Nigeria must reduce cost of governance if it intends to see development -Johnson

Ladipo Johnson, a lawyer, is the Lagos State coordinator of the Kwankwasia Movement, the political group of former Kano State governor and now Senator, Rabiu Kwakwanso. In this interview with PATRICK OKOHUE, Johnson speaks on the Nigerian political system and why the nation must reduce cost of governance if it intends to make real progress.

You are the Coordinator of the Kwankwasia movement in Lagos State and recently or not too recently, the PDP where your principal now belongs held its presidential primary and he didn’t eventually get the ticket. But looking at that primary and the primaries of other political parties, how would you rate it?
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) always will have or most times will have orderly primaries.

The one in Port Harcourt wasn’t much different, everything went well or rather I will say most things went well. People would have complaints here and there, but overall, most things went well.

Results came and as good sportsmen, as people who want the governance in this country to improve and want to bring good governance to the masses we will always accept the verdict, and keep working and keep moving on till we achieve good governance for Nigerians.

Looking at other primaries, the APC had a single candidate, but eventually we now have so many presidential candidates, because of proliferation in political parties, how do you look at 2019, with regards to the number of political parties and what is happening across board?
Yes, unfortunately Nigerians are not yet at the level where they play ideological polities.

We tend to move from one party to another, to the extent that you find yourself with old age fellows and you are not coming from the same ideological perspective, but we are hopeful that by 2023 and beyond we will see more parties fusing together where they have common interest and ideologies that it will not be so unwieldy.

But our Constitution guarantees freedom of association and so you cannot stop people from forming associations. Even in countries as the United Kingdom you only know of two or three major parties.

Many other parties, they run based on particular interest. You have parties that run because they believe in the environment, and so on and so forth.

So if you look at the 1980’s to the 1990’s, the social democrats and the liberal democrats came together in the UK and they almost presented the challenge.

They were the third party to the Labour Party and the Conservatives. But then, now again, they are fading out. So, politics is dynamic we are still learning in Nigeria.

So don’t you think that it’s time the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) put structures in place to check the number of political parties, because I wonder what the ballot paper would look like in 2019.
INEC has tried that before and I think there were court cases. So if you want to do that, you are talking about a constitutional amendment and that would take some times.

But it’s something that the National Assembly should look at as well, something they should look at, something the country should look at.

Generally, we have to see how our democracy, our government, National Assembly, Judiciary can be better, cheaper and more effectively run.

We are wasting huge resources on elections, I wonder if they are buying equipments all over again. The figures you hear are mind bugling.

So you wonder whether we are putting things on what we have done before or what we have achieved before or whether we are starting all over again.

Whatever happens, its a duty, it is something that the incoming president and National Assembly must look at. They must look at reducing the cost of our democracy.

In Politics with governance if you are running a recurrent budget of seventy something percent then where lies the money for investment and infrastructure and most importantly in the people of Nigeria.

These are some of the issues that people like myself would try to put out into the space during the 2019 elections.

Either from the background or from wherever I’m standing in those elections, no matter the party, no matter whose ox is gored, we must reduce the cost of governance in this country. It is too expensive and Nigerians are suffering for it

Some people are suggesting that there should be a unicameral legislature, do you think so too as part of reducing cost?
Yes, it’s something that we can look at. I found that the presidential system of government is so expensive for where we are.

Parliamentary system may have been cheaper, but in their wisdom in 1979, they changed it, but these are all things we should look at.

In the midst of that, it must be a holistic approach, because restructuring means different things to different people.

They must define what we mean by restructure and I believe it has to be holistic, it has to be economic, political maybe geographical but, you understand.

But basically, you have to do that so that we can deliver better governance to the people of Nigeria. Nigerians are suffering in the midst of plenty.

You are a lawyer besides being a politician. Now the issue of the president’s certificate is coming up again because in the last election, he claimed that it was with the military, it was said that the military responded, whether that’s true or not, it was neither here nor there. But the point now is he has been in power for over four years and filling the form again he’s still saying the certificate is with the military and swearing for affidavit. Does that clear him, even with WAEC did recently? Is there a provision that you can only submit a sworn affidavit to make claims that may or may not be true? How do we deal with this kind of issue?
It is on INEC having seen that affidavit. And they won’t say they are deaf to what has been going round in the public space, it is on INEC to approach the military at this stage to say we have an affidavit which we believe ordinarily is true, but there is a lot of noise about it.

Please quickly, can you confirm from your records whether this certificate or statement of result or whatever it is, is in your records and can you give us a certified copy of it? That is one.

Two, nothing stops the holder of that certificate from going to the institution and saying please I am in need of a certified true copy. They are not confidential documents. They are not security documents.

I need a certified copy of my certificate or of my statement of result to put this thing to an end.

So both ways, something can be done, something must be done, but for me, it is neither here nor there, yes he’s done some other courses and then so, it’s neither here nor there.

But the question for me is, do the average Nigerian care whether the president has a certificate or not, is the average Nigerian better off than he was in 2015, and the answer is no.

So you are not bothered so much about the certificate is?
I’m not bothered, I feel that the people around me, a lot of people in this country are suffering, poverty is on the increase. And you saw this manifest in two clear elections.

Poverty was used as an advantage by the government in Ekiti, you saw it again in the rerun in Osun. So where you have poverty increasing in the country, it is difficult for people to open their eyes and make a clear choice when it comes to elections.

It will be easy for whoever controls resources to apply undue influence by spending silly amount of money at the polling unit, the average Nigerian is gullible when hungry.

Some people said that this same poverty that you talked about is responsible for the increasing insecurity in the land especially the Northern part of the country, do you agree?
That is hitting the nail on the head, if you have worked and you are relatively happy with your work, if you are in university, polytechnic and you know that reasonably when you graduate in the next six months into the work force, seek for job, seek for employment, get something, it would be difficult for anyone to brain wash you to strap bomb to your body.

The economy is porous. There are many indices that the government is putting out there, so the bottom line for me is that inflation is up.

It may be facing a downward train at the moment but it is up. Unemployment is up; I think it’s about 16 or so percent. Double digits. The economy shed millions of in jobs 2016, 2017.

But this government will always be quick to tell you it’s not their fault.
No responsible government, to quote Raji Fashola partly, when he said no responsible government will fail to handle power in six months.

No responsible government will be giving us the same excuse, three plus years down the line, there were problems that was why people voted for change.

Now what you should be coming out to tell me is that you have done so so much and you believe that in the next four years, you would do this, that and that, but they are not saying that.

They still tell us that someone, some how many years ago caused the problems. But this is it, when that someone caused the problems, inflation was low, employment was higher and the general outlook of the economy was good, the stock exchange was doing better. Investments opportunities were coming out.

But now, we don’t have the feeling good factor and you will understand the system. There is not magic anywhere, it’s hard work. We understand that it takes time for government to turn things around sometimes.

What we are saying is that you’ve had over three years and it doesn’t seem that this ship is turning to face the right direction, so why should I give you four more years?

In economics, we call it sending good money after bad, you get to a certain level, you say this investment is bad, you cut your cost, you turn around, you restructure your company.

Restructure and reposition your business and that is what we have to do to the business of government of Nigeria in 2019.

Well, some people believe that, yes there is a need to refocus and restructure the government, but that the PDP candidate who seem to be the major opponent is not necessarily the best candidate, that there are other candidates that can do better, but that the PDP candidate, who your principal supports by the way, is like saying he’s being in government and he hasn’t really shown much capacity to do the right thing, what do you think?
Well, being a good candidate is not just being good on paper and in theory. We have to have the structure to get you to the market place which is the voting public.

I dare say that in 2015, we had many other candidates that were more intellectually prepared than the current president.

We had more candidates that we felt would stand up and command respect of people and the international community, but for certain reasons, a lot of us decided to go to the market place with President Buhari, we did it based on our belief and there is nothing wrong.

And I always wonder why we insult each other when people have different views. There is nothing wrong with my decision that oh, I voted for you in 2015, I don’t think I can vote for you again in 2019.

But you get people immediately beginning to insult you instead of talking, on the facts and stating that this is what.

So when we now look at former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, there are many people who say that he may not be the messiah but we are not looking for a messiah,

we are facing realities, we are looking for someone from day one, who understands the system on day one, will roll up his sleeves and begin to work for the masses of the country.

I believe that the fact that he was part of the team that saw us from 1999 to 2007 maybe an advantage because if you ignore all the rhetoric’s and look at the facts,

I make hold to say that you probably will not be able to compare the present government with that of President Olusegun Obasanjo at what they both inherited, oil prices.

If Atiku was part of the entire government, then we should know that okay, those good things that he should be able to get us there. Those bad things he should have left, those mistakes, because no government is perfect.

He should have learnt from them, learn from what Goodluck Jonathan did or didn’t do, and also learn from the good things that Buhari has done.

I won’t tell you he hasn’t done any good thing. I’m not that sort of person, but I think that the progress has been too slow for what we have, you understand.

The resources we have, especially the human resources factor I think we have not done as much as we ought to have done. That is my judgment about Buhari’s government, I will not tell you they haven’t done anything, they have done some good things.

You are a Lagosian, and the politics of Lagos just got very interesting, the current governor who in some areas they believe has done or is doing well, some people don’t think so, he has just been dropped from the ticket of the APC, another person has been picked. So that makes 2019 an interesting year to look up to. What’s your view of Lagos politics as it’s playing out?
Well, I think that Lagos for those who have a discerning eye, Lagos will be interesting come 2019, because the two major parties have had crises in their primary season, the PDP, the APC when such happens, a lot would depend on the candidates that are coming out to contest election.

It would depend on the party, how they come together, how they approach the people. But the most important thing in all these is for the people of Lagos.

Lagos is a cosmopolitan state, yes there are indigenes of Lagos, proud to say I’m one, yet, it’s a cosmopolitan state.

And our strength in Lagos is the fact that we are accommodating to a lot of the tribes in this country, and a lot of the tribes in this country contribute positively or have contributed positively to the growth of Lagos.

So, with that in mind, and with the hope that a lot of people of Lagos will come out to cast their votes one way or the other during the coming elections, we may be seeing results that we do not expect, even in Lagos.

But we hope as I said that people would participate and that INEC would be an unbiased umpire.

And that we would get a government in place that would work for the people of Lagos State. When Lagos works, when Lagos sticks, the economy of Nigeria would begin to stick.

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In Politics with governance if you are running a recurrent budget of seventy something percent then where lies the money for investment and infrastructure and most importantly in the people of Nigeria. These are some of the issues that people like myself would try to put out into the space during the 2019 elections. Either from the background or from wherever I’m standing in those elections, no matter the party, no matter whose ox is gored, we must reduce the cost of governance in this country. It is too expensive and Nigerians are suffering for it