Daily Independent (Lagos)
Michael Jegede
6 July 2009
(Page 2 of 2)
Recently, the world human rights body in a report scored Yar'Adua low saying that he achieved nothing in the last two years that his administration has been in existence. Do you agree with that position?
That global human rights report on President Yar'Adua was wrong. I think they were not right. It is wrong for anybody to condemn the President completely that he has not done anything for the past two years. They were not being fair in their report. He may not have done the best or he may not have met the expectation of the people as such. But that is not to say that he has done nothing for the past two years. You see, leadership style differs from person to person. Leadership of the President may be different from the leadership style of President B. So, as far as I am concerned, I will rather prefer to give him the remaining two years. Let see what will happen because one thing I know is that he is sincere about the rule of law, going by what he has allowed the court to do and obeying the court orders shows that he is sincere about the rule of law, even when it is against his own interest, he still obey the court order. That shows that he is sincere about the rule of law. The only thing that I think is going to be a testing ground is the electoral reform. I think that is the only thing people are looking out for. And if he does it the way he promised to do it, his name will be written in gold in Nigeria. That is if he is able to reform the electoral system in such a way that election will be conducted and a winner will congratulate the loser. Then, he would have written his name in gold. I think that is just the only thing I believe that will turn our face to the right direction. And since nobody asks him, he offers to do it. Whatever we think that is not right now, I don't want to believe that is going to turn back to his promise.
With the level he has gone, in terms of the electoral reform, do you think there is hope that the reform can create an environment that would really guarantee a free and fair transparent and credible election that will give Nigerians the opportunity to elect their leaders?
I think the ball is now in the court of the National Assembly. I say so because we know that whatever the National Assembly comes up with is what the President will definitely abide by. It is only when he decides to veto the decision of the National Assembly. The National Assembly's decisions are accepted and welcome by Nigerians as the best or what they were looking for. It is only then that people would say the President; you are reneging on your words. But he has done what he feels is the best for him and passes on to the National Assembly and the National Assembly says oh, the President, it as if you are bracing up to what Nigerians want. And now decided to do what Nigerians want and refuses to sign it and vetoes it. As of now I still believe that the ball is in the court of the National Assembly.
What is your assessment of the National Assembly in the 10 years of the nation's democracy?
Again, the life of the National Assembly is similar to what I tried to explain before about Nigeria's position before 1999; and where we are today. the Assembly or what you call the legislature had always been the loser in all the years of military administration. The executive had always being in place. A president might go, B president might go, C president might go, but the permanent secretaries were there, the directors were there, the civil servants were there and all these come within the ambit of the executive. There was nothing like National Assembly or legislature. Now, in 1999 we had the first crop of legislators and after four years most of them were voted out, new people came in.
The new people that came in are not better than when we started. So, we have been on learning process till today. As far as that National Assembly is concerned, we are still in the learning process up till today. If you ask me I will prefer a situation where it will almost be professionalised. Professionalised in the sense that if you allow somebody to run almost his life in the national assembly we will see the benefits and the beauties of democracy. If you watch those of them that are in their third tenure in the national assembly now, listen to their debate, listen to their contribution you will see the difference. You will see somebody talking from experience. I don't want to mention names. But I know that there are few of them that if you watch them during the national assembly debate or whatever, you will see their contribution and discussion is always very every different from others. We have new crop that are naturally intelligent, during very well as well, going next to those that have were there before.
Now, if by the next two years you remove all these people and bring new people. We are going back to square one. So, I don't normally rush to blame the Assembly people that they have not contributed enough to the growth of democracy. I don't agree with that. They have contributed reasonable to the growth of democracy. They may not have satisfied Nigerians they are suppose to have satisfied Nigerians. Buy let us think of how many of them have served in that capacity for the number of years they are supposed to serve before they get that experience. Let us not look at what happen in America and other developed countries, where somebody can spend all his life in the congress or in the Senate, fifty years in the congress, fifty years in the senate. How many of them do you have in Nigeria? So, if you allow the members of the National Assembly to go in, go back for an election, come back. Although, you must still have to expose them to the electorates quite all right. I am not saying they must go back. But they will all now be working hard to satisfy the electorate so that they will elect them back. But this issue of it is our quota.
These people have to go. They are from North West, North East, South West and the rest of them have to go as long as we continue to have freshmen in the National Assembly. And fresh men will always be fresh men in their ideas. Even in Secondary schools, in the university. Fresh men in the university can never be the same with those in year two or three in Secondary School, anywhere. It is therefore our duty as Nigerians to reduce the tendency of my people have been represented. Let me represent them this time around. As long as that person representing you, is doing what he is supposed to do without really concentrating on what they call constituency jobs to his home town. As long as he is taking care and charge of the whole constituency, I mean anybody could be there. And that I believe will help us.
Despite the way the Ekiti re-run election went, there are those who believe that the problem with the re-run was not that of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Do you share the same opinion?
It is not even only in that election. The problem of election in this country is not all about INEC. I said it earlier the era of rigging and carrying of ballot boxes will end any day we start internal democracy, nominating people that are supposed to be nominated in our primaries, it will stop. Forget about INEC. It is not about INEC at all. It is about insisting that you must be there when you are not supposed to be there. Your people don't want you to be there. But because you know Mr. A they gave you nomination that you must be there. That is the problem. If the issue of Mr. A in a party headquarters can allow the people to select whom they want as their National Assembly members, State Assembly members, governors or whatever, if they allow them to select them on their own rigging will end. You don't rig when you can be overpowered. But when it comes to point of intimidation with gun, everybody will just go to his or her house to rest. So, I don't really blame INEC in everything that happens in this country. They are human beings. But in most cases the people that conduct elections are they INEC officials. INEC officials only do the paper work.
How would you describe the present leadership of the PDP?
The leadership of the PDP at any given time will determine what PDP will look like. The way the public sees PDP will be determined by the leadership of the party at any point in time. The way people see PDP now is different from the way people were seeing it before now because of change in leadership. And this leadership has not conducted any general election. They have not conducted any primaries to say that they are going to introduce internal democracy or they are not going to do that. I believe that the next primary election that they are going to conduct, they will abide by that popular opinion of internal democracy and the review of the constitution of the party is part of it. But that was not the case before. We were all victims of lack of internal democracy. I was once victimised. So, that cannot be the same. And again, the relationship between the government and the party goes a long way to influence what happens in the party.
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