By  Abdulwahab  Abdulah

Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN) is a respected constitutional lawyer and public affairs commentator. In this interview he spoke on the controversy generated by the proposed national dialogue,   the scandal rocking the Ministry of Aviation,   extension of emergency rule in some states in the north and related issues.

Excerpts:

 Some Nigerians have hailed the proposed national dialogue while others including the national leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and his party have criticized the move. What is your position on the issue?

I must confess that I am a little bit taken aback by the reaction of the APC on this issue. I am not even little, but very taken aback because Asiwaju Tinubu comes from a political zone which has been in the forefront for the struggle for sovereign national conference. It is in fact, the template that they have established that most of us have been following on this issue.   So, suddenly, to turn around volte face, straightaway that they are not going to accept the national dialogue, to me is not done in good faith.

To say the dialogue is fraudulent is a shock to me. To start with, even if the person planning the conference is not instituting it in good faith, nothing stops you from taking part and taking it over yourself and instituting the right thing that you feel should be done.

Sagay, SAN

They have the personnel, they have the intelligentsia, they have the number and everything required to do it. That is number one. Number two, on this issue of the closeness of the dialogue to the elections, having heard everybody on this matter, which is their greater concern of the APC led by Tinubu.

That is that. Elections are due for 2015. We in the APC can see ourselves almost taking over government. So, any other   thing happening now can constitute a distraction from our taking over the government, regardless of the fact that we have been fighting for this national conference for decades, we will wave it aside.

The way Nigeria is structured now is so bad that the country cannot survive if things continue this way. So, in my view, priority should be given to the conference by all well-meaning Nigerians who have the interest of the country at heart. For me the 2015 elections are secondary to the issue of the conference and the future of the country.

There is the fear that the conference may not lead the country to anywhere except disintegration, especially while considering what happened between Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State and a member of the panel, Tony Nyiam. What is your view about this?

No, I don’t. I think  all the speeches I have read so far and the symposia I have attended ever since the establishment of this conference by Mr. President. So far, the unanimous view of all those present is that question one will be answered in the affirmative.

What is question one? Do you want to remain together as one nation? So far, everybody says yes. And what I am saying now is not just from like-minded people, like people from a particular zone. I am talking of different ethnic groups like Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, Kanuri, Niger   Delta. Nigerians want Nigeria to remain as one, as Nigeria. Nobody wants to leave because it is in our best interest to form a multinational country, a productive country full of hardworking people who are diverse in culture, skills and various attributes.

Everybody wants Nigeria to remain the same. The only area of challenge is question two, how do we relate with one another politically?  And I think we can resolve it. Even the North that seem so much in love with the terrible unitary system of government we have now which they think they are benefiting from are beginning to have a rethink. They are now saying if you have a police that is controlled by one government, then they can be chased up and down as they are being chased in Abuja.

They can’t hold any meetings anywhere, it will be disrupted. We also saw what is happening in Port Harcourt. Everybody has seen that one source, which is the centre should not be the only one in control of police. And there are so many other areas like that. My belief is that the present structure in which all the resources, all the federating units are pumped into the centre is wrong.

What gave you that impression?

The centre does not have a resource on its own. From Niger Delta oil, to Lagos VAT, to Customs Duties from the coastal states, everything is pumped into the centre. And having collected all these, at the end of the month, it begins to distribute to the states like beggars. Then you begin to hear state governors complaining that ‘we have not gotten our allocation for this month’.

It is so humiliating. We shouldn’t hear a thing like that in a federation. Is the state a civil servant that gets salary every month? It never happened in the First Republic because when you say federation, what you have is federating units which are independent and autonomous, having full powers controlling their resources, who then out of those resources sent a proportion, a fraction to the federal government who doesn’t have its own resources. Federal government is an artificial entity created by the federating units.  So, there should be no federating account. If I have mine, then you have yours. There should be no single account. There should be no local government in the constitution.

 Are you advocating the cancellation of local government as the third tier of the government?

No. by that I mean every states should create the number of local governments it wants and fund them. It is not the business of the centre. Unless we do those things we can never develop. What is happening now is that the culture of productivity is dead in most of these states because the governors don’t work for money but only receive at the end of every month. What they do is collect the money, divide it and finish it and next month, they are trekking back to come and collect more.

That is not good for the morale of the federating units and the existence of the country.   If we had sustained what we did in the FirstRepublic, by now we would have been far developed compared to where we are now. Let me give you an example, in the North where they have a lot of things that they themselves are not appreciating again. Look at the cattle, by now there would have been cattle ranches.

There would have been a beef industry in which they will rear cows, slaughter, chill it and even export it abroad. Argentina was making $12bn a year from exported chilled beef and there is demand for it all over the world. But all we are focusing on is oil. The whole country is gradually dying because of lack of productivity and we can’t continue like that. So, the conference is absolutely essential. There are no two ways about it.

Do you in anyway share President Goodluck Jonathan’s position during his last presidential chart that the corruption ravaging the country presently is not one of its problem?

I don’t know why he said that. I may not say corruption is number one but certainly, it is amongst the most terrible problems we have in this country. So, for the president to say it is not number one problem is to say that it is not important. But in fact, it is a critical problem, it may in be our number one problem.

I always say this, from the evidence we have seen in the last few years, I can name up to thirty different scandals that we have had in this country, Siemens, Halliburton and numerous others. One thing I have found in this country, is that we have degenerated to a level that when two or three Nigerians are given a project to execute and money is sent for that project, the first thing they do is to divide that money amongst themselves and then leave out a little which cannot effectively carry out the project.

That is why we have so many uncompleted projects in the country today. Look at Sure-P, they raised the price of petrol from N65 to N67 and the government promised us that the N32 realized on every litre of fuel will be used for infrastructural development, that roads will be built, adequate healthcare services will be provided an so on. Everyday now, we keep hearing stories that SURE-P cannot carry out a project because it is broke and the Senate just raised alarm that N500bn cannot be accounted for.

So, you see what is happening? In other words, we cannot rely on Nigerians anymore to handle anything involving funds. And if we cannot do that, who then is going to handle our funds? Are we going to bring back the British and give them funds to implement our projects for us? So, I think corruption is our number one problem. Because if we cannot be trusted to hold and operate our funds, we cannot make significant progress.

But that is the situation now. It is that bad. You think of any level of government, once a person is in office, the next thing he thinks of is how to loot and suck the government dry. And that is why you have a lot of ugly things happening these days. You have kidnapping, you have illegal oil bunkering and so on.

Kidnappers will say ‘these are the people who access to our national patrimony, so let me take my share from him through ransom. There is no morality in the country anymore, it is dog eat dog and the survival of the most well armed and violent. So, corruption to me is our worst enemy.

Majority of Nigerians are of the view that nothing may come out of the government’s probe  into the N255 million aviation cars scandal due to the perceived closeness of the aviation minister, Stella Oduah   to the president. How would you react to this?

That is the issue we are talking about. When it comes to something that is serious, especially when it has to do with public funds, question of rapport shouldn’t arise anymore because we are talking now of national interest. So, what he president needs to say is ‘ I am sorry, given the gravity of what has happened, I have no choice but to take the appropriate steps to cleanse the system and assure Nigerians that certain things will not be tolerated’. That is very important. So, issue of rapport or party affiliations should not arise.

If it arises, then of course, it means that national interest has been compromised and it will have a disastrous effect on the morale and morality of the country. If you look at what has happened, I have listened to the defences, it shows that those involved have no respect for the intelligence of Nigerians including members of the National Assembly. N240m was approved for you.

Then you took N250m and bought two vehicles that were rejected. One, those two cars have exceeded the approved budget by N10m. Two, the House positively, clearly rejected those two cars when they were put forward. There are two offences there already.

Then they compounded it more by allegedly borrowing money of over N600m from First Bank with interest which will bring it to over a billion which they will now pay over a period of three years. Now, government has approved only N240m for this year, you have a commitment of over N1bn for three years. In other words, you are now mortgaging allocation in the future which has not yet been approved.

That is an offence in law. Supposing they didn’t approve the allocation, how will you pay back the money? You cannot spend money that has not been approved in advance. So, for me all those clever words of ‘do the needful’ is meaningless words. Instead of apologizing, to be playing smart and think the whole nation is made up of fools make me very sad.

Already the National Assembly has approved the extension of the emergency rule in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states. Are you in support of this?

It is a welcome development and I am fully in support of it. There has been a clear improvement since the state of emergency was declared. There is no doubt about it. Those insurgents don’t have freedom to roam about freely and do whatever they like unlike before. Of course, they still come out occasionally and do some damages but not every day and not so brazenly anymore.

They have been curtailed, they have been wounded and their numbers have been decimated. If we continue like this, the whole disease of terrorism will be totally eradicated. As long as Boko Haram is unrepentant and going about committing mass murders, I think we should continue with the emergency rule.