LANRE ADEWOLE discussed the nation at diamond independence anniversary with leading lawyer and senior advocate, Femi Falana.
The sense of déjà vu is always there dissecting the nation at each independence anniversary, but this is a landmark year and we cannot but ask if the nation has fared better at least since the coming of the stable democracy we currently run.
The celebration of Nigeria at 60 should be low keyed. The country should posthumously honour the young men and women who fought for the independence of Nigeria. Some paid the supreme sacrifice. No doubt, the diamond celebration may be a landmark for the government and members of the ruling class. But for workers who are not paid a minimum wage of N30,000, pensioners who are denied meagre pension and the majority of unemployed young people, it is a celebration of frustration and despair.
Regrettably, the members of the political class have failed to appreciate what Nigerians went through to take back the country from highly corrupt and dangerous murderers in military uniform. We are however mobilising the Nigerian people to hold political leaders to account for their stewardship or betrayal of the people.
Were there foundational flaws, something like demons, we should be exercising?
There are no demons to exorcise from the political system. First, the history of slave trade and colonialism is not taught in our schools. Even politicians are made to believe that Nigerians did not fight for independence. Neo-colonial scholars deliberately refuse to recall the wars waged by the British colonial army against the various communities to seize territories. The brutal massacre of 55 women at Aba in 1929, the brutal killing of 21 miners at Enugu in 1949, the deposition and banishment of traditional rulers, the 1945 general strike, the imprisonment of members of the Zikist movement and other egregious human rights violations perpetrated by the British colonial regime against the Nigerian people are hidden from students by the neo-colonial educational system.
Apart from lack of knowledge about the atrocities of colonial rule, the indigenous ruling elite retained the structure of colonialism, its laws and ethos. Of course, the economy has been taken over by imperialism through the IMF and World Bank. The point that I am making is that we are not in control of the history, culture, politics and economy of the country.
The current generation of rulers couldn’t just have gone rouge on a working system. It appears the older generation messed things up a bit and the rot is just deepening under the current crop of rulers.
The older generation of rulers did not lead or even join the struggle for genuine independence. While the workers and the youths were calling for revolutionary changes, the nationalist politicians were busy attending a constitutional conference at Lancaster House in London. In those conferences, it was agreed between the colonial forces and the nationalist politicians that the status quo would not be dismantled. That was how Nigeria was tied to the apron string of imperialism. But the system collapsed barely four years later as the contradictions of the post-colonial rule could not be resolved under the neo-colonial structures.
By January 1966, a group of confused military officers violently took overpower but they were also overwhelmed and consumed in the crisis. A few months later, there was a violent counter-coup. The latter group consolidated power and set up a military regime with the connivance of the British government. None of the military dictators that ruled the country for about three decades embarked on industrialisation, job creation and infrastructural development. As if that was not enough, the Ibrahim Babangida junta embarked on the sale of public assets and institutionalisation of corruption under a dubious economic agenda called Structural Adjustment Programme. Since then successive military and civilian regimes have retained the economic programme and thereby promoted poverty in the land while subsidising a few rich people. Through the zealous implementation of the neo-liberal economic system, Nigeria has since become the global capital of poverty.
Many believe that the combination of rulership and governance is our major bane since independence. There is even this joke about some fellows abroad coming back to re-colonise us. What brand of government do you think will work for us considering we have tried parliamentary, presidential, military, even diarchy, without many solutions?
No doubt, the members of the ruling class are principally responsible for the crisis of underdevelopment plaguing the country. You cannot blame the people for the economic crimes committed by the rulers and their foreign masters. Even though the colonial officials withdrew physically in 1960 the economy is still fully controlled by imperialism. Can you believe that the recent fuel hike and increase in electricity tariffs were dictated by the IMF as a conditionality for the $3.4 billion taken by Nigeria to address the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic? Without empowering the Nigerian people to take their political destiny in their own hands and control the economy in the interest of the country, no political model will work. No nation can make progress by excluding women, workers and youths from politics because they constitute the majority of the population.
You once sought political office and appeared to have recoiled. Is our democracy/civil rule so incorrigible?
The ruling class has monetised politics in order to further corner the commonwealth. Frankly speaking, it is difficult to compete with the political buccaneers that have hijacked the political space. I am however involved with genuine progressive forces in the struggle to liberate the masses from the shackles of poverty in the midst of plenty. My practical involvement in politics is based on an ideology that will challenge the status quo. Although I have not contested elections after my failed bid in 2003 I have never recoiled from politics and human rights struggle.
With all the fissures becoming very yawning, do we have hope of sustained nationhood in another 40 years, at least for the country to attain a century of togetherness?
It is undoubtedly clear that the inability of the ruling party to run an inclusive and gender-sensitive government, address security challenges, confront the menace of corruption and ensure the control of the national economy has continued to threaten the corporate existence of the country. But the ruling class will always resort to violence to keep the country together.
On the part of genuine forces of change, the masses should unite and confront the ruination of the country by the ruling class whose members are united. Since nation-building is unfinished business in many parts of the world ours cannot be an exception. But members of the ruling class should stop saying arrogantly that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable. If the unity of the country is not negotiable why has the Federal Government been negotiating with militants, terrorists and bandits?
At least there are areas of governance that can be categorised as working. What are these areas for you and how much hope do they generate in you to be confident of a better tomorrow?
The constitution provides for popular democracy and that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. It also provides for an inclusive government at all levels. My confidence is that if the abundant human and natural resources of the nation are well husbanded and utilised for the common good, Nigeria will take her rightful place in the comity of civilised nations. The delegates to the 2014 National Conference unanimously voted for the justiciability of the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy embodied in the constitution. All federal and state legislators are going to be mobilized to appreciate the urgent need to make socioeconomic rights enforceable in Nigerian courts.
You consistently accuse successive administrations, including the incumbent of encouraging impunity in almost all matters of governance. If this is the heart of the matter, what is your one-stop solution to end impunity?
The much-celebrated rule of law is a bourgeois doctrine designed to maintain political stability in capitalist countries. The four basic tenets of the rule of law are accountability and transparency of the government, just laws including human rights laws and accessible justice. Even though it is practically impossible to have just laws or laws evenly applied to every member of class society the difference between the ruling classes in advanced capitalist states and peripheral states is respect for the rule of law or otherwise.
In the former, once you breach the law the system deals with you. But in the latter, if you breach the law you deal with the law by manipulating the system to escape justice. In Nigeria, members of the ruling class are above the law. Hence, court orders are disobeyed by the managers of the neocolonial state. Official impunity is worse under the Buhari administration because the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami SAN openly defends disobedience of court orders. Just last week, he shunned the summons of a properly constituted judicial commission of inquiry headed by Justice Ayo Salami, a former president of the Court of Appeal. Neither the government nor the Nigerian Bar Association will ever call him to order. The implication of the lack of fidelity to the rule of law by the government is that it encourages citizens to breach the law and thereby promote instability in the country. Impunity is not the heart of the matter but it is a major facilitator of political instability, insecurity, human rights abuse and even corruption.
Incidentally, your primary constituency, law and its rule, is generally accepted as the hope of the common man. Being a major player, you should be engendering hope in someone out there, dissecting the justice sector of the last 60 years?
The late Justice Akinola Aguda once said that the term ‘equality before the law’ is a myth promoted by lawyers and judges to deceive the people. Like Karl Marx the jurist was saying that there can be no equality before the law in a class society. It is deceptive to say that the law is the last hope of the common man. The law is the last hope of the rich who can hire lawyers to challenge the violations of their rights.
My law firm has just secured the release of a young man detained in Kirikiri Maximum Correctional Centre for six years without trial. He was arrested along with four other persons during a police raid in Lagos. They were railroaded to detention. The police demanded for a bribe of N50,000 for the release of each of them even though they committed no offence. Four paid the bribes and were released. Since the man could not pay he was charged with armed robbery, denied bail and locked up in prison to await trial. The legal advice of the Lagos State Attorney General to the effect that he had no case to answer was not delivered to the court by the police. So he was locked up for 6 years. That can never happen to a big man or woman in any part of the country.
By the way, the police cannot raid the rich. In 1989, we fought for the abolition of the vagrancy law. It was abolished. But the poor are daily arrested and detained for wandering or loitering. The last 60 years have witnessed a progressive collapse of the justice system. The legal profession is not helping matters. About two months ago the Supreme Court of Nigeria ruled that virtual hearing of cases is not unconstitutional. But Nigerian courts are not prepared to migrate to virtual hearing of cases. Unlike my experience in municipal courts in the country, I participate in the virtual hearing of cases in the ECOWAS Court. So I do not have to be in Abuja to handle such matters. I have just filed a case online in the ECOWAS Court registry in respect of a man who is being detained in Cape Verde. About a week ago, I gave evidence through video conferencing in the Ogoni case being tried by a court in the Netherlands. But the local bar and the bench are reluctant to move with the rest of the global legal community with respect to virtual proceedings. South Africa, Kenya and many other African countries have embraced digital technology to aid justice delivery.
In all fairness, is there something for Nigeria and Nigerians to celebrate in this landmark anniversary?
Apart from acknowledging and celebrating the heroic struggle of the young men and women who genuinely fought for the independence of the country, there isn’t much to celebrate. As we celebrate Nigeria at 60, we deserve to know how a group of military dictators and their civilian collaborators destroyed the nation’s modest achievements in all spheres of life and turned Nigeria into a dumping ground for all manners of imported goods including petroleum products even though Nigeria is one of the largest producers of crude oil in the world.
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