You are a member of the National Conference and in fact a co-chairman of one of the committees, what are your expectations at the end of it all?
Basically, in spite of great expectations from certain quarters that a new constitution will come into force, I think our job is to review what we have and recommend that which brings about social justice, stability of the country and luckily, the president said nobody should raise issues that will threaten the unity of the country but we should discuss that which will strengthen the unity of the country. My understanding is, it is a national dialogue that will recommended certain structural changes, certain operational changes in various legal documents, organizational structures of government, relationships between the centre and the federating units and therefore, at the end of the day, help make the union stronger.
The conference initially started on a very stormy note, especially on the issue of voting formula. Now you are doing the committee work, do you see delegates agreeing at the end of it all?
In spite of whatever contentious issues, everybody’s attitude is that it can be resolved, there must be an agreement and therefore I believe that people have a right to advance their positions. In a democracy, you stake your claim but you know that you have to negotiate. You must go with a spirit of give and take and you must do it patiently with wisdom, patriotism and understanding. At the committee level, people will discuss them, they will arrive at certain conclusions and they will bring it to the plenary. We will still discuss them and at the end of the day Nigerians will get solid recommendations from this group of eminent Nigerians.
Delegates are divided on the form of government to adopt; presidential or parliamentary and even the issue of federalism. What is your take on that?
So, when people make these agitations about true federalism, sometimes it comes from ignorance but sometimes it comes from genuine concerns for the fact that the centre is too strong. Take the case of revenue for example; the military centralized it to a point whereby the federal is taking virtually everything at the expense of the federating units. I believe in certain ways there are areas that we need to look at to decentralize the centre. However, I don’t think restructuring or federalism implies we should go back to a confederal or semi confederal arrangement or go as far as saying we should return to a parliamentary system of government. What has become a problem today is not the presidential system but largely the type of leadership that the Nigerian presidential system has propelled forward. If you look at even the 36 states in the last 14 years, we have produced several state governors, some are completely hopeless, corrupt, incompetent and inefficient.
The same thing can happen at the federal level. If we do not begin to move away from picking and promoting leaders who are in incompetent, who don’t understand the country, who don’t understand basic issues of economic development in a complex society like Nigeria in the 21st century.
Where is the place of the local government in all these?
If you look at the current constitution which we are operating, it is as if the drafters of the constitution worked so hard on the federal and state that when they got to the issue of the local government they were tired. They simply put anything down and put even names of local governments in the constitution and handed and promulgated the thing and walked away. It is the weakest part of the constitution, it is the most ill thought-out section, therefore, that invariably, has presented local governments with a lot of difficulties.
From the scenario you created, some would argue that Nigeria would be better off without the local governments?
No, no, no, no, no. Nigeria would be better off if local governments were run more effectively.
Do you support the calls for the reversal of the abrogation of the dichotomy?
I have never supported it (abrogation). Absolutely I have never supported it because I thought it was a mistake. Anything below the continental shelf up to 200 miles belongs to Nigeria. It doesn’t belong to any state.
