In this interview with ADELEKE ADESANYA, the presidential candidate of the KOWA Party in the 2015 general elections and a member of National Conscience Front, Prof Remi Sonaiya, says the disposition of President Muhammadu Buhari towards the challenges facing the country shows he has no respect for citizens. While discussing other pertinent issues in the country, she also suggests that 2023 general elections should not hold until solution is found to Nigeria’s problems. Excerpts.
There is no doubt that Nigeria is facing so many problems under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration. What do you think this government is not getting right?
Well, there’s just so much that is wrong. We are getting our priorities wrong, we are getting the whole security situation wrong.
So, maybe the problem is that there doesn’t seem to be so much concern to really confront the challenges that we have. People are still behaving as if we are not in a desperate situation.
For instance, there was a meeting that started this last Friday, that was supposed to be an emergency meeting, and then they didn’t finish and they said they will reconvene on Tuesday, and I was wondering if you are in an emergency, would you take your weekend off? Wouldn’t you just stay there and make sure that you do all that is required. So, that kind of struck me.
You know, there’s still this whole attitude of oh Business as usual, tend to sort themselves out and so on. I think there isn’t that consciousness of the seriousness of our situation, and no responsiveness.
For a long time, people were complaining, the head of security units were not performing, the President ignored all the calls from the people for a long time, finally he sacked them and appointed new service chiefs, who declared absolute loyalty to the President. So, one is really worried about the situation of things.
But looking at it, are they supposed to be loyal to the President or to the system and the citizens of Federal Republic of Nigeria?
Of course! Even the president should be loyal to the system, should be loyal to the country, he should be loyal to the people who voted for him and put him in office. So, all their absolute loyalty to the President is wrong.
We heard the Secretary to the government when he was appointed, saying he’ll serve at the President’s pleasure. Because he chose you does not mean you serve him. You are serving the Nigerian people, because it is the resources of the Nigerian people that are being used to pay their salaries and support the work they are doing. So, you cannot be using the people’s money, and say that you are serving an individual.
On insecurity facing the nation through the activities of killer herdsmen, bandits, kidnappers, Boko Haram, and others, do you think the President is handling the issues right?
One thing is that we have a President who does not address the nation, and that is a major issue that Nigerians should rise and talk about. We must demand that our President speaks to us. You know, all we hear is from Garba Shehu, Femi Adeshina and so on, are they the ones we elected? if the President does not want to speak to the people, how come you run for office and ask for their votes and now they voted for you, you don’t say anything to them and then the representatives will come out to say well everybody has their personal style. Should the President have a personal style that refuses to speak to the people who elected him? So, I think that is a fundamental issue and it really shows lack of respect and sort of disdain for the people. So, if we don’t hear you, how can we trust that you are acting in our interest when you don’t even come out to say anything to us directly? So, that’s a very important issue.
Several ethnic nationalities and groups have been demanding to have their independent nations due to the enormity of the problems in the country. What is your take on this?
What I will say first and foremost is that when there is no consequence for all the banditry and so on that is going on, how many of the herdsmen have been arrested? Have we seen them being tried and condemned? Now, it’s obvious that this is a money making venture for the bandits, just collecting ransom, collecting ransom, and there’s is no consequence, and there’s a Sheik Gumi who says you have to dialogue with them. So, we are in a jungle right now. What this says is that you are free to commit offences, crime, abduct people, do as you like, there is no consequence for it, and it is very sad. That kind of situation, what do you expect people to do? The police are not going to protect you, you are at the mercy of the bandits, so you try to protect yourself as much as you can, so that’s why people are making all kinds of efforts on their own.
But how do you see the calls for a Yoruba nation?
I don’t want to talk about the call for Yoruba nation. I want those we have voted for to do the job. Their responsibility is to secure our lives and our property, that is their responsibility. So, I think we should focus on that, let us demand that.
It is simply because they are not doing their work that’s why people are calling for all kinds of things, people are frustrated. That’s it. So, let’s not focus on the frustration of the people, let us focus on those who are using our resources, wasting our money and not delivering the services that they are supposed to deliver to us.
Then will you support restructuring as solution to these problems?
Of course, I’m for restructuring. Restructuring for me does not mean breaking up the country, restructuring for me is a return to a true federation. In fact, our name is the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but we are not running a federation right now. We are running a unitary and centralised government, which was impose on us by the military.
This is not what we negotiated at our independence. We had a real federation at independence, where the different federating units were autonomous, and they had control over their resources, and they could decide what their priorities were. So, that is what I support, too. We should determine what federating units should be. I don’t think that all these states should be the federating units, but in any case, we have to engage in a conversation to determine what our federating units will be.
Looking at the situation of things in the country, what will you advise should be the peoples’ expectations ahead of 2023 general elections?
Personally, presently, I don’t think we should conduct any election anymore. With the current situation, I think that it is time for us hold a national conference to renegotiate our existence as a country among all the different ethnic groups and the different civil groups in Nigeria. I am not looking forward at all to any 2023 election because I don’t think it is going to yield what we want. Do we want to elect another set of people to this same structure, they too will get there and they won’t want to leave.
So it is better for us to now convene a national conference, to renegotiate.
But a national conference was held in 2014 with a report that is yet to be executed. Are you saying another conference should be convened?
In any case, the one that was done in 2014, let them bring out the report. Why did the President refuse to consider it? What is this thing that made those who are voted into power to think that they are above the people, that the will of the people does not count? So, those are the issues for me. We must immediately revisit the process of renegotiation, and in line with that, I am one of those advocating a new federal constitution, because this our old constitution we are using is not truly a federal constitution. It’s an imposed constitution. It does not represent we the people at all.
