Democracy Dividends: Nigerians have shown they are their own worst enemies –Ikuforiji

Rt. Hon. Adeyemi Ikuforiji was Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly between 2005 and 2015 making him the longest-serving head of any legislative house in Nigeria.

The ex-lawmaker believes that after 18 years of a democratic rule it is evident that the leaders need to embark on an urgent re-orientation of the people, arguing that with the present mindset of Nigerians it will be difficult for the changes that the nation dearly desires to come.

He told PATRICK OKOHUE in this interview why he believes that Nigerians are their own worst enemies because they are always in the habit of celebrating people stealing them blind. He also spoke on the Lagos at 50 among other issues.

*****Eighteen years into democratic rule, do you think Nigeria is on track, doing what great democratic nations do to be great?

Well, we should be grateful to God, at least since independence 57 years ago, this is the first time we are experiencing democratic rule for this long and that is a sign that Nigeria is getting matured as a nation, yes there are a lot of problems, the system is plagued by all sorts of shortcomings, but the major thing is we are still there as a democratic nation. Obviously we have urgent needs for a re-orientation, a complete re-orientation of the populace, we have turned things upside down as a people and right now the only way out for us is for the leadership of this nation to take the issue of the re-orientation of the Nigerian people serious and take it up as a major issue of national concern and devout the necessary time and resources to achieve that re-orientation. If we get our orientation right and we start doing things the proper way, things will turn around for us and the nation will be better-off for it.

******Before now people are quick to blame the military for the mess that Nigeria is in, but do you think 18 years into democracy that the leaders have done better than the military?
You see when you destroy it takes time to rebuild. You can destroy in few minutes, but to rebuild takes a very long time, unfortunately since our return to democracy, successive governments have failed to take the bull by the horn and go straight for it, that is a re-orientation of the masses. What went into us gradually and settled down in the system, it is not going to be so easy to sieve it out of the system, it is already in our blood. Our orientation is a disoriented one. We are working on our heads, our legs are what is up and under such circumstance we cannot really move at the pace that we should ordinarily move. So we need conscious re-orientation of the Nigerian people. Look at it for example, where lies our value, our values have been swept off, we are a people without values. Ethics means nothing to us right now, everybody is in the craze for money. Everyone who could not get a job is now a politician and we see the rabble-rousers, the unemployed, the never do well, all sorts of people call themselves politicians and even those who have the necessary education, what are they doing in the system, everybody is busy running for the cake and some have gone so far stealing so much money that even their children and grand children will not be able to finish, so if we don’t wake ourselves up from the slumber and decides to go in the proper
direction we are not going to get there.

***** In these 18 years we have had four president, if you are to look at them individually which of them will you say really made significant impact in the life of this nation?

Each one has made impact. If you look at Olusegun Obasanjo who was the first one, his contributions are not what you can throw aside, don’t forget that perhaps his ascension is what even helped to keep the military at bay, he brought the stability, when he took over the economy was completely stagnant, it was a stagnated economy, nothing was moving and he got us moving, he brought in some political technocrats who were able to manage the economy to a large extent and the economy returned to the field of play and we got debt forgiveness and things started moving.
If you look at the Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, yes Yar’Adua started it but due to ill health and the fact that the period was too short he couldn’t see some of the programmes through and Jonathan was there and to some extent there came a level of calmness in the Niger Delta, maybe because he is one of their own and they felt it was time for them to calm down. Offcourse, the nation had been opened up for foreign investment right from Obasanjo’s time and ordinarily that continued under Jonathan, except for the depth of profligacy and recklessness of some of those who worked with him that he was not able to reign in, he is a man that I have a lot of sympathy for because some of those things were just beyond his control.

Yes, Baba, Muhammadu Buhari is there now, but unfortunately he is also relatively ill, he is not enjoying a full blown good health, but his achievements are there. Nigerians are just quick to forget that the economy was running down the steep hill real fast, but in the two years of Buhari’s government that downward movement of the economy has been arrested. The issue of Boko Haram and its enormous powers over a nation that is supposed to be a great nation was also taken care of to the extent today we all know that the issue of Boko Haram is almost a thing of the past. It is true, he is also facing some challenges, but his anti-corruption campaign is paying off and things are no more business as usual, yes it takes time to get most of these things out and for us to start seeing the direct impact of the body polity and the economy, but so far he has done fairly well. The honest truth is the economy was already on its kneels when he took over, so we cannot put all the blames of the situation today on President Buhari, yes there are things that should be done to accelerate the recovery and I think right now, it appears the government is really working towards that, but so far I think it’s been fair.

*******The legislature has been the arm of the government that has suffered most, because at every military incursion the legislature is always the first to be affected and its workings halted, but 18 years now of continuous legislative practice in this country, will you say the legislature is meeting the aspirations of Nigerians, especially considering recent happenings at the national level?

The legislature has not been able to meet the yearnings of Nigerians, but we should also realise that the legislature is the baby in this family of three. The judiciary is as old as Nigeria, the executive is as old as Nigeria, the legislature has always been the abiku of the system, that is given birth to, but its life is cut short at every military intervention. So, the experience of the legislature is so far very short, it’s far below that of the executive and the judicial arm of government. That is not to say that the legislature couldn’t have done better, but you could also look at the environment. The executive generally have been overbearing, because of our peculiar environment, poverty and the level of enlightenment by the people as far as democratic experience is concerned and the particular choice of a federal system, the three arms separated yet expected to work together interdependently, it is really a little bit difficult for the legislature to come of age at 18. You are asking an 18 year old to oversight his great grandmother or his grandmother that is 103 years old or grandfather and watch over them, to police them and see to it that they are doing the right thing and so on. You forget the fact that no matter how much education an 18 year got he cannot have the wisdom and the experience of a 103 years old grandmother or grandfather, the executive has a way around and again you have to look at it that because of the prevalent poverty in our body polity, the people will continuously elect those who can feed them with the crumbs, the people have more access to the legislators and so they hold the legislators by their necks, they are tied to the apron of those they have elected to represent them and because of the excessive demands of the populace on these legislators, the main jobs that they are supposed to do are usually neglected in favour of satisfying the electorates demands for support, for cash and so on, and at the end of the day, because the legislators are not put on the spot on the job they are elected to do, because the next ticket will not come from your performance in the parliament, because your re-election has nothing to do with how good a legislator you are, but how much you are able to give to electors and how much support you are able to go back home with for the people, offcourse the legislators are also in a dilemma. Honestly, I know that the members of the legislative arm are really an endangered species. Don’t forget, when you are the commissioner or the minister or you are the governor or the president, the mere fact that you are the one spending the money is what is known to the people, you already get all the necessary honour and respect of the people. And because of our past, before the advent of democracy and democratic rule, our communities, our traditional communities, we had our leaders, the obas, the emirs and the rest of those traditional rulers. They were lords unto themselves, the oba in Yoruba land is referred to as kabiyesi, that is the one that cannot be queried or questioned, he is the number one citizen of the community, you cannot ask him questions, he makes the laws, he is the executor of the law and he adjudicates, all powers belongs to him.

After God, infact in the system, whatever he does is what God has approved. Now, all these powers that were given to one man have now been split into three, but the power to make laws you gave to the legislative arm, execution is by the executive and then the judiciary adjudicates, by protocol the governor or the president is the number one citizen and the number one citizen in our traditional system is not to be queried, he is kabiyesi, whatever he does is final, now you are saying that the legislators should go and query him and when the attempt to do so, you are also the first to condemn them, you are the first to tell the world, oh! It is because they want to get something, they want money from the number one, so, the Nigerian populace are their own problems, because you will not allow the man you have elected to represent you to actually represent you properly. You disturb him for all the unnecessary request for support and at the same time you will not allow him to do the job that you have asked him to go and do and if there is any little problem between him and the executive you are quick to give support to the executive. So, in the last 18 years that is what we have experienced.

You remember my own case in Lagos, Lagosians who are supposed to be the cream of the Nigerian society, will not even asked questions, to say what happened, how come the man who has a budget that is less than two percent of the state’s budget is the one that the EFCC is running after, what happens to the rest of the budget. When they said that out of six billion naira I have spent seven billion, nobody sat back to say how did this happen and this man is the head of the legislative arm. To remove the Speaker is easier than to even kill a fowl. That his members were trooping out, talking in his favour and supporting him, going to court with him and so on was not enough for Lagosians to know that there is more to this than meet the eye. Infact EFCC did not take me to court for embezzlement or for fraud, but Nigerians are not interested, because we are lumped together, the issue of these bad legislators. The fact that the honourable, the senator are bad, they are the ones that are thieves, yet the budget of the legislative arm is a minute portion of the national budget, but they are the thieves.

*****When Nigeria had independence some 57 years ago, it had so much potentials, so many people believed that this country was going to be great within a short period, but as at today some of its contemporaries in Asia and Europe are countries to be reckoned with, but Nigeria is not, what happened?

We missed our way. We lost the track, like I said, we got it wrong, the orientation went wrong, the things that made our country great in the past we lost them. With the coming of the military the whole thing went upside down, Nigeria started walking on its head with its legs in the sky. I grew up going to primary and secondary school believing like it was sang into us and it sank that indeed there was dignity in labour. When we were in primary school when you get to school in the morning we first sing what they now call nursery rhyme in Yoruba, that you must work hard and there is dignity in labour. But what is happening today, every young man you find around is only interested in making money, but not working to make it, they want to be billionaires overnight. I grew up in an environment where if you finish school you go to Lagos, you go to Ibadan and you come after three or four years in a car, your mother will be the first to start crying, asking what has happened, where did you get a car, how could you have a car at this level, where did you get it. Your mother and father will cry, they will call the clergies around to come and talk to you, but today what is happening, even the children who are in the universities you will see their parents telling them about the problems they have at home and telling a young girl, a girl of 19 or 20 in the university, asking for her support to solve the problem, so what do you expect of such a girl? We have lost our track, we missed the way and until we retrace our steps….