Daily Independent (Lagos)
Daniel Kanu and Olisemeka Obeche
3 November 2008
Lagos — Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, a retired Naval chief and former ex- military governor of Imo and Lagos states, is among past leaders who are disenchanted with the current socio-political and economic condition of the country.
He traces the country's political problem to what he called Unitarism, which is the excessive concentration of powers at the centre, and expressed deep worry that if nothing urgent is done to restructure the system with a view to returning to the status quo, which is true federalism, the nation may collapse.
According to the former naval top shot, Nigeria needs cementing and fundamental dialogue by the different ethnic nationalities.
Kanu x-rayed the roots of the country's political problems while fielding questions from newsmen in his Victoria Island, Lagos, office. Senior Correspondent, Daniel Kanu and Reporter, Olisemeka Obeche, were there. Excerpts:
Sir, how would you assess the present Nigerian state where you grew up, and served under the military. Would you say that we have made tremendous progress
Nigeria needs some definition, because many may not understand, especially those who didn't have the opportunity to see the kind of Nigeria that was about to start in those good old days in the 1960s. Around that time, there was zeal to build a nation-state out of the country, Nigeria. It was a country with a lot of hopes, where one would love to contribute a lot to achieve your own aspiration. Over the years, in this country Nigeria, something has gone wrong. And, definitely I will say, without fear of contradiction, that this is not the Nigeria I was born into or grew up as a boy. A lot of things have changed, and I am not talking about infrastructure, but the core issues which is the matter of the spirit of the country: the spirit of the different people that make up the country.
It is no more the Nigeria that was to be exactly as was put down in that first Anthem, which I still strongly believe in: 'though tribes and tongues may differ, in brotherhood we stand.' There was a matter of unity in diversity, but the country has left that and gone into a quagmire of unitarism, which does nobody any good.
What do you think actually went wrong with Nigeria?
Various things; those things that are not insurmountable; those things which ought not to have happened but equally did happen; yes, but could be overcome in terms of their effect. If you look at the past, to be able to now look at the present, to be able to plan for the future.
What went wrong is that we had the aberrations of military rules. But equally I keep telling people that the very first problem this country had was when the Federal Government went to interfere in the affairs of the regions: it was a breach on federalism. In fact, if you keep looking at all that happened, you end up finding that even the matter that led us ultimately into this catharsis of war was an outcome of that breach of federalism. Even the ambits of military rule with all its shortcomings; we ended up with the worst of things - that is the matter of Unitarism.
Why I say this is that I try to analyse whatever I see as a problem to this country; it stands foreseeable and just comes down to one basic issue: the matter of Unitarism.
It is affecting so much in the country in the sense that when you look back to the last eight years, I don't know how you young men and women feel about the last regime; whether in real terms you may even wonder whether the eight years really passed or that it just disappeared. If you look further back, you can also start wondering, what actually happened, especially when Nigerians were fed up with the military under Babangida.
You talked about Unitarism as the major problem, and we all know that by virtue of the the 1999 Constitution, Nigeria should be practising federalism, but in practice, it seems to be Unitary. All appeals to the Federal Government to initiate a sovereign national conference have so far been ignored. Where do you think we are going from here? And what would be your advice?
The matter of the so-called constitution is a serious matter. Nigeria is addressed as a Federal Republic. But you cannot be a federation and have one constitution. It is not possible, because those who are federating have got constitutions of how they live and how they are now coming up together to join up with others. This country, Nigeria, didn't start with one constitution; and it could not have been a country if they try to have one constitution; no, there would have been no Nigeria. We started off Eastern Nigeria, Western Nigeria and Northern Nigeria. From there we had Mid-Western Nigeria; each had its own constitution.
The only way you get a Federal Government is that the federating units surrender some of their God-given rights to the central government, not the other way round. When you now talk about a federation where you created different people? No! You cannot, because it is peoples created by God that are coming together. In-fact, the United States of America is not a federation, because every American, apart from the American Indian, knows where he comes from including some of them who came from my village. Those who came from Poland, Ireland, and Germany and so on, know where they came from and know their homeland. I am an Igbo man and have no other home land anywhere except the South East.
Nigeria would have kept on evolving; there would have been other regions, even Ijaw region would have been there, Calabar, Tiv and so on. They would have been evolving each with its own constitution, coat- of-arms, even with its own representatives; and we would have been living better than what is happening now.
It is a deceit to talk about federal constitution when there are no regional constitutions. When I was the Military Governor of the then Imo State, edicts I passed derived their powers from the constitution of the Eastern Nigeria, as then suspended by the military regime. And when I came over to Lagos, the state derived its own powers (edict) from the Western Region.
Take for example, even land use decree of the Federal Government could override the land use edict of the Lagos State at that time. The Federal Government still had to come to negotiate with the Lagos State government for right of way to pipelines. They don't just come anyhow and decree that every water way or coastline was theirs. There are so many things.
Even the culture of our various peoples are being assailed by those things that are unitary. That is how you end up and come to local government or my community or ward and install somebody as my representative. They may even come all the way from Abuja and determine who will be the councillor of my ward. In most cases, the man or woman doesn't even understand the terrain or the problems of the people he or she is appointed to represent. Before we know it, we have people who have gone into the Assembly without understanding the place, and the people they are representing.
I am not saying that we don't have fantastic men and women in the Assembly. But we have also those who have gone in there without good knowledge of their places of representation; and they say is a federal might. It is the country they are despoiling, and also despoiling the composing areas and units.
Nigerians are rightly asking to sit down and discuss what, how to be a strong and united country. And the question I ask anybody opposed to Nigerians coming to sit down and talk and agree is ÷. Different people of Nigeria want to live together, but. We have been talking about it for the past fifteen, twenty years and nothing has happened. It just takes a little matter for the spoon to slip from the tongue. It doesn't take a whole planning or whatever. And the way and manner people's spirit are dying is very worrisome, and for me, we have come to a stage in this country whereby I like to be told which group of individuals - be it the Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Ijaw, Tiv, Ibibio, etc. - is not feeling marginalised. I don't mean individuals. If you go out there and ask some people, they will tell you that things are working out well because either they are occupying some places or the other. I will like to be told which of the geo-political zones or professional associations and other interest groups in the country is happy the way things are going on in this country.
You see, for a child who was 15 years in 1999, when the child started in 1999, there was 15 degrees of power supply in the neighborhood; in 2000, when he is now 16 years, it drops to 14 degrees, and by the time he is 20 to 30 years of age, there is almost zero degree of power supply. Therefore, the right thing that child is learning about development is that the rate of power supply must be reducing. It is the same way that crime is rising everyday. A child who was brought up in that system sees nothing good about the country except to make money and enjoy life. Thank God now that the world has become a global village that most young ones can easily have a glimpse of what is happening in the outside world by listening out, read out and reach out to people, otherwise if you look at the whole things, it has just been a disaster.
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