Interview
Democracy and governance have not worked in Nigeria (2) – Prof. Adekilekun
What do you think is wrong with the present constitution we are operating and some of the amendments which the national Assembly is making and the call for total restructuring of Nigeria?
In the first place, I agree that the constitution should be amended because of certain things. Secondly, we are just making noise in Nigeria about the amendment of the constitution. Practically, it may be impossible to have a new constitution through the crop of the legislators that we have at the moment in the National Assembly. Let me give you an example, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, has been able to do the unthinkable on the issue of the autonomy of the local government. It would not have been possible till eternity through the National Assembly.
The crop of senators and members of the House of Representatives are controlled by their State governors and the governors would not want that aspect of the Local government to be touched, at all. I am aware that the governors have been warning Representatives from both chambers at the National Assembly from their states that anyone who supports the Local government autonomy as should forget another term, as he or she is gone.
See what happened in Oyo state with Governor Seyi Makinde, who used the allocations of the Local governments to secure loans for the next five years, which is going to run even, after his tenure as governor. Even as it is, under the constitution, the autonomy of the local government is guaranteed by the law.
Let me make you laugh and to let you see how crazy some of these governors are. You can’t believe that the governor of Anambra state Prof. Chukwuma Soludo made a law in his State, that he is not disputing that the local government should not collect their allocations but after collecting it, they must all pay to another joint account.
This is not a mere statement, it is a statement of facts because I have the law here with me. You can now see the rubbish that they are doing. The money, according to the law, must be paid into another Local government joint account within two day. We thought a person being a Professor, and who had held that tangible position as the Governor of the apex bank in Nigeria, should have known better and shouldn’t condescend that low to do that kind of mess against the law of the country.
I am happy, that Soludo is now facing a lot of bashing here and there by Nigerians, who believed that he disrespected himself for his action. What some people, who we believed should know better do, sometimes baffle some of us. We should not be deceived, that is the intentions of most of his colleagues, to circumvent the Supreme Court judgment on the Local government autonomy.
What is also killing us in Nigeria is that too much power is vested at the federal government. The centre has so much to do and that is why people rush for appointments there. With the Exclusive legislative list of about 63 items, which the federal government is handling the state and the local governments functions are limited.
You can imagine the federal government handling boreholes in the rural areas, which is supposed to be the prerogatives of the Local governments. What concerns the federal government sinking boreholes in Sokoto, Maiduguri Iseyin. Kabba, Ede, Osogbo and most remote areas of the country. All the money allocated to even the ministries and what the National Assembly take money for, as oversight functions should be given to the states to provide amenities for the people, especially pipe born water as we used to have it during the colonial era, where all cities and villages were provided with water.
In fact, it is ridiculous that Nigeria has not moved forward. When I was doing my PhD in Malaysia, my attention was drawn to a picture at the Library, which showed General Aliu Gwuazo, who was sent by General Olusegun Obasanjo to commission the first borehole in Malaysia. It was a very big picture displayed conspicuously, and which they were proud of. For that country, then, to have called on our Head of state to come and commission their own first borehole, it means, we already had several boreholes as a means of providing water for our people, which they admired, since that was copied from us here in Nigeria.
But today, you can’t compare the two countries.In Malaysia of today, if you are in a building of 50 floors when you open your taps you will be surprised with the rate the water would rush. All the several billions of Naira budgeted for boreholes by the Federal government should be diverted to providing water across the country is not the ways they are doing it now but through the local governments that should be saddled with such responsibilities and telling them this is your core job and we want to see how water would reach all the villages.
There would be results instead of people using their influence to provide for their people only, to show off in their towns and villages as Lords.
To me, that is how to govern. The amendment of the constitution goes beyond the National Assembly. I was part of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Legal team. Honestly all of us in that team agreed that there is the need to amend the constitution and we also said that the process should not just be left for the National Assembly alone to start but there must be a working paper to guide them.
But what they do now, is that they will just pick a section that either favours them or the executive and say it should be sent to the committee and after a brief deliberation they would say, that part has been amended.
No, that’s not how to go about it. If we want to ament the constitution, it must be done holistically and even, if it is to be through the National Conference, some people are needed, to do the underground work. That is what other countries do. The present members of the constitutional amendment committee at the National Assembly after billions is released to them, would just call some lawyers to discuss with them on what should be done. This is not how it should be done. There should be a particular tactical committee, that would look into it and it is the report of this tactical committee, that the National Assembly is expected to work on because some of these legislators are not experienced.
They don’t know what is in the constitution, or the nitty-gritty of appropriation, and they just go there to discuss politics. That is why in my own opinion about governance, is that you can’t give what you don’t have.
Governance is a serious job; it is not just about parading yourself at functions as they do here in Nigeria. If you are serious about governance, you have to bring out your plans. Your maps and sit down to look at the plans you have drawn and how you want to achieve them in the next five years in different areas,
Do you think President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is doing the right thing and adopting the right approach to governance?
Well, with what Tinubu is doing now, I am always curious to know whether he is doing the right thing or not, and that is why I go extra miles to ask economists and researchers to tell me, because I am a stakeholder as a Nigerian.
The point is that I have not seen any to tell me that what he is doing is not proper; they always say it is good 100%. However, may be he ought to have added something. What many think is that the major problem the country is facing is the issue of subsidy removal on petroleum. The subsidy on FX and petroleum are finally over, the problem is that the government should have provided means of public transportation in all the states before hand. To say whether the removal of subsidy portends well for Nigeria, yes. It is fantastic. But before the removal, transportation issues ought to have been sorted out by providing luxurious buses that would engage in inter and intra state movements of the people.
That is where I fault Mr President. He knows he wants to do these things, he should have used, at least, a year to prepare and during that period, you will see a lot of private companies who will be willing to key in into the project and supply buses and government can subsidize transportation before removing the subsidy completely. Instead of people paying 500% it could be reduced to 200%. If he had done that before the removal, the problems would not have been critical, as they are now.
The issue of revenue mobilisation, do you think how it is shared presently is proper and adequate?
This is part of the things to be tackled if the constitution is amended. Like I said earlier, what is in the Exclusive legislative list is too much and that is why the Federal government is getting higher than the states. Most of the things on the list should be dropped for the Local governments to handle.
Now let us talk about how your family has been able to produce 400 graduates and about 10 professors…
In my family, we have been educated in the Islamic way and have been Islamic scholars, since 1870s. I am not talking about western education but Islamic education and since that time, people in the family had risen to the top.
In Ede today, it is only in my family where they don’t have land or you have somebody saying I am going to farm. We have always been reading. If you don’t go to school you go to Islamic school. The most difficult thing to learn is Arabic. It is like you are cramming Chinese. Cramming what you don’t really understand but at the same time exercising your brain in a positive way.
If you can do that since childhood, then the western education is a child’s play because you can understand that. That is the reason why learning became easy for all the children in the family. Even up till now, our children must learn Quran. In our days you must never be found playing football. As soon as you come back from school you must engage in reading the Quran. Because it has been the rule in the family to read. Education has become part of what we have to do and it is not negotiable.
However, not that you can’t engage in other thing. If you are good in football, table tennis and other games, you will be encouraged, but not at the expense of your education either Islamically or in the secular way.
That is why today we have over 400 graduates, professors and still counting numbers of undergraduates, in the Adekilekun family.
