Dr. Yemi Farounbi is a media icon, whose landmark professional footprints remain indelible in the annals of the WNTV-WNBS in Ibadan and as a manager of the Nigerian Television Authority. He is equally a political leader and a diplomat, who once served as Nigeria’s Ambassador to Philippines. His vast knowledge across fields of human endeavour makes him a veritable voice in popular culture as well as socio-political commentaries. In this interview with TAIWO ADISA, he dissects the emerging polity under President Bola Tinubu and concludes that lack of political ideology by the parties and undue monetization of the leadership recruitment process have turned away credible hands who could help salvage the country. Excerpts:
President Bola Tinubu would be two years in office in the next three months, how would you rate his governance so far, is he fulfilling the dreams of the people?
I don’t think so. In any case, he has not lived up to his own promises. He said for example he was going to restructure the budgeting system in a way that there would be no inflation in the economy. But we’ve found the highest inflation in Nigeria since 1996, general inflation is 34 percent, food inflation is 44 percent. He promised that food would be affordable in his May 29 speech. He also promised that power, electricity would be affordable and accessible, but he has increased the price of power and has even now partitioned Nigeria into those who ought to have power regularly and those who have none, even though we are equal citizens of this country before God and man. But now some people are in Band A some are in Band zero. He promised that we are going to have agricultural hubs, that we are going to have 120,000 hectares of land for wheat, he promised 100 hectares of corn, we are still waiting for that. In terms of providing for the welfare of the people, I don’t think he has reached there at all. And you only need to go out and see the level of anger, hunger and poverty. Our National Bureau of statistics said that there are 122 million Nigerians who are multi-dimensionally poor, so he hasn’t reached there.
Looking at the states, where 42 percent of the nation’s resources reside, when you add 26 percent for the states and 16 percent for the councils, will you say that the states are doing enough?
Absolutely no. I was reading a week ago about a state that was budgeting billions for mass wedding, how does that translate to improvement in the lives of the people. There was a state also that was giving out goats to the people. Some of the states are not giving the impression that they understand the essence of governance. And like I said it is because everybody is interested in power, not what you can use it for. There are some states that you can see ingredients of development but there are many states where there is no semblance of states governance at all. That affects the state, local government and federal method of political recruitment. We are no longer bringing the best because our electoral processes no longer encourage the best. The best people who can turn around Nigeria may not have the money that the political processes ask for. I amuse people when I tell them that if Awolowo had been alive today, he does not have money to contest as chairman of Ikenne local government and that Azikiwe even with his university that he created, will not be able to contest for state assembly from Nsukka, because the kind of money we are now asking for is what Mbadiwe would say from known and unknown sources, legitimate and illegitimate. So we have to deemphasize the vulgar use of money in our political process. Because that’s why we buy votes. So the person who cannot buy votes but who can transform the economy, change the landscape, transform infrastructure will not come out. So we have to come again and look at our political recruitment process. Why is it for example that Bisi Onabanjo was chairman of Ijebu Ode Local government and he became governor. You will recall that (Shehu) Shagari was supervising councilor for Sokoto, actually that was after being federal commissioner for national economic development. But they thought this was a teacher, he had this experience, he is the one that can turn around our education in the local government. Do we do that any longer, no. The parties would sit down at the headquarters and decide who would be councilors and chairman of the local government. If we don’t change the recruitment procedure to get the best, we are still deceiving ourselves. This is not a question of party now, it affects all of them. You will recall that in electing the person we all like to hate, Kemi Badenock, there were over 168,000 that voted for her to become leader of the party, but to choose presidential candidate, in the APC there were only 2,200 delegates in the Eagle Square, for the PDP it was 970, so there is a poor democratization and a non involvement of the people and once you go to this narrow delegates system, it is easy to just buy all of them over, if you have the money. So we have to demonetize our political system, tending our political recruitment such that the people would have a say in the recruitment process.
The South-West has been clamouring for restructuring all these years, how feasibly do you thing that would be under this scenario?
Yes, it is feasible if we all have the will. I will also say that the political elite of the South West have not done enough to educate the people about restructuring. What do they mean? Does it mean an automatic return to regions, but that doesn’t amount to restructuring. When the states were created in 1967, by Gowon, who created 12 states, six in the North, six in the South, and he said each of the 12 states should have the power of the regions. So what is difficult to ask each of the 36 states to have the power of the regions? That would strengthen them, that would make them to counterbalance the centre and it will motivate them to work, because in the First Republic, whatever you got either from agriculture, economy or whatever, you kept 50 percent of it and then you gave the centre 20 percent and then you kept another 30 percent centrally in case of emergencies. But you know that the more you work, the more you get. But in the constitution that we have, the best you can get no matter how hard you work is 13 percent. That creates the situation where those who were not working were getting and those who were working were demotivated. We need to explain this. I saw it when I studied the opposition against the tax reform. I looked at the tax reform, it is perhaps the only meaningful action, in my view, very meaningful action that the Tinubu government is attempting to take. Because for once, certain parts of this country where they don’t even pay tax at all, will now begin to be able to collect tax. That would mean more money for the government. But they now talked about the possibility of giving 30 percent to those who produce rather than the 13 percent and that’s why some are now saying no, no, no, that would mean we will no longer have money because they have no longer been working. If you explain this, in the First Republic, Nigeria was the way it is now, in terms of climate, soil and potentialities, but Sardauna of Sokoto, (Sir Ahmadu Bello) used what they think is hostile environment to produce the groundnut pyramids. He used the resources of the North to create the so many corporations and companies that are all over the North today. Awolowo used his own to do free education and so on, Okpara used the resources of the East to do agrarian revolution and so on. So, what I am saying is this, there is no part of Nigeria that has a monopoly of resources. It is possible you may say in South South they have crude oil, but Zamfara has a lot of gold, so also is Sokoto, in Plateau and that area, they have tin, columbite, uranium and so on. In parts of Kogi and Benue they have the finest coal in the world, so there is no part of Nigeria that doesn’t have resources. Even when you don’t have crude you have things bigger than crude. But to work on it what will you get, 13 percent, so why should I work and get 13 percent, therefore we lack the motivation. The South-West needs to explain a little bit clearly. But then, those who are advantaged by the contradictions in the constitution, should know that it will not be forever. It can never be. I always like to use this unhappy example. When Ironsi got there, he destroyed the foundation of the federal structure with his unification decree, which he thought would be to the advantage of his people, he left the place, Gowon took over, using the same power inherent in that decree, that he (Ironsi) had made to protect themselves, he was now able to use that same law for his own people. So if you always think of your people and would not see Nigeria as your own its like the roulette it will turn round one day and what you think is benefits you today will not benefit you tomorrow. So it is better for all of us to sit down and say what would benefit all of us. What would expand our economy because if you take Nigeria and compare it with say Malaysia, we used to be at the same level in the 1970s, poor country, dependent on crude oil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia. But today, Malaysia is no longer dependent on crude oil, it is not because they are not producing as before, it is because the economy has grown. Crude oil has fallen to 11 percent from 94 percent agric that used to be six percent is today eight percent manufacturing that used to be two percent is today 34 [percent. Things like hospitality, financial services have grown to 43 percent. But because we didn’t grow our own economy, we stood on the same spot, milking the crude oil, so today we still depend on crude. The crude oil contributes about 20 percent of our GDP but provides 80 percent of our revenue. How do you explain that. So we need a restructuring of our economy and that will come from a restructuring of the federation and all of us will be happy. So we hope that one day there will be somebody in charge of Nigeria who is committed to the growth of this country and will know that if a house has a faulty foundation, whatever you put on it is doomed to have cracks if it doesn’t collapse.
The House of Reps came up with a proposal for 31 new states, do you think that will answer the restructuring question at this time?
It shows that they don’t understand what restructuring is about. Creating an Ijebu State for example, how will that change the fortunes of the Ijebu people, except that they will now have a secretariat, a house of assembly and legislators that would be earning big salary, riding armoured cars and so on, has that altered the amount of money that used to come, no. whereas restructuring is saying, don’t put everything in the centre, so we need to look at that. We need to look at restructuring in terms of functions. Today we have 68 items in the exclusive legislative list, it used to be 12. Even something like marriage is under the federal list. So whether you have 71 states or 100 states, it still doesn’t remove the fact that the centre is overburdened with responsibilities that ought to be done at the states. If you go to UK today and you want a house, they will ask you to apply for council flats. That means houses being handled at the local government level. But here we have Federal Ministry of Housing, a Federal Housing Authority, Federal Mortage Bank Federal Urban Bank for housing, so, if we don’t tackle that problem, we are just doing ornamentation, we are not doing functionality and to grow this country, I don’t think it’s by making every village a state or every division a state. What will make us grow is to allow the sub-nationals to have the power like the states or provinces have in the United States and Canada or the provinces in Australia. To make sure that our states have the powers that the regions used to have. I should be able to stay in my region and say I will teach my students in my own language. So creation of states will not solve the problem of restructuring, it will only compound the unreasonableness of the federation that we have.
You are one of the statesmen who saw Nigeria grow from inception, and you’ve been particularly involved since 1999, how would you describe the evolution of this Fourth Republic, compared to what it was in the First and the aborted Second Republic?
This Fourth Republic is a product of unusual circumstances. We’ve had in all 28 years of military rule and before this particular Republic, we had an extended one that ended in 1999. But before it could end there was an intense struggle by the media, the pro-democrats, the social democrats, the civil service and so forth, for the termination of military rule. That led to the G18, G34, the eventually metamorphosed into the peoples Democratic Party. There was an attempt by the operators to set up parties not based particularly on any ideology, but so that they can have an end to military rule and not have a recurrence of it. That was the basis for the PDP, the Alliance for Democracy and the All Peoples Party. Once you’ve formed political parties that eventually took over governance, not on the basis of any economic ideology or political philosophy, then you run into problems. So the problem of this Fourth Republic was foundational. We just wanted an end to military rule. And so the PDP was an amalgam of all shades, left, right, little to the left and the centre. So there was nothing really ideological joining them together except that they just wanted an end to military rule.
Is the lack of ideology also responsible for the constant threat of one party state? The threat has always been there since Obasanjo to Buhari and even now.
Yes, it is. Once there is no defining character of the political party except the search for political power, once a party gets to power, these who are supposed to constitute the opposition also drift across the party’s boundary into the party in power because they are interested only in power. There is nothing differentiating the PDP from the APC or whatever party they may want to form tomorrow, because all of them are only interested in power. And that is why you have the threat of one party state.
Societal development has been scarce as a result of all this, so how do we get out of it as a country?
I believe that for democracy to thrive, there are pillars that you need that are no longer there or have been eroded. That’s why we are where we are. And we have to begin the restoration of those pillars to be able to get out of it. The first thing is that we must have an executive that is accountable, transparent. But do we have that. The executive behave like an imperial majesty. I recall our good president, Tinubu talking about the Tax Reform, which even has not been enacted by the National Assembly in his media chat and he said, it has come to stay. So that does not indicate accountability or transparency or listening to the electorate. Then you must have an opposition. You should have a legislature that is counterbalancing, we don’t have that either in the centre or in the state. The legislators in the states are poor errand boys for the executives. Then you should have the judiciary. From everything that we see, the judiciary is either for sale or they also have an umbilical cord relationship with the executive, that they only translate the wishes of the executive into judgment. One of them is the issue of local government autonomy. A series of judgments from the Supreme Court from 2000 to 2023 had said that the Federal Government has no relationship with the local governments, that the local government is under the states. Even as late as 2022 in the Abia State vs. Federal Government decision, the Supreme Court still upheld this, that the local governments are like babies to the states, but because of the umbilical cord relationship between the judiciary and the executive, they somersaulted in 2024 and sort to rewrite the constitution. After that you need a strong and virile independent press. Really Nigeria has always had the best press in Africa in terms of independence, objectivity and impartiality and so on. But what’s happening to the press? The most vibrant segment of the press has always been print, but the economic situation has really hampered the power of the press and the uncontrolled development of the electronic has made sure that the electronic hasn’t the kind of power, the kind of voice that say, a unified radio used to have. Another aspect of this is the rule of law. The rule of law has been substituted with the rule of man. You can predict what the judicial interpretation of a case would be depending on those who are involved. So saying that the judiciary is the last hope of the common man has stopped. If we are going to rebuild, then we will need to restore all of these; the political party, particularly the opposition, there are 17 opposition parties and so there ought to be 17 opposition voices, but we are barely hearing one. Yes, political power is good, but the question should be, what do you want to use it for.
Some people would attribute the challenges in the polity to the inconsistencies in the 1999 Constitution rather than the failings of the actors. How do you see that?
Actually it is a major defect of this republic, the constitution that we have. The constitution was enacted as a decree of the outgoing military. And those who took over in 1999 didn’t see the constitution until they had been sworn-in; and the constitution lied against itself by saying that we the people of Nigeria. The people of Nigeria never sat anywhere either in form of delegates or in form of representatives to choose for themselves a constitution. That constitution that we have is based on the recommendation of a 27-man committee headed by Justice Nikki Tobi. But because everybody was tired of the military and the desire was to get the military out by all means. And in fairness to Obasanjo as soon as he got there he set up a constitution review committee constituted by the three political parties, the PDP, AD and APP. He also set up another committee headed by Prof Jerry Gana, which looked at what to do and that culminated into the 2005 confab in which various sectors were involved. But unfortunately for everybody, there was a paragraph that was never discussed at any level, smuggled into it, which was the famous third term clause. But you would have though that a properly democratic National Assembly would take the constitution paragraph by paragraph and eliminate that offending clause that was going to bring the third term. But what did we have, the whole efforts of seven years were rejected without looking at them. So we lost a meaningful opportunity to structurally amend that constitution because of a wholesome hatred for third term. There were so many things in that constitution that would have helped. I am aware because I was the chairman of the Technical Committee for the South West. I know that there were efforts to reduce the power of the centre; there were efforts to reduce the allocation of resources to the centre, we lost all of that. Then there was the 2014 constitution confab, that didn’t have the type of legal backing the 2005 confab had but which came by an executive order. Even then, in their almost 32,000 page report, they had almost 600 resolutions, 400 of them were unanimous. The remaining 200 was on the basis of majority. And there were a lot of these resolutions that would have substantially alter the structure of this country for instance instead of the Federal Government getting 52.8 per cent, they said it should drop to 40 per cent. Instead of the states getting 26% it should go to 30 and things like that. There was also an attempt to whittle down the enormous power of the centre, so that the sub-national units can counter balance.
But if you amend the Police act without an amendment to the constitution, can the Police Act override the provisions of the 1999 Constitution?
No, it cannot. Really, what they should do is to amend the constitution the way they did when they wanted the Judges in the Supreme Court to go from 60 to 65 years. But you will find out that every assembly has amended one thing or the other in the constitution, but they have not amended it is the most fundamental way. Those who are benefitting from the current system, who also dominate the National Assembly are not interested in making fundamental changes.
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