Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, one of the founders of the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), was a commissioner in the regime of the first civilian Governor of Kano State, late Audu Bako and political adviser to late President Shehu Shagari.
In this interview, he assesses Nigeria’s progress in the last 60 years.
How would you assess Nigeria 60 years after independence?
We have every reason to thank Almighty Allah for sparing our lives this long.
Many people were not that privileged.
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Well, from whatever angle you look at it, we have recorded some laudable strides.
You can only reckon that our achievements are not as much as we had hoped.
But, certainly, we have not just been marking time.
Look at the level of education, health care, commerce and industry, everywhere.
We are definitely better than where we were in 1960.
The giant of Africa, as many like to call us; would you say the level of progress achieved so far is up to the expectations of the generality of Nigerians?
Nigeria is truly the giant of Africa.
With a population of over 200 million people, no other nation can claim this endowment from Almighty God and our other natural endowments.
We have all sorts of mineral deposits and the human size itself is capital.
If you look at the change that happened in China within the last 60 years, just about the same time that we started to become what we are, it is tremendous.
Sixty years ago, China was far below on the list of developed countries.
Today, it’s the second most developed country in the world and it is their population that made it possible – but a population with foresight and commitment.
This is what Nigeria is lacking.
But we are still the giant of Africa; we can change the situation for the better within a relatively short time.
What would you say is responsible for our backwardness?
If you compare our situation, you will see our achievements as a country, and you will see the degradation that we went through from 1966 to date.
We can look at our counterparts (countries that we were at the same level at independence), Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia etc. They are far ahead of us.
But, the only thing responsible for that is the military interventions.
Our leaders from the North, East and West tried their best, and each of them recorded tremendous progress from independence to the first military coup in Nigeria.
If they had been allowed to continue, or their lieutenants had continued on the trajectory, our country would have been at the same level or higher than those other contemporaries.
Nigeria has been practicing democracy for 21 years now, yet cirizens struggle for basic needs such as electricity, healthcare, education etc. What would you say is responsible for this?
You see, democracy does not just consist of getting a government through a ballot box.
It consists of electing the right calibre of people.
When we returned to democracy in 1999, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president.
You cannot change the mantra of the military man.
A person who joined the military at age 18 right up to his maturity, his psyche, attitude and way of life are by and large military.
He could be elected by democratic process, but he can’t be a democrat: To be a democrat, there are certain attributes one must possess.
For example, every true democrat respects the rule of law.
We were all in this country when then president Obasanjo, because of personal disagreement with then governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, refused to release revenue due to local governments in the state for the entire eight-year two-term tenures.
It was Yar’adua, when he was elected, that authorised the payment of the federal allocations due to LGs.
No democrat in the whole world would behave like that.
Another example is the detention of Sambo Dasuki by the present President Buhari.
He too was elected on a democratic platform, but because of his military psyche and mantra, all the courts that Dasuki went for redress ruled in his favour to be released on bail, including the ECOWAS Court, but Buhari refused.
He only released Dasuki when the media, particularly from the South, were complaining over Sowore whom he had also detained.
So, actually, Dasuki benefited from the release of that young journalist (Sowore), not because Buhari decided to respect the various courts.
Obasanjo and Buhari were elected on democratic platforms but that did not change their mindsets.
Being elected doesn’t automatically make you a democrat.
But in between former president Obasanjo and the current President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria had late Yar’adua and Jonathan as presidents. Did they make any difference?
They attempted.
First, I mentioned it already that when Yar’adua was elected, he accepted that the system of election in Nigeria was not democratic and appointed a committee to look into the system under retired Chief Justice Lawal Uwais.
The committee submitted its report.
Unfortunately, when he was trying to implement the report, he died.
He was succeeded by Jonathan, his vice, who later got re-elected.
Jonathan did not implement all the recommendations of that committee.
But he did one or two things that only a democrat would do.
There were many problems but he decided to pick one that was very important; that which if corrected will place Nigeria on a new track to development.
And that is education.
First, he created 12 new universities, deployed nine to northern Nigeria, which is backward in terms of education, and also converted or introduced Almajiri schools to the Western system of education.
This is the mantra of a democrat who has the entire nation in his mind, to address the problems bedeviling it and move it towards development.
Apart from military interregnum in the past and the issue of corruption, are there other factors that contributed to Nigeria’s backwardness?
Yes, the trouble is that corruption is just like cancer.
Once you have cancer in any part of your body, the whole body will feel it.
The level of corruption in Nigeria has caused all the sectors to be sick.
We are not even trying to look for medicine or treatment for our ailment, we are going deeper and deeper into the problem of corruption.
The degree of corruption in Nigeria today is many times over that of by 1966.
It is the magnitude of corruption in our society that has made it impossible to develop this country.
For instance, when I was Commissioner for Finance in Kano State, the state government used to order drugs for our hospitals and we had hospitals in a number of places.
We took inventory of the quantity and type of drugs needed in each of those hospitals and the government would order them, and they would be distributed to all the hospitals according to their needs.
Nobody is ordering drugs now for any hospital in Kano State.
Why? Because now the money will be shared among the officials.
It is only at very few like the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, that you can get drugs already stocked in the pharmacy.
This magnitude of corruption is all over, even in schools in terms of procuring chalk or books or learning aids.
So, corruption in Nigeria is now many times more than when the military overthrew the democratic government in 1966.
But some people are still of the view that the current democratic system we are operating is also to be blamed for our backwardness…
When we adopted the presidential system of government, honestly most Nigerians believed that it will be better for Nigeria for the simple reason that the president will treat the whole country as his constituency and therefore he will try to address their problems uniformly.
Unfortunately, this is not how the situation turned out to be.
With the concentration of power in the central government and the president, you find that we are actually going from bad to worse.
So, yes, the system has also contributed to the degradation of the quality of life of Nigerians.
I have said that we can continue with this system but we have to change the way it is operating.
What do you propose?
Under the present system, whether the president or the governor is performing, you cannot change them.
Why? Because you can only change them by impeachment.
For you to impeach the president or the governor, you need to have two-third majority support of the members of the legislature.
The politics of the country has been monetised such that all the president or the governor needs to do is to look for sufficient funds to settle at least one-third of the legislature.
With that situation, you cannot impeach them.
So my opinion is that we continue to have a president who should be a ceremonial president.
If we want to elect him by adult suffrage let it be so.
But, let it not be the executive president that we have today.
Let us have the president but the cabinet should be headed by the Prime Minister.
He will nominate the ministers as we do now.
He can recommend names to the president who will nominate them to the legislature for them to confirm.
The difference is that under the system I’m recommending, if the government at the centre or the state is not performing, members of the legislature can pass a vote of no confidence on it.
When that vote is passed with a majority of one vote, that government will automatically resign.
So, the fear of that vote of no confidence will make the government address the problem of the population.
We are not doing that now because the president and governors are not afraid of anybody.
They know you cannot remove them except through impeachment, and they know they have the means to frustrate any move to impeach them.
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