Jonathan Has Frittered His Goodwill   

Femi Falana, human rights lawyer and pro-democracy activist, in this interview with General Editor, ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE, takes a look at the goings-on in the socio-political scene and declares that all is not well yet under the Goodluck Jonathan administration

• Femi Falana

Are you not worried that as 2011 elections inch closer, rather than discuss issues, people are discussing zoning. How do you feel about this?
It is not in any way surprising that the leading aspirants in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in their presidential race are concentrating their campaign on zoning and the turn-by-turn formula that Nigeria’s visionless governing class has decided on to perpetuate itself in power. But for me, I blame President Goodluck Jonathan and the media for the confusion in the political horizon. Here was a President who came on board with great amount of goodwill which has been mismanaged completely – having been in power for over nine months without any evidence of good governance in town.
President Jonathan, as a contestant in the presidential race, has nothing else to campaign with other than his place of birth, hence his handlers or the promoters of his campaign are asking Nigerians not to vote for him for his competence, achievements or the ability to deliver the dividends of democracy to Nigeria. They have therefore been forced into the cocoon of zoning. Hence, we are being told that nobody from the South-South zone has ruled Nigeria before and that therefore he should be allowed to take the slot of the South-South. Unfortunately for him, that will not work.
If upon taking over government in Nigeria in November last year, President Jonathan hit the ground running by seriously addressing the crisis in the energy sector, which if properly addressed would have opened up the economy and activated those industries that have closed down – whose warehouses are now being turned into churches all over the country. If the President had devised a mechanism for arresting the increasing wave of corruption in the country by checking the excesses of the legislators in the country and other public officers who have turned Nigeria into a bazaar where everybody is trying to take some things home at the detriment of the majority of Nigerians. If by now, President Goodluck had created an enabling environment for credible elections in Nigeria, if and this is if, Nigeria has been allowed to take her rightful place in the comity of nations, particularly in the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, region, headed by him, Africa Union and in the World, nobody would have dared to challenge him in the PDP. Neither would the opposition have been able to produce a candidate with an alternative programme to challenge good governance in the country.

But having burnt his goodwill, Jonathan has to resort to primordial sentiment to justify non-performance. This is because if you are going out to campaign, what are you going to tell the people? Because, they are not ready for debate as was witnessed in Obama-McCain episode in America. These guys are not going to debate anything and that is why none of them is talking about fixing our roads, fixing our hospitals, revamping the educational sector that now produces 98 per cent failure in the secondary schools. None of them is addressing the unprecedented looting of our treasury. So, what do you expect?
The same goes for the self-styled military president, General Ibrahim Babangida. So, what did you expect from him? Here was a guy who ruled Nigeria for eight years, during which period the economy collapsed on his head. In fact, he reasoned aloud, by asking: ‘Why has the Nigerian economy not collapsed?’ Because, he couldn’t believe. Having regards to the diversion of public wealth going on around him, he couldn’t believe why Nigeria was still surviving. But he did nothing to stop the rot through the World Bank-imposed Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, which he plagiarised and claimed as his own idea. The middle class was completely wiped out of existence and corruption was made the principle of state policy. To crown it all, while corruption was made the directive principle of state policy, from the dedicated account alone, secretly operated in the Central Bank, IBB and the former governor of the CBN, Alhaji A. Ahmed, took out $12.4 billion and can still not explain up till now what happened to the huge fund. There is the Okigbo panel report which government has declared missing. If the sizeable sum of money in that report had reflected in the Federation Account, the value of the naira would not have been destroyed.

But IBB has been claiming that the report did not indict him. What’s your reaction to that?
He can tell that to the Marines! But let’s wait and see whether he’s indicted or not. But on a very serious note, to crown it all, he arrested the development of Nigeria along the democratic line by annulling an election whose presidential ticket was Muslim-Muslim.
Another leader in the zoning agenda is Alhaji Abubakar Atiku who, until the last days of Obasanjo administration, conspired with his principal to engage in the manipulation of the electoral process to an unimaginable proportion. Both of them gave themselves licences to establish private universities. It’s never happened in the history of this part of the world that a sitting president and a sitting vice-president would establish universities, while they deprived the public institutions of funding. Today, no child of the talakawa (the poor) in his region can attend the ABTI University in Yola, neither can any attend Obasanjo’s Bells University. Ask for Babangida’s factory in the North, you can’t find it. With all their wealth, they are not employers of labour. They don’t employ the people whose cause they are now pretending to be championing.
But again as I said, I blame the media. After celebrating Obama as a man of ideas, did Obama stand the chance in America? Four, five years ago, if anybody had predicted that a black man would be the president of America, everybody would have said it was wishful thinking. The Presidential Villa in America was deliberately named the White House to be occupied by the white people. Today, you have a black man in that house. The first lady of America today is darker than the president. That system produced them through sheer force of ideas – about the economy, tax issues, education, the war in Afghanistan, about peace and human rights in the world and the growth of America in changing the face of the world. Having celebrated Obama, the Nigerian media have continued to promote the proponent of zoning and ethnicity.

I have one apprehension here that if this process works out, what about our skewed electoral process through which our votes don’t count?
The whole campaign for electoral reform is aimed at ensuring that the votes of Nigerians count. Like President Jonathan did say in Canada, the choice of Professor Attahiru Jega was unsettling to the ruling party (PDP) but he was chosen by accident. Again, like the President did say, he never knew him (Jega) from Adam, but he was recommended for him that if he wanted a credible elections, if he wanted Nigerians to be respected by the international community, then appoint this fellow and he was so appointed. Nigerians now have a duty to collaborate with him and ensure that the manipulation of the electoral process becomes a thing of the past. Of course, the government lacks the political will to ensure credible elections in the country because those who have taken refuge under zoning would not allow credible elections. If allowed, they would annul the elections. But for me, Nigerians have continued to demonstrate this time around that they are prepared to defend their votes. I am convinced that once we have biometric registration of voters, we would have gone a long way in checkmating electoral fraud.

Are you talking about a review of the register or a new registration?
No, a wholesale registration. Jega is going for wholesale registration of voters. The old fraudulent register had been discredited. We are going for a new one, a biometric system of registration which will, among other things, collect the finger prints of all and sundry which cannot be duplicated. Under this proposed registration, you cannot have Mike Tyson or late Prophet Ayo Babalola appearing in Ondo State or Fela Ransome-Kuti emerging in Anambra State. Once we get over registration, and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, publishes the list of voters all over the country for possible objections, we would be able to weed out all fake and underage voters from the system.

You expressed disappointment that President Jonathan has frittered his goodwill. Is it still possible for him to do something between now and when the elections will take place? In other words, can he still wake up?
Having allowed ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and others who destroyed Nigeria to wield such tremendous influence around him, I can’t see the possibility of him getting it right. I can’t see it.

I was at a forum where a South-South governor complained that after his state established a power plant it was told by the federal government to connect its production to the national grid, because it is on the exclusive list?
You know that’s an old struggle which dates back to 1999 when the Lagos State government attempted to have an independent power supply. But because that battle was not fought, the federal government got away with it. All private companies and individuals acquire generators, why has the federal government not asked them to connect to the national grid? Isn’t that discriminatory? If you are not asking private individuals to connect to the national grid, including big companies, particularly the oil companies that are generating electricity, why must a state government do so? Having funded power from the statutory allocation, for me it is illegal to force me to connect to the national grid and supply other states and share with them electricity we have generated with our own resources. It cannot be justified under our constitution.

But if our lawmakers can do something about that section of the constitution…
Which lawmakers? The federal legislators are essentially in Abuja to take care of themselves. Since 1999, how many bills have they passed into law? About 99 per cent of all the bills that have been passed into law have been fashioned out by the executive. Which legislators? The level of profligacy going on in the national assembly is capable of derailing the democratic process. It is so obscene that in a country where over 70 per cent of the populace live on less than $2 a day, Nigerian legislators, according to Professor Itse Sagay, a renowned professor of law, are the highest paid in the world. What American legislators take is peanuts to what our legislators earn. Between 1999 and the year 2010, about N712.8 billion has been hijacked by the National Assembly for 469 people. That can’t be tolerated for too long in a decent society.
Today, the approved basic salaries and allowances for legislators in the National Assembly is about N15 million, but today, we understand that the President of the Senate goes home with about N250 million, while his deputy takes home about N150 million per annum. American legislators must be jealous of their colleagues in Abuja. This year, N5.8 billion was allocated for foreign travels, while they award to themselves all sorts of unapproved allowances.

It seems nobody can check them…
No, they can be checked because Section 70 of the Constitution provides that the salary and allowance of all legislators shall be determined by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC. What I’ve just discovered is that out of questionable ingenuity, members of the National Assembly foolishly think that the law can be manipulated by adding to what has been prescribed to them by blackmailing the president to allow jumbo allowance through the Appropriation Act passed into law by themselves. Hence, the National Assembly has now taken it upon themselves to rewrite the budget of the country and pass it into law.
In other words, the functions of the President and the RMAFC have been usurped by the National Assembly in order to cleanse and help themselves to the resources of the country. We are going to court in a couple of days to stop this mess, otherwise, if care is not taken, the whole system will collapse once again on our head through sheer insensitivity of this set of people.

What is your view about the tenure extension debate for some governors, especially after the tribunal rulings…
The whole debate and campaign for tenure extension is bunkum. It is illogical to reasoning totally. As far as Section 118 of the Constitution is concerned, no elected official in Nigeria can spend more than four years at a go – maximum of two terms or eight years. It was never contemplated by the constitution that a man who has rigged the election would profit from his fraud, while those who conducted good elections will spend the short time. I don’t understand it.
You know the case of the governors is like a case of three undergraduates in the university: one has a re-sit in one paper out of eight like Governor Segun Oni of Ekiti State. If he reads well and passes the single subject, he moves to the next class with his colleagues.
A student passes his exams, he moves to the next class.
The third one cheated in the examination. Ordinarily, he should have been expelled from the university for gross misconduct, but through appeals from several quarters, he’s allowed to remain a student. If he’s allowed to re-write the exams, he cannot be given double promotion. That’s what we are being told: that in those states where INEC conducted good election and produced winners, the winner will spend the maximum period of four years, while in those states where the court annulled the election on the ground of fraud or manipulation of electoral process, we are being told that these governors will spend six or seven years, contrary to logic and the letter and spirit of the constitution. In one of the states, the Court of Appeal found as a fact that no election took place at all because not a single result of a polling unit was produced in court. The law does not reward fraud. The law does not reward illegality. The law punishes fraud.
I’ve tried to impress it on some of my colleagues that there’s no need causing confusion in town, the law has been settled in this area. When INEC backdated the certificate of return of Governor (Peter) Obi of Anambra State in 2006, I cried foul and I was alone in saying that Governor Obi was entitled to a four-year term because to me, it was unreasonable to allow a man who didn’t win an election to spend three years while the winner will spend one year. Many senior lawyers dismissed my thought. Even Governor Obi at that time said he was not concerned with the four-year term, that he would do with the remainder of the term. But after 14 months, he was impeached and kept out of office for close to 10 months. He was forced to fall back on the interpretation that I had given. Luckily for him, the Supreme Court upheld the position. That then means, once a man takes an oath, his term begins to run.
There is another case in Ekiti State where the Federal High Court has now decided that a governor is entitled to a four-year term in Nigeria and a maximum period of eight years. Even though the case has not gone to the Supreme Court, there is another case that emanated from Anambra State where, as a result of the annulment of election of governors Ngige and Andy Uba, two set of legislators went to court to say, since the election of the governors who proclaimed the House under whom we took our oath of office has been annulled, then the court should direct Governor Obi to swear them in so their own term can also now begin to run. But the Supreme Court said: “What rubbish?’ That the oath performed by those governors whose elections were annulled were not invalidated by the annulment of their elections. Do you get the logic? Notwithstanding that their elections were annulled, all actions taken by them, including your own oath of office, remained valid. After all, Governor Segun Oni, Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa State, Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State, Idris of Kogi State or Wammako of Sokoto State, in their states, nobody has gone to court to say all the laws and bills signed into law by those governors should be set aside because their elections had been annulled. Nobody has said all the salaries and allowances taken by them, including huge security votes and the award of contracts, should be set aside so that the money can be refunded and taken to the treasury. Nobody is saying that. You want to eat your cake and have it? That cannot be the intention of the law. When in the case of Governor (Rasheed) Ladoja against INEC, after his reinstatement by the Supreme Court Ladoja went back to court, having been kept out of office illegally for 11 months, and said, I want my term extended so that I can regain the lost time, the Supreme Court reiterated the point that the term of office is four years but of course, you could take your salaries and allowances for those months. So, the law is settled on the tenure of elected officers in Nigeria.
To contend otherwise is to encourage rigging of elections, so that your election can be annulled; having remained in the office for three years, you start all over. So, you can have a situation where for your two-terms of four years, you can be in office for 12 or 14 years. That will be reading the constitution upside down.

What’s the way forward in terms of the economy?
The Nigerian economy has been badly managed in the last 11 years. The recent revelations credited to the Management of the NNPC which Nigerians have not addressed confirmed the primitive management of the economy.
The new GMD of NNPC, Mr. Austin Oniwon, disclosed that some former Heads of State, at different times directed the NNPC to dish out and dash out various sums of money, totaling N1.5trillion. He also said on one  occasion, one of them (ex-presidents) asked the NNPC to give N18 million to a sugar factory and from my investigations, the sugar factory is located in Swaziland.

From that investigation, who is the owner of the factory?
It’s owned by a private individual. That’s not all. The $20 billion left in the excess crude account in May 2007 by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration has been drawn down to about $640 million as of last week. Nigerians cannot identify what was done with over $19.4 billion in the last three years, the money taken from that single account.
Recently, Exxon Mobil, an oil company, wanted to renew some oil licences acquired over 40 years ago and the government set up a committee headed by a Minister to find out how much the licences should be renewed for. The committee came up with a figure of not less than $2.5bn, the licences were put in the open market and Exxon Mobil was given the right of first choice. Exxon Mobil offered $600million, a Chinese company offered $5bn. In a prodigal manner, the Federal Governor sold or renewed those oil licences for $600mn. In that single transaction, Nigeria lost $4.4bn. A couple of weeks ago, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole disclosed that the $5bn earned by Nigeria in the Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG, has not found its way into the Federation Account.
I have also discovered that over $200bn collected through signatures and bonuses cannot be located in the Federation Account. The same goes for N155bn that accrued from the sales of government parastatals’ properties; N511billion being privatisation proceeds from 2004 to 2007; N119bn being the accrued amount from the Education Tax; or the N263bn collected by government parastatals as revenue in the last 11 years.
Hence, the National Conscience Party has just written a letter to the Senate not to approve the $4.4bn President Jonathan is seeking approval for as a loan. In April this year, the Senate approved a loan of N915mn. If Nigerians do not rise up to stop the mortgaging of the sovereignty of the country once again through loans that will find their ways into the private account of the government officials, then we would be in trouble once again. What you would have expected of a National Assembly that knows its onions is how to investigate our missing funds. These missing funds that I’am talking about belongs, not only to the federal government, but to the local and state governments. Unfortunately, the local and state governments at the end of every month go to Abuja to share crumbs and poverty.
Fifty years after oil was discovered in Nigeria, we still don’t know how much oil we produce. The multinational companies are simply ripping us off. They only declare to us what amount of oil they lifted in Nigeria just by themselves alone. That can only happen in a failed state. The Petroleum Industry Bill, PID, that was designed to plug some of there loopholes and ensure that Nigeria earns much more from crude oil, the oil companies ganged up and conspired with the National Assembly not to pass the bill into law. The economy of Nigeria is being managed presently against the interest of Nigerians. It is managed to enrich multinational companies and their lackeys in government to the detriment of the Nigerian people.