Dr Wunmi Bewaji, a former Minority Leader, House of Representatives, speaks on the state of the nation in this interview with BOLA BADMUS.
Could you help us make sense of the situation in the country today?
The situation in the country is terrible to say the least. What is more concerning is the issue of insecurity. The insecurity in the country has got to a level that it has become a very potent threat to Nigeria itself as a country. And unfortunately the present administration, the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari, does not appear to have any clue as to what to do about it and that is even a bigger danger.
So, it is unfortunate that we have found ourselves at this point and you know the multiplier effect of insecurity. We’ve seen the effect on the rate of inflation, the cost of goods now like food items has skyrocketed. It is so sad now that even you go into the markets and you see that raw tubers of yam are being cut into small pieces to be sold because people can no longer afford to buy a whole tuber due to high cost. This is also because farmers can longer go to their farms either to plant or harvest and you know students too cannot go to schools, they are being kidnapped. The long term effect of that will be in some few years’ time, when those students who are now in IDP camps, and who are not able to go to school, may become willing tools in the hands of domestic terrorists that this administration has decided to deodorise as bandits. There is nothing like bandits in our law, yes.
But some people would not buy your line of argument as they believe that the president is actually doing his best to ensure that Nigeria is at peace?
There is way to look at it; the proof of pudding is in the eating. There is no evidence whatsoever that this president is doing everything to bring peace and security to the country. When you are fixated on the wrong notion that okay you are doing things, then there is problem. Look at the Defence Budget, Defence Budget is now taking up to 35 per cent of the country’s total budget, and people say Nigeria is not a failed country. Yes, it may not be a failed country yet, but it’s obviously a failed democracy. Yes, Nigeria is a failed democracy under General Buhari. Nigeria has become so.
This is because, democracy, by definition, is supposed to be that particular platform to annex the diversities of opinions of people, of policies and all that. We have a president who cannot even manage his own political party. APC which brought him to power is today being run by a sole administrator, a garrison commander, appointed by the president. And it’s unfortunate INEC has become so weak that up till this moment, the electoral body has not said anything about it. INEC is the agency saddled by law, both by statue and the constitution to enforce provisions relating to how political parties must be run.
Don’t you think INEC decided not to say anything because Mala Buni is an interim chairman who will leave the seat as soon as APC organises its congresses and National Convention?
Buni has been there now for how long and under what condition did Buni get there? Is it legal? Let INEC answer that question. Is it legal to remove a democratically elected chairman of a party, to remove a democratically elected National Executive Committee of a party and then appoint a sole administrator and INEC will have nothing to say about it? Somebody that has not been democratically elected would sign form to INEC and INEC would recognise it. And INEC has not been credited with writing a letter to say look, you must conduct your national convention, we are giving you 60 or 90days?
If you are familiar with the Company’s Act of Nigeria that gives the Corporate Affairs the power to supervise companies, likewise the Central Bank (CBN), under the Central Bank Act, being given the power to supervise banks, when you see a particular bank do something contrary to law that might harm the economy, the Central Bank of Nigeria would come hard on that bank. Why did INEC not do that? So, I don’t think that we should even be waiting for the Supreme Court for that if INEC had done its own job. That shows the level to which democracy has decayed in the six years of Buhari’s government.
Still on security issue, one can recall that when these attacks occurred in Igangan, in Oyo State and elsewhere, the president was approached and he said he had given the governors the go-ahead and that they are Chief Security Officers of their various states. People would want to ask, why do we continue to blame Buhari for everything that has to do with security?
No, we are not blaming Buhari for everything happening in the country, but as President and Commander-in-Chief, the buck stops on his table. Now the question to ask is this: was this the democracy that Buhari inherited in 2015? If the democracy had been this bad, would Buhari have been able to defeat an incumbent president in 2015? Democracy is a form of government that relies on strong institutions as against strong leaders. It tends to be that when you have a leader that is dictatorial or a leader with the cast of a tyrant, then what you discover is that because the democracy is still young, because most of the heads of these institutions want to keep their jobs, they don’t want to ruffle feathers.
There is this issue that has to do with repentant Boko Haram being rehabilitated and brought back to the society, all in a bid to address the security challenges facing the country, and such move is raising dust here and there. What is your view about it?
Well, let me say the report I heard of Alhaji Lai Mohammed saying in America that there is so- called international best practice whereby surrendered terrorists would not be prosecuted, although he refused to cite an example of that in any part of the world. He also refused to cite any law or statue in support of that. Although he came back to the country and said he was misquoted, so he has now said they would be prosecuted.
Yes, under International Arms Law, when a soldier surrenders, then that individual cannot be killed. Otherwise, it becomes a war crime. Then the first thing to realise in that you cannot continue to deodorise that individual as a bandit. If you are recognising him as a bandit, he does not come under the purview of that convention. He must be what you call active combatant. But you cannot say somebody carrying gun to rob at Ikeja Bus Stop, then you subdued him, in the process of the robbery, he comes forward to surrender his arms, and then you now say there is an international best practice for him not to be prosecuted. For what?
So, this government needs to be sincere to know and understand that Boko Haram fighters are terrorists. They are not bandits. …the Nigerian media will share the blame in this because it has accepted that false narrative of this government, deodorising terrorists as bandits as if they are common criminals. An organisation as Boko Haram that is already ranked No. 4 in Global Terrorism Index in the world, that’s the very organisation that you call their combatants or bandits and then you are using the tax payers’ money to feed and cloth them. I am not against any terrorist who might have had a change of heart surrendering, yes, you can surrender. But having waged war against the Federal Republic of Nigeria, there are laws regarding that and those laws must be enforced. You have the Treason Act, you have the Terrorism Act.
So, those laws ought to be enforced. Yes, the present Administration of Justice Act allows for plea bargaining. Maybe, you want to think of what do we do since this individual has surrendered? Maybe, that might affect the level of punishment, but for you to say that individual should not be prosecuted is wrong. Nobody is saying they should be killed when they surrendered, no. That’s against international law, but when somebody surrenders, then the person should be taken in, debriefed and properly prosecuted, and that’s the only way you can send the right message to his other fighters, or his other colleagues or co- conspirators who are still waging war against the Federal Republic of Nigeria. You could see that these are people who have pledged alliance to a flag different from green-white-green. So, it is shocking that this administration is maintaining this kind of attitude towards domestic terrorists as known all over the world.
That’s on one hand. Then the same administration is unleashing the DSS, the Army and all that against the people who are campaigning for independence for their own region, which is not an illegal act. It is only when it involves violence that it becomes an illegal act. It is not illegal for someone to say I want my own side of this country to be independent of the rest of the country, it is actually legal, it’s allowed by law.
The only thing that is not legal is when you want to do that by force of arms. So unleashing the DSS, the Army and all other against people campaigning for independence of their region, and at the same time, you are now sending mediators to Boko Haram fighters, it’s shocking and disgraceful.
The National Assembly amended the Electoral Act, while they rejected electronic transmission of vote results. How do you see this?
I am in full support of what the National Assembly has done to electronic voting and electronic transmission of result, but at the same time I have also said that if you want to do this, we have to do it right because we have seen examples around the world. Yes, I am in support of non- inclusion of the provision in the law now.
Why?
The reason is this. Once you put that in the law, any other thing done contrary to that law becomes illegal. So, now we are in 2021, by next year, we would enter election mode. So for me if we want to do it, we have to do it right. We have seen other places where this thing had been done, if you don’t do it right, the consequences would be catastrophic. If we want to go electronic, we must do it right. We must have at least a minimum of four years of trial and error before we would then do it wholesale.
You see I have listen to a lot of commentaries on this, but as someone that has a lot of experience on this in Nigeria, UK and America, my position is that we must do it right. Look, if it goes wrong, the same people who are saying they must put it there now would be the same people to complain. They will say you can imagine what would happen if in 2023 we are not able to have a transition because the election has been botched. So, as we speak right now, we do not have that infrastructure.
But people are saying this is the same infrastructure that banks in the country rely on and it is working fine for them.
Yes, people have forgotten. I always tell people they should step out of their cities. You know I travel a lot. The moment you step out, even out of Lagos, a kilometre outside of this Lagos, life is different. So what I am saying is when we would want to do it, it is ideal. Electronic voting, electronic transmission of results is the ideal. Buhari came there in 2015, over six years now, so my point is that in six years, we should have introduced this system, we should encourage some states that will do this in their local government elections. INEC would talk to some states, Kebbi, Lagos, you want to do your election; we want to bring these machines and want to test them. You want to do bye-election, you use them and all that. If we do this for at least a period of four years, at the end of the day, we would have been able to see the weaknesses of the system, then we would have been able to correct them, and we have been able then to see how we can improve on it.
On the Petroleum Industry Act, oil- producing communities and other stakeholders are raising eyebrow, declaring their rejection of the Act. Do you think they are justified?
My attitude towards petroleum resources generally is for people in whose land this oil is found to own the oil, mine and sell and for them to pay their tax to the government.
You are in full support of resource control?
Yes. Whether the government is talking about three per cent or five per cent, I don’t think so. What is holding this federation together, this false federation that we are calling Nigeria, is that daylight robbery that the Federal Government is committing in the Niger Delta. If you remove that, this false federation’s problem would be solved.
Can we also say you are in support of people calling for true federalism or those calling for total breakup?
We must restructure. We have got to a point where it’s either we restructure or the country by itself will dissolve. As you can see today, the country is dissolving on its own.
In what way?
In every way. The strength of any country is in the unity, and can you say there is unity in Nigeria as we speak? No, there is no unity, even the North that we used to see as one, the Middle- Belt has its own separate identity. The Middle- Belt was almost at one with the core- North. You can see what the Fulani are doing in the Middle- Belt. Then you see the agitation in the South-East and then the agitation in Western Nigeria.
I would not deceive you; the dominant political discourse today in Western Nigeria is independence of Yoruba nation. Yes, that is the dominant political discourse in any gathering today of every family. Yes, a lot of people are saying it is Buhari’s factor, that probably if somebody else comes in, he may be able to unite the country. But as we speak, things are so bad, as far as unity is concerned. Where is that unity? There is no unity.
Even the APC, which is the ruling party, Buhari is not even able to maintain unity within the APC fold, which is his own party. So even within his own party, Buhari is not seen to be friend with leaders from other regions of the country. Leaders of the party from South-East, South-South, South-West or North-Central, apart from his own side of the country, the core- North. Don’t forget that governor of Benue, Samuel Ortom came into office as APC member, have you forgotten? Yes, look at how Buhari mismanaged the situation that forced Ortom out of the party, that has now made APC to become an entity that is undesirable in Benue.
Therefore, a country that is not united would daily continue to diminish. Today, I was watching president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa attending a G7 meeting, when last did you see president of Nigeria attending G20 or G7 meetings? This is because world leaders see him as tribal warlord. He does not have that clout, status, skill set to be able to perform that function. And that is why he has become a personal non-grata to the international bodies.
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