Without restructuring, Nigeria will break up —Okurounmu

Senator Femi Okurounmu is a frontline leader in the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere. A politician of the progressive hew, Okurounmu represented Ogun Central Senatorial District between 1999 and 2003, on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy. He was appointed chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Conference and midwifed the conference, whose report has become the subject of a national discourse. In this interview with DARE ADEKANMBI, he speaks on the meeting of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) held in Kano State last week and the resolutions therefrom. Excerpts:

SOME northern elders under the aegis of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) met in Kano and in the communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, some issues were raised, one of which is that the renewed clamour for restructuring of the country’s political and economic machinery is creating unnecessary tension in the polity. What do you make of this?

They are hypocrites. What is creating tension in the polity is the refusal of President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the recommendations of the 2014 national conference. The conference met the yearnings and aspirations of the majority of Nigerians who want and clamour for restructuring. At the conference, Nigerians were gathered from across the country and they made a resolution towards the restructuring of the country. The North was there fully represented and they did not object to the resolutions. They were co-signatories to the resolutions at the conference. As long as they do not restructure the country, Nigeria is going to break up. There is no way we can continue to run Nigeria the way it is now without restructuring it.  Without restructuring, the Hausa-Fulani power oligarchy will continue to be overlords over the rest of us. They were made overlords by the British and they want to continue to be overlords over us. But it can’t remain so. We are equal stakeholders in Nigeria. Our constitution, system of government must all reflect that. Until we do this, Nigeria will cease to exist.

Some stakeholders in the Nigerian project may not share your view that the country will disintegrate. The threat of break-up has been on for so many years and yet the country is still intact as a single entity. Many have even said repeatedly that the unity of the country is not negotiable…

It is the North, the Hausa/Fulani people, who say the unity of the country is not negotiable. When they get power, they tell us that the unity of the country is not negotiable. But if at any time power slips from their hand, they are ready to break the country up themselves. If people from other sections of the country have power, the North does not care about unity. They are hypocrites.

They also made a strong declaration in their communiqué that the North is conscious of its rights and obligations and will discharge and defend same without reservations. These are very strong words. Don’t you think so?

Just as the North is ready to discharge and defend its rights and obligations, the rest of us are also conscious of our rights under the Nigerian citizenship and we are also ready to enforce and defend our rights. It is because those of us in the Southern part of the country have been too liberal, too accommodating, too permissive and docile and too lethargic that the North has been taking advantage of us. Let those of us in the South throw away all docility, lethargy and be determined to enforce our own rights to ensure we are equal citizens of this country. Unless we do this, there is not going to be any country called Nigeria. They are entitled to enforce their own rights as well. We are more determined to enforce our rights.

They also warned some people whom they said are trying to exploit the absence of President Buhari to achieve dubious political goals. This looks like an indirect threat. Do you think so?

All we have been hearing so far is that it is the North, the same Hausa/Fulani cabal that is trying to exploit Buhari’s absence to stage a coup so that if they are not able to hold power as civilians, they will do so through the military. That has always been their philosophy. If they can’t rule as civilians, they look for opportunity to use the military to do so. As far we are concerned in the South, we are very constitutional in our approach. We go by the constitution. Our constitution says when Buhari is absent, the vice-president becomes the acting president. And if anything happens to Buhari permanently (we are praying for him), the acting president becomes the substantive president. That is the constitution. The northern hegemony are among the civilians as well as the military. Right now, they have power and are represented by Buhari. Political power is currently in their hands. According to their warped thinking, if for some reason anything happens to Buhari and then the constitution says power must go to Osinbajo, they see this as meaning that power is slipping away from their hand and they feel power must not leave their hand for any reason. So, to prevent power from leaving their hand, they will rather get their people in the military to take over so that the Northern oligarchy, that is, the Hausa/Fulani in the military will now be in charge. That is why they want to have a coup.

You seem to imply that some people may not allow the acting president function as full president in case of any eventuality. Is that correct?

If anything happens to Buhari and the North says the acting president will not function as substantive president, Nigeria will break up. I repeat, if anything eventually happens and Buhari is no longer the president and they do not allow Professor Yemi Osinbajo to become substantive president as the constitution says, then that will, in effect, break up the country. That will be the end of Nigeria. I am not afraid to say this. We are not slaves to the North. We all own the country. If the constitution says the vice-president must become president in such a situation and then the North goes extra-constitutional and deprive him of that office, it means Nigeria as a project has been scuttled. There will no more be Nigeria.

Do you share their position that the anti-corruption war of President Buhari is on course?

The anti-corruption war has been very biased, sectional, unfair and ineffective. It has not been fair because it has been selective. He has been going only after people who are not close to the ruling elite. There is an APC circle close to Buhari and who are above the law. They are sacred cows under Buhari’s anti-corruption war. It is only the critics of his government or those in other parties that Buhari is going after. It is also ineffective because people have not been jailed since they started. We are only treated to a lot of dramas by the EFCC which parades money collected, but we never see people who have been jailed. The only deterrent to corruption is jailing those who have stolen our money. If we only collect some of the money they have stolen and we let them go, we are encouraging and not fighting corruption, which is what Buhari is doing.

Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said decision as to who will sign the 2017 budget after it has been passed will be taken when the document gets transmitted to the Presidency. What is your take on this?

He is talking crap, rubbish. It is the president that assents to the budget. And if the president is away or incapacitated or is not available, then it is the acting president that will assent to the budget. That does not require any separate decision from anybody. That decision is already in the constitution.

While the Northern elders have declared support for the acting president, they have also urged him to ignore mischief makers who are seeking to pitch him against either the president or Nigerians.

What do they mean by trying to pitch him against Nigerians? They have to explain what they mean by that. In the absence of any explanation from them about this, I assume that the president, whether acting or substantive, must respond to the yearnings of Nigerians. The president is not a dictator, but an elected president. When the majority of Nigerians say they want certain things, it is the bounden constitutional duty of the president to respond to the yearnings of Nigerians, That is why he took an oath to act in the interest of Nigerians.

President Buhari has not left anyone in doubt that he is not receptive to the idea of restructuring either through the implementation of the confab report or other means. The acting president can’t in his absence embark on any restructuring. Where does this logjam leave the country, especially with the 2019 elections approaching?

As long as the president is still alive and Osinbajo remains only an acting president, he must follow the wishes of the president. He must show loyalty to his boss and must not in any way be disloyal to him. But that is as long as the president is still Buhari. But if anything happens and Osinbajo becomes president, then he has all the full executive powers in his hands. He can then take his own decisions and will no longer be bound by what Buhari would do or would have done. Then he can call on his own knowledge, wisdom, and experience and take the right decisions for Nigeria.

What if between now and the 2019 elections, Buhari is still president and Osinbajo still the acting president?

Then we will judge Buhari by his performance over his four years in office. Nigerians will judge him and decide whether to re-elect him or not.

In your own assessment of his government in the last two years, do you think he has done well?

By the admission of their party, APC, and those who campaigned vehemently for them before they were elected, the Buhari administration has been a letdown. His government has been a disappointment. Nigerians are daily cursing the government. In my own view, the government of Buhari has not achieved anything in two years that it has been inaugurated. They have not done anything to justify that they want to run in 2019. That is why I said in a democracy, it is the people who will decide. This is my own opinion. If Buhari wants to come back in 2019, Nigerians will decide whether to re-elect him or not.

If the government fails, then those of you who are of progressive hew should take responsibility for its failure. You clamoured that the conservative PDP was not getting things right and now a party that styles itself progressive is in power and yet things are not working. Is this a curse on the progressives as being said in some quarters?

The progressives betrayed Nigerians in 2015 by making the Yoruba to vote for Buhari in 2015. I was very much against voting for Buhari in 2015. I was also very much against Senator Bola Tinubu who is the culprit. It was because of his wealth and money as well as his selfish ambition of attempting to be the vice-president. He already knew Buhari’s health condition and knew that Buhari may not complete his four-year term and was already positioning himself such that if anything happens to Buhari, he will be president. So, for this selfish ambition, he made the Yoruba vote for their enemy. Yoruba have no greater enemies than the Hausa/Fulani people. They have always been our tormentors at every stage in Nigerian history. They have had this unrelenting ambition to run over us and take over our territory. It is Tinubu who betrayed the progressives, using his wealth and unleashed massive propaganda which easily misled the ordinary people who fell for it. All the North wanted in 2015 was for power to shift to their area and they got it. Tinubu played along with them because he felt he would benefit personally from it. It is the progressives who were betrayed by Tinubu and all of them jointly betrayed the Yoruba people and Nigerians in general.

PDP that should play the role of a constructive opposition party is in tatters and there are boasts from the APC camp that no party can stand should-to-shoulder to them in 2019, not even the proposed mega party.

Nigeria needs a social revolution. Any idea of any people getting together to form another party will not take us anywhere. I have said it many times that the present crop of the political class whether in APC or PDP or any other party that is existing now are all thieves and vagabonds. They are all in it for their own self-interest; to make quick money and not to render any service to the people. They have no vision for Nigeria. They see politics as the only means to make quick and get rich. Any mega party or realignment will be mere going back and forth; zero plus zero will always be zero; thieves and thieves will always be thieves. This is why APC is not better than PDP because APC itself is a concentration of thieves in one party and the thieves in other parties coming together.

The hope of Nigeria is not in the present political class. The current political class can only lead Nigeria to gloom and disaster. It is the young people today who must now lead a social revolution and re-group to redefine politics in Nigeria; redefine what political parties are. We must now have political parties with vision and mission. We need committed young men to lead this revolution. Look at France that elected a 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron as its president. Why are we always looking forward to recycling the old men in Nigeria? I am one of the old men. Let the young people who have vision lead the country. The future belongs to them. Let the youth come together and redefine politics the way Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his contemporaries did in their youth. They were in the youthful period then. Why can’t our young men today come together and redefine politics in the country? Why can’t the young ones give us a party that has direction and vision; a party that knows where it wants Nigeria to be in the next 10/20 years; a party that will make Nigeria one of the great countries of the world. Let our young men come together and carry out this social revolution. Let them seize the future in their own hands. Let them not wait for the same old political class to do things for them. A new party, whether mega or not, will always lead to gloom, as long as it is led by people from the current political class.