Letter to Buhari: OBJ is right, Nigeria now practising nepotocracy —Nwolise

Professor OBC Nwolise of the Department of Political Science, the University of Ibadan, renowned for his informed commentaries on national and international politics, is tired. Yes. He is tired of writing and commenting on Nigeria, its challenges and leadership without result. He has declined giving press interviews or appearing on TV, but had to change his mind “because of his love for Tribune and to appreciate what it has been doing.” MOSES ALAO brings excerpts of the interview with the scholar, where he speaks on the ‘letters’ of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the import of the latest one written to President Muhammadu Buhari.

 

FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Tuesday, pub lished a letter addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari, calling on him not to recontest in 2019 and raising serious questions about the government’s conduct. This was not the first time Obasanjo would write a letter, of this kind; as a political scientist, what is your take on the Obasanjo letters?

You know I have been off air for about two years; I am just granting this interview to respect Tribune and to appreciate it for what it has been doing. The problem in this country is that we do not see any use of knowledge and so, at a point, I felt there was no need wasting my time talking, writing and commenting when nothing has happened with what one has done in the past. The country has been going down, but nobody is using knowledge to arrest the situation. Nigeria has no brainbox; we are not thinking. At the leadership level, what we have is a political cabinet, but no strategic cabinet and any country that is not governed on the basis of knowledge cannot go anywhere. Nigeria is being governed on the basis of sentiment, emotions, trial and error and that is why it has been going in circles. That was also why I felt there was no need wasting one’s energy and time. But you are the first to pull me out of my cocoon for this year and from now on, since they have blown the whistle for politics, we can now continue.

By now, Nigerians should have known Obasanjo as a political whistle-blower. He has been doing this for long. During the era of former President Shehu Shagari, he wrote a letter alleging widespread corruption in government. During the time of Ibrahim Babangida as Head of State, he wrote a letter in which he insisted that the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) must have a human face. When former President Goodluck Jonathan was in government, he wrote a letter to him and even tore his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) card. We are here again. So, Nigerians should, by now, know the former president as a political whistle-blower. One strategic thing one must give to Obasanjo is that he reads the situation and he is a very patriotic Nigerian.

 

You don’t think there is something personal in Obasanjo’s letters, maybe a score to settle or something?

There is nothing personal in all these letters. Obasanjo was not talking to IBB as a person; he talked as a citizen who loved Nigeria. We must respect Obasanjo for the fact that when he criticises government, he does so for the good of Nigeria and not to attack the government unnecessarily.

Having said all these, Obasanjo was a third-term seeker; so people will ask why he is speaking against someone who has not even said he wants a second term. President Muhammadu Buhari has not told anyone that he wants to contest in 2019. Let us forget whatever body language anyone is reading. But as I said earlier, Obasanjo is a political whistle-blower and when the APC was working on the presidential candidate and a running mate, he was the first person to shout that Nigerians would not accept a Muslim-Muslim ticket. That is why I said we must give it to him as a political whistle-blower and he does not do it for himself, he does it for the good of Nigeria.

However, I must add that Baba Obasanjo should have started his letter by apologising to Nigerians for being part of those that imposed what we are seeing in this country today. First, he talked about politics being a do-or-die affair, which he has not apologised for and he has to do that. He has to tell politicians that politics is about getting power through the democratic process and not through killing and maiming people and burning down things. I have said this because that statement is still haunting Nigeria’s polity till date. During the campaign period in 2015, there was violence. PDP was not allowed to campaign in some places in the North; the party’s vehicles were burnt down. That is not democracy. But it was Obasanjo’s formula of do-or-die that the opposition copied. So, he has to first apologise to Nigerians for bringing that deadly formula of politics upon us.

Another reason he has to first apologise to Nigerians is because he was part of those who brought the present government to power. He was called upon to navigate the APC to power and we are seeing where that has led Nigeria. So, for imposing nepotocracy on Nigerians, he must apologise, because what we have today is not democracy, but nepotocracy; a government of nepotism. What we have today is nepotism that has taken Nigeria back by 100 years.

In all, the message Obasanjo gave is right but the prophet has a soiled hand. But let us take the message and leave the prophet and his errors to God, because God can still use a prophet that has sins to deliver messages. Whatever is between Obasanjo and God, let them settle it.

 

The prophet with a soiled hand actually told President Buhari to go home and rest. What is your take on that aspect of his letter?

My own take is that I will wish President Buhari to live longer. So if the letter was written to ask him to go home and rest, it was not because he did not perform; he has done something. The courage to fight corruption is something, even though we know that the anti-corruption fight does not have a strategy. President Buhari is a retired military General; he should know that any war that does not have a strategy cannot be won. Fighting corruption is number one. Number two, in the North-East, Boko Haram has been degraded and all the territories occupied by soldiers before he came into office have been reclaimed by our soldiers and men. That is an achievement. But it is only a 55 per cent achievement on the security item, because insecurity has increased all over Nigeria: kidnapping, robberies, ritual killings and so on. There is too much bloodletting in the country. Each day, we talk of cattle rustling, herdsmen killings. Let me not even use herdsmen, because these are not the herdsmen we know; these are trained militia. The fact that Buhari’s government has not taken effective measures to protect Nigerians goes to show how bad things are and that is why I talk of nepotocracy—that is the greatest undoing of this government.

President Buhari has achieved something, but whether he should continue or not is left for him to decide. But I want him to live longer and I know that governance has its pressure, its weight, which his health cannot continue to handle.

 

Though the Federal Government sidestepped some of the accusations contained in Obasanjo’s letter, speaking only of the achievements it has recorded, some Nigerians are alleging that the former president only came out to criticise the government because he has lost out in terms of influence on the president. The point is that the letter is a ploy to embarrass the APC government and the opposition PDP before Nigerians and the international community, prepare the ground for the emergence of a new party that will be peopled by his ‘boys’ and he would eventually anoint the next president of the country. What is your view on these allegations?

As I said earlier, I see Obasanjo as a patriotic Nigerian. When he talked about SAP having a human face, he was not seeking relevance.

 

That may be so, but you would recall that Obasanjo was former President Jonathan’s political father until things turned sour and he fired a letter criticising him. It has also been said that he enjoyed free access to President Buhari at a time in the life of this government and that he could have spoken to him privately instead of going public.

I don’t see things from that perspective. I see Obasanjo as a political whistle-blower who does not care about personal benefits. You see, when a government begins to fail and you are expressing ideas that the government or those surrounding the government do not want to hear and even when you want to see the person, you don’t have access, the next thing to do is to write. When Obasanjo wrote Jonathan, he expressed the fact that even to see the former president became a problem. I have heard people say that as a former president and an elder statesman, Obasanjo should have gone to Buhari to tell him his views; but if you want to see your president and you don’t have access, you write. I know how many presidents I have written in this country; none of them has ever replied.

 

The former president talked of a coalition for Nigeria, what is your take on that?

Yes. He talked about a coalition and a movement, but I will leave that to politicians, even though he said once the coalition becomes a political party he would pull out. I will rather address four categories of Nigerians that must wake up now and sit up. The first category is intellectuals. Intellectuals in this country have been too lukewarm and quiet over the country’s politics and the country has been going down. I know the laws of the country deliberately will not allow intellectuals to participate in politics; they want you to resign. No professor will resign to go and participate in politics, so we need to change our laws, such that academics who join politics can take three months leave, even soldiers. That is how we can save this country. If an academic or military man wants to join politics, he can take five to six months leave, go out there and slug it out, pass new ideas, go round and educate the people on how they can do things better and if they succeed, they can then go ahead to resign or retire and if they fail, they can purge themselves and return to their desks. We must not continue to leave the politics of this country to the private sector or the cash and carry profit-driven individuals. As long as we do that, we will continue to have problems, because they borrow money to campaign and they must pay back or they have greedy godfathers that sponsor them and they must pay back. So, corruption can never end.

The second category of people that must wake up is the youth. The youth of this country must wake up now; their future is being destroyed by the political class that has simply refused to become statesmen. What we have are greedy politicians and ruling class that have refused to become statesmen.

So, the youth of this country must wake and sit up between and the next election, because the mercantile politicians are ruining their future and the resources meant for the youth. We have millions of unemployed youths in the country today and the government thinks there will be peace and security. There can be no peace and security where you have millions of unemployed youths who have no hope, no direction and no plans for them on the side of government. So, the youths must wake up. The students must wake; the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) must wake up. Between now and the 2019 election, they must educate every tertiary and secondary school students to wake up.

The third category is the women. The women in this country must wake up and that includes President Buhari’s wife; she knows the direction the country is supposed to go. That was why she screamed when the Presidency was going the other way until she was told that her place is in the kitchen and the other room. The president has a right to hold his views but we know his wife knows the direction we are supposed to be going, so the women have to sit up. We have thousands of educated women; they must act now. Between the women and the youth, we must have a young dynamic president, be it a woman or a man; we must draw a line against gerontocracy, the rule of elders.

 

You are already joining Obasanjo to write off Buhari and by extension former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar who are already above 70 from the 2019 Presidency, because they are elderly.

Former President Obasanjo had his views and he expressed them, I am expressing mine. It is left for the president or any other older politician to convince Nigerians that gerontocrats can perform. But we have seen politicians ruin this country from 1960 till date. I told you I was off air for a long period; I got pissed when I discovered that I started writing and talking about Nigeria and what needs to be done right as an Assistant Lecturer in 1982 and my wife kept asking me, ‘you have been talking, writing since you were an Assistant Lecturer 35 years ago, now you have two years to retire as a professor, there has been no progress, so why do you continue to talk when no one is listening?’ The abundance that Chief Obafemi Awolowo and others promised us are still in the pipelines. Nobody is using Awolowo’s ideas: nobody is reading. We are only being governed based on emotions. So, let the gerontocrats go home and rest; let us have fresh thinking. Let us have people who are thinking of this country. See, Nigeria has been programmed to disintegrate by 2030. This country has been programmed by hostile forces to die by 2030. There was the first prediction in 2005 that Nigeria would disintegrate by 2015. That was why the 2015 election was frightening and people thought the country would scatter until President Jonathan conceded defeat and congratulated the new leader. Boko Haram must have been part of the plan to destroy the country, because initially it was killing southerners and burning churches, deceiving the Northern Muslims that they were for them. If by that time the Christians and Southerners had reacted, this country won’t be where it is today. But the Southerners and the Christians read between the lines and tolerated the killings, destructions and insults and so we are where we are today. But in 2010, the date for the death of Nigeria was shifted to 2030. It is on record. Five American Air Force officers did a research and gave the indices that will lead to the collapse of Nigeria by 2030. Unfortunately, our politicians are not even behaving as if there is problem on the ground. All they think is money and to capture power. If you capture power, what do you want to use the power for? Nobody thinks about that.

 

Former President Obasanjo, through his views in that letter, saw anger and anguish on the faces of Nigeria, he saw corruption in government, he saw nepotism, he saw Fulani herdsmen killings but the APC-led government said maybe the former president had been too busy to see the achievements the government has recorded. You are a scholar and, perhaps, may not be as busy as Obasanjo, what do you see?

I don’t envy the minister of information. A friend of mine used to defend things that were indefensible, so I used to call him lawyer of the guilty. I don’t envy the minister, because he must give a reason and say something on what Obasanjo said. But if those issues are taken one by one, you will see that the government has performed in two areas: partially in the area of security and it is not security in general, but on Boko Haram. If you talk about security generally, then you will see that insecurity is walking with stick in Nigeria today. But on Boko Haram, government has done well and for having the courage to even fight corruption, it has done well. In other areas, we have not seen much. On the TSA and foreign reserve, what have they brought to Nigerians who that they are dying of hunger? Today, the economic situation has turned many Nigerians to liars; someone who is in his house will you ‘please send me N2000, I am in the hospital.’ Many people have become thieves; many housewives have become prostitutes, families are in a shambles, because of the harsh economic situation. So if you talk about growing foreign reserve, we should ask you what it has brought to the table. Salaries and pensions are not paid as and when due.

The minister has not addressed the real issue. Nigerians have been shouting about restructuring but government is talking about processes. This country is not going anywhere without restructuring taking place and it is not just physical restructuring. There must be physical restructuring and fiscal restructuring; there is too much money concentrated at the centre and it is because there is too much money at the centre that the centre is being looted. The money that is supposed to go to the states and the local governments is left at the centre. So people just go there, open the save and grab money. All of us know what has been going on. So, we must restructure. There should be constitutional restructuring also, because a lot of things that are on the exclusive list should go to the states. Why can’t the states run railway lines? Why can’t states run inland waterways? A lot of the juicy sources of revenue has been centralised in the centre by the military. So those things have to be reworked. Restructuring has to be fiscal; the revenue formula has to change, so that more money can go to the states and local governments.