represents Ekiti Central Senatorial District
in the Senate. He spoke to Sunday
Vanguard in his Abuja office on several
national issues.
When you wake up in the morning and
you look at the Nigerian situation, what
comes to your mind?
What comes to my mind is that things
could be better and ought to have been
better if we have taken Nigeria seriously.
How do you mean taking Nigeria
seriously?
I have a feeling that those of us who are
leaders have not taken Nigeria seriously
and there is a need for us to do so,
quickly, before things got out of hand.
There are so many problems that need to
be solved quickly. And I look at the
environment and see most of our people
moving around without hope; that does
not portend a society that will create a
future. Today, the young ones do not
even have any compass as to where they
are going, and we are not assisting them
to know. So, how do we have a future
that is going to be better than today?
When you have a problem and you have a
solution, you are happy that things will
get better. But we have so many
problems today and nobody seems to be
addressing them or, do I say, they are not
being addressed seriously. There is no
hope for a better future if we continue
this way.
When one observes the Nigerian situation
so well, it is possible to see a disconnect
between the leadership and followership,
which makes it difficult for anybody to
want to believe that there is any good
leader left in the country. What is the
problem with Nigeria and the leaders?
It is true that there is a gulf between the
leaders and the led. And this is due to
the fact that the masses lost hope in the
leaders. Anybody in the position of
authority, either at the executive,
legislative or the judicial level, is seen as a
thief. And why it is so is that the people
have been betrayed over the years by
the leadership. You believe in somebody
and you sing his praise to high heavens,
he gets to the position of power and he
begins to do things contrary to what you
have known him to profess. Under no
circumstance would you then believe in
such person again. So, we need to work
very hard to return that credibility into
the person because if you are not trusted
by those that you are leading, there is no
way they would follow you. We must work
hard to return that credibility.
You were one of those who had it rough
under military regime. But given our
current experience under civil rule, some
people have been tempted to say things
can be better under the military. What
do you think?
Under no circumstance would I glorify
military regime. I believe that what we
have today, as unfortunate as it may
seem, is much better than the military.
Again, we have to be cognizant of history.
How did we get to where we are? History
will show you that we were brought to
where we are today by the military. The
few years that we had civil rule before
and after independence showed the giant
strides the country made. Suddenly there
was military intervention till 1979 when
soldiers handed over power briefly and
they came back again up till 1999. So, all
of the things you are seeing today are
symptoms that came into being when we
were under the military. Therefore,
glorifying the military is not going to help.
The problem with the country is that our
yesterday is always better than our today
and our today, the way things are going,
will always be better than our tomorrow.
But we have to stem the tide of this
abnormality.
But what it should be is that today should
be better than yesterday…
But it is not so here! That is why
somebody, during Obasanjo
administration, say, "Oh, Obasanjo is not
good." But now that Obasanjo is not
there, they say, "Oh, Obasanjo was much
better than Jonathan." Today they say
Jonathan is not good and may be
tomorrow somebody comes in and they
say, "Ah, Jonathan was much better than
this." It is so because, by our attitude to
life, our today is always better than our
tomorrow and our yesterday always
better than our today. And by that, you
can explain that we are not planning and
we are not progressing.
We are not thinking of development. If
we are thinking of development, why
should we stop our national planning
process? For more than 27 years ago now,
we have stopped the national planning
process. We suddenly stopped and
nobody cares. Budgets do not get
announced in January any longer and
budget for a year gets announced or
starts to be implemented mid-year. That
is why we are in this state of ass and why
our people are becoming so despondent.
They are becoming cynical about society.
I am saying now that we all have to come
together and say enough is enough and
put a stop to this drift.
People like you have always spoken about
the way out of our problems but none of
those in positions of authority to make
things work seems to be interested. What
new thing is the opposition putting
together to ensure that, whatever it
takes, 2015 would be the time to really
come together and say enough is enough?
People are worried, they are concerned
and, as a result of that, they are
organizing to ensure that there is change
in Nigeria. What I cannot assure you is
whether this is enough or not enough. We
again may have to wait and see how it
translates. But I can assure you that in
our different level we are organizing.
Nigerians as a people don't seem to know
what they want from the leadership. And
I think this is part of the problem facing
us generally as a people…?
I disagree. I do not believe that Nigerians
do not know what they want. I have my
reason for that deduction. For instance,
when President Jonathan removed
subsidy in January of 2012, he and his
lieutenants promised heaven and earth as
to how funds from the removal would be
reinvested for the good of Nigeria. Today,
even the buses that were said to be part
of the measures to mitigate the effect of
the subsidy removal in Nigerians have
been withdrawn from the roads without
anybody talking. And when Mr. President
directs FERMA to patch a portion of a
road, you hear people singing his praises.
It also happens in the case of the
governors.
Again, it is the failure of leadership at
different levels. And when we talk of
leadership, we are not just talking about
those in positions of president, governor.
Although we have leadership at the levels
of social organizations and families, it is
about lack of vigilance at all levels. We
are too concerned about immediate
survival. We want to eat good food, we
want to live in good houses and we want
to ride good cars. And that is what we are
focusing on. We are not focusing on
building a society that will ensure where
all of us can live a comfortable a life;
where all of us will leave legacies for
those who are yet to be born.
That is why we are not often consistent in
our assessment of things; that is why you
have people say, "Oh, this system is good
because I have benefited from it and that
one is bad because I have not benefited.
If I support this, may be I will benefit in
future." Look at the type of trivialities we
are all concerned with. People who
change societies do not look at 'what do I
gain' from this thing? They look at it from
the collective interest. Even if I die in the
process of pursuing this, I will have left
the society better than I met it. People
who are real and true leaders, that is the
way they think and that is the way they
look at life. But here, we are too short-
term in our approach to matters.
Senator Ben Obi, Special Adviser to
President Jonathan on Inter-Party Affairs,
has called on all parties in the opposition
to come and join hands with Mr.
President to enable him move Nigeria
forward. What is your comment?
That is calling for one-party state and,
when you have one-party state, you do
not have a democracy. When you talk of
democracy, you talk of having choices to
make as to whether I have to go for Party
A or Party B. When it comes to a point
whereby everything becomes come and
chop, then we do not have democracy.
And that is the wish of the PDP, that
Nigeria should become one-party state.
But that is not going to happen. That is
why some of us raise up our voices in the
Senate to say, "Look, some of us are in
opposition and we should carry out the
role of opposition." We cannot continue
to be robots that must be led on. So, no
matter the lamentation of people like Obi,
Nigeria cannot become one-party state.
This democracy must stand. There must
be progress in Nigeria. There must be
plurality of political parties and there
must be plurality of views.
How workable is the emergency rule as
solution we all long for in the North to
the insurgency there?
From information from the military chiefs
who came to brief the Senate Committee
on Defence of which I am a member, on
how far they have gone in the course of
the emergency rule in those three states,
what they told us was reassuring. They
said they had recovered all the grounds
seized by the insurgents and that
normalcy had returned to those places.
People are now moving freely. If we have
been able to achieve that, I think we
must commend the military officers and
men on ground and those who are
managing the emergency process.
How does that affect the issue of call for
dialogue by leaders like Prince Bola
Ajibola, Chief Olu Falae?
In fact, if the report given by the military
chiefs to our committee is anything to go
by, it is about time to dialogue. You
dialogue at a time when your enemy is at
the weakest position. You do not dialogue
when the enemy is as powerful as
yourself. But when you have pushed him
to a point of surrender, you can then
invite him for dialogue.
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