Gabriel Enogholase
29 June 2009
interview
DR. FESTUS IYAYI is a lecturer in the University of Benin.
He came into limelight when he was the National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), where he joined others to confront the obnoxious policies of the Babangida administration. Since then, he has not looked back. A radical author and human rights activist, Iyayi in this interview with Vanguard described Nigeria as failed nation state. Excerpts:
WITH the persistent fuel scarcity in the country, lack of energy to run the industries and a faulty electoral system amongst others, would you describe Nigeria?
I have made the statement more than ten years ago that Nigeria is a failed nation_state. I made that statement a long time ago because the problems that we are encountering now have been with us for a very long time. It is the inability of the ruling class in Nigeria to harness the potentials of the country into a concrete achievement
I have always made the point that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ranked Nigeria as the 9th potentially richest country on earth. And the same UNDP in terms of the achievement of the country ranked Nigeria as the 13th poorest in the World. About 70 percent of the Nigerian population live on less than 1 US Dollar a day and they are below the poverty line.
So, everything that you are seeing is an indication that Nigeria is not just a failed state; it is a nation governed by insincere leaders. The same mentality that characterized the slave trade era when African rulers sold their kin and kith into slavery is in operation today. This country gives nobody any opportunity or chance for optimism or hope. It is incredibly ugly. So, Nigeria is a failed state.
With the experience in some of the rerun and bye- elections, what type of electoral reform would you recommend to the country?
There is nothing to reform. Based on the outcome of the failed 2007 general elections in the country and the reactions of Nigerians, President Yar' Adua administration was forced to conceive a process of reforming the electoral process . We know what the Justice Muhammed Uwais Committee came out with. People doubted whether the Committee would have the courage to tackle the problems that everybody felt is untraceable, but they did a good job in identifying the problem.
It was a very, very good job. You are aware of what happened to them. The government accepted the minor recommendations and the ones that lie in the heart of the sanctity of votes in Nigeria , they rejected i.e. the appointment of the chairmanship of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and the question of how to settle election petitions. These are crucial issues that lie in the heart of the failure of the electoral system in Nigeria .
And if you go to Ekiti State where the government played an active part in perpetuating viol
ence, and the rigging of election, you will tell yourself that there is no hope. These classes of people have learnt nothing and forgotten everything. So, if people are looking forward to 2011, they are just joking because in 2011, there will be no election. What happened in Ekiti State is a simple reflection of what is going to happen in 2011.
And this class that is determine to kill, maim, milk and famish the people have strategic plans to punish the people without any fear of the consequences. The people are not well organized, resistance is not there and where it is organized, it is not sustained, and so, they think that they can get away with anything under the sun and that is what they are doing. So, there will be no electoral reforms because the essence of the reforms have already been taken away by what the government did.
Some have argued that the president should not appoint INEC commissioners and the chairman. What is your position on this?
That is not what we are looking for. What we are looking for is not an appointment made by either the judiciary or the executive. We are looking for is a system that is impartial, that guarantees the independence and freedom of the actions of the person that presides over INEC so that the person does not owe any loyalty to whoever appoints him or her. That is the real essence.
So what the commission recommended is not to take away the powers of the President and give them to the Judiciary, it is essentially to deal with the problems that have faced this country over the years - where the chairman of INEC has seen himself as an appointee of the President and therefore tended to do the bidding of the President.
That is what the entire country is concerned about and so, what I expected the Executive arm of government to have done is to have said, yes, you have done this, are there other ways in which we can strengthen what you have done in other to make the appointment impartial? That is not what the Executive did. What the President and his cabinet did was to go back to the same procedure; the same process that has created fears, anarchy and violence in the electoral system in Nigeria .
That is what has made it impossible for people to believe that their votes will count. Their votes cannot count as long as the President continues to appoint the chairman of INEC. So, it is not whether it is the president or the judiciary that appoints, it is looking for a process that ensures that the way the INEC boss is appointed is such that it does not lead to a situation where the person owes any loyalty to anybody. His loyalty is to the Nigerian people. This is the essence.
One of the recommendations of the Uwais Committee is that election riggers and their associates should be jailed for ten years. Do you think that this punishment is appropriate?
Well, I believe that if an election rigger goes to jail for ten years, that is an appropriate punishment. It can be more severe, but that is a starting point.
The issue is not whether there will be a law, it is possible that this thing will pass through the National Assembly and it becomes a law. The problem is whether the law itself will be enforced. But who enforces the law; is it the same people who have rigged or who rigged their way into elective offices? The EFCC is there, we know of those who are corrupt. Names have been mentioned, international scandals are there and all kinds of things that happened. But is the EFCC functioning?
The issue is not whether there are provisions for punishment; the issue is that of enforcement. And I believe that whoever is guilty of election rigging should face the music immediately.When a court declares that one does not win an election, that is a sufficient ground to say that the person is guilty of election rigging.
But the current system that allows the person to remain in office is undermining the proposed punishment. So, there has to be consistency between the different parts of the reform. If somebody says he wins an election and there are petitions indicating that the person did not win, the matter has to be decided before anybody takes the oath of office.
And it is in that process you establish who rigged and who did not rig election. If you say it does not matter and allow the people who are being challenged to continue in office, then, how would they be punished for the offences that they have committed? What will happen is that they will get a polling agent and one or two persons from the pol
ling stations into jail, while the key perpetrators and those who were really involved in rigging will go scot free.
How do you see the failure of the federal government to implement the reports of the Technical Committee it set up to look into the Niger Delta Crisis?
Well, has the government implemented anything? We have just spoken on the Electoral reform, has the government implemented its recommendations? How do you expect it to implement the recommendation of Leedun Mitee led technical Committee? There is a certain degree of naivety but I also think that in our circumstances, may be that naivety is sometimes justified.
If Mitee and others have not served in the committee, they would have said, look you don't want to give the government a chance. Many of us had said that nothing would come out of it and at the end of the day, Mitee and others who served in the committee would be biting their fingers.
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