Democracy and governance have not worked in Nigeria – Prof. Adekilekun

Professor Mubarak Tijani Adekilekun, a lawyer and Professor of Business Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Ilorin, worked at the Law Firm of Yusuf O. Ali &Co in Ilorin. He is a consultant in regulatory compliance, Legal and Regulatory reforms, Investment, Corporate Restructuring, Business Advisory Services, Commercial Disputes and due diligence, among others.

He received excellence award for completing his PhD in less than three years. He is a member of procurement Law Academy Network (PLAN) UK. Member Law Teachers Association of Nigeria. He was also in the Legal team of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu during the 2023 Presidential Election petitions.

In this explosive interview with Business Hallmark’s Olusesan Laoye, at his residence in Ede Osun State, the Professor, who belongs to the family of 400 graduates and 10 Professors, talked extensively about the rot in the Nigeria’s judicial system, attitudes of Nigerian politicians, mistakes of President Tinubu, moral decadence amongst the youths and other national issues.

Excerpts:

As a Professor of Law, what’s you view of the judicial system, and the attitude of judges…?

Personally I think there is nothing really bad in the Nigeria’s judicial system but the attitude of people that operates the system, the judges and the individuals. If you look at it holistically, in Africa and even some parts of the world, Nigeria has the best rules and regulations governing the judicial system, likewise, the executive and the legislature.
If you look at the presidential system of government or the parliamentary, that provides for the National Assembly and you look at the laws, they are not really bad but the facts remains that we can’t compare ourselves with the advanced and developed countries, like America. America got her independence in 1776. It has been practicing the system and they have identified all the loopholes.

But in Nigeria, we started in 1979. When you roll back, we got our independence in 1960, we started with parliamentary before the presidential system in 1979. Over all, one would say, it is still work in progress, likewise our judicial system. If you look at what the constitution provides for on how the judiciary should perform, its programmes and all its processes, there is nothing wrong with them but rather, it is we as Nigerians, that have that problems. I was discussing with a colleague in Kaduna recently and I told him that the problem of Nigeria and solutions, can’t be found in any book.

If you are a professor in economics and you are the best in the world, you can’t get the problems solved in your book but through experience. Nigerians are fond of circumventing the laws and processes, which are even not provided for in any book. If Nigerians are aware that there is solution in a place, you can trust them, they would go all out to circumvent it. That is actually the problem we have in Nigeria because they can go to any extent to cut corners. Yes, focusing on the whole of the judiciary with what I have enumerated earlier, one can’t say that all the Judges are bad, good or saints, whatever the case may be, they are all products of Nigeria as an entity. It is we Nigerians, that create the problems we find ourselves in today. For instance, if you see a person being appointed to a public office, it is people that will mill round him and teach him, how to be corrupt and make money illegally from the position, which he is called to serve.

There are still a lot of issues we need to talk about and find solutions to and until those problems are addressed, that is when we can move forward as a nation. To me, the judicial system is okay, but the problems are with the operators of the system. We have the saints among them; we have the wizards among them and we have the demons amongst them.

Looking at democracy presently in Nigeria and with what you have just said about our judicial system, how best do you think democracy could be sustained in the country?

The simple answer is that most Nigerians, especially, politicians lack democratic culture. In Law, we say you can’t give what you don’t have. I was telling somebody that you want to appoint someone as a President, and you know that the country is in a serious economic quagmire and the person you want to appoint does not have the experience and ability to resolve simple economic crisis. When he gets there, what do you expect from such a person? He would only depend on people and continue to gamble, whether this would work or not. Look at it this way, if you have a security ravaged country and you want a solution to the problems, and you appoint a person, who loves violence, who would not look back, to examine the causes and how to tackle them but because the language he understands is violence, what would be is solution is to adopt violence. He would, without thinking twice, command the boys to go and flush them out and this approach will further escalate the problem, rather than solving it.

The same is applicable to appointing leaders. You appoint a violent person as president or governor to solve issues, honestly don’t let us deceive ourselves, there would be more crisis, because that person doesn’t have what it takes to govern and you can’t expect anything better or expect him to give what he does not have. I am not talking in terms of giving out money or any other things but I am talking in terms of experience, the culture you have not imbibe, economic know-how and all the rest. In Nigeria, we are practicing democracy without democratic culture; it is not done and we can’t get it right, until we are ready to sit down and fashion out our own democratic culture to sustain our own democracy.

A lot of us are just there in government looking for what to eat. There are a lot of things which make democracy work, such as the rule of law and observing it, education, and we have a lot of them. All these cultures need to be imbibed by us and that is where the government comes in, either through the Ministry of Information, National Orientation Agency and other agencies of government, saddled with such functions, not that they would just be in office collecting allocations without doing anything. Orientating the people is the duty of all the layers and this involves, even, our community and religious leaders.

Without having that culture of democracy Nigeria can not sustain democracy. If there is culture of democracy in Nigeria operating it would be natural. I always say even under democracy, in this part of the world, you have stronger men but weaker institutions.That is what we operate in Nigeria. We have very strong men in Nigeria that when you don’t see them nothing works and things would not run in government. That is not what it’s supposed to be. For instance, in America, when Donald Trump came in and said he banned citizens of some countries from entering America. Can you believe it, that it was the Ministry of Justice, and the Attorney General of the country that instituted an action against the president because from what he was taught and the oath he sworn to, under the constitution of the country, that was not what it was supposed to be and within five days, the action of the President banishing citizens of some countries coming to America was reversed. That is a system that is running and working. These are institutions that are balanced. If Trump just said it and people folded their arms without doing anything, it means that America would have started the era of stronger men, weaker institutions.

In this part of the world, we should allow the institutions to run. The only state that looks like that in Nigeria is Lagos. Still I can’t give them up to 50%, but they are getting it right a little. We are in a country where there are stronger men. If you become a governor whatever you say is the order of the day, whether it is recognized by the constitution or not. You can’t say that you want to sustain democracy without the rule of law and not obeying what is in the constitution.
That is not done and that is not how to maintain and sustain democracy. That is my answer to that.

There is moral decadence not only among our youths but everywhere, a situation which many believed is causing high rate of crimes. What do you think is responsible for this situation?

Yes, I agree with you that there is moral decadence all over. It is not something, which just started today. Some people attributed it to the long rule of the Military in Nigeria. But i don’t actually subscribe to this totally, because we had other countries ruled by the Military, not as morally bankrupt as Nigeria. Again not all Nigerian are as bad and morally bankrupt. There are many decent and morally upright people in the country.
This kind of people are those brought up by the older generations. But some of the generations, now, let us say those born from 1985, 1990s and up till now. Since they have been growing up, they have never experienced orderliness and the language they are used to is disorderliness, cutting corners, and always wanted to be on the fast lane and the kind of life they are used to is to engage in Yahoo-Yahoo and cutting corners.

How then, do you want to convince those kind of people that they are not living normal life, since that is what they grew up with.
They will just be looking at you that what is this man saying, because what you are telling them is not the normal things they are used to. I was giving a lecture at the University of Ilorin and a question about leadership came up. Someone raised the issue of minimum qualifications to attain before aspiring to lead and his question was borne out of what has been happening in Nigeria about the qualifications of those ruling in the country and what the constitution says.

Since the academic requirements to aspire to any political office has been ridiculously reduced to primary school level, it means those with primary education are the ones ruling us. How then do you want to encourage people to read since they know that without a degree they could attain a very high level politically.

Even when some people look at a graduate and even someone with PhD without a job, roaming the streets, then what encouragement is there, for others to want to read. Again someone, who went to school read up to PhD without a job for how long do you want him to continue in that, without taking to crime. This thing is about law of nature. He has been told that when you go to school , you will get a job and then get married to build a home but after educating himself, no where to work.

I have a lot of friends, who are yet to get married because they don’t have the money and they don’t want their family to suffer. There are a lot of people like that, all over, who could not be patient as my friends, who at the end of the day, go into cyber crime.
These kind of people want to live a normal life but there is no room for them and they see the children of politicians, who were not better than them in school riding flashy cars and living in affluence.Their parents too are arrogantly displaying wealth, which they did not actually worked for. How then is the society not going to be corrupt?

These things are in us and it is high time we address it. Let the older generations teach the new ones good morals and how to live descent lives. Let those in government and position of authorities too, live by examples. Honestly, no normal or an average person wants to take into crime.They know the consequences.

If you go abroad, Nigerians, because of hardship faced here, are damning the consequences, even death, to go into crime for survival. They know and they go into it, with the determination to either survive or die. They are determined that they cannot continue in poverty, with the current situation Nigeria.

Also, those who go into crime, especially, those into drug, continue as a result of greed because they will continue and not stop because of the heavy money they are making from it. Many, refused to quit because they found it difficult to go back to salary jobs.
There was a boy, who was caught and he said, he decided to continue peddling in drugs because he can’t imagine himself earning N300,000 400,000 in a month. Although that kind of business is morally wrong and illegal, what pushes them to do that, to me, is as a result of imbalances in the society.
We need holistic approach to stem it. Government should go into moral suasion, and this is the time that the National Orientation Agency should go to work, while government, should now introduce subjects that are related to teachings of good morals. It is sad that you find some state government removing History from their schools curriculum. If people don’t know the history of where they are coming from they will not know where they are going. If we want to be successful as a nation, History is very important because it would guide an individual on how to behave and even how to relate with ourselves.

To encourage good morals in Nigeria, I will advocate that History and something related to National development should be made compulsory, in our schools, even for those who are doing sciences. Now, youths, who don’t know where Nigeria is coming from want to be in power, while the few ones, who have occupied positions have not done well.
Look at the case of Yaya Bello and others. A lot of them don’t understand the nitty-gritty of the society and where Nigeria is coming from. The youths clamouring for powers shift, to me, are not prepared because they don’t know the political culture, the history of where we are coming from, for them to to be able to determine, where we are going.

Can you comment on the new Federal Ministry of Education law about admission policy into the tertiary institutions after WASC?

The direct answers to your question would be in two phases. In Nigeria, we are lacking behind in a lot of things. I understand that the Minister of Education opened up the conversation because there is a law he met on ground. The Minister being a Professor of Law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), never sat down to examine the law properly before announcing its implementation.
What should have been done is to holistically looked at the law to see if it is still relevant to what we have and the mood of the people and the nation, generally. He should have realized that laws are made for man and not man made for law.

From what we observed, the law must have been in existence, since 1970s. How come the law made in the 70s would want to be implemented in 2024 and that is the problem we are facing in Nigeria. In the first place, let us look at the time of the enactment of that law and how relevant is the law presently.
You don’t just wake up one day and say because something exists in a law and let us now start following it. Let us be honest to ourselves, that law is no longer relevant today. Even as a Senior advocate of Nigeria and a Professor of Law, I believed that he should have studied the law, look at the reasons why it was enacted and then, relate it to the situations we are facing presently.
Let me give you two examples, and the havoc, which that policy has caused thousands of students. I am a lecturer at the University of Ilorin and I want to tell you that the overall best student that chose UNIILORIN this year, falls under the age of 16. With the policy about 370 students were affected in UniIlorin alone, who are very brilliant students with good and excellent grades. Some of them will now have to wait for about three years to gain admission into the University when they ought to have been finishing.

While I advocate that you may not be too young to enter University because of lack of experience, which i think that may inform one of the reasons, behind the policy.
As a lecturer, you noticed that some of them are very sharp but they lack experience about life. Some of them can’t even be left alone to take transport on their own to campus here in Ilorin. Their parents always bring them.

But in terms of brilliance, they are good which to me is a good development for Nigeria, because just as we are trying to slow down the pace with which some of our children are going in education, we have children of 15, 16 years having PhD in some advanced countries, where there is no impediments on education and the age limit to how children can grow or achieve educationally.

Some of these children too, in Nigeria, are exceptionally endowed. The government just want to pick the implementation of the 18 years policy into the tertiary institutions from the top without beginning from the root or the foundation. To me, where the government should have started is from the primary schools to ensure that, whoever is entering primary school attains the age of six years. Although, children of today are very sharp, you will be surprised the way two or three year old child talks and tackle issues but not withstanding, it is the proprietors of private schools admitting children of two, three years into their schools, that government should face first. If a child gets into primary school at the age of six years he would get to secondary school, at least, at the age of eleven and by the time he gets out of secondary School, the child would be 17 and ready to go to the University at the age of 18.
In that case, there won’t be the need to sanction any body with the age of 15 or 16 because of a policy that is not well articulated.

That is what the government ought to have done first. There should be a law that covers all private schools on when and how to enroll children into their schools. The process should be a systemic approach from bottom to the top.

My own child is affected in this. She is just a little above 15 years but made WASC with distinctions at one sitting, and JAMB one sitting, and offered admission by a University on merit without any interference. This means that she will have to be at home for three years because she is not yet 16. This is unthinkable. A lot of people including some of my friends are saying their children would go and learn a trade or go to computer school, but looking at it critically, the policy is gong to kill the zeal and enthusiasm in a child, who is ready to pursue his or her education without a break. This could honestly derail and discourage some of them from going back to school because the two or three years they will stay at home or being used to learn a trade, could expose them to something else, which could affect them for life.

Government is not saying anything about entry requirements into primary and Secondary schools. I am aware that in Finland you can’t start school before seven years. And until you are seven you have to be at home with your parents because they want them to imbibe some home intelligence. But these are countries, where things are working well. In that country, it is the government that sponsors your education from primary to the University level. When you finish, there is job and accommodation for you.

Nigeria is till lacking far behind in many things but implementing policies inimical to the progress of the citizenry.

To be continued…