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Former Minister of Information and Culture during General Sani Abacha administration, Professor Walter Ofonagoro, speaks with Groups Politics Editor, KUNLE ODEREMI, on the current state of governance in Nigeria, among other issues.
As an elder statesman, what do you have for Nigerians in the New Year and your assessment of the current state of the country?
There are so many experienced and prominent citizens who have held high profile public offices in the country. We even have people who have held leadership positions in international organisations. There are so many of them and Nigeria is really not lacking in this area. But all I can say now is that after 61 years of trial and error, I wish Nigeria a much more resolute march towards a peaceful and prosperous future for our citizens. I have always believed that what Nigeria needs is a leader that can tidy up the nation in such a way that Nigerians will not want to run away from their country.
Looking back to 1976 when I left where I was to come back to Nigeria, I came back then full of hopes for the future of the country. I came back full of burning ideas on how to make Nigeria a better place. Other people and I also came back determined to contribute our quota to the development of the country. But today, nobody is thinking of doing that again, as Nigerians that have gone are not thinking of coming home and those at home are thinking of leaving. So, it doesn’t augur well for the future. Anytime you turn to the radio or other news media, you keep hearing of children being kidnapped from schools, not one or two, but the entire population of a school being kidnapped, both girls and boys, and taken to unknown destinations. A majority of the children are kept against their will in the jungle by hostile forces. Do you know how many children have been kidnapped? But what have we done about them? We just go about our daily business as if nothing is happening. This is one matter that disturbs me a lot.
Secondly, we have very few job opportunities for the youths. And yet we are creating more universities day by day. I think at the last count, we probably have about 200 universities. But the graduates we have already produced, what have been our plans to have them gainfully employed? And do you know what happens to a nation that has a huge number of unemployed youths? If in the face of immense opportunities begging to be explored, you have unemployed youths that are ambitious, what you will end up having is a revolution, one that you cannot control. So, basically, I don’t believe in having wishy-washy resolutions, but critically identifying the country’s problems and offering solutions. Whatever you have today in Nigeria, you need to sit down and craft solutions.
In this country, we have run with the parliamentary system where you have ministers as members of the parliament. But the military changed this with Decree No 8 of the 1967 whereby Nigeria was changed into a military federation comprising 12 states. They called what they created a federation then, but the states have very little autonomy as they were virtually ruled from the centre and they do as they were told. And there were rules at that time by middle level army officers who were simply posted there through normal military postings to serve in the state and report to their seniors. And the military went on to create more and more states from 12 to 21 states and then 30 and finally 36 states. But away from the military rule, you now have a situation where somebody controlling one state can call himself a governor, sitting down in the government house and using the police and army to enforce his ways. But despite this, it is highly impossible for someone to travel from one state to another in the country without the fear of being kidnapped or killed. But was it ever like that in Nigeria before?
I remember one time in 1992 after the Port Harcourt convention of the NRC [National Republican Convention]. I took my car and went from Port Harcour tto my town in Imo State. And I was to bag a fellowship by the Nsoko Society of Nigeria at the Usman Danfodio University in Sokoto. And then, the conferment ceremony was to take place on a Monday. But I was still in Port Harcourt on Saturday and I had a ticket I could use. But at the same time, I had to first get to my home in Imo State to pick up my files. So I went into my Mercedes and took off by road alone. And then, I drove from Imo State to Sokoto. I ended the first night in Makurdi around 12 midnight. And I slept at the Benue Hotel in Makurdi. And the next morning after breakfast, I picked up my car again and drove all through Kaduna and Zaria till I got to the UDU campus in Sokoto at midnight of the second day. I was on the road for 48 hours, driving alone. My colleagues were shocked. They thought I would not make it. And immediately I went in, I delivered my papers, got the fellowship and travelled back. But can I attempt that today? Can anyone even try to travel by road from Port Harcourt to Sokoto nowadays?
For the second example, look at the years back when the armed robber, [Lawrence] Anini was terrorising the Bendel State and its highways. I went home again to see my father in the East. I had tried to get a flight from Port Harcourt to Lagos, but the flight was cancelled. So I had to go to my father and told him that I had to travel by road because my daughters were coming the next day from New York to Lagos and I needed to be available at the Lagos airport to receive them and bring them home. So, he agreed and I picked up my 504 around 11:30 pm in the night and headed for Lagos. And as soon as I was going, heavy rainfall started, the kind that armed robbers want. But as God would have it, I drove into the Lagos airport at 5:30am, the same time the plane that conveyed my daughters was touching down. And when I met my daughters, I took them in the car and took them home. I have driven from Lagos to Port Harcourt and Sokoto all alone in the night. But can anyone attempt that today? So what are we doing? There was even one trip I went on when I was a minister in 1996. I went to Jos as we were having the National Festival of Arts and Culture, where the various state cultural groups will come out and perform. I had started going for such programmes since I was 18 years of age. So for that year’s edition, I got a prize and a certificate of merit, signed by Dr Nnmadi Azikwe, the premier of the East then who later became the executive president while Tafawa Balewa became the prime minister in 1960.
Then, the Northern people opposed the president because they didn’t like him, because they were afraid of what Nigeria would be like under him in view of the disparity in education levels. They (The North) did not have mission schools which we benefited from in the South. But the North have said they don’t want Christianity, so while we benefited from the Christian schools in the South, they didn’t have that opportunity. The only schools they had were the ones built by the government. And virtually all the people who had held political offices in the North passed through the schools. Meanwhile, unlike in the South, teachers in the schools in the North were punished for teaching students subjects like Mathematics. And that is why as we gained independence, the disparity showed.
But in 1953, when they went to Lagos to discuss the prospects of Nigeria’s independence. [Anthony] Enahoro moved the motion. But the motion didn’t gain support initially because he was from the opposition party and they didn’t have the number in the parliament to have the motion passed. So the North said the idea of independence was not possible. They opposed the motion and walked out from the parliament and went back home and as they were going, they were being booed by hooligans and touts for showing that they don’t want independence. But when the independence was eventually given, Azikiwe and the like that worked towards its granting found themselves behind Sir Ahmadu Bello of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) who had said they don’t want the independence. I was about 13 years old at that time, but my father used to subscribe to all the newspapers in the country back then. So I followed all the events.
But you have not talked about the constitutional conference you attended during your active days in politics?
I was the chairman of the committee that organised the constitutional conference elections in conjunction with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to make sure that there was full participation in the conference and ensure that the West doesn’t boycott the elections so as not to sabotage the efforts of Abacha to get the country back to the civil rule. So I say okay, what do we do? How do we ensure that the election takes place when a whole region is determined not to participate in it? So we had to find a solution. In that case, there is no point in going through the normal process of using the voter›s card. So I said what we are going to do is universal adult suffrage, in which on the election day, everybody that is 18 years and above, queues up behind his candidate and we then count manually. And at the end of the process nobody went to court as they all saw transparency in the process. Oluwole Awolowo was at the conference. Even [Odumegwu] Ojukwu, who led the civil war, was there in person. Alex Ekwueme was also there. Virtually all the big wigs in the country then were at the conference and we sat down for one and a half years and drafted a constitution that would have saved Nigeria all the troubles we are going through now. But Abacha refused to sign the constitution into law after all our efforts in June, 1995. And from that time till 1998 that he died, Abacha did not sign the constitution. He was just seeking opinions from all kinds of people, while his own boys were at the same time planning a coup to remove him.
So, if that constitution had been signed, Nigeria won’t be in the current mess it is now?
Yes, if the 1995 constitutional conference reports had been signed into law, Nigeria will not be in the mess it is today. Abacha split Nigeria into six zones (three majority zones and three minority zones), not majority in numbers, but in language like the British, which has four tribes or nations. The Welsh have the Welsh language, while the English have the English language. Then, the Scots have the Scottish language, while the Irish take the Irish language. But four of them make up the United Kingdom or Great Britain. So they rule in four and rotate their leadership. So, if we are going to have a united federation, why force everybody to stay on one unit and concentrate all the powers at the centre, making one ethnic group to dominate the rest? You are simply asking for disaster; it will never work. We have done our best to produce the structures and documents. I took part in the designing of the presidency and the rest. We have done our parts to make the Nigerian project work. But now, what we see is mass killings. Before, Nigeria used to be one of the most secured people in the world. But now, it is the opposite.
But now, what is the solution to our problem?
If you look at the 1995 constitution, which Nigerians agreed to, we said for the six regions, give each of them autonomy, so as to make the federation work. Each of the regions should be allowed to control its own resources and then pool a part of the resources to the central government. And this is what everybody is hoping and ready for.
But sir, we have had other constitutional conferences after the 1995 one you talked about?
But there was none as comprehensive as the 1995 constitutional conference, because everyone who had taken part in the political affairs of Nigeria were at the conference. The biggest crisis we have faced as a country remains the civil war which lasted for 14 months. But who was at the civil war and wasn’t at the 1995 conference? Ojukwu, who led Biafra for three years and some months came back from the United Kingdom to participate in the conference. General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and the like took part in the conference too. So the conference remains the most comprehensive and well-attended in the history of the country.
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