Suspension of Twitter is FG’s way of saying ‘we have failed in our job’ —Ayo Obe, ex-CLO president

A former president of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) and a partner at a Lagos-based law firm, Ms Ayo Obe, speaks with SUBAIR MOHAMMED on June 12 as Democracy Day, the honours bestowed on heroes of the democracy struggle and other issues.

 

During the celebration of June 12 as Democracy Day, the Federal Government seems to be trumpeting their achievements in office. Is this not leaving out the real heroes and heroines of the struggle?

On the 25th anniversary of the June 12, 1993 election that was marked at the Presidential Villa where the Federal Government declared the day as Democracy day, they honoured four people at the event. However, in my speech at the occasion, I mentioned many more people that had been instrumental in the struggle for democracy in Nigeria. The government did say they were going to award more honours and so on and so forth. But, of course, after that, it turned out that every Tom, Dick and Harry started claiming to be a hero in the struggle. Many of us were surprised that only four people were chosen to be honoured from the multitude. It was very strange.

We all know how the United Action for Democracy and, to some extent, NADECO and the Campaign for Democracy spearheaded the struggle against the annulment of June 12 election. So, if we are talking about the June 12 election itself, the people that were honoured by the Federal Government were not the main characters. But if we are talking about democracy in Nigeria, certainly, Chief Gani Fawehinmi was an epitome of the struggle for its realisation. He was one of the champions of democracy, not in the context of the June 12 election but there were many people who were there well before him.

 

(Cuts in)… that are yet to be honoured?

Well, I don’t think this government has interest in doing that anymore. I do remember that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha, said that would happen. I believe it was also one of the wishes of the late Abba Kyari that it should happen. Is honouring just a few people enough to immortalise the heroes of the June 12 struggle and appease Nigerians for its annulment? I don’t think that honouring four people implies celebrating democracy the way it should be celebrated. I think the Federal Government should make some efforts with what to do when it became a national holiday as the Democracy Day. At least, they ought to have shown interest in honouring some others, including the late Beko Ramsome Kuti. I think it is not a matter of appeasing people. We all know that the June 12, 1993 election was the culmination of the transition programme of former military Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida’s dictatorship. We had a free and fair election on that day but the process that led to that election can hardly be called a free and fair democratic exercise. The only benefit that one would see from it is that by the Babangida transition which forced Nigerians to either be in one party or another, you only had two options. You did have a situation whereby there was tendency for the Left in Nigeria to splinter into many parties, thereby allowing the Right to sail through on the majority because the Left has divided its votes. By forcing Nigerians to have one party or the other, the Babangida administration gave the Left its natural majority in Nigeria’s politics and that is why the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and its presidential candidate won.

 

As the country commemorates another June 12, what do you think can be done to ease the challenges confronting Nigerians?

I think everybody should calm down. The fact is that we have professional grievance seekers in Nigeria and it is unfortunate. I am a Twitter user. The great thing about Twitter is that you put your nonsense out there, people see it and if it is nonsense, they will challenge you. I don’t buy the excuse of the Ministry of Information and Culture for the banning of Twitter. The suspension is their way of saying ‘we have failed in our job’. The president is the one that not only appointed the Minister of Information but he reappointed him knowing how bad the job they have been doing is.

The antidote to the problems we have been facing is good government and applying the money that is supposed to be used to govern Nigeria to govern the country. We cannot always make a profit out of being in government. It means they have to devote the money available to building infrastructures, equipping the police and enforcing the law.

 

Nigeria has had 22 years of unbroken democracy, yet the country is in tatters. What measures do you think should be adopted to put it back on track?

First of all, you said we have had 22 years of unbroken democracy. No. Let’s call it civil rule. Secondly, you are sitting here in my office and we are talking in a much civilised fashion, yet you think the country is in tatters? You came here and nobody attacked you. When you talk about tatter, those of us living in Lagos need to be very careful. There is insecurity, no doubt about that, but I don’t think that puts the country in tatters.

 

If you say the country is not in tatters, how do you explain the level of unemployment and insecurity across the country?

I don’t have to explain that. You are acting as if it is my job. At every election, citizens have the option of looking at the candidates on offer and they make their decision based on who they think is best to address these challenges that we are faced with, whether it is insecurity, poverty or unemployment. They scrutinise candidates and choose who will do the least damage in respect of these challenges. Sometimes, Nigerians vote for candidates but they don’t really think that they are the best. That was the situation with many Nigerians in 2015. But in 2019, I think it was a question of between the two on offer, which is better? While I agree that we are undergoing unprecedented challenges, we are also facing unprecedented situations. Of course, we have been facing climate change time bomb for a long time and that is why there is the issue of herders which ought to have been addressed more seriously since 10-20 years ago. But when the Buhari administration came in, instead of addressing it and carrying the people along, they insisted on using words like ‘cattle colony’. Do they want to colonise our land because of cow? No, thank you, we don’t want that? They made that mistake. So, we have that climate change challenge and it is not going to go away. Nigerians have to find a solution to that whether they think that this administration has failed to provide a solution or not. Let’s wait and see what the next administration will do. That is what democracy is all about.

Similarly, it is a year of Covid-19 challenge. We will be deluding ourselves if we don’t think that the pandemic has impacted many aspects of our lives, which has made it convenient for people to resort to violence because the government is unable to provide them with other ways of earning a living.

Thirdly, there is the challenge of the Islamists. I am not one of those that buy into the ridiculous idea that one of the ways the president is consolidating on his presidency is by allowing Islamists to run free. I call them Islamists because they use the cover of Islam. They use the term but in reality they have an agenda which quite frankly has seen them killing many Muslims and people who are not Muslims. We face this challenge but, for me, it is a bit ridiculous to suggest that a president is consolidating himself in power by undermining government’s ability to deal with the insurgents.

We can’t ignore the fact that he is the one who put the people in his administration there. Like his Special Assistant of Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, who comes out quick to say something anytime there is a comment about herdsmen or his Attorney General who came out recently to make an unfortunate statement about the Federal Government banning spare parts traders. The point is, when these people talk, they actually support the idea that the president is in office to attend to the needs of his own religionists and his own ethnic group. Even if that is not the case, the unfortunate reality is that he is the one that put those people there.

 

One of Nigeria’s major challenges is the issue of constitution. While some are clamouring for the return of the parliamentary constitution, others are saying that the 1963 Constitution is it. What is your thought on this?

I am totally indifferent. As far as I am concerned, Nigerians have two options: they either tackle the amendment so that whatever it is they want to do, they set out the constituent assembly or put up a new constitution to referendum. They can do that directly or continue to propose amendment to the 1999 Constitution that we are operating under as we have been doing. Where we found that there is a problem, we adjust. I am really not bothered about the word ‘restructuring’.

I came to Nigeria in 1977. At that time, the constituent assembly under Sir Udoh Udoma was sitting. Nigerians discussed. As Udoh Udoma himself said, the deliberation of that constituent assembly, notwithstanding the meddlesomeness of the military which stuck a few things after they had finished, he felt that they represented the wishes of Nigerians, by and large.

After the military coup which brought him into power, Babangida set up a political bureau and asked the people across the country what they wanted. The people said they wanted a government that is Left wing. You will remember that Newswatch magazine was proscribed for carrying a report of that political bureau but it was done in a way that was devoid of politics. During the time of the late General Sani Abacha, there was another constituent assembly but as soon as they put a termination date on the Abacha dictatorship, the constituent assembly became a non-grata.

Then we had President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. He also set up a constituent assembly. He considered many things and came up with a report. One of these suggestions was that we should have 54 states in Nigeria. Unfortunately, that was where all the comments and criticisms were directed and everything else was jettisoned. My take is, some of these recommendations require constitutional amendments, new statute or amendment of statute, while some of them require presidential instrument and President Jonathan did none of that. So, those are attempts at constitutional review.

When the APC came to power, they also picked up this term ‘restructuring’. They came up with reports and shelved it. When we use term like restructuring, my opinion is that we strive to go big. But anytime we strive to go big, nothing gets done. To me, we better continue with the piecemeal adjustment and let the people who want to change things throw up their proposed amendments and submit them to the National Assembly. We saw the charade of the Senate hearing on the proposed constitutional reform. It is just a way of saying instead of doing ten things, you will put one thousand things on the table and that will be their excuse for doing nothing. That is why I said, to me, it is irrelevant. Let the people who want a change draft the amendment and put it through to the National Assembly. We have been going through the process of changing the constitution and some people say the whole thing should be jettisoned. This is ridiculous. What do they want? Many of them want a military coup at the end of the day because that is the only way you can get the whole constitution jettisoned.

The truth is that nobody who was elected into office either on the platform of the PDP or the APC was elected on the basis that he was going to jettison the constitution.

Democracy is not about everybody agreeing. People are fond of us attacking anybody that supports the president as though democracy is only on the terms that they want. Most people who have run for office since 1999 from the pro-democracy camp or who are campaigning against the military dictatorship ran on the platform of the PDP because that was the party that was strong at the time. I have no reason to quarrel with them. My partner, Dr Shonibare, is a leading member of the Social Democratic Party. I am not going to quarrel with him because I don’t agree with his views on restructuring and so on. He is free to make his own case and put it to the electorate. But when it becomes a matter of if you don’t agree with me, you are not a democrat, that is not right. Among the candidates who are on offer, there are some who are saints and some are sinners. But we don’t get that. You get people who are part saints and part sinners. You don’t get a clear choice. There is no country in the world that gets the best choice.

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