National Organising Secretary of the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, Mr Dele Farotimi, is a human rights activist. In this interview held on Channels TV, Farotimi spoke on President Bola Tinubu’s recent visit to Benue State, the coalition building up to unseat the president in 2027 and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. Excepts:

Read Also: What I’ll tell Tinubu if I meet him — Mike Okonkwo @ 80 

The president did a lot of political housekeeping when he visited Benue State. On the other hand, the Tor Tiv took another dimension to say though there is a political dimension to the issues in Benue, it is more of a genocidal invasion. What do you think of the things he said?

I heard the compelling words of the Tor Tiv. I must say that it would have been better if the president had not gone to Benue. The only thing worthy of anybody’s time is the words of the Tor Tiv, who spoke extensively about the reality of the situation in Benue and spoke eloquently about the pains of the victims. Other than that, all the president had to offer were mere windows into his preoccupation.

In February 2018, when Buhari went to Dapchi in Yobe State, you would recall that they ensured that they went with the red carpet so that when he came out of his limousine in Dapchi, he could step onto a red carpet. In Benue, they knew exactly what was of importance to the president, so they ensured that they put out the necessary theatre in preparation for 2027. The death of over 200 people did not count for anything much. They were mentioned probably only in passing. You would have been excused for thinking that it was a political event. And the president did make it sound as if the problem was a political one that should be resolved politically.

Even though I thank the Tor Tiv for ensuring that despite the comical clapping that revealed the dystopia reality in our society, where even though over 200 persons have just been brutally murdered and burnt in their homes, persons could still find the idiocy to be clapping over everything and anything almost in a manner that challenges one’s sanity. But that’s where we find ourselves, unfortunately.

If there was a suggestion you would like to put out to end this carnage across the country, what would it be? 

It would be that the Nigerian state should stop being complicit in the murder of those who should be its citizens.  In 2022,  Commodore Olawunmi, retd, informed this nation how members of Boko Haram and Islamist terrorists ransacked in Buhari’s regime and how a list of such sponsors had been given to that government since 2016. I didn’t  hear anything about any one of those being talked about today, and yet the president was pointing comically at the Service Chiefs and demanding to know where the murderers were, where the terrorists were and if anybody had been arrested.

Is it the same government that had not arrested anyone since 2016 that is going to be chasing people around nine years later? The critical thing is that government needs to come clean and be honest about the fact that it is complicit in the senseless genocide that is going on in Nigeria. How can it be that we have a government, and the primary duty of any government, wherever, whatever kind of government it might be, whether it is a theocratic, one-party state, 10-party state, it does not matter. Whether it is even a dictatorship, the primary reason a state exists is to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

We have almost lost our capacity to be shocked. 200 human beings were murdered, and the president went to Benue, talking almost as if he was prepping for a campaign rally. And the only person who appeared to retain sufficient cognition to draw attention to the gravity of the occasion was the Tor Tiv. It was more or less like they went to dance on the graves of those they had known, some of whom may never even be identified, often buried in mass graves.

In all honesty, let the state begin to do what it should do, which is to protect lives and properties, and stop being complicit. The complicity of the All Progressives Congress, APC, government is established beyond argument, and it should just really repent and begin to protect Nigerian lives.

What do you mean when you say complicity?

It is very clear. It was Dr Usman Bugaje, who came out and told every Nigerian, that in the lead up to the 2015 election, the APC imported terrorists into Nigeria. He said so, and he made it very clear. There are multiple videos online. Multiple times during the Buhari years, terrorists were attacking Nigeria, particularly in Kaduna, and they made it clear that they had a deal that had not been honoured. They did not say so in hiding. They had been out in the public space.

On multiple occasions, members of the Middle Belt Forum have come into the public space to speak of terrorist camps in the tri-state area between Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa, and how members of the Nigerian security forces are well aware of these terrorist camps and never done anything about it. The president went to that place today, and you could hear him clearly talking as if we are dealing with a political problem.

We are talking about over 200 human beings, somebody’s children, somebody’s husband, somebody’s mother, somebody’s father. We are not talking about, even if these were rats, it should be worthy of some sort of scientific curiosity to find out exactly what has happened. But we are talking about human beings, and the president is talking about committees. It’s almost like it was a theatre to fulfil all righteousness. The only thing is that it was not righteous at all. If you are asking what the solution is, I am saying government needs to stop colluding.

And if you still want further proof, listen to what Commodore Olawumi said. Commodore Olawumi was a spook. You do not hear those kind of people speak in public spaces. And he spoke without hesitation. He named names, at least as much as he could. But there was something curious that he said, if you go back and listen to that tape. He said he was confident that by 2023, when he thought  there would be a change of government, we would be shocked by the revelation we would get. He presumed that the will of the people would prevail, and that we would have a change of government in 2023.

One of the things that was visibly absent from the President’s commentary was the capacity of the security agents to deal with the issues on ground. Is there any optimism on your part that that is being addressed behind closed doors?

Let me be very frank with you. There is very little about our situation to make one optimistic about government’s role in the insecurity playing out in Nigeria. If there is anything government could possibly do, it might be to get out of the way of those who are prepared to defend themselves, and let there be an end to this insinuation that the only thing the government ever do is to come before the attacks, disarm the local population and then leave them as sitting dogs.

If government and the security agencies are incapable of defending citizens, I think it was one of the defence chiefs that came out the other day, and was counselling citizens to be prepared to defend themselves. That was not a bad idea. If it is time that we recognised the fact that the state has failed, and we may for a season be allowed to defend ourselves, I am sure that Benue people are not incapable of defending themselves if the state that has rendered them incapable of defending themselves would allow them to do so, they will defend themselves.

In reality, any attempt to implore the security agents to do what they have refused to do for well over a decade. Every time we talk about Benue, it is about blood, unnecessary blood being shed. Every time the Middle Belt comes into focus, that is what it is always about. I am not optimistic that the Nigerian security forces, in the absence of clear readiness by the government to change their operating instructions, can do anything. I was told that the last attack, they had a military formation, special forces, less than 600 metres away from the point where the massacre was taking place. What happened to the soldiers there? They were waiting for instruction before defending citizens.

I have no confidence in the Nigerian armed forces.

Let’s talk about sub nationals now. I literally almost empathised for the governor yesterday. The reason is quite simple, because it felt like the president was teaching the governor Governing 101. What can be done to make governors begin to be a bit more effective within the premise of what we have on our hand, hoping that maybe someday there will be state police, if they too don’t end up abusing it?

We are not where we are because of a shortage of ideas. We are where we are by design. You have a situation where the constitution says that the governor is the chief security officer of the state. But he can’t give any order to the commissioner of police in his state. And this is supposed to be in a federation. I am currently in America.

The county has its own police well-harmed. The state has its own police. And then you have the FBI. But in Nigeria, supposedly another federation, everything flows through Abuja. So our problems are not by accident. They are by design. This state police argument has been in place. In Afenifere, we have been demanding for this for decades. It is nothing new. It has been there forever. And even when the president was busy with his Government 101, exactly what was the content of the rambling? Exactly what? How do you compare the madness going on in Benue to Lagos? 200 human beings just got burnt for no reason.

We are just deodorising madness in that country. That is just the truth. That’s not Governance 101. That is nonsense 101, if the truth be told. But state police, yes. 

And I am shocked that it is the same man who used to sing state police like Christmas carol that got to the presidency, and now say state police is something that cannot be done in two years. It is amazing. But that could be a solution to most of these problems. But the problems are part of the design. So I am not going to be railing against the windmill. It is a non-issue. Nobody needs to be told that we should decentralise all these things, especially security. Talking about state police right now, I am not going to say anything new or revolutionary. It has been there on the plate for decades. That we don’t have it is further proof of the lie that we call a federation.

How much confidence do you have in the moves by an aggregation of opposition members to unseat this administration?

Number one, I find it ludicrous when I see Nigerian politicians running around claiming that they are forming coalitions. I find it ludicrous when the victims of their shenanigans begin to get excited on account of such shenanigans. Let me just put it that way. In reality, it is the victims, the Nigerian people themselves, who need to be looking to rally behind common interests and common causes. That you see politicians jumping together to get into the APC or banding together trying to form another collective to battle the APC, is just a contestation for office.

It is not a contestation found on the interest of the people. The last person in the calculation of these people are the victims of Nigeria who have been commonly assailed by them. What Nigerian politician, barring one or two exceptions, has ever really given any concern for the Nigerian? I am not interested in the coalition of politicians, I am more interested in Nigerian victims coming together to demand an overhaul of the electoral system and a return of some hope, some confidence, of some measure of integrity in that system, not the battered system that we currently have, destroyed almost beyond recognition after what happened in 2023. So anything the politicians are doing, it alarms me when I see them.

Would your disposition change if the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, in the 2023 polls, Peter Obi, were to become a key figure in this opposition coalition?

Let me tell you this. I would be shocked if the Nigerian ruling class, the political parties, would come to a point where they would agree that somebody like Peter Obi should be the arrowhead of that coalition. I would be shocked, because frankly speaking, it would suggest that they have come to understand that the party is over and it has to end.

And that might perhaps offer them an orderly way of getting out of the mess they have contrived to place Nigeria in after the many years of misrule. But I have no such illusions. They are not a people ruled by altruism.

They are almost always governed by selfish interests, rarely ever enlightened. Enlightened selfish interests should inform such a coalition, because it is obvious that the only one among the lot who could possibly capture the imagination of the youth is Peter Obi, but it is not likely to happen. I don’t see them doing that.

Some young persons now are raising a campaign about fixing INEC…

Well, I voted for the first time in 1993. Incidentally, we were celebrating or mourning the tragedy that the day eventually became. As of that time, we had no computers for elections. It was just the electoral officer with their pens and paper and we would queue. It was called option A4, open ballot. We queued. And by the end of the day, we had the result. Even though those who are unhappy with the way we dared to express our sovereign right annulled that election.

Now, in 2023, we were told that Bvas would walk. There will be a real-time upload to IRF and every one of us would be able to see how the election went.

On the back of this and on the strength of this, we got people involved in the electoral system. New people registered in high numbers. And then Mahmood Yakubu did his magic. Now, the minimum anybody can expect to place on the table before you might find the kind of engagement that is meaningful in 2027 would be to ensure that there is automatic transmission of results so that we cut out all these glitches. Because in spite of these glitches, those who did what they did were the first to come out repeatedly to assure us that they will transmit these results. It is a minimum irreducible.

What Peter Akah is doing, I am 110 per cent behind him. I am grateful for people like him taking on that campaign, going around the country, trying to sensitise our people. It is the minimum irreducible. If we can’t have confidence in the electoral process, we might as well just throw up our hands, especially when you have an INEC that is already refusing to register parties. What kind of democracy are we practising?

Even in the First Republic, we did not have an electoral umpire that was busy registering people up and down the place, acting like we might as well open an office for them in the APC headquarters. As far as I am concerned, I really don’t see anything wrong with that demand for electoral reform. And I really don’t believe that there will be any serious electioneering process in place in 2027 in the absence of guarantees that there will be electronic transmission of the results.

What could have pointed to perhaps the body language that would suggest the disposition of the administration towards a support for electoral reforms before the 2027 election would have been a reference to it in the President’s Democracy Day speech. But there was nothing of the sort.

Should we run away with that, or we should stay with assurances of the committee meetings of the National Assembly that have been tasked with the responsibility of deliberating on the items in the proposed electoral reforms?

I think it would be not only simplistic, but exceedingly foolish for anyone to expect that the APC government of Bola Tinubu would be interested in an electoral reform that would ensure transparency in the electoral process. This is a government that is the beneficiary of an electoral heist. I say that full chested. I say that as the person who was charged with the duty of collecting from EC8A, from INEC in Lagos State. And I say without equivocation, that Segun Agbaje, the then INEC Commissioner in Lagos State vould not produce a single form EC8A.

Not one could be produced because the entire result in Lagos State was a fraud. And that is the basis upon which the man sits in office and you expect him to reform. But I expect that the Nigerian people, who are the victims of this gross abuse of powers and gross abuse of processes, have every right to demand these reforms. And they should.

If that includes going into the street peacefully, if I may underline, to make those demands, we should. Power is not served a la carte, even Bulaba said so. You grab it, you snatch it, you run with it. But it is the right of citizens to expect to be given the power to vote and decide who rules them. And we should be making that demand very clearly, without any equivocation or apologies to anybody.

Vanguard News