longer sure if they will not be lynched by a mob for whatever reason, they are not likely to make investments that will lead to progress and development because there is rather an atmosphere of uncertainty. This in my view is a matter of leadership failure. Unfortunately, the same northern elite claim they are great leaders and should be entrusted with the leadership of Nigeria. Yet, they can’t even get the North together. That is one of the reasons why I say there is need for us to have a conversation on the future of Nigeria and how we relate even before we start talking of elections in 2023. Just this May 12, in Abuja I led a summit on the future of Nigeria. Incidentally, the summit held on the same day this very murder of a student happened. We met in the morning and then later in the day this happened. We had all sorts of leaders in attendance, we need to get to the level of respect for one another, we cannot continue like this.
What are some of the major resolutions arrived at during the NPSG / NCFront political summit of May 12?
I can tell you that many views have canvassed the structure of our federation, most of it point to the direction of the principle of subsidiarity, that is decentralisation of authority. The popular view is that government should devolve most activities to the level closest to the people. For instance, it was agreed that the whole idea of policing is a local function and should therefore be moved towards the local governments and at most the states. There could be a central body in Abuja that will be in-charge of setting standards on policing around the country, but the funding and manning should be local. I, personally subscribe to having multiple levels of policing, beginning with every community having its own police, whether you call it a vigilant group or whatever, that is where the intelligence is most gathered for policing. After that, you can have local government policing, state and then federal. This in my view is how we can make progress. We must agree that local issues must sort themselves out if we are going to make progress in this country.
Despite the crisis in Sokoto and others threatening to spring up, the emphasis is on 2023 general election. Do you think the politicians will give any consideration to the issues raised at the Abuja summit?
Unless we start addressing the issues now, politicians will wake up one day and discover that there is no country to run for any office. Nigerians are getting fed up and as you know, the Sokoto incident was followed by what happened at Lekki in Lagos. As we speak, the people at Lekki are organising, and if we are not careful, we will get a situation where warlords will be springing up in different corners of the country; by then, the road to Somalia would have already taken root. We have been warning for years that Nigeria is on the road to Somalia and it will be a tragedy if that becomes reality. We must quickly go to a referendum on whether we want to continue with the arrangement as we have it. Many eminent Nigerians are saying there should be no election in 2023, I called for it myself. I’m of the view that all the ethnic nationality groups should nominate a number of people to form an interim government while we discuss whether or not we want to live together and how we should be together. That call was re-echoed by Chief Afe Babalola, SAN, two weeks later, Afenifere has also said it; I think there are very serious issues in Nigeria that we cannot take for granted any more because the truth of the matter is that Nigeria is falling apart and we cannot continue in the business as usual mode.
Some people express concerns that the last interim government we had in Nigeria in fact, prepared the ground for full return to military rule as all democratic structures already in place were dismantled by the military, are we ready to risk such again?
The interim government in 1993 after the annulment of the June 12 election was completely different. It was not a national unity group nominated by the people. The interim government I call for is for Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Arewa Consultative Forum, and all other ethnic nationalities to give us a certain number of people who will be charged with the responsibility for collegial running of the government; there could be a rotation of the chairmanship of the interim government among them, within the period they will also agree on a new constitution and the system of government; we could go for a West minister parliamentary system in which all elections are local. We can then have a Prime Minister at the centre elected from among his peers. We can have a significantly decentralised authority, group of states can decide on their own to see if they can come together and have a collaborative network of development. For instance, we can have South East or South South states come together to have a development union and move things forward from there.
Several appointees of the Federal Government who initially indicated interest in contesting the 2023 election and perhaps paid for the expression of interest and nomination form of the APC are all of a sudden withdrawing from the contest, what do you think is happening?
I am not sure that all of them backing out in the so called national interest, really have the interest of the nation at heart. It is unfortunate that this president, I don’t know the way he takes decisions. I think if he is really serious, this will be the time for him to dissolve his cabinet, let all of them go and find people who are not so partisan to manage the country for the remaining one year.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC), just recently arrested the Accountant General of the Federation on suspicion of N80 billion fraud, how do you see that considering the very sensitive office the suspect occupies?
Corruption is so frighteningly widespread in government. I don’t know how we got to this level especially under a government that came to power on the mantra of fighting corruption. In the first few months after President Muhammadu Buhari was elected, there was sanity, but all that has faded, nothing will shock me now about corruption in Nigeria; it is a shame; unless we begin a totally new moral rearmament to get Nigeria out of the pit of corruption it has sunk into, the future is going to be very bleak.
The first few months of sanity you mentioned was when ‘the Buhari Body Language’ was potent, what do you think happened?
The people found out that people around Buhari were more corrupt than the ones there before. Take an instance where the leadership is saying one thing and doing another; people will not take it serious.
South East Nigeria is very tense presently as the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) / Eastern Security Network (ESN) have declared a sit-at-home that could threaten the chances of political parties conducting primaries for the 2023 general election, what are your concerns?
There are too many dis-functions in the South East environment right now. My understanding is that IPOB has called off the sit-at-home but some group of individuals who are profiting from it are still enforcing it against the IPOB order. What we need to do is to engage in conversations with the stakeholders to get to the roots of what is happening.
There is a large concentration of the Nigerian military and other security agencies in the South East, and non-state outfits like Ebubeagu and ESN boast of their presence, yet unknown gunmen have a field day wrecking havoc with no arrests made, is that not strange?
It is very possible for things to go wrong. When this initially started, people were saying it is IPOB. Now, it is clear it is not IPOB. The big question we must ask the big question, what is the motivation of the people doing this; are they criminal gangs trying to take advantage of the situation, do they have any particular political motive? When we establish these things then we can make sense of what is going on. The only thing we can think now is that this is the work of a criminal gang, the question is what is the best way to tackle this criminal gang, people know where they come out from and where they exit.
If you were the president what approach would you adopt in tackling the South East insecurity and others in the country?
I will definitely have stakeholders conversations to find out the root of the problem. I will adopt a carrot and stick approach for those who want to exit that kind of existence to take an amnesty route. If they fail to take it, then one must utilise intelligence, identify them and eliminate them completely. The youths of all the local communities have a role to play in that because they are the drivers of all these community security network we have in place.
