Daily Independent (Lagos)
Olusola Balogun
13 October 2008
interview
Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora, a chieftain of the Action Congress (AC), is not an alien to Nigerian politics. The medical doctor-turned politician stormed the political scene in 1999 when he emerged Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly ahead of several veteran politicians in the House. From there, he was elected into the nation's highest law-making body - the Senate - in 2003.
In this interview with Assistant Editor, OLUSOLA BALOGUN, the Senate Deputy Minority Leader explains why the upper chamber is not happy with President Umaru Yar'Adua over the handover of Bakassi. He examines on other issues including the controversy over the President's health.
Excerpts:
There is a lot of uncertainty about the health of the President and some people believe the matter is not being well handled by the people who ought to disseminate information about the President's health status. It is believed that the government is being too secretive about his health. Do you share the view that the health of the President is his private business?
Let me start by also saying that I wish the President good health. I wish him speedy recovery and I wish him sound mind and health for him to cope with the enormous responsibilities of his office. The day we took oath of office to be public office holders, we have lost, if not our entire privacy, a larger portion of that privacy. So, we are subjected to public scrutiny in all aspects of our life, including our health. Nigerians have the right to know what is happening in terms of the President's health, at any given point in time.
It will appear, as you rightly said, that undue secrecy is being applied to the issue of Mr. President's health. We are all human beings, we can take ill; we have blood in our systems, we can take ill at any point in time. But, again, there is nothing to hide about it.
In other climes, where things are done better, every little thing concerning the health, particularly of the President or a Head of State, attracts the front page, even common flu, what we call catarrh, there is no big deal.
When you hide the truth from the people, then you cannot blame them for rumour mongering. My advice is to the handlers of information about the President and the Presidency to own up openly without delay, if and when there is need for it, particularly on issues as it affects the health of the President.
But the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party)is saying that it's the opposition that is fueling the speculations about the President's health?
I have said this repeatedly, that the PDP appears to be a confused party. Recently, they came out and said the opposition parties are trying to destabilise the government, they are trying to even engineer a coup. It's balderdash and totally nonsensical outburst. What has the opposition got to do in this matter? We have all the entire Nigerians. You see the problem is the tendency to always want to politicise every matter in this country. Every thing cannot be politicised. But, unfortunately, every thing that happens, the PDP has a way of always reading politics into it. It's unfortunate and we really need to talk to PDP to please govern and stop applying politics to all issues.
Another very contentious issue, especially in Lagos, is the number of local governments. Governor Fashola said that elections would be conducted in the 57 local governments, including the 37 LCDAs, but the PDP is opposed to that insisting on the 20, even the Attorney-General of the Federation wrote a letter to Lagos State advising them over this. You were part of it from the beginning. Where do you stand in all this? Also some people said that the Constitution has already been violated by the ceding of Bakassi to Cameroon, because Bakassi Local Government was in the Constitution?
The issue of local governments in Lagos has become an over-flogged matter. To start with, the Attorney General of the Federation has no business writing to Lagos State Government regarding the conduct of elections, because if you look at the Constitution, there is no role for the Federal Government in the conduct of local government elections. It is squarely the business of the state.
You will recall that following the creation of these local governments, as far back as 2002 under my speakership, Lagos State fulfilled its own side of the bargain because, what the Constitution said under Section 8 is that following the creation, the states shall make returns to the National Assembly which we did. I led the state delegation that made that returns. The then Speaker, Ghali Umar Na'Abba and Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim received us.
To that extent, we have fulfilled all righteousness in respect of the process for creation of new local governments in Lagos, and we need to understand properly the issues: creation of new local governments and then post creation. Creation is exclusive preserve of the state, which we did.
Now listing into the First Schedule of the Constitution, that is the problem of the National Assembly.
Now, you recall that in a suit filed by the PDP against the state that has since been decided even at the level of the Supreme Court. One of the prayers sought by the plaintiff, the PDP, was that the Supreme Court should nullify the election conducted in Lagos State. But the Supreme Court refused to do that, and stated clearly that it was within our powers to create, and once we have so created, we also have powers to conduct elections to them. As far as I am concerned, there are no new issues to be determined, no new issues.
The only issue that is still outstanding is the listing into the First Schedule of the Constitution where local governments are listed, and that is not the business of Lagos State, it is the business of the National Assembly. So, as far as I am concerned, it is the National Assembly that has failed to do that which the Constitution has vested them to do and in so doing, the Constitution is clear about what the Constitution says that, 'the National Assembly shall make consequential provisions.' So, it's a directive, it's mandatory, it's not a request. As far as we are concerned, we have done what we need to do and, as far as we are concerned, the new 37 local governments have come to stay.
We need to get it clear; creation and listing are two different things, and this is the crux of the matter. And you cannot deny the fact that we have created new local governments, and if they have been created, they will also need to apply the Section 7 of the Constitution which talks of being democratically elected, and that's why we are proceeding into having elections to them. I have always argued that now that we have another chance for constitutional amendment, my position has always been that we should expunge this first schedule listing of local governments in the Constitution.
The Constitution has put the local governments effectively under the state, so it should be the business of the state to determine what they do with the local governments and once that is done, we would not have this problem because we are not the only one in this, many local governments were created in Niger, Nassarawa and so many other states. So, the earlier we amend the Constitution to expunge this so-called listing, the better for us, because we are under a federal system and, as it is now, the federating units are the states. So it should be the business of the states to determine the number of local governments that they want, given the circumstance of which the state is in the federation, so that once and for all, we can put this issue to rest.
Do you see the ceding of Bakassi as causing harm to the Constitution?
Well, you see again, there are so many issues; but yes, it's also part of what we are saying, the Bakassi issue. Its quite unfortunate because of the kind of processes the whole thing went through. Now when you talk of Bakassi, as it is today, that has become a very big issue: when you talk about ratification of a treaty, the so- called Green Tree Agreement. The ratification of a treaty is the business of the Executive and the Green Tree Agreement came as an aftermath of the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where we voluntarily submitted ourselves to ICJ.. And, unfortunately, arising from that ruling we seem to have lost out and it now came to the issue of implementation of the ruling - that was how the issue of the Green Tree Agreement came into being. Of course, we had arbitrators from both sides. We had the highly respected Prince Bola Ajibola, he was one of the top arbitrators involved. But to cut the whole thing short, we decided to implement the Green Tree Agreement. But where do we find ourselves?
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
