By Onyedika Agbedo
CHIEF Guy Ikokwu is a lawyer, Second Republic politician and one of the pioneer members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In this interview, he speaks on the crisis rocking the PDP, which has led to the loss of its members to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Ikokwu, who fought on the side of Biafra during the Nigerian civil war, also airs his views on some governance issues in the country, expressing the opinion that virtually all the challenges bedeviling the country have their root in the absence of a true federal structure. He warns that if the country is not restructured by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, there may be no Nigeria when he leaves office. Excerpts:
The crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has seen many members of the party defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), especially in the South-east. As a founding member of the party, how would you assess the situation?
I am certainly a founding member of the PDP but I don’t change parties. I don’t move around because I believe that if a party is founded on an ideology and a system, it is better to preserve and enrich that ideology and system. And if a system contains good eggs and bad eggs, as you try to enrich the system you take away the bad eggs or they will fall out by themselves.
Having said that, it is not true that as of now, majority of the defectors from the PDP are Igbos; that’s not correct. The vast majority of defectors from the PDP are Yorubas. How many of the original members of the PDP in Yoruba states when the party was founded are still there? Also, look at the freedom fighters Nigeria had under the aegis of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) during the military era. NADECO mainly had Igbos, Yorubas and Middle Beltans as members. How many of the original members of NADECO are still fighting for true democracy in Nigeria today? Some of the arrowheads of NADECO are no longer doing that, particularly in Yoruba land. For instance, Bola Ahmed Tinubu was a NADECO chieftain and believed very much in democracy and the restructuring of the country so that we can have a true federal structure rather than a unitary arrangement. But later he became ambivalent. Now we can’t say that Tinubu is this or that. But the Yorubas are more diplomatic than Igbos.
Igbos traditionally like to stick to principles and say, ‘here we are; we don’t want to move right and left.’ But day-to-day incidents affect the way people feel and react. Most Nigerian elite today are intelligent and moneybags because they enjoy well paid jobs and government patronage. They don’t react the same way to day-to-day incidents as the trade union members; those who are at the base. It is only a few of the people at the base that can be very rigid. If you take a look at the history of other nations, you find just a few of such people who were rigid.
In Singapore, for instance, you find somebody like Lee Kuan Yu. We studied together in London but when we graduated, he decided to go home while I decided to stay two more years. But he was a very principled man from Chinese ancestry. When he got home, he tried with the Malaysians to get people together to form a federation of ethnic nationalities in Asia. The other ones refused; they said they don’t want any kind of federation of ethnic nationalities. So, they stayed on their own. Singapore has no oil and no forest; it is surrounded by water. But the man believed in an ideology that he thought would raise his people. He set up a think-tank to get his people to use their brains. And that’s what they did for years. And within 40 years, Yu brought Singapore from a third class nation to a first class nation. Singaporeans today have more GDP per person than Americans. It was possible because they invested in the development of the brain of their people through education. They are the most digitalised citizens in Asia. This is what we should do in Nigeria.
There are very brilliant Nigerians but we need massive education. When you put massive education in place, you won’t see people moving from one party to the other. The defections show that there is no ideology; that there is no care for the welfare of the people and that the ultimate aim is to continue to impoverish the masses. We are now in a country where the minimum wage is N18,000 per month. To buy what? So, you find some very wealthy southern Nigerians dancing from one party to the other because of what they will get either in another contract or multi billion treasury loot.
You were a chieftain of the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP) in the Second Republic and there was massive defection to the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the then eastern states of Anambra and Imo. But the NPP still won the states in the 1983 elections. Do you see history repeating itself in 2019 with regards to the chances of the APC?
I see what is happening now as a repeat of what happened then and that justifies my position. I am happy you asked that question. When the NPP came up, it was not formed by the aged, the superior class, the monetised class or contractors who had billions in their bank accounts or owned hundreds of houses in Ikoyi. It was formed by the youth. I was one of the youngest state chairmen of the party as a junior lawyer then; I was under 40 years then. That was unheard of in our part of the country. But in our part of the country, if people see a young man who is dynamic and seeks to maintain the trajectory that had been laid down by his ancestors, they listen to him. As Anambra State chairman of the NPP then, people respected me and nobody dared to bribe anybody with anything from the ward to the state level. You must earn the people’s support. We ran the party like a movement and it became the dominant party in the state without force or coercion. We had an ideology, which the people believed would better their welfare. That is what is coming back again.
So, when you talk about the PDP, the party will be reoriented and you will find more young people identifying with it. The young people are today frustrated. They are being grilled to the ground; they are being impoverished. But they are very educated. They will certainly say, ‘enough is enough.’ How can you today be telling the youth that the minimum wage will remain such a paltry amount when they have read economics and know the meaning of devaluation? They know that today, one dollar is equal to N500. So, if you equate their salary today to the dollar, you find that it is now not more than five per cent of what they used to have. They are educated; they can reason. But even if they are not educated, they go to the market; they see that the prices of soap or banana have gone up compared to last month. So, why should their salaries be stagnant? Why has government not increased the minimum wage to reduce impecuniosity among the people? Meanwhile, when impecuniosity is reduced, people will stop being angry. But an angry man is a hungry man. If you look at the reports in the media everyday, all you see is crime. It extends to even the security agencies because people need money to do some things but they don’t have. So, criminal tendencies are being whipped up by the economic situation of the country.
On the crisis and defections in the PDP, there are figures in the party who are just moles. They are not true to the party; they are serving other interests. But if you kill the PDP and the APC today, there won’t be a political vacuum in Nigeria. Nigerian youths know what is good for the country and will immediately chart a new path to move the country forward.
So, given your experience in Anambra in 1983, are you saying that APC has no chance in the South-east in 2019 in spite of the defections?
No, there are people who support the APC. Everybody cannot be in one political party because people don’t think alike. In fact, if everybody is in one political party, it is no longer a democracy because people don’t feel logically in one way. There are perspectives; this group will see something this way and another group will see the same thing another way. The only thing we south- easterners are saying is that there should be equal opportunities in the Nigerian political space. There should be level playing ground for people to canvass ideas while the electorate will have the freedom to make their choice. You may have a good idea but which will take a very long time to perfect. But another person might have another idea and have a short cut to realise the same thing. In that circumstance, the people will have to choose which of the ideas they consider best. So, the methodology is also part of the ideology.
There was a recent controversy over whether the South-east should strategise to produce the president in 2019 or 2023. What is your take on that?
On the present system of governance, they have agreed that presidential powers should rotate between the North and the South, not between the geo-political zones. So, when it is the turn of the South, they will now choose from which part of the South, likewise the North. But in each group, when they want to choose, they try to ensure that there is also rotation within the group; that it is not just one zone that continues to perpetuate itself in that office. So, the present zoning arrangement is eight years each. If this system continues just as it is, then it will be foolhardy for the Igbos to say they want to disrupt the system of rotating power between North and South. And you know that this problem also came up during the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Most of the northerners said they voted for Buhari because they wanted a return to the rotation arrangement between North and South. So, that is one scenario.
But a lot of us do not support that scenario because we think the system is already archaic. We need Nigeria to be restructured; we don’t want a unitary system any more. Nigeria at the moment is at a ubiquitous crossroad of easily verifiable constitutional quagmire occasioned by 50 years neo-military constitutional fiat, ethos and even invectives. The fundamental principles of a truly federal constitution was the one enshrined in the Independence Constitution of 1960 and the Republican Constitution of 1963, which separately define the powers and constituents of the central government vis-à-vis the powers and regulatory principles of the regional or state governments.
The military are not civilians or elected officials and usually refer to civilian proponents as “bloody civilians”. The military are trained to shoot and kill and to obey superior orders without demurring or any further information. The 1979 and 1999 constitutions were military orders or regulations, which erroneously deviated from the principle of the sovereignty of the people. It is this military arrogation of powers and contradictions that have left a country such as Nigeria with an educated elite in the present shambles constitutionally, politically and economically.
So, one million Igbos who want to go to APC because they want to be president in 2023 are welcome because there will not be a unitary government in 2023. What we will have by then will be a presidency where most of the powers have devolved to the regions and no longer centralised as it is at the moment. So, in 2023, whoever that is the president will just be a titular head.
If you are saying that the system of government will change before 2023, how is that going to happen?
You are asking me a dire question. If Nigeria is not restructured within this President Buhari’s tenure, there may be no Nigeria after him. There may be no Nigeria if restructuring doesn’t happen under Buhari’s tenure because we are heading towards the precipice. And when we get to that precipice, you know what an avalanche is like, once you fall over the avalanche, it’s irredeemable. You cannot survive because nobody will draw you up again. You go on and on until you are totally demolished.
The military, which murdered its own military head of state for unitarising Nigeria’s constitution in order to promote orderliness and reduce the spate of corruption, which was then between five per cent and 10 per cent index, turned around in the following years to aggregate the rate of corruption to more than 100 per cent, and sometimes with the astonishing looting of Nigeria treasury both in Nigerian and foreign currencies as the order of the day. This process has lasted more than 50 years and has impoverished our country terribly. With the consummate advice of corrupt and insincere elite, they went ahead to commit a constitutional aberration by calling their constitutions of 1979 and 1999 “federal” instead of unitary, which they are constitutionally and legally. Most of the retired military class and even former Nigerian presidents agree that Nigeria is on a road of no return. We should retrace our movement before we reach the precipice.
Without restructuring Nigeria, the 2016 budget was a failure and the 2017 budget will also be a failure. As I speak to you, there is no power supply in many parts of the country and without electricity the economy cannot survive. In my office, there are three petrol generators and I spend so much money before I can work. At some point, the total supply for the whole nation was less than 1000 megawatts. Today, it’s 2200, which is only good for a state like Lagos alone. So, what is the economic perspective and reasoning of the present Federal Government? At a point they were talking about borrowing $30 billion from abroad. And people who would have stolen that money from the treasury were waiting for them. Who will pay for it? I pray that does not happen because if it happens, naira will slide to N2000 to one dollar. But this is a government that promised that one naira would be exchanged for one dollar during the campaigns. We all heard them loud but since they took over, there has been nothing but the devaluation of the naira.
And you think that these challenges are there solely because of the structure of the country?
Absolutely! But we are talking of the solutions. The only solution is for the Federal Government to reduce the items on the Exclusive List. Let me give you an example. Never in the history of this country have we seen one minister wielding powers that are more than that of a whole region. We have a minister who is intellectually capacitated but you don’t take the strongest areas of the economy — power, infrastructure and housing — and give to him alone. It is an impossible thing. In the 2017 budget, that minister has virtually more revenue to control than the whole states in the South-east. But what have we realised? Has power generation and supply jumped from the inherited 3,500 megawatts? They told us that within a year or two it would climb to about 7,000 megawatts, and that getting to 2019 it would be about 12,000 megawatts. But instead of moving up, we are going down. We are experiencing depreciation in the sector and they have invested a lot of money there. Now, where are the resultant effects of those investments?
How will restructuring improve the situation?
The 2014 National Conference resolved that the six geo-political zones could stand as the federating units. Meanwhile, you can also use the 36 states as the federating units. But there are also 18 groups who also want to be states. Thirty-six plus 18 will give us 54. If we have 50 states as the federating units, they will be so tiny and the problems will still be exaggerated. So, the best option according to the 2014 National Conference is to use the six geo-political zones as the federating units, leaving them to stand like the regions we had in the First Republic. The states under the regions should not be scrapped; in fact, the regions can create more states if they find that fashionable. But they can change their name from states to provinces as we have had in Nigeria’s constitutional history, while retaining their powers to look after their own areas.
However, there will be no local governments because that will amount to wasting of money. Good governance also entails reducing the cost of governance, which at the moment is very high under the present system. Under the proposed arrangement, no state or province, depending on what the regions decide to call them, will have 20 commissioners as we have today and the commissioners will not have 100 aides, even when they cannot pay salaries. How many states are paying the salaries of their workers? Out of the 36 states of the federation, 28 cannot pay. A situation where a state or local council cannot pay the monthly salaries of its workers indicates that the state or local council is indigent and unviable. So, the 28 states that are not paying their workers today are indigent economically.
Unless you now change the system by gravitating downwards, by devolving powers from the centre to the regions, there is not going to be a change. The devolution will ensure that the regions have things they can do and the resources with which to do those things. A truly federal democracy as we had up to our Republican Constitution of 1963 ensures that the centre as well as the federating units or states have their own written constitutions, Coat of Arms, national and states anthems and even quasi diplomatic agencies as we had in Britain and elsewhere. The autonomy of the federating units or states is guaranteed in law and under the constitution. The arrangement we had at independence was for regions to exploit the resources in their domains and pay tax to the centre. For mineral resources, the derivation was pegged down from 100 per cent to 50 per cent. But from 1966, the military abolished the whole structure and that is why we are still suffering today. At a point, the derivation formula went down to three per cent and later came up to 13 per cent, which is not even being paid effectively.
So, you can see the problem in which we are financially and economically. And the solution is in changing the system. Do you know that the eastern region under the leadership of Nnamdi Azikiwe and later Michael Okpara was growing at nine per cent per annum, higher than any other nation in Africa? Today, what is Nigeria’s growth rate? The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said we are growing at 0.8 per cent. How can you be growing at 0.8 per cent and you want to go and take a loan that you will be repaying at five, six or seven per cent interest? It is a road to bankruptcy. The Nigerian economy and system of governance today is a ‘one chance’ system. It is, therefore, not viable and sustainable; it will certainly grind to a halt.
What is your take on the recent declaration by Prof. Ango Abdullahi that the North is ready for Nigeria’s break up, even when opposition against the restructuring of the country has mainly come from there?
Well, Ango Abdullahi is a very well respected intellectual. He is a man that you cannot fool around because he is well respected; he has good intellect. I have read most of his works and statements and so have many Nigerians. He believes in self-respect; I respect you while you also respect me. That is the primary goal of true democracy. He knows, as many fellow country men up there also know, that if you put the Northern states of today together, they will be very viable tomorrow. He knows that when the states in the North-west where he comes from are put together and left to administer itself as a region, they will be more viable than Ivory Coast, Congo and Cameroon. But he knows that there are people who do not understand this amongst his colleagues.
So, the thing is let North-west grow and be viable while South-east, South-west, South-south, North-east and North-central also grow and be viable. If there is devolution of powers, the South-west of today will be one of the most viable regions in Africa. As we could see, the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode teamed up with his Kebbi State counterpart to produce LAKE rice. It was so because Lagos doesn’t have the land but it has the money. So, Lagos teamed up with Kebbi, which has the land but does not have the money. It is not Yoruba farmers that are cultivating the rice in Kebbi; it’s Kebbi indigenes and they are paid with money from Lagos. They got the rice in their first harvest, bagged them very well and reduced the price of rice in Lagos and Kebbi states from N20,000 per 50kg bag to N12,000. Everybody was happy. So, a system of governance that will make everybody happy whether in the North or in the South on the basis of economic viability is what will strengthen our unity as a country.
We say One Nigeria because we aim to become the greatest country of the Black man in the world. If we get it right, we can set an example that other Blacks will emulate. We can teach other Blacks how to rise up and be great. But a situation where we keep fooling ourselves leaves the countries that are watching us to laugh and call us big for nothing, which has become the other name for Nigeria today. So, we really need to reorient ourselves and I can tell you that Ango Abdullahi is one of the people who believe in the idiom, ‘live and let live’; not live and persecute others. A unitary system in a diverse, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-tribal entity like Nigeria won’t work; it will crash.
Are Igbos ready if the unity of the country should crash today as you are predicting?
If we are ready…
Yes sir?
What did they then fight us in Biafra for? Listen, in the history of Nigeria, it is the Hausa/Fulani that first coined the word secession. They told the British, ‘if you do not let us have a federal system where we would rule ourselves, there should be araba’. That was their word for secession. They were the first to preach it in Nigeria. It was Zik and Awolowo who said, ‘no araba, no araba; we should be one; we should be together.’ So, they asked for concessions so there would be no araba and one of their demands was to have the majority seats in the parliament in Lagos. They didn’t have the population but the British granted the request so that there will be no araba.
So, we kept on preaching One Nigeria but here we are today. We in the in South-east have been marginalised to the point where we cannot even rise up to demand for what is due to us. If Nigeria is dissolved today, give the South-east five years and our standard of living will be as high as that of the British.