By Dickson Omobola

National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Shehu Garbam, in this interview, faults the country’s democracy. Garbam, who further criticises the judiciary, says it is not living up to the expectations of Nigerians with regard to delivering justice. Excerpts:

Bishop Kukah, Peter Obi among others voiced concerns about our democracy. How do you describe our democracy?

As a nation, we have abandoned our values, our principles and the foundations of democracy that we cherish as a copycat of the presidential system of democracy. To explain what the leaders have said, from Matthew Kukah, to former President Obasanjo, to Peter Obi and a host of others, it is extremely painful that a journey that started innocently, where people left military administration, came together, formed a movement that led to the formation of political parties in 1988 to 1989, nobody ever thought that we would be at this point that we are today.

The entire philosophy (of the SDP) is to entrench our democratic culture, our democratic system, create a sense of belonging and a participatory democracy for every Nigerian, irrespective of tribe or religion. I was part of that founding members. I know the wisdom, I know the philosophy behind the founding fathers of the party. Some of them paid the supreme price, and they were sent to prison.

Today, nobody remembers them. And the entire characteristics that define democracy are no longer in existence. A nation that every day wakes up with killings, maiming, barbarism, kidnappings, insecurity, hunger and poverty contradicts every definition of democracy all over the world. A nation that a citizen cannot afford to feed itself two or twice a day has contradicted the entire definition and responsibility of democracy. Now, all this has been directed at the presidency. The president is aware of these things, and we have mentioned it, we have appealed, made corrections and made adjustments.

But it appears that the president has lost sight of the fact that he was part of this journey at one point. He was in exile at a point, at the point that the nation was struggling and fighting to restore democracy. Today, he is the president of Nigeria by an act of destiny. And everything that he needs is available in Nigeria. There are brilliant and intelligent people that would have guided, generated ideas on how to drive the process, but they have all been sidelined, including political parties that ought to have provided a buffer. We are talking about a country after the election.

Once you are sworn in, your responsibility is how to move the country forward. None was put into consideration. And of course, what remains is what we are seeing today, the kind of balkanization of the system, the kind of destruction we are seeing in a nation where we have a democracy guided by law, we have a constitution, a leadership of a nation that will go outside the rule of law, outside the constitution and make a pronouncement that is creating a very hot atmosphere that we are facing today as a nation. I feel sad about it because I invested all my life in this democracy, fighting for this democracy, restoration of this democracy.

And we feel ashamed that we are at the crossroads where you cannot fault former President Obasanjo by virtue of his experience, as a military head of state and elected president. President Jonathan also compressed and condensed his submission. You cannot fault it. I have also listened to Wole Soyinka, very precise to the point. What are we talking about? Can the president believe that all these people are wrong? Does he believe that the media institutions that are custodian with some information and intelligence of what is going on in the country are also wrong by advising him? Unfortunately, we are a nation where so many sycophants have taken over the system. There is virtually no realist. What we have are theorist-oriented people who come up with policies or ideas that are not realistic and they are pushing them forward. Otherwise, you cannot have a crisis two years into a government, which is almost collapsing the entire system.

In specific and direct terms, how would you describe democracy under the Tinubu government?

Let me say that in every democracy, not just Bola’s, it is about the safety of life and properties of Nigerians. If you take the statistics of what is going on, you know that the government has failed in terms of providing law and order in the country. Are you aware of the number of insecurity going on around the country? Even in the last week, people were kidnapped, people were killed and people were maimed.

There are areas where you can say there are improvements. The number of kidnappings have dropped, but it  not stopped. In a nation that cannot feed its own citizens, you are talking about democracy, what position are they taking in terms of defining government? In a nation where you cannot get justice, where the judiciary delivers judgment based on what they think is right, not based on reality and facts available to them. In a nation where the judiciary is not living up to the standard of Nigerians, in a nation where the strongest arm of government, the National Assembly, is not living to the expectations of Nigerians, they go outside their own rules in conducting their business without reading and understanding the implication to the nation.

I think virtually every factor that you are looking for, you are shopping for anywhere in any shopping mall, that defines democracy has been violated under the Tinubu government. That is the reality we are facing, not to talk of human rights abuse, not to talk of intimidation and harassment.

Are you going to put all of those blames on this government that is less than two years old?

There is nothing like that in governance. Governance is about continuity. President Bola Tinubu is aware of the rotten situation or the rotten system he inherited. He promised to fix them. He campaigned on them and at that point said that if I do not provide electricity to all Nigerians within four years, don’t vote for me again, which means that he understood clearly what to be done, what he wants to achieve, what are the deliverables. He has analysed them. He has come to the conclusion that he will solve the problem. Now, one of the things he has inherited is insecurity.

There is no doubt about it. It is not just him. Even the previous administration inherited that. In 1999, there was a report that there would be pockets of crisis across the geopolitical zones. So every president that came into office got a security report and intelligence of what the country was going through.

What we expected is that the president will prioritise what he wants to achieve. The first thing he did was to remove the subsidy in a nation that was already enveloped by poverty, insecurity, rascality, lack of deterrence, and the subsidy was removed.

Subsidy removal was promised by most of the presidential candidates…

They did not say they would remove it 100 per cent. This is not the first time the subsidy was removed. Every president that understands the dynamics and the peculiarities of his own country knows that you cannot go all the hog and remove it completely. You have to do it bit by bit so that you feel the pulse of the people, of the citizens.

You seem to be describing Nigeria as though it is derailing under this government…

Not just under this government. My fear was that he inherited a system that was derailing. My expectation was that he would stop it. That was my expectation. I have always said that he would perform much better than even former President Muhammadu Buhari. I said it on air several times. I have nothing against him as a president. But I have everything against the policy that they are pursuing that has no human face and doesn’t recognise the dignity of the citizens.

What are those policies?

One, I have mentioned it maybe for the sake of repetition, the protection of the life and properties of Nigerians.

Would you say that security is worse off right now than about two years ago before this government came into office?

What is the improvement from what you know? Do we have improvement in the agricultural culture that is related to insecurity? Farmers cannot go to farms.

What about the North-West?

It depends where you are talking about in the North-West. In Katsina streets, there is still banditry going on. In Zamfara, there is still banditry going on and some other places. You can minus Kano, you can minus Jigawa and the South. But in all these states where you have banditry that have been entrenched, it has been reduced, but it is still constituted.

How would you describe the administration in terms of focus, purpose and the performance of promises being made during the campaign?

What the president lacks is a team. Government is not about individualism. It is not about monopoly of knowledge and wisdom. That is why there is a division of labour in governance. The president needs a team that understands the peculiarities of Nigeria. There is history, there is an archive, where we are going right and where we are going wrong. If the cabinet is up to date with the reality of Nigeria, with what Nigerians are facing, you can imagine the youth corps member whose case turned into controversy. She was crying on the screen.

She cannot afford to buy a crate of eggs, and it went viral. She was being threatened. Is that democracy? Is that freedom of expression enshrined in our constitution? The National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, and our institution threatening her? Do they know what she goes through? There are millions of people dying in silence. Go to the hospitals. Please, spare time and go to the hospitals. People cannot pay their bills. They are dying because of sicknesses. There is no attention. If you take somebody who needs attention in the hospital, once you take the person to the hospital, the protocol associated with admitting him will make the person die before being admitted in the hospital.

Is that one of the reasons why your party has suddenly become the beautiful bride to most of the politicians and those who are aggrieved in the APC?

My responsibility as leader of the party is to consult as much as possible. I am not going to disclose whomever I am consulting with. It is within my own strategy to give everybody his own respect, his own view. And in due course, we will cross the bridge.

However, we are in consultation. We are reaching out to people that will create the impact, that will change society and make sure that we have a great country. So the consultation is ongoing. Virtually every day, we receive decampees into SDP from every state of the federation. If you Google, you will see that there are over 300 resignation letters from very important persons, VIPs. Some of them were senators, some of them were ministers that are joining the party. So it is not about just one individual.

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