Voting for APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket is voting for extinction of Christianity in Nigeria —Okurounmu

Afenifere chieftain, Senator Femi Okurounmu, who was chairman of the Advisory Committee that midwifed the 2014 national conference, speaks to DARE ADEKANMBI on the 2023 presidential candidates, Muslim-Muslim ticket, North’s political advantage, among other burning issues.

As one of the prominent elder statesmen who have seen the way politics is done at independence till now, what do you make of the state of the country, would you say Nigeria is going to get it right some day in the future?

The way things have been going in Nigeria and in the states, the country is not showing any promise of greatness or even promise of survival as a country. The only promise we see is a move towards disintegration and the break-up of the country, if serious steps are not taken to avoid that. I can see greater and greater instability in the coming years, not very far from now, instability arising from insecurity and increasing fears of enslavement by a particular ethnic group, particularly the Fulani ethnic group. The Fulani ethnic group is gearing up for war, total domination and complete enslavement of the rest of the country. The Fulanisation and Islamisation agenda is going on in full swing under President Muhammadu Buhari and unless some steps are taken to change the direction of things, that Fulanisation project will get stronger and it may soon throw the country into war. I can see the state of undeclared war already in the country, undeclared in the sense that there are serious preparations on the part of the Fulani to take over the country and it is only the pretentious or the lethargic that will pretend not to see it.

You have painted a picture of gloom and doom for the country and its future. What can we do to avert this?

What we can do right away is, perhaps, to call a national summit of elder statesmen with a view to changing the constitution of the country. The constitution has to be changed with immediate effect, even before next year’s elections. There is no chance of Nigeria making any progress if we hold the 2023 elections with the current constitution. It will only make our journey towards collapse and disintegration faster. In order to avoid that, we need to immediately see how we can change the constitution to grant greater autonomy to the constituent parts of the country, to decentralise. If we grant greater autonomy to the constituent parts, something akin to the constitution we had at independence, in fact, I will say we need to go back to the 1963 constitution, which was the constitution on which we got our independence as a country. Leaders from all parts of the country agreed on that constitution and the document served us so well till 1966 [the first coup] and we were making progress; we were able to solve our problems and our ethnic  differences did not catapult to the kind of instability that we have today. It is only under such a constitution that Nigeria can manage to continue as a country. But if we continue to have a strong federal government as we have today, we will simply be accelerating Nigeria’s march towards disintegration.

Many Nigerians appear fired up that 2023 elections will offer them hope of electing the leaders they deserve. Fortunately for them, the presidential candidates have emerged with Atiku Abubakar and Senator Bola Tinubu representing PDP and APC. Any hope that either of the two or any of the others can bring about fundamental changes in governance?

I am one of those who have always said that the problem with us is not just with individuals in power, but with the system we run. With the system we operate and the constitution that we run, whoever wins power cannot make much of a change. The Fulanisation agenda will go on unimpeded. If you look at the APC, for instance, their presidential candidate has pledged to continue Buhari’s policies. Buhari was the first person he consulted before declaring to run for office and everything that he has been doing is towards satisfying Buhari and we know Buhari has a Fulanisation agenda. For anybody who has pledged or is committed to continuing Buhari’s policies is indirectly committed to the continuation of the Fulani agenda. Whether the person comes from Yorubaland or Igboland makes no difference. As for the PDP’s candidate, Atiku is a Fulani man who has never raised any voice against Buhari’s Fulanisation agenda. So, it can be assumed that he too will continue those policies.

The policies of Islamisation and Fulanisation did not just start today under Buhari. It has been a continuous and long standing policy of the Fulani ever since Nigeria got independence and it has been pursued relentlessly by successive leaders of the North. It is only that Buhari has pursued it to the extreme and that is why it has become so daring. That is why we have the 1999 Constitution which was given to us by [General Sani] Abacha. The constitution was actually designed by Northern strategists to expedite and accelerate the Fulani project. Buhari has taken advantage of the constitution fully. So, it is not just about who is in power, the constitution already imposed limitations on what the person can do. Unless we change the constitution, the North will always be in power, it will always have its way. Even when they are carrying out policies against the rest of us, they will be giving it constitutional backing. Our so-called legislators, through a perverted presidential system of government which makes the presidential wield executive power, can always be turned into a rubberstamp. Most of the legislators, once they get to Abuja, they forget about their constituents and only care about being in the good book of the president. So, the lawmakers can’t dare to oppose policies of the government, even when such policies are against their constituents. So, I don’t believe the problem can be solved with having a different person as president. What we need to urgently do is to change the constitution.

It can be inferred from your submission earlier that you oppose a Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC…

In fact, that is one of the most obvious instances of the Islamisation agenda. The Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC is an insult to the intelligence of Nigerians. With the current atmosphere of things in the country where in the last seven years Christians have been under consistent persecution throughout the country, from Benue to Southern Kaduna to Plateau, there have been massacres of Christians, not to talk of the recent attack on the Catholic Church in Owo where about 50 people were killed. Priests are being kidnapped and ransoms are being extracted from them. The ticket is an onslaught against Christianity. With the current situation, they want two Muslims to run for office on a joint ticket. Anybody who votes for APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket is voting for the extinction of Christianity in Nigeria. If such a ticket wins power, you can assume that Christianity is out in Nigeria and Nigeria will become a full Islamic country, especially as Nigeria is already a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Nigeria was smuggled into the organisation by Ibrahim Babangida and we remain a member till today and OIC is committed to certain agenda which include the Fulanisation agenda. A vote for a Muslim-Muslim ticket is a vote for the Islamisation of the country.

You were a member of the Senate between 1999 and 2003. Why do you think it has been difficult for successive National Assembly to carry out the real fundamental changes required to the 1999 Constitution?

That is why I said the 1999 Constitution was designed by the Northern power brokers led by their military politicians who were in power then. The constitution contains the processes by which it can be amended. The composition of the National Assembly is already such that a majority of the members of the National Assembly are from the North which has vested interest in the preservation of the constitution as it is. A majority of the senators and overwhelming majority of the House of Representatives are from the North where the Fulani hold sway. So, anything that is not in the interest of the Fulani will never be allowed to pass through the parliament. This is why we can’t amend the constitution to favour the whole country because the North will not permit it with their numbers. The constitution already gives them the number and they may dominate the rest of the country forever if nothing is done to the constitution.

You described the presidential system of government as being abused and perverted. Are you indirectly making a case for the return to parliamentary system in addition to the wholesale repair of the 1999 Constitution?

Absolutely. We have to go back to the parliamentary system of government. The presidential system we are operating will never lead Nigeria to anything good. Even in the United States where it was copied, it is a corrupt system, not to talk of Nigeria where politicians are even more corrupt. When you have people who are naturally corrupt, the presidential system is no system at all. It turns corruption to an art which is why our system of government now is governed by corruption. Nomination of candidates is corruption prone, primaries are governed by corruption and election itself is governed by corruption too. Everything is corruption from the beginning to the end. The National Assembly that should provide a check to the Executive’s power, which is why we talk about checks and balances, is not doing it. Once the president or the governors give the lawmakers money, the legislators become rubber stamp and the governors or the president can have a free ride and do whatever they want. They rubberstamp whatever is brought by the Executive and blackmail the governors to give them more money at times. So, there is no check. The governors have become dictators and the president is a super dictator because the legislators that are supposed to check them have been corrupted. All these cannot happen in a parliamentary system.

INEC says with its deployment of technology to conduct elections, rigging and malpractices are over. Are you confident INEC would do a good job next year?

I am not confident at all because there is no record being kept for all the performances of INEC. The Federal Government has control over INEC; the government dictates to INEC what it should do. The chairman of INEC is a Fulani man who is loyal to Buhari who appointed him. Everything INEC does is dictated by government. People can cast their votes, but what INEC announces is another thing. It has happened. We knew what happened in 2019 where the votes cast by the people are different from what INEC announced. A lot of INEC officials get compromised. Despite the use of technology, it is human beings who will use the gadgets and these human beings cave in to pressure and are compromised. You cannot guarantee that they will always be fair.  Even professors who are usually appointed by INEC as returning officers get bribed, are compromised and they announce something else. There are very few people that can be trusted in this country because there are very few men of integrity in the country who can be trusted to do the right thing and will not buckle under pressure. Most Nigerians will buckle under even very little pressure. A little money is enough to tempt them, especially when the pressure is from the government that appoints them. Only very few people can resist pressure.

The president a few days ago admitted that the job of running the country is difficult and that he is eager to return to his homestead next year. Do you think he is overwhelmed by the problems of the country or does not have the capacity to run the affairs of the country or is his age the issue?

Let us always remember to make a distinction between what the man says and how it is said and what he means. If you always depend on what the man says, you will always read him wrong. A lot of Nigerians say certain things to give certain impressions, but what they have in mind to do is very different. So, when Buhari says he is tired of running the country and so on, he only says it for certain effects. The man has a certain goal and a purpose to fulfill before he leaves. The agenda will unfold soon and you will all see it. Every day now we see different things, strange things happening like the Kuje jailbreak which everybody now knows was planned. It was a planned jailbreak and not just an ordinary one. The government is complicit in the incident. The government knew about it and it planned it. They wanted to free some Boko Haram people who were there. The soldiers guarding the prison were ordered not to do anything when the attackers struck. The soldiers just watched as the inmates broke out of the prison. When you have such a thing happening and you can see that government has a hand in it, then you know something is going on. Nigerians should not be naïve to just think that these are just normal occurrences happening in the country. Again, when you see the presidential candidate of the APC going to the North-East to pick Kashim Shettima, a former governor of Borno State, who is not only a Muslim but also a known sympathiser of Boko Haram, you will figure out what is happening.