Daily Independent (Lagos)
10 November 2008
interview
ARTHUR MBANEFO, a renowned Chartered Accountant and former Nigerian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, is not only regarded as an outstanding statesman whose views on economic and political issues are always taken seriously one of the busiest articlate minds in the country. For over four months Senior Correspondent DANIEL KANU made almost fruitless efforts to track him for an interview. But on Thursday it paid off.
In the relaxed and cozy ambience of his Ikoyi home, Chief Mbanefo who has served as Pro-chancellor of several universities including Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, discussed incisively, from an informed background, several issues concerning Nigeria, Africa, the United Nations and the Obama presidency.
Excerpts:
Sir, Nigeria has celebrated 48 years, so far so what?
Well, 48 years of independence for Nigeria. I think that by and large we have gone extremely far from what it was in 1960, when we achieved our independence. The expectations are high, but the achievements and the measure of those achievements is where we are lacking. The foundations upon which our forefathers actually laid down were disrupted obviously by the difficulties we had after barely six years which resulted in one of the worst wars in recent times. At the end of that war, many mistakes were made and, somehow, we have not been able to correct those mistakes.
Be it in terms of our relations amongst ourselves, be it in terms of having a nation totally and fully united with one course, we have, most unfortunately, tried to accentuate statism and ethnicity in place of unity, nationalism and more importantly patriotism. So, that is one the basic foundations: every other thing naturally will build from that.
The economic advancement of Nigeria again over this 48 years have not matched, in any form or shape, the aspiration of the Nigerians basically because of the inability or the commitment of the leadership over the improper use of resources available to the nation. The result, naturally, is lack of appropriate infrastructure, in agriculture, in our healthcare, hospital and roads, etc., have unfortunately had to retrogress. But the way of life is founded in hope. One hopes that at some point in time there will be a very serious change of heart on the part of the leadership to make it possible for Nigeria to be reckoned with in the comity of other nations. We cannot really afford to keep beating our chest and say we are the most populous African nation. We need to march our hopes with reality; it is happening today in the Gulf region, in the Middle East, it is happening in Asia. It can also happen here. All we need is to put our acts together; we don't need people from the moon or from another planet to do it for us, we have to play down on issues that divide us and come back to things that are necessary for nation-building. We have lost out completely, as far as nation-building is concerned. We don't seem to understand what it is all about. We are not even close to what anybody can describe as a nation. The worst out of this is the result of the balkanisation of this country in the name of state creation. It has not facilitated development. Many of the states cannot sustain their own basic economies, they depend, at the end of the day, on Federal Government hand-outs and, even at that, they are not enough for most of them even to pay salaries, not to talk of the corruption that diverts most of those resources to non-productive areas that will not enhance the welfare of the people.
I also believe that we need to really work together in the sense of knowing what the true roles the Federal Government should be and what the true roles of the state should be and the local governments. We also have to look at their development and see whether we need the type of presidential government we have now; whether we can afford it or whether we cannot afford it. And, I believe that with the experience that we have had this 48 years, we can, if we really want to, change what we are doing wrong. The change that is sweeping the world at the moment, I hope also will reach Nigeria. We need change , and we can do it peacefully and should do it peacefully. We need this change in leadership, at all levels, and we should be ready to be our brother's keeper.
You said there is hope. Looking at the present government and its seven-point agenda; can we link the hope to it?
The seven-point agenda of this administration is laudable, there is no question about it, but in it's implementation. It is the practice that is important. As somebody just observed the other day, and we know it also from experience, that campaigning or what people say to get elected into office often are not matched by action. When they start governing, so many constraints come in and the lack of preparation, etc.
In the United States of America, for example, an election was held on the November 4, the election closed about midnight, on that same day and three to four hours after, the results were out. We are claiming to be 150 million people, the people who cast the votes that elected the president, that elected the governors, that elected the members of the Congress had over 220 million registered voters and the people who voted eventually, I understand, were almost 200 million and yet the results were out. It is something we should really look at. Secondly, the policies of the government had already been formulated in anticipation and this enabled Obama, next morning, to appoint his chief of staff. His cabinet, even though he has got six weeks in which to prepare himself for the seat, are already on ground. He's already gotten his team and his team is expected within the next one week. And so by the time he is sworn in on January 20, 2009, he will hit the ground running. Here it takes you, I don't know how long, to appoint ambassadors, and how long to appoint a cabinet. There are so many things that people need to do and these are the changes that we are talking about. It is not just having a brilliant seven-point agenda. Seven-point agenda is nothing, you can make it two point-agenda, or 100-point agenda - the issue is how prepared are you to really carry out and put up an action for people to see?
Two years of this administration is about going, and the worst part of it is rather than getting better and achieving progress people are getting distracted. One of the seven-point agenda is the issue of the rule of law, and many are already feeling it's no longer tenable, if you want to do an assessment. You cannot say any of those points in the agenda has really taken off in any meaningful way. So, if you relate that to hope, the question will be: how do we assess the achievements of the seven-point agenda? How open is government? People are talking of transparency - that is openness - like Obama said in his acceptance speech: "I will be open to you and I will listen to you, particularly when we disagree". Now when you say you will be open to the people, it means you have to communicate with the people; it means you have to talk to the people. A situation where the people are allowed to guess what government is doing is really not good and should be avoided, because this is what creates speculations and what ultimately undermines government and governance, giving the security agents sometimes time to harass some innocent citizens. We need to inform people and not allow people just to sit down and imagine things that are not possible.
You mentioned the issue of corruption - looking at the anti-corruption campaign through the EFCC, ICPC - could you say we are at the right track?
I think the problem we equally have is that we ourselves use the word corruption without understanding what corruption really means, either in the ICPC or EFCC sense. EFCC is not strictly for corruption as such, it is expected to look at fraud and fraud is not necessarily corruption. ICPC specifically is for corruption, and corruption comes in various ways. It is not the multiplicity of agencies of governments that will address the problem of corruption. We do have the Special Branch of the Police that is investigating financial crimes and things like that. Now you have EFCC, between two of them, EFCC has so far been headed by senior police officers, and yet we do not see the easy co-ordination among their activities. A case may be before the EFCC and at the same time before the Special Branch of the Police and you get them dragging the people forward and backward, without getting anywhere. So the lack of co-ordination among these organs is a problem. And this is again because everybody who is in any form of authority tends to create the idea that he has something to pursue and that he is the one who has to show some degree of authority. We must begin to understand that the purpose of most of this agencies created by government is to achieve some results for the benefit of the society and, if they don't work together, if they don't seem to have the same objective and are more interested in either to fend for themselves power blocs, the ultimate result can only be chaos and unhealthy competition.
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