This is the last interview granted to Vanguard in February, 2013, by Professor Omo Omoruyi shortly before he flew back to Boston, United States of America where he was undergoing treatment for cancer. Omoruyi died last Sunday.

PROF. OMO OMORUYI, former Director-General of the defunct Centre for Democratic Studies (CDC), a political scientist, says Dr (Mrs) Oby Ezekwesili,  a minister of education under the Obasanjo administration,  should have written a memoir on her days in office to talk about government spending instead of shouting the way she did. He blames the sentencing of the police pension thief on the nation’s two legal systems: the Penal Code in the North and Criminal Code in the South, and calls for urgent review of the laws. He says two-party system is best for Nigeria.

Extracts from the interview:

On Dr. Oby Ezekwesili’s allegation that the governments of the late Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua and Goodluck Jonathan squandered 67billion U.S Dollars left by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in the Foreign Reserve and Excess Crude Account.

*Omo Omoruyi

It is unfortunate that the young woman had to come out in that form. If you are familiar with the way government works, she was not supposed to speak like that because if she was privy to some of those facts, she has access to the President and she would have gone to the President to ask what happened and so on. What I am trying to say is that there is what we call ‘Official Secret’ and for a person of her status who served the Federal Government at such a high level and was privy to certain facts and, if those facts are contentious, she should go and check them.

It is not for her to go public and begin to make noise about them. If she feels also that she has to say something, she should write her memoir; not through a public lecture and begin to challenge officials of the Federal Government to a public debate. Debate what? You see, government is a continuous process and if there was something in the way the money was being spent at a particular time, it is not that somebody spent the money, you are asking question on what happened to what Obasanjo left behind.

Was she Obasanjo? Obasanjo should be the one to say I left so, so behind; then, the Minister of Finance then is still the Minister of Finance today and they were together in Washington. She must not do that, she is more intelligent than that because I happen to know her. I would say they are using her, but the whole thing is politically motivated and it is in bad taste.

What do you have to say on the judgment of an Abuja High Court that sentenced John Yakubu Yusuf for stealing N23billion police pension to two years imprisonment or an option of N750, 000 fine?

I think there is something which you journalists do not know. You are missing a vital point; and that vital point is that we are running two separate judicial systems, that is, Penal Code in the North and Criminal Code in the South. The Penal Code in the North was a colonial contrivance which was brought about in order to accommodate Shariah.

The Criminal Code is the one which applies to me and you in the South which is based on the normal judicial system that we have been used to. So, in attempting to harmonize the Shariah legal system of justice, before independence, the Federal Government or colonial government had to employ Sudanese and Pakistan justices to try and see what should be done with the Penal Code.

What is Penal Code other than adulterated form of Shariah? That is why if you steal the whole of the Central Bank of Nigeria and you are in Kano, you will not get more than two years imprisonment. You can make all the noise you are making, but let the National Assembly go straight to the matter of legal reform, not constitutional reform. That is one.

Two, why should a man who stole police money, the police is Nigeria Police, it is not Bauchi police, be subjected to Penal Code? He should have been subjected to the criminal justice system which you and I are used to; that would have dealt with the man drastically. They tried to see if it was Native Authority Police Pension. Number three, is Abuja a northern state, a Penal Code state, a Shariah state? Those are the issues the National Assembly should be addressing today, but they will not.

They are busy talking about constitutional amendment and I said ‘why don’t you do first thing first, that is, try and harmonize the legal system in the country?’ Professor Oserhiemen Osunbor, a former governor of Edo State who is now in-charge of the country’s legal reform, this is his job to try to bring about the harmonization of the laws of this country. So, when you found a man who was fined N750, 000 just put his hand in his breast pocket, he knew already what he was
going to be fined.

And, how did he know? Like Rotimi Jacobs (EFCC lawyer) said, he was surprised that the man had that money in his pocket. He brought out the money, paid and entered his Mercedes limousine and drove away. Common, give me a break, it is not good. It is the audacity, the impudence and the way it was done; he was like saying ‘who are you?’ And people for whom that money was meant are dead and are still dying. I am a pensioner, if it a kobo that we are entitled to, please give it to us because we worked for it.

We are not asking for more. But you will not let us have it. I am just applying this to the police. Look at the barracks the police are supposed to occupy, where they are being trained, is in squalor. So, when you look at all of that, why would corruption not be there? So, we are running two systems and, if you now ask the National Assembly, of-course, they see loopholes in that system; they want it because they too don’t want a system under which they would be jailed twenty years and so o
n and so forth.

How do you see the Federal Capital Territory running the Penal Code?

Well, it is running a Penal Code because it is a Shariah state today. It is unfortunate that many of these things are happening. That is not the way the founding fathers, Gen. Obasanjo, the late Gen. Murtala Muhammed and so on designed Abuja in fairness to them. Look, Obasanjo is also guilty. Since the founding of Abuja, how many, apart from the first man, I can’t remember his name now who became the Federal Commissioner, tell me a southerner who has become the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja and, I am not talking of a Minister of State like the daughter of Chief Richard Akinjide.

That is not a Minister; she is just carrying a bag following the Minister that is what we call Minister Without Portfolio. Jonathan is there now, why should Jonathan not appoint Okonkwo, Omoruyi, Durotimi, Okafor, Orubebe and so on and so forth as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory? But when we look back, Yar’Adua’s father was the Minister for Lagos Affairs and we accepted it. But we don’t have the nerve; we don’t have the courage to do what is proper.

We believe that if you appoint E.K.Clark’s son as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, ah, the heavens will fall. So, if you appoint a southerner the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, he will put his foot down and say, no way. I can tell you what I did; I built the present Law School today at Bwari, Abuja and, when it was being built, they started to put Arabic signs and inscriptions and structures, I protested.

President Babangida upheld my protest and called Maj-Gen. Gado Nasko to leave it the way the professionals wanted it and so, they downed the walls and made the finest construction. Secondly, they were putting up a mosque and I said, no problem, we must also put a chapel; the two were built and they were opened at the same time. So, you don’t see one and conclude that Nigeria is an Islamic state.

The government did not send me to jail for it, but we don’t have the courage to do such a thing today; that you are putting up a building in Abuja today and the first thing you want to see is a mosque. If you go to the Law School, as you enter, to the right is the mosque and to the left is the chapel. That is the house that I built, built by Omo Omoruyi, which is the Law School. We are the ones creating problems for ourselves, it is not the northerners.

Still on the country’s legal system, Nigeria appears to be two countries, running two separate legal systems. How do you see that?

It is a serious matter. We fought this thing during the 1977/1978 Constituent Assembly and I am still on record as one of those who fought that matter to say, ‘look, we want a secular state; we do not want two legal system or legal system where they now wanted the Court of Appeal would also have a Shariah Court of Appeal, then, you have a Sharia Supreme Court’ and so and so forth. And on the basis of that, may his soul rest in peace, Dr. Mudiaga Odje, an illustrious son of Delta State, moved the motion for the deletion of Shariah. He said he did not see why he should be there and we all supported that. After that, they walked out, if you remember that.

The history is there.   And they have to be brought back and when they were brought back by Obasanjo and so on, in order to placate us, they said they were going to create a new division, but it did not work. We said no way, we will go back; they said no, they will not go back. So, it was the quest for two legal systems, two judicial systems that they found a way of introducing into the present Nigerian law and justice today.

It is an unfortunate thing because I also remember and I was at Harvard then when Chief Obasanjo came to speak immediately he was elected President. He was asked three questions, one was on Shariah and two was on the Niger Delta. Speaking on the Shariah system, he said, nobody would introduce that; it was as good and dead. As we were leaving, I don’t want to mention one of the people who came with him, he said, the man is lying and, of course, he was lying. It never happened. Every state in the North started to introduce Shariah because, at that time, it was only Zamfara State that had introduced it.

How do you see Nigeria at 100 years in 2014 in view of where we are coming from?

I take you back to the Financial Times of London of January I, 1914 where  it was said that the wife of Lord Fredrick Lugard named the country Nigeria. It doesn’t matter, we are already in it. In my view, what we should have been doing ever since is to do what the Americans call a more perfect union, but successive governments in this country, successive leaders in this country never addressed this critical issue, whether military or civilian. It is unfortunate today that we are what we are; we are where we are with so many issues unresolved.

These are issues of nationhood, issues of survival; I don’t want to start talking about whether Nigeria should break up, no; that is not the issue. The issue is how we re-negotiate this country as it is and we must do that. If somebody tells you you cannot re-negotiate, then that person must be out of his mind. Who can lead it? I have always said that Jonathan can, his transformation should take the form of a political restructuring and that is the only thing he should do.

His second term agenda should be how much of that transformation will be in the political realm. It is not economic because the economy can take care of itself; the political theme has virtually overwhelmed us today; that PDP is not a party and it does not have an alternative and because it does not have an alternative, if people run away from the PDP, you have nowhere to go.

You go to A C N; A C N has its own problem too. I suggested to a young colleague of mine and said, ‘America got to a stage where the American Political Science Association said, ‘let us organize a brain -storming session towards a two political party’. It is not that they don’t have other political parties, but you know the debate, Ronmmy and Obama, there were others who called themselves candidates, but they were not recognized as such. So, what we need in this country today is a two- party system. If there is anything that Babangida left behind as a legacy, it was that. He called me to help him fashion that and we did that. You might say it was brought about by a decree; no, it wasn’t correct, the way it came out with all the teachings that followed it, it wasn’t. We need a two- party system at the national and state levels.

What we have today is not working. Now they are talking about merger; that is obubuyayah; that is a 419 because what you need is a re-alignment of political forces. If you do not like PDP, go to A C N, you don’t like A C N, go to CPC and so on.   A merger is a recipe for disaster; it is not going to work. I can tell you because I have gone through this stage in my highly productive young days as a political activist. In the Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP), I was the National Secretary and I knew what happened before then in UPGA and NNA.

Merger is not going to work. The A C N people mean well, but they are handling it the wrong way. The PDP should put its home in order; those who cannot carry on there should get out and join other parties like A C N. Let me tell you, when I was working with (former Vice President) Atiku, I spoke with his Special Adviser then who was a good advocate of two- party system, a colleague of   mine from Kano, Prof. A D. Yahaya. I said, ‘Ali, what is all this?’ He said, ‘Well, if A C N,
A C at that time, has four, five or six states, four years later, they can improve on that position, maybe, win another four , another four years, win another two, that is how parties developed’. Merger will not work; they may mean well, butit is not going to work.

Do you think Jonathan has the courage to fight corruption against the backdrop of the reports indicting the NNPC and the Petroleum Minister which the government has not acted upon?

Does he have the courage? That is what we are talking about. He should have the courage. That it is taking so long to try Farouk Lawan and others baffles me because when I was going to hospital, the matter was just surfacing and, when they phoned me, I kept asking, ‘how is the Lawan matter?’, and they will say, ‘Oga, it is dead o, nobody is hearing about it’.

It is now about this week or so that the matter is being heard. Why? So, in my view, he should use some people as scape goats. He should deal with certain people and that is what I like Obasanjo for. For instance, Afolabi was his master at Baptist High School Abeokuta. He did not call Afolabi by name, he called him my senior, did he not deal with him? Jonathan should deal with this matter expeditiously and they will say, ‘ah, this man could deal with his brother like this?’ Like what is happening in Bayelsa State, that is not going well and he is from Bayelsa. I don’t have the facts or figures, but things are not going well. He could do better.

On the scramble for the 2015 Presidency and Jonathan’s chances

Well, the election is a presidential election, essentially presidential, essentially one person. Will he get the nomination of the PDP? If he doesn’t, will he go to another party? Whether they introduce ethnicity to it or not, in my honest view, Jonathan has the election to lose; he is the one who should say, I don’t want, nobody can push him out. I also read somewhere the Ibos said it is their turn and all that. But that is neither here nor there. What is it that the mega party is trying to do for Buhari? In my honest view, Buhari should retire. I like him a lot; I regret what I did with Babangida to push him out. I don’t want to hide my feeling; I aided Babangida to push him out.

Babangida appealed to me then that Buhari was not a democrat and I read everything about him and he wasn’t and, up till tomorrow, he is not a democrat. So, what are we buying and what do we want to buy because he wants to be President? The mega party they are trying to put together is a mega party of Buhari. If you don’t give him, he is out.

He came to ANPP on two occasions; he destroyed that party and so on and so forth. And if A C N is not careful, A C N will become a Yoruba bound political party. They claimed that they could always win their election, but I have my fears about all that, but Buhari cannot appeal to the East, he cannot appeal to the South- south, he would appeal to the North again, the far North would on the basis of the Penal Code system.

So, the PDP should put its home in order. There are many people in PDP who shouldn’t be there; Jonathan should be the one who should say, ‘this is my party and I will allow it to function’ to make himself a President, but he is not doing that. And he is allowing all these second term governors to destroy him now; Chibuike Amaechi, Dr. Aliyu   Babangida, are second term governors who are not coming back, so, they are the ones coming together and people are flying a kite of Sule Lamido and Amaechi ticket and so on and so forth.

I am a Fourth Dimension man who is beyond the tripod. This is an opportunity we have for a non- Ibo, a non- Yoruba, a non- Hausa/Fulani to become the President of this country and yet they put all obstacles in his way of his survival. No, he should survive o.

Do you think Babangida achieved his aims and objectives after overthrowing Buhari at that time?

This is my disillusionment. In my memoir, I called it the delusion democrat. When he invited me, he wanted to make a name, he wanted to bring about democracy, he wanted to bring about a name and everything that Buhari was against and I came on board. So it is still one thing I did, which I don’t regret. What I regretted was that we thought with Buhari out, that was the recipe for a new political order.

It did not work. We worked hard, but, at last, it didn’t. June 12 was the casualty and he should not have allowed that to happen, but it did happen. And, to me, it is one sore point which remains unresolved.  So, the issues that were with us at that time are still the issues with us today. I keep saying, why was it that Abiola could not be President, why could Awolowo not be President, why could   Azikiwe not be President, why could Ekwueme not be President, why could Olu Falae not be President?

And the same reason argued negatively, why could Obasanjo be President because that is the one they could use? These other people were people who were determined, have a mind of their own, their people loved them; the Yoruba loved Awo, the Ibos loved Azikiwe. Ekwueme was well supported by the Ibos at that time, Olu Falae was also well supported and of course, Abiola.

Then, you went for a man who was not even supported by one fifth of his ward, that is, Obasanjo and you now used the machinery of the North to make him President, to be dependent on you so that you can now use him for whatever purpose, but, unfortunately, they did not succeed. When Obasanjo got there, he had a mind of own, they were disappointed. That is one part of the problem today.

The general feeling then was that Nigeria was not made to be governed by a southerner who had the support of his people; it was supposed to be governed by a northerner or a southerner who was dependent on a northerner, which was an unfortunate part of the game. It is unfortunate. To me, I don’t have problem with northerners because the party card that I ever had was the NPC card.

I have no regret and the revered leader, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, in 1964, during the UPGA/NNA debate, told Dr. Michael Okpara, ‘go with your oil’. This means he supported 100 per cent derivation; ‘go with your oil so that Nigeria can survive’ because, at that time, oil was in that part of the Eastern Region, not in the West. Azikiwe was a ceremonial President at that time. What the present northerners do not realize is that Sir Ahmadu Bello was the first northerner to support 100 per cent derivation. We should go back to record, but when we now raise the matter, they will say, no, no, Boko-Haram should come and ta
ke over, oil belongs to all Nigerians. This is not true. Sir Ahmadu Bello held that position and it was that position that attracted me further to the NPC.