Former Minister of Police Affairs, Adamu Maina Waziri, a delegate to the National Conference, has denounced the call for the application of resource control saying it will cause disaffection in the country. In this interview , the former minister believes the call is motivated by an agenda that will impoverish parts of the country and breed disunity. INNOCENT ODOH reports
Views on committees’ recommendations
It is too early for anybody to say he is satisfied because the task does not stop with the recommendations of the committees. The finality will require the conclusions of the conference in plenary. Let us put this conference in its proper perspective. The conference is a child of controversy; there are certain controversies in the country that necessitated the convocation of the conference.
While there was a lot of orchestrated demand for sovereign national conference, the President, working within the ambit of the constitution, could only convoke a national conference. In majority of the issues, people have different ideas of how the country should be run, which is raising controversies about the thematic issues for the country. And now we are at plenary to discuss the reports of the committee.
Every one of us has his own ideas about the fundamental reasons of the conference. While some people feel the conference will strengthen Nigeria, there are some of us who feel that it will not necessarily strengthen Nigeria. Let me give you an example.
Time it was when our national anthem had a stanza which says, “though tongue and tribe may differ” but we unanimously said the word ‘tribe’ is not cohesive for the unity of the country and we removed it from the stanza. Today, we have a number of people who will get up in the conference and say they are representing an ethnic nationality which is really feel very uncomfortable.
We don’t want to identify ourselves by tribe because even the provisions of the census conducted last time removed some of those things that will give you ethnic identity. It is not for national identity that issues like religion and tribe were removed from enumeration of the census.
Today, we are talking about ethnic nationality as if ethnic nationality is an identity. The conference has also thrown up frontlines that we ought to have gone beyond. I happened to be in the committee of restructuring. Gen Ike Nwachukwu, a fine gentleman was the chairman. His father was an Igbo man, his mother, a Katsina woman from the vicinity of the emir of Katsina and he confided in me that …he finds it embarrassing to listen to some of the debates in the conference floor.
We hope that at the end of the day since the conference has resolved that Nigeria will remain indissoluble, whatever the outcome will strengthen the indissolubility of the country. But at the end of the conference there is one prime necessity -that there is the need for a national leader that will cement and weld this country like it happened in other countries.
All nations are made great by a leader either through his warrior ability, his integrity, vision or national acceptability to be able to weld the country together.
Possibility of true national leader amidst mutual suspicions
Yes, it is possible. When you look along the lines of your question, I want you to also look at the basic needs of every Nigerian. Poverty does not know north and south. The common needs of the Nigerian do not know Islam or Christianity, it has no ethnic affiliation, and it has no political coloration.
So it is along these unifying basic human needs that a leader will emerge and unify the country. Corruption does not know north and south, Christian, Muslim, PDP, APC. But if you have a leadership that is corrupt as evident as we have with the tiers of government in Nigeria, then you are going to have divisive elements to divide the country because a hungry man is an angry man.
The leader must be just and fair. If there is no adherence to the principle of rule of law, there will not be development in the country. So there are enough basic requirements for a leader to weld this country into one.
Between status quo and a shift there from
This is where the mistake is being made by people like you with all respect. The opening statement of the constitution said “we the people of Nigeria,” should we say we the people of the United States or England? Are you saying that 492 of us chosen not through electoral process, but by nomination represent Nigeria? Are you saying that if 492 of us draw up a constitution, it will be better than the current constitution? Are you saying that the 492 of us will bring another constitution that will not say we the people of Nigeria? Look, all nations start from imperfection then try to attain perfection.
It is irresponsibility for someone to say because we say “we the people of Nigeria” then the constitution is not acceptable. Professor Ben Nwabueze who is the chief architect of this is the author of Decree 34, of Ironsi. He has no moral right to come and say now that he wants a constitution for Nigeria based on his antecedents. How many people lost their lives because of Decree 34?
He is dangling a paper, saying that he will draw a constitution for Nigeria. How can an eighty-year old person, almost at the point of senility, come and tell me that he is a panacea for the problems of Nigeria when he should be tried for treason.
We must have a starting point. All human life has a starting point. We Nigerians don’t want to accept a starting point, every starting point that we had is a mistake, the constitution of 1999 is a mistake, the amalgamation of Nigeria is a mistake, the colonization is a mistake, is that what you are saying?
Some people will say, let us go back to regions, when the northern region is more than the three regions put together and you say we should go back there.
Some say we should use the geopolitical zones which is just an idea brought by Dr. Alex Ekwueme, in a conference like this one. The South East as presently constituted as a geopolitical zone is one third of North West in landmass and about 50% in population of the North West. And you say they must be equal and you are talking of democracy. Democracy requires inequality meaning majority and minority votes.
We cannot make progress by going backwards. It has never happened anywhere in the world. The former Soviet Union, their disintegration was almost seamless, meaning that there was no war but the frontlines are emerging now.
We have also seen the consequences in trying to weld a nation out of heterogeneity. If you go to America, there are so many ethnic groups and so many nationalities. Slavery was abolished in 1864; the Bill of Rights that came in 1964 was signed into law, but equal opportunities did not start getting manifestation until Obama was elected President. Even that is a process in spite of the fact all men are deemed equal, but electorally there was discrimination. It was not the Bill of Right that brought Obama; it was what Luther King Junior said that his children should be judged not by their colour and their creed but by the content of their character. That is what I am saying that a time will come when a leader will emerge and he will have the force of character, the integrity and the national experience to take Nigeria to the promise land.
Subscribing to true federalism
You see, you are also guilty of this propaganda. You are talking of true federalism, you are talking of resource control, and they are two different issues. There is nothing like true federalism. In the committee of restructuring, I asked the proponents what it means. In political science, it is federalism and confederation. These are the two systems of government. So we have in operation a federal system in Nigeria since 1960. All those things that you consider as iniquities of federalism that make you to call for true federalism are not federal practices. For example, there is a government; it is corrupt or not corrupt. It will be corrupt when you follow corrupt practices. Federalism is a system of government whereby the various groups that make a federation decide to operate a government that is multi-tier meaning; there is a central government that is either going to be with the state or state and local government.
As far as human knowledge is concerned for a heterogeneous society like Nigeria, diverse in terms of geography, the system of government best suited to recognize the characteristics of the unit that make up that entity is federalism, and that is what we have in Nigeria.
So whatever you realized are the shortcomings, require that we look at it.
The constitution recognized the central government, state and local government and each one of the tiers, has duties assigned to it and also has a leadership assigned to it and the process of conducting the duties assign to it. But when people come to subvert it, it is not the system that is at fault, it is the action by the people.
So we need to look at it and say okay we now have a situation the federal government is stronger than the state government. Why? Because the central government is taking resources for infrastructure development more than the second tier of government that are more in number, that are also closer to the people. Yet that share of the central government 80% of it is going to personal emoluments and that is why development is also uneven.
What of the issue of resource control and the principle of derivation?
We have a derivation principle now which recognizes that 13% of the revenue derived from the resources is given to the states where such revenue is gotten. That recognizes that in the process of derivation, the host community will suffer certain unintended consequences. To get to the point where an oil well will be drilled, all the vegetation along that route for example will be trampled upon. These unintended consequences are being remediated by 13% derivation. That is what we have now. Some people are saying that they have suffered environmental degradation that will require more than 13% and they are asking for 100%. And that out of that 100%, they will now pay royalties and taxes to other parts of the country as a whole.
Now the question you need to ask is whose money was used as seed capital for the development of this mineral resource that you will want to control 100%? Was the money used from the whole country to develop that mineral resource or was it only for the host location? Now if you are also saying that 100% must be controlled by the host communities, are you not also saying that you don’t recognize the existence of the country? We have agreed that development will bring about unity in Nigeria; it will eliminate illiteracy and poverty and provides human basic needs.
People always refer to America but even in America, there is no 100% derivation. In Russia there is no 100% derivation, in all countries of the world that we aspire to emulate, there is no 100% derivation. What is there is royalty and taxes and development of mineral resources.
We can also ask that my state because we don’t have any mineral resources , we don’t benefit derivation of that 13% but the states that benefit from that 13% derivation, have they been able to use it to develop their people?.
When we sit in a conference people are going to canvass for their position, and for you to get my support, you need to show me what I am also going to benefit if I grant you what you are canvassing for. Nobody can show me what my benefit is, and yet when I say that it must be 13% somebody will accuse me of maintaining status quo.
Your canvassing your position does not deny me my right as a Nigerian. So now what is happening is that less than 25% of Nigeria is producing oil and it is from that 25% of Nigeria that the request for resource control is coming. If whatever the 25% are asking is granted, is that democracy? Is that not the tyranny of the minority? Will that also make Nigeria stable?
Truly speaking, we all recognize there is environmental degradation, there is pollution and so on, but we must also note that the host communities have ruptured pipelines deliberately within the last 30 years.
Every position canvassed by interested parties in the conference must also be embedded in its selling points to the other conferees. If you give me a good selling point I will support you. But if the point is to impoverish me, and enrich you then there is going to be a problem.
Way out of present security challenges
This question is very apt. If you had listened to the BBC, you would have heard the report that an American soldier captured by the Taliban in 2009 in Afghanistan was exchanged for five Taliban detainees of the Guantanamo bay detention center after five years of negotiation.
So the insecurity in the north east can also now find solace in the fact that we need to embark on dialogue. Even if the insurgency was foreign induced, the American involvement in Afghanistan was also foreign induced. Their military might did not bring about just one of them detained. So the Nigerian government must lead the way in creating the enabling environment to allow dialogue to take place so that the insurgency can be brought to an end. There is no way you are going to isolate parts of this country and say they can kill themselves it is their own lives. Up till today, there are people that are lamenting the ceding of Bakassi, which is just one local government out of 774 local governments in Nigeria.
Now the insurgency has engulfed three states where a lot of damage has been done and it will take years to mitigate. So the government must embrace the path of dialogue.
In 2009, Nigeria was also undergoing serious security challenges in certain parts of the Niger Delta, dialogue and amnesty brought about peace in that region. So we should not forget so easily the benefits of dialogue to procure peace and it was through the instrumentality of amnesty that brought rehabilitation and reconciliation in the Niger Delta.
Between Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram insurgents
What is indisputable is that there is an insurgency. So ask the insurgents their demands. If you don’t know, tell the authority to ask them. The alternative is finding an end to the insurgency otherwise it will continue forever. The purpose of leadership is to provide the basic needs of your citizens and to strive to attain those needs of your citizens.