Self-preservation behind impasse over election sequence —Agbakoba

Constitutional lawyer, Chief Olisa Agbakoba, is among the arrowheads of the Nigerian Intervention Movement (NIM) touted as Third Force. In this interview with KUNLE ODEREMI, the activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) talks about the primary agenda of the coalition, and other issues. EXCERPTS:

PRESIDENT Buhammadu Buhari recently withheld his assent to the amendment to the Electoral Act passed by the National Assembly because the latter altered the order of election proposed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). What is in the election sequence that could have forced both the Presidency and the National Assembly to return to the trenches?

The 1999 Constitution has set out the function of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and given the powers to regulate the order of elections. Even though the constitution does not specifically say that INEC should deal with sequence issue, I think it is implied that the constitution has given the commission the powers to order, provide and regulate elections in Nigeria. Therefore, for me, I would say it is the INEC and not the National Assembly that has the power to say elections should be in a particular format because the constitution gives it that power. So, it is as simple as that.

Are you saying the decision by the president to withhold his assent is in the right direction?

It’s correct. But, there are arguments that there is more to that action than meets the eye, that it has some political undercurrents, especially on issues of preservation than national interest?

First, you have to look at the legal issues and decide what is the right thing to be done.  For me, the constitution gives INEC the powers to set out the sequence of elections. That is only the legal side. The political side is that all politicians, from the president to the governors to the National Assembly, which election should come first?  That is simply politics. So, clearly the president feels that if his election comes first, it could lead to his advantage. The National Assembly feels if its own election comes first, it could be to its own advantage. So, they are fighting for political advantage. But that is not to say that the real answer to the question cannot be deal with in an honest way. In an honest, legal way, the National Assembly has no powers to determine the sequence of election. People talk about legal reason; they talk about political advantage. So, it is in the interest of the National Assembly to seek a way that gives them the maximum advantage. That is what is playing out.

It seems we have only seen the first phase of the impasse, as a number of groups and individuals have headed for the court over the issue, either for or against the National Assembly, while some powerful power groups are said to be mounting pressure on the lawmakers to reconsider their stance on the alteration. Where would the unfolding drama and muscle flexing by the main factors likely lead the country, especially as the countdown to the general election has begun?

Well, it’s all about political power. So, you would find that politicians would do everything possible to ensure that they get the best advantage, even if it means killing their mothers. Look, you are talking basically about people who have no employment and no job, and the only way they can get money is to be in politics. So, we are looking at a multitrillion Naira lottery. The winner of the lottery takes everything. If the president wins, he gets everything. If the people who oppose the president lose, they lose everything. So, both the Presidency and the National assembly will go to any length to ensure that the thing favours them because they are looking at a four-year lottery: raw political power where Nigerians have no voice and no stake.  You can see that Nigerians are not participating in the debate; we are like outsiders looking on what the NASS is saying and what the Presidency is saying. But if you go underneath it, you are talking about raw political power, stupendous power with grandiose lifestyle, driving their cars with siren, flying in government jets around world, stealing government money, including security votes. That is what it is all about because if the presidential election comes first, and the president wins, it would have a legal impact on the outcome. So, the NASS people are trying to make sure their own comes first. So, it is a war of both sides with no prisoner taken; nobody is going to take prisoners, only to kill themselves. They will want to spend millions in court to make sure they get what they are looking for.

The sentiment in certain quarters is that the adjustment carried out by the National Assembly was capable of deepening democracy and boosting good governance, given the 2015 experience where there was a bandwagon effect after the victory of President Buhari when many candidates rode on the crest of president to power. Don’t you share such sentiments?

I do. But, there are a number of conditions possible. First of all, it is clear the one that has the power to fix sequence of election. That’s number one. Number two, the president wants to go first. Number three, the NASS wants to go first. We can find a middle of the road by actually doing all the elections in one day. That is the middle-of-the-road. So there will be no question of political advantage every time. The current system takes a lot of time, as every Saturday, people are expected to go out to vote.

You are a prime mover of the National intervention Movement (NIM), which is currently involved in an aggressive nationwide membership drive preparatory to the elections. But with the election less than a year, many people consider your efforts as belated. In fact, the main political parties have since stepped up their games. Why would you not reconsider your position?

It is not too late, unless some people still do not know what NIM is all about. It is not a political party. It is simply a movement to show interest in how the elections should go in 2019. Already, we have two million members. We are targeting about 30 million, because we have a study of the voting population and we found that about 30 million voters are between the ages of 18 and 40.  And these 30 million voters are the people who are mostly affected by bad government policies. They have no jobs; they suffer from unemployment, and they will be very angry. So, our job is very simple: it is to simply reach them basically by social media and tell them that the only way you can change your situation is to get registered because it not like the Sunday church that you will be praying to God and yet, you have no Permanent Voter Card (PVC). So, register and have a PVC. If you don’t register, then don’t complain.  After you register, vote for whoever you think: whether it is APC, PDP or anybody you think is going to advance your interest to make Nigeria a better place. That’s our simple job. Our job is not to put people in office.   I’m sure if we have two million members today, in another two, three or five months, it would reach five million people. The fee to sign up is only N200. Go to our website. What we are advocating is that once you change your circumstance, you can change the process; that’s all.

Part of our work is that if any of us like Donald Duke, myself, Pat Utomi, have a political interest in running for office, then we will call on the movement to support us. If I was to go for an elective office in APC, PDP or whatever platform, I will now tell the movement that if you believe in my confidence to do the job, make sure you work for me. We are not like a political party, where you have to build offices; you have to build structures, you have to galvanise the members. Ours, in NIM, is to help shape the opinion of the people we have identified, to really need us to assist make the change. So, two things, one go and get registered. I was speaking on Wednesday at the Nigerian Law School, Lagos to about 4000 law students. I asked them, ‘how many of you have PVCs?’, only about 15 put up their hands.  These are lawyers-to-be. You can imagine that if in Lagos we have 20 million people and in the last election, only two million registered, what about the other 18 million prospective voters? So, when we complain about the Land Use Charge , it is you, Lagosians, you, the 20 million, if you have PVCs, and you don’t like what Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is doing, you vote him out. But if you don’t have your PVCs, you can’t do anything except grumble and write articles in the newspapers or go and talk on television programmes or on the social media. So the job of the NIM is to encourage people, for example, in Lagos that we will like the voters to grow from two million to about 10 million, and those 10 million, we will now tell them that ‘do you think that the present government is favouring you or not?’ These are the people determining your fate on a daily basis. You will have to take part in the political process because if you don’t and the governor is not doing the right thing, so don’t complain. Our job is just to talk.

 Before now, your group came up with the identity of the Third Force. But all of a sudden, former President Olusegun Obasanjo came up with the Coalition for Nigerian Movement (CNM), as another Third Force, just as the stalwarts of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) have also described their party as a  Third Force.   What is the relationship between NIM and the other two, especially the SDP?

There is no relationship. The SDP is a political party,  we are not. Your question even makes me happy because it shows the NIM has made the term, Third Force, to have meaning. Obasanjo has, kind of, come up with Third Force and SDP says it is a Third Force. That’s exactly what we want to hear. Let everybody propagate the word, Third Force. Whether you are a Catholic, Methodist, Baptist or a Presbyterian, you are all Christians.

So, with Obasanjo passing a vote of no confidence in the ruling APC and the PDP, is there the possibility of all these political tendencies coming together to challenge the status quo in 2019?

We are all working on the same agenda. The agenda is to challenge APC and PDP. But, we are working on different platforms. Some have a political objective like the SDP to sponsor people into offices; and to overrun APC and PDP. So, if you have 20 members in the Lagos State house of Assembly, we in the Third Force, whether in the Obasanjo group, or SDP, or NIM, we would like to see that the Lagos State House of Assembly has more people not from APC and PDP in 2019. That is our vision. So, if we are able to bring in a fresh new generation of president, which is the victory. Whether Obasanjo is pushing his own Third Force, or SDP is pushing its own Third Force or we are pushing our own Third Force, the common agenda is to see that President Buhari is defeated.

You talked about the desire for a new generation president, but most of the names being bandied about as presidential hopefuls belong to those often described as recycled politicians. Is that the kind of change you have in mind?

That is a very good question because that is our big challenge. But we recognise that you are looking at a 20-feet high wall and how to jump that wall successfully is not going to be easy. So there is no question that in jumping that wall, we might have to make compromises. That is pragmatic politics. The nature of those compromises is still unfolding. But for me, personally, what I will like to see is a paradigm shift from the past, but whether that is politically possible in 2019 will unfold in the next two, three or four months. Let me create a scenario, if for instance, the PDP adopts a relationship with other political parties: SDP, and they agree to adopt Atiku Abubakar, who is 74 years old, and they ask me, what do I think? I will say, well that Atiku is part of the old structure but I would like to know who will be the vice-president. If it is possible to have somebody like Professor Yemi Osinbajo,  he is smart, suave, charismatic, and so on, I will go with Atiku. If they bring in an ex-CBN deputy governor, Dr Kingsley Nwuoha, I will say this is the most ideal. But the problem is: how does he break down the 20-feet wall? That gives the answer to your question. What I know is that whoever the Third Force would support, we will have to be pragmatic and idealistic.

Despite the visit of President Buhari to Benue, Plateau etc,  following a spate of killings by herdsmen in these states, the killings  continue unabated? What does the trend portend for the country?

The issue of governance comes here. There is an international body that measures the effectiveness of government to govern over their territorial areas. There are about five critical measures, the worst is when a country is labelled as a failed state. A failed state is where warlords have taken over, such as Somalia where government has collapsed, the rule of law has broken down.  Nigeria is just a step above that. Nigeria is described in the index of failed states as a low grade civil war and when you are in a low grade civil war, you cannot effectively protect the lives and properties of your people. So, when you look at Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Yobe, it is as if Nigeria is lawless. Today, the president goes to Benue; the following day, they kill some people. The next day, they killed some people in Plateau. So it shows that politically we are in a precarious state. Because it is a very sophisticated, informal system, there is an appearance of normality. Things look normal because 99 per cent of Nigerians do not need government to survive: the vulcanisers, drivers, carpenters, plumbers, and so many others, they are out of the system. Many Nigerians are outside the formal sector and that was the problem General Ibrahim Babangida confronted when he was in power. I keep wondering why Nigeria has not gone done. And the reason it has not gone down is because about 120 million people don’t look up to the government to survive. If, for instance, there is an earthquake in Abuja, we won’t feel it because at age 65, I have never received a dime from government. So government is not doing anything for anyone. Nothing! So we find a way to survive, through spiritual ways, either by living on our relations, friends or businesses or being paid under the table. That’s how Nigeria has been surviving. If in Nigeria we have a situation where most of us depend on government, we would have been all dead. If these things happened in America, that country would go down.