We are essentially in a state of criminal state hijack — Dele Farotimi

Activist lawyer and social commentator, Mr. Dele Farotimi, in this interview by SAM NWAOKO, speaks on a variety of national issues.

The traditional institution in the South West has come under various forms of challenges, including declining public trust. Who do we blame for what has become of our traditional institutions? Should we blame the appointing authority, the government which is the consenting authority or the monarchs themselves?

Yorubas will say Amokun eru e wo, o ni oke le n wo, e o wo isale. They said to the man with crooked legs, “the load on your head is unbalanced” and he said “why are you looking at my head and you are not focused on my legs?” The traditional institution in the South West or any other part of Nigeria or Africa for that matter cannot be divorced from the society within which they operate. The traditional institution in Nigeria today is a function of the way we have evolved. He answers to the local government chairman. There are 774 local governments in the country. So, when the Ooni of Ife, for instance, wishes to travel outside his domain, he informs his local government chairman who will give consent.

So, when you consider the fact that these are persons who are not elected or selected through the age-old traditional means but are essentially appointees of the government, it is the persons the government feels most comfortable working with that they will end up appointing as the oba. There is a person I know who will never make a popular person the oba. It is the prince that is unwanted that he will make the oba so that that person answers to him, not to any traditional authority.

So, when you have obas who have been appointed because of their closeness to political overlords who are essentially themselves the worst in the society, will the worst in the society appoint the best in the society? Nigeria has happened to the obaship stools in Yorubaland. It is the persons who are most acceptable to those who are political overlords in Yorubaland that are today the obas in Yorubaland. That has been the process in the last 25 years or thereabouts.

In the days of the military, there was minimal intervention or interference in traditional stools. But that is no longer the case. The kind of political powers wielded by the obas have made them victims of the political system that we have evolved. So, don’t worry, you will see some obas, when they remove the decoration on their heads, you will see that they will fit in well in the motor garage. That is a reflection of the society we have found ourselves.

However, among them, you will still see people like the Orangun of Oke Ila, Oba Dokun Abolarin, who contribute positively to their society. So, you have exceptions. They are men who, in their own rights, are simply good men. But increasingly, the process of appointment has assured the contamination of the product. So, in reality what you have as obas today are government appointees. They serve at the pleasure of the governor, and if the governor is unhappy they can be removed.

With 2027 already generating so much political heat, what do you make of the early positioning of political actors across the parties?

With the absence of governance, then there will be no reason to be surprised that the total focus is on politics. In the absence of substantive policies to be discussed, the only thing to be discussed will of course be politics and the government will prefer that we all focus our attention on that. That is why you have seen the early arrival of the political transfer season — politicians moving from one platform to the other based on their perception of what would help them to retain power. So, in the absence of anything else to do, you should get used to the noise from the political parties.

This noise seems to be drowning every other thing, including the economy and some of those things they said they were going to do in terms of infrastructure.

That is by design… At the end of the day, there is a reason why the Press is called the Fourth Estate of the Realm. The Nigerian government dictates the narrative and the agenda in the public space. When they make a misstep, they create a diversion so that the people would have something new to talk about.

At the moment, we are dealing with multiple issues which should engage the attention of the people, but the government will prefer that the people are not focused on those issues. The Nigerian Press has dropped the ball as the Fourth Estate of the Realm. All the critical public institutions that would have engaged with government in the non-partisan fashion have been compromised. So, government is dictating the agenda and is also shaping the narrative. You have a country that is in virtual lockdown because of insurgency. People are afraid to move between towns and cities in every part of Nigeria — North, East, West and South.

To travel from Ibadan to Lagos is with apprehension. When you travel further into the hinterland, to travel from Oyo to Iseyin is with fear. But who is talking about that? They would rather talk about BB Naija or be dancing Skelewu or be talking about which PDP governor has moved into the APC because we have to avoid talking about the real issues.

Your president just jetted off again now and grown men in their seventies stood on the runway waving at an aircraft because the president has taken off in it. So, they will prefer that we are talking about election in 2027 even though we are in 2025 and people are facing real life issues. Instead of facing those real life issues, instead of talking about the fact that people are being slaughtered in their bedrooms in their own country and the government is calling the murderers herdsmen instead of what they should be called, instead of talking about the fact that Nigeria as a state is adopting the policy of paying terrorists — we have the most successful Islamic terrorist deradicalisation programme in the entire wide world. Instead of discussing that, since we have a successful deradicalisation programme that is unheard of anywhere in the world and seeing if we could export the expertise to other countries of the world — a deradicalisation programme that has not found anybody in the South East to deradicalise, only Islamist terrorists that we have to deradicalise.

What is the point of talking about the fact that we have about 20 million children out of school? We must focus on the fact that election is in 2027 despite the fact that elections, since 2023, are not worthy of the name “Election.” We should focus on the 2027 election despite the fact that what just took place in Rivers State, to everybody’s admission, is a travesty. Those are the things we should be talking about. We are busy arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

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Since the political class has not learnt any lessons, what do you think about the Nigerian people themselves, the electorate? What should they do?

We love the words without looking at the substance of the words. Who are the electorate? It takes citizenship to elect. The citizens elect their leaders, but we cannot have citizens in a place that is not ruled by law. Citizenship is a creation of law. You can’t have electorate in the absence of citizens. You can’t have democracy in the absence of the rule of law. What we have are not citizens, what we have are shadows. We have shadow-citizenship in Nigeria.

A person that the police can clamp in cell without the direction of law or protection of law is not a citizen. A country ruled by law does not employ people who turn guns on citizens without the due process of law. Citizens don’t produce the travesty you saw in Rivers State. Why are we in denial? If we have forgotten what happened in 2023, if the memory of Mahmoud Yakubu demanding that people should go to court has receded, what about what we just saw in Rivers State? What about what we saw in Edo? Is it what we saw the judiciary doing in Edo or is it that what we are seeing since 2023 is suggestive of a democracy?

This is part of the failure of the Fourth Estate of the Realm. The Nigerian Press does not need me to tell you that this is not a democracy. A Bayo Onanuga that wrote for my generation to read would not require anybody to tell him that this is not a democracy. If the Press cannot even say the basic things like “we are not in a democracy,” how easy would you think it is for the likes of us who have already been branded extremists to define the shortcomings for the people, when we are arguing the mainstreaming of madness? We are mainstreaming madness by referring to this as a democracy.

Now that you have said that there is no citizenship, what should we now do?

If we are going to have an argument, it should be about difference of opinion. It should not be about facts. Who is a citizen? A citizen is a person enjoying the protection of a law in a society governed by law. The Nigerian does not enjoy the protection of the law and the society is also not governed by law. These are statements of fact.

What do we now have in Nigeria and how do we continue as a country?

We have victims. The Nigerian is a victim, we don’t have citizens. The Nigerian is not a citizen. Even for complaining or pointing out your reality in Nigeria you will be victimised. Telling the truth does not protect you in Nigeria.

We are then entrapped. So how do we get out of it?

Number one: The likes of you (the Press) should stop mainstreaming evil by refusing to call it its name. Call it its name. Call it what you see. Stop sugar-coating the evil. What we are seeing in the Middle Belt is genocide. Stop calling it “farmer-herders clash.” There are no “farmer-herders clash.”

What you are seeing in the Middle Belt is the failure of the state and the complicity of the state at its worst. At its best, it is a failure, at its worst it is the complicity of the state. How do you explain a situation where Army formations are less than a kilometre away and the Army man will be telling you that he was waiting for orders to engage? Citizens are being murdered and they are waiting for orders to engage. Listen to that yourself.

You already have people in the Intelligence Community like Commodore Olawumi, who came out in 2016 on national TV to say what the situation is. He came out to say unequivocally that there were persons in government who were directly linked to terrorism — both financing and operation. Before him, Baraje had come out clearly to say that the APC in 2014 imported terrorists from five Sahelian states.

There are enough facts in the public space to suggest that the Nigerian state has been complicit in the insecurity in Nigeria at least in the last twelve years. The silence of journalists makes it look like we are talking without evidence whereas these evidences are clearly in the public space. This makes the job of those of us saying these things more difficult. The failure of the Nigerian state is directly attributable to the complicity of the Nigerian Press. You are too quiet and it is understandable.

Isn’t the Nigerian Press a victim too?

Then speak out. Speak out.

In your home state, Osun, there has been a standoff over the seizure of local government allocations to the state by the Federal Government. How do you read the politics behind this dispute?

There is no standoff. What you are seeing is the reign of impunity. How does the situation in Osun in 2025 differ from the situation in Lagos in 2003? How? The same Tinubu that was speaking of federalism and the right of the state to do as it pleases as a federating unit with its local governments — how has it changed?

How is it that a federal state has suddenly turned around that it is now INEC that is supposed to be conducting elections in local governments? This is not a matter of legality, it is about brutal impunity. That is why you are seeing all these PDP governors falling in line and all of them talking about cross-carpeting and joining the APC and singing “on your mandate we shall stand” because they know it is not about the constitution, it is about the will of whoever occupies Aso Rock.

But the Attorney-General of the Federation who is involved in this is a senior lawyer…

He is a very senior lawyer who is vested in the administration of impunity. That he is a senior lawyer proves nothing. Obasanjo recently referred to the Nigerian court as “a court of impunity and court of corruption.” His seniority simply means that he has been a senior in the art of administration of impunity.

Because, if not, does he need me to tell him of the many illegalities that this government has embarked on? The contracts that were awarded without due process, no budgeting, no tenders? Does he need me to tell him that those are illegal contracts? Or, is he unaware? Does he need me to tell him that what they did in Rivers State is patently illegal and that the president does not have the power to do as he did?

So, don’t talk to me about any senior lawyer because the higher they are in the Nigerian judiciary now, the more likely that they would do the wrong thing. So, that is not a mark of honour in any way, shape or form.

Could there not be some constitutional remedies to some of these things you are talking about?

You don’t have a constitution, stop talking about constitutional remedy. Which people sat down to write what you are calling a constitution in Nigeria? Who and who sat down? When did they consult the Nigerian people?

You have a document that is forced on a people against their will, and that has been maintained essentially against the people, and increasingly as we have moved away from 1999, the will of the people has been gradually removed from the operation of the country itself.

So, which constitution are you talking about? Even the fraudulent constitution in question, they are not even obeying it. So what constitutional remedy do you want to talk about?

How long has the PDP filed a suit against the removal of the Rivers State governor? As fraudulent as the election that brought Siminalayi Fubara might be, the reality is that he was the one declared as governor. But when he was also fraudulently removed, the PDP rushed to the Supreme Court. Has the Supreme Court responded by now? No. The judiciary has kept painfully quiet, shamelessly so. You don’t have law courts in Nigeria, you don’t have judiciary, stop lying to yourselves.

Then it means there is no way to protect the financial autonomy of local governments across Nigeria, which is what the whole matter is all about?

I don’t believe that there is a way to treat an ailment without proper diagnosis. It would be wrong diagnosis to be treating these things as though they are the way they are being presented to be. We do not have a constitution. We are essentially in a state of hijack, criminal state hijack.

Our judiciary, which is meant to be the last hope of the common man, has become hopeless. It is not different from our police station. Our legislative arms are essentially peopled by persons who you will not employ to run any business enterprise deserving of integrity or probity. We have recruited the worst of us to govern us at all levels and they are reflective of who we are. They reflect us.

This is a symptom of a deeper problem and if we define this problem eventually, how do we begin to solve it at least to ease the federal/state tension which Osun has represented?

There is no federal–state tension. All you have is a situation where the sharing formula is not equitable. If the governor of Osun State had spent his time in office serving the people, and if the people had felt the impact of good governance in Osun State, he would not be so fearful of Tinubu, that he would be abandoning positions he had presented.

If they had spent less on foreign travels and more on primary education, on primary healthcare, on rural roads and infrastructural development, we would not be having this discussion. The problem in Osun State is not a constitutional crisis, it is a political crisis engineered by the Jagaban machinery to make him fall into their column.

And because the state governor is divorced from the people, it is easy to isolate him and turn him into the kind of orphan he has become, running helter-skelter, begging. He doesn’t have a constitutional problem, he has a political problem in an environment not governed by law. So, he doesn’t have the protection of the law, otherwise he would have run to the court and would have gotten justice.

So, let us be clear, he does not have a legal problem; he has a political problem in a society governed by impunity. So, there is no protection. That is why foreign investors run away from the country. They know they don’t have the protection of the law. If they are on the wrong side of the man of power in Nigeria, they are in trouble.

You mentioned it briefly earlier — our president is back on vacation. The frequency is beginning to annoy more Nigerians, yet some are defending the vacations, saying he is entitled to certain number of days’ vacation in a year. What do you think?

The annoyed Nigerians are not annoyed enough. I assure you that if Tinubu put out an announcement to say that he has to tax Nigerians for the air we breathe in order to fight corruption in Nigeria, I guarantee you that some people will defend that decision and they will tell you that it is a mark of his master-planning and brilliance.

That is what you get when ignorance has been weaponised against people for so long and then it is now compounded by poverty that has also been weaponised. So, a person who has had ignorance weaponised against him, compounded by weaponised poverty, would say the kind of thing they are saying.

That is why they said they didn’t need his legs but that they needed his brain. That is where we are now. So, he has to travel. If I were his age as well and I have his economic means, I will have to be travelling to be maintaining my joints and bolts. So, I cannot begrudge the man. It is not his fault that the people he is ruling are foolish.

Before he left, he gave himself a pass mark on the economy and on other fronts too. Do you think the present administration has a coherent plan or are we just firefighting?

In 2022, before the election, I remember saying clearly that “Tinubu and Atiku are the twin horsemen of the apocalypse.” It was clear to me that as long as they did not turn around urgently from the path into which Buhari had launched Nigeria, Nigeria was going to be destroyed.

So, anybody who claims that they delude that Tinubu had an economic plan when they were coming to office, it is either the person is deluded or the person is genuinely unintelligent. There is nothing to suggest a turnaround. The man came and said he will continue the policies of Buhari. He said he will build on the legacies of Buhari.

These were the man’s words, and then I also have 24 years of his hegemony in Lagos to guide my prediction of the future that he was capable of delivering. Tinubu has done excellently well within the parameters I have elected to evaluate him, and those are the parameters that he had set out before he was rigged into power. So, I’m sorry there is no economic recovery plan to evaluate.

It is a pocketbook thing. How much was petrol when he came to office? How much was the Naira when he came into office? What was the quality of the Nigerian life? These are real pocketbook issues. Nigerians should ask themselves if their life is better off today than they were two years ago. These are objective things.

Go and check the retail price index; check the food price index; check the movement of our forex. What is the cost of borrowing today? So, when a person stands in the marketplace and makes a pronouncement that is at variance with common sense…

You may have read the story of the animal that was running after the tiger and they went to the lion with the animal shouting “the grass is blue,” and the tiger was arguing with him that the grass is green. The lion had to punish the tiger for arguing with the animal. He was punished for arguing with the fool.

I am not going to engage with Tinubu’s numbers. He has marked himself and he is very correct. He has been a resounding success on the pathway to failure.