Without referendum added to the constitution all ongoing agitations will fail –Adeyeye

Ajibayo Adeyeye, a medical doctor is the immediate past Majority Leader of the Lagos State House of Assembly. A blunt politician and social critic he speaks to issues as he sees them without the regular colouring of a politician. In this interview with PATRICK OKOHUE he speaks on the ongoing agitation for restructuring, the Biafra threat, local government elections in Lagos State among other issues.

*****There seem to be so much crisis in the system at present, calls for restructuring, secession and all sorts, now some are saying if the government refuses to embrace restructuring at this time it may be forced to embrace secession, what is your view of the present development?
First and foremost, I want to say, Nigerians asking for restructuring are asking for it for different reasons. What restructuring means to somebody like me from Ondo State and has practiced politics in Lagos is different from what it means to an Hausa man, it’s different from what it means to an Igbo man. We first must agree on the definition of restructuring. We all must be on the same page on what we actually mean by restructuring, are we saying the same thing, when we agree that we are saying the same thing, then we can decide on whether we can restructure.

Now, to be specific, to a Lagosaian, restructuring will mean re-writing or amending the constitution to right what the average man on the street perceive as injustice.

For instance, Lagos and Kano was put on the same pedestal, had 20 local governments long ago, perhaps when Nigeria was still 19 states, and today Jigawa has been carved out of Kano and Jigawa has 27 local governments and Kano has 44, a total of 71 local governments from the old Kano State and all these local governments are listed among the 774 local governments in the constitution, whereas old Lagos State still has 20 of the local governments and resources are distributed based on the number of local governments.

How do you want the average Lagosian to believe that there is no injustice done to them in Lagos. So, if you say restructuring and a politician or a Lagosian is talking about it, that might be what he is talking about, because clearly there is injustice in that, Kano is collecting money now from the 774 in 71 places and Lagos is still collecting 20.

Again, restructuring to a Lagosian may mean that we are collecting VAT, because VAT is part of the Federal income that all of us go to FAAC to go and share, now you come to Lagos, you go to the seaport, all the trailers in Nigeria come there to pick containers, damage our roads and nothing in particular is allocated to Lagos from the entire VAT that is shared to remedy the situation and the people of the Niger Delta are shouting resource control, is there no need for the control of the resource coming out of the ports or can you carry the water from Apapa to somewhere else, so Lagos deserves to benefit from that. That to an average Lagosian may mean restructuring.

Restructuring to an average Lagosian may mean that look, Lagos is a former federal capital and that is a lot of burden that the Lagos State government has to carry because of that, there is no family in Nigeria that does not have a representative in Lagos and Lagos has to cater for all these people, so restructuring to an average Lagosian maybe let Lagos have a special status order than the status of just a state.

Now, if you go to our Arewa brothers, restructuring might mean you can no longer look at security as a thing of per state, there is no war going on in Lagos, there is no war going on in Oyo, Ogun or other Southern states, so, if there are 10 Policemen in Nigeria, please bring seven to Maiduguri where there is war, if there are 10 Soldiers in Nigeria, bring eight to Maiduguri, close down the barracks in other places and let them come and resume in Maiduguri, that might be what they understand as restructuring, because that is where their problems lies.

Restructuring to them might mean any yam coming out of Benue and coming down South per yam you must pay certain amount, because this is where we grow the yam, so we must put specific tax on it before the yam crosses over to your side, that is some kind of restructuring.

To the Igbo man, he might say look since independence we have only had Nnamdi Azikiwe as figure head president, we have not really had a president and commander in chief that we will use the power of a president, restructuring is let us ensure that an Igbo man is president in 2019, we can go on and on as to what the meaning of restructuring is.

The man in Niger Delta will tell you restructuring to me means, this oil that is our God given right, let us be in charge of it, let the Federal Government say how much they want as royalty and we will send it to them, they want to use their money to help us develop the oil we agree, we will be paying you royalty for that, but we will control our oil, that might be restructuring to them and they look all these we have been doing together all these years it is not paying off.

All the money is shared by all the states of the Federation and our environment continually degrades, our farms destroyed, our fishes are no longer surviving because of oil, this is what we understand as restructuring. So, if you actually look at it, all over the nation, restructuring means different things to different ethnic groups, to different tribes, to different states of the Federation, so, we must first of all sit down and discuss, what do we mean by restructuring. That is one, two when you now talk about restructuring, why do we want to restructure? The only reason that will be common to all of them is the situation we are right now is not paying us, we are not happy with it, irrespective of how or what definition you give to restructuring, the situation is that you are not happy with your present position and you want a new position.

Now, were we happy with the position before now? Only the various regions can also answer that, but if I look at it, I probably will say we probably were better off during the regional government, because a situation where you are repairing roads in Lagos and the person supervising that job resides in Abuja, it is not acceptable and it is affecting the quality of work and the way things are being done, it is affecting everything about it, because whoever is supposed to supervise it is not close by, but that was not the case in the time of the regional government, in the West for instance, everything was controlled from Ibadan and Ibadan is almost central to everywhere in the West of Nigeria. If you also look at it from the point of view of the cost of governance, the cost of governance has multiplied by 100 since the time of regional government. During the regional government, they probably had maybe 10 commissioners supervising the whole of the Western region, now maybe every state has 20 each at least, commissioners and Special Advisers, now the work that was done by about 10 people is now being done by about 200 people and all these 200 people you have to service all their offices one after the other. Changing that structure also means some kind of restructuring.

At the Federal level we have 109 senators, 360 House of Representatives members, do we need a bi-cameral legislature? The drafters of our constitution thought it wise to just copy the American constitution and composition as it was without looking at our capability to fund that kind of system. Now, restructuring can mean saying, look gentlemen we can only afford one of this legislative houses. So, on restructuring we can go on and on, but the most important thing in these is that irrespective of how somebody decides to look at restructuring, you must look at it from the standpoint of ensuring that it does not affect the corporate existence of our country, because we have gone so deep into one another that severing the country now might mean a lot of crisis and we might never get out of it, but nothing absolutely will be wrong to discuss our corporate existence as Nigerians.

*******But some people are saying that the 2014 Confab addressed all these issues and maybe it should be given to the National Assembly to look at and maybe adjust where need be, but the government seem not ready to look at that report, do you think it is a wise thing?

Well, everybody talking about Confab, about report here and there and other things, they forget that we are not operating military system, we are operating a democracy and that means we must work with the structure of democracy that is in place, except we want a military government to erase the constitution or suspend the constitution, suspend all the structures of government and now handpick those that will sit down and do this discussion.

As it is now, the reality is that we have elected representatives and all of us took part in electing them and the 2014 conference you are refereeing to was supposed to be subjected to a scrutiny by the National Assembly who are the elected representatives and they were supposed to use that while amending the constitution, but that did not happen. What I think can happen now if we don’t want the autocratic way of getting to where we are going.

The autocratic way is for a military man to take over, erase all the structures and now say all the Obas and chiefs nominate people from your tribes to come and discuss, because that will be possible if there was no constitution, if there were no elected representatives. Now, either those talking about it like it or not, the reality is that there is a National Assembly in place, there are states houses of Assembly in place and nobody can feel justified to represent the people order that these people, because they were elected. Either they bought their ways to National Assembly, either by crook or anyhow, they are the recognised representatives of the people and we must do all these things through them, that is the way I want to see it.

Now, if we want to do it through them, we can use the 2014 Confab report as a template for the National Assembly to discuss and come up with what seem to be workable material as a basis for our corporate existence as different tribes, different small nations, as different people that have come together to live as a country.

But, doing this outside the National Assembly I believe will be very difficult and even, another trap is that if you do it through the representatives, I am yet to see any human being that will preside over a cut in his own allowance or a cut in his own salary, it is going to be extremely difficult for anybody to preside over his own wage cut or to say my office is no longer relevant we need to cancel it, that is going to be difficult, can you ask our House of Representatives to sit down and decide that we no longer need a federal House of Representatives. That is not going to happen, but you and I know that one of our problems is the outrageous cost of governance occasioned by the number of legislators we have and the number of the executives. During the days of the parliamentary system of government, the members of the cabinet were chosen from the legislature, so that there will be no need to have legislators separately and also have executive separately and the country is funding the two. So, it is the grace of God that will allow the Rep or the Senate to outlaw themselves out of existence, I don’t know how that is going to happen.

*******From your point of view the country is in a serious dilemma?
We are, there is no doubt about it, because I do not see a situation where you are going to get our elected representatives to outlaw their own existence , I don’t see how that is going to happen, but that is part of the things that must be discussed. But, a way out of all these is to get the legislature, to persuade them, to insert the provision of referendum in our constitution, as it is today that provision is not there.

So, people talking about referendum are just wasting time, because there is no legal framework that will allow a referendum take place, it is not known to our constitution, but the moment we succeed in inputting referendum in our constitution then we can throw the question back to the people, Nigerians do you want uni-cameral or bi-cameral legislature? We vote on it is yes or no, it is counted, the result will decide whether we have a House of Reps or we have a Senate. How much do you want your legislators to earn, we vote, count the vote and we agree, except that is inputted in our constitution, I am afraid we might be at a cross road.

*******Do you think it I will be easy to get the legislators to add that in the constitution?
That is not difficult

*******Considering the fact that they know it will be a back door of dealing with them?
Well, except they are not sincere, there are several things for which we will need referendum, one of it is what we spoke about, then we are talking of state police, resource control, we are talking about so many things that we need referendum for, but unfortunately the drafters of our constitution omitted that as another level of engagement of the people, now let us put it there, we go back to the people and let the people decide what actually they want.

Then the leaders of every group in Nigeria can go and talk to their people and educate them, like look we want resource control, anytime they come with it in referendum vote yes for it and once they vote yes for it, resource control we have. But, until we have that I don’t see any of these things succeeding. If Buhari like let him sit in Aso Rock and appoint all the wise men in Nigeria, Professors, Imams and what have you, put them in a confab, whatever they say there must be subjected to scrutiny by the National Assembly and whatever the National Assembly decides for it to have any effect must be imputed in our constitution. For you to amend even a coma in our constitution there is a process to it, two third of all houses of Assembly in Nigeria must agree to it.

So, restructuring is not as simple as people are talking about it, you cannot do anything. Even when you sit down in a conference, let the President agree, let all the National Assembly members agree, they still cannot effect whatever they agree except they do it by constitutional amendment and one of the process is that two third of the houses of Assembly in Nigeria must vote yes to it before it can pass, so you will agree with me that it is not an exercise as simple as a lot of people are talking about it.

******So, the easiest way is to first inputs referendum in the constitution?
Yes, and then we now list all our sore points and start voting on them one by one.

******So, there is even no way a referendum can be conducted for the people of the South East now to ask them if they want to go, without first inputting it in the constitution, is that what you are saying?
No, the constitution is the supreme law, any law, any act anywhere within the walls of Nigeria that is against the constitution is null and void to the extent of its inconsistency, we will be wasting our time, if you like put all the wise men in Nigeria and say they should go and discuss Nigeria, whatever they come up with must be inputted in the constitution, if it’s not inputted in the constitution you can’t effect it. These are problems I feel we really need to find a way out of and it is not difficult if the leadership of the National Assembly and the Leadership of the executive are sincere, it can be achieved within three months. We don’t need to discuss anything, just inputs the processes of a referendum in the constitution and by next year the government will list all the issues and send it back to the people for vote, we vote on it and that is it, we will know how each region voted, because the result will be made public. You will even write it there, do you want leave or do you want to remain in Nigeria? It will be decided, if you don’t want to be part of Nigeria, the whole of Nigeria will know that Ondo State people said they don’t want to be part of Nigeria, you leave and then let them go their way, if they can survive alone so be it and if along the line they so wish again that we can no longer survive alone and come back again and discuss whether we want to accept you back or not, so, I don’t really think we need to worry ourselves about anything in Nigeria, the only thing we need to be worried about is to input a referendum in our constitution.

*******Your party, the APC seem to be losing it, look at the way they lost a senatorial election to the PDP in Osun State because of lack of due process, when somebody that was not cleared by the screening committee and the appeal committee was cleared from above, in Lagos look at the crisis that the party primary for the local government election generated due to imposition and some people are saying this kind of impunity is what brought the PDP to where it is today, what is your take on all of these?
You see, when people talk about imposition I tend not to want to understand what they mean, because in my own judgement imposition has been, it is and might continue to be, this is because imposition is not just that you went to write down the names of a candidate, imposition can mean manipulating the process of selecting that candidate, imposition can also mean that you own the structure of the party so you determine who becomes the candidate, even though that candidate is not popular among the people, so I don’t want to discuss imposition because it depends on who is talking about it, that is when you can determine whether the particular situation is imposition or not.

Now, in the case of Osun, the reality is that I won’t say that I am very surprised that we lost election in Osun, my own reason is different. The same reason that gave APC victory in Ono probably gave APC the loss in Osun. What do I mean? The two states are similar in composition and structure, the structure in Ondo State is that it is a civil service state, Osun State is also largely a civil service state. At the time of election in Ondo State, the government of the day, the PDP government was owing the civil servants about seven months in areas of salary and I do know that that the government in Osun too is owing some areas of salary, not out of any fault of the government, because I have been part of the electoral process in the state, I was there to campaign for the second term election of the governor, I know how popular he was amongst the people, but not out of his own fault, all of a sudden the resources of the state started dwindling, but the people do not understand that it is not the fault of the APC or the fault of Gov Aregbesola that salaries are not being paid, but they will avenge their anger on the party that is in position, not because of the popularity of Adeleke, who knows Adeleke that is contesting election, what has he done before.

*****Are you saying if Adeleke had been on the ticket of the APC that he would not have won?
He won’t win, that is the reality, who knows him, what has he done to deserve popularity among his people.

*******Perhaps because of sentiment for his late brother
Is he the same person as his brother? He is not, he has never been part of politics before, I don’t know what he has done, I cannot remember hi m being a commissioner or being a local government chairman or being a councilor or being anything, he just came and said he wants senate, he is only benefitting from the sentiments of the moment which is that the people are aggrieved, they have not been paid their salaries for some tome so, they are avenging their anger on the state governor and the party that is in control, so, even if he had contested on the platform of the APC I don’t see him winning.