•Dr. Yemi Farounbi
Nigeria’s former Ambassador to the Philippines and senior citizen, Dr. Yemi Farounbi, in this interview, speaks on a number of national issues, reports Saturday Tribune.
Excerpts:
The National Assembly of Nigeria has been in the news lately for not too pleasant reasons. How do these pieces of news come to you?
It is shocking, it is embarrassing, and it is disgraceful. It is disgraceful because Senate anywhere in the world represents things of freedom, things of prestige and things of those you can call statesmen. Those in Senate are expected to have gone beyond political partisanship, ethnic affiliation or such frivolities. So, when you see what our National Assembly, particularly the Senate, is doing, how else can one view it if it is not with disappointment?
But the Senate has been resolute in the defence of their various actions which have attracted comments as yours. Are you satisfied with what you are hearing from them as defence?
Absolutely not! Take the defence they put up in the case of Natasha, for instance, and also look at the defence they put up in the case of the state of emergency in Rivers State where they had a voice vote like the House of Representatives where two thirds majority vote is required. Also, look at the recent case involving Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and a senator that exhibited act of immaturity. How do you explain these acts of immaturity? How do you explain that a senate that is supposed to be making laws for the stability of the nation or be making laws for the improvement of the lot of the people in terms of economic growth and economic development will have so much time for these trivialities? For me, it is an indication of the poverty that has been in our political recruitment system. It is an indication that sometimes, those people we elevate to the high status of our National Assembly are perhaps not better than just councillors. This makes me sad because they haven’t given the impression that they understand what they have done wrong. They only give the impression that they believe that they are so supreme; they are so superior and that they cannot be wrong. And that is unfortunate.
You also said members of the House of Representatives should be arrested and prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for the festival allowances they said they had received. Why did you make this kind of call since they have exhibited transparency?
There was a circular issued last year by the Central Bank. It says that Naira is the only official legal tender in Nigeria and that schools or universities that are asking for fees in dollars are contravening our laws and committing criminal acts. The circular ended by saying that anybody who finds anybody using any other currency as legal tender (other than the Naira in Nigeria) should report to the EFCC so that the EFCC can prosecute such persons. Now that members of our own House of Representatives have admitted that they were given Ramadan allowance (gifts) of $5,000 in a country where the legal tender is the Naira, and in compliance with that circular, I believe the EFCC ought to invite them, investigate and prosecute them. This is because the lawmakers are not above the law.
Do you see the EFCC doing this?
In the Nigeria that we are, they won’t do it. The EFCC will not do it because it is a class society where you have different laws for different classes of people. The laws for prosecuting people who are spraying money, who are not members of the All Progressives Congress (APC); that law that absolves the people as soon as they join the party line; and the law for the common if he is dancing and is said to desecrate the Naira by spraying money, he will be taken to court. What the members of the National Assembly have done is worse than those who are dancing and spraying the naira. They have completely abandoned the naira, they have abandoned it as a worthless legal tender and they have opted for the legal tender of another country. It is worse than the people spraying the naira. Maybe there will be another set of laws for them. That is the society which we are and that is why we are not moving towards the development which we deserve, because those who should kick-start and work to earn it are the ones who are breaking the law with impunity and who get away from investigation and prosecution, which is sad. It is very sad.
How do we then begin to wriggle out of all these? Should we begin by looking at our political recruitment processes… can we do that?
Yes, we can if we decide to but the truth is that we won’t. First, it is the political parties that sponsor candidates. You will expect that a political party is a voluntary association of people who share the same ideals and goals. A political party should also be governed by common goals of ethics, integrity, good neighbourliness, reliability and things like that so that when they select a candidate you are almost sure that, in terms of moral rectitude, that candidate should be okay. Howbeit, we have seen in Nigeria a clear case of Rivers State that has just happened, where an accountant-general that didn’t belong to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who probably didn’t have a PDP card, became the party’s candidate and became a governor. There are several instances of powerful human beings imposing on us through the political parties. So if the political parties don’t do the appropriate thing, sometimes it might be difficult for the electorate to know what to do because of, as we all know, the level of poverty and political illiteracy. We also all know that in Nigeria, voting sometimes has nothing to do with character; it doesn’t have to do with your capacity, capability and so on. It doesn’t have to do with your aptitude. Sometimes, it just has to do with who is your godfather or how much money you have in the bank. So, votes are bought. They are purchased by those who have the money who, most times, like Dr. Mbadiwe said, “I’ve acquired this money through legitimate and illegitimate sources.” So, unless the political parties really exist we will make no headway. And you and I know that they don’t exist, and that is why a man can be APC in the morning, in the afternoon he can be in the PDP and in the evening he can be in SDP because none of the parties has ideological orientation. They don’t have moral compass they use in selecting candidates.
I don’t see a sharp break in the process that we are using to recruit our candidates. When the elections come next year or so, what we had done in the past would be done again. And this is unfortunate.
The continued closure of local government secretariats in your native Osun State as a result of dispute between political parties has not gone down well with some people in the state. How do you feel about this development?
I feel so bad. We keep on saying that the local government is the nearest to the people, you can say that the local government is the people’s government. The state is high up there and Abuja is so distant from them. Now, the local government secretariats are shut. Why? Because the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) said they would not work because they are in sympathy with the governor and his party. Two things are involved in this matter: once you submit yourself to the adjudication of the court, you ought to really abide by the ruling of the court. If for any reason you are dissatisfied, then you proceed to the higher court. It would appear that the APC is relying on the ruling of the Court of Appeal in Akure. It will appear that the Court of Appeal said that Federal High Court that disbanded APC elected council chairmen and so on had no jurisdiction at all. If that is the position of the Court of Appeal, then there has been no decision at all to dissolve them.
The PDP has a right to disagree with that and they could have done two things in my view: They could have gone to that Court of Appeal and ask for a ‘stay of execution’ of that judgement and they could have then proceeded to the Supreme Court, which is a higher appellate court over the Court of Appeal, even though they conducted their own election. Unfortunately for all of us in this country, the Supreme Court has ruled that local governments are autonomous even though they haven’t been able to fully or even partially implement the judgement. In my view, I would have said if the Court of Appeal said they should not be there, it then means that the election they conducted was illegitimate. But everyone is relying on their own interpretation and this makes me sad. Why are these politicians putting a burden on the course of justice? Why don’t we just do the right thing and simply comply with simple laws and obey them?
Other countries practise democracy, do we see them go to court because of almost every political decision? You do councillorship election you go to court; you do chairmanship you go to court; state assembly, state governor, national assembly and all are, in the end decided by the court. So, sometimes, you now have court-imposed legislators and executives. It no longer matters the wishes of the people and the voting apparatus. So, technically, the court can impose you even when the party has just done the election. Because of technical error, you are declared the way Rotimi Amaechi became governor while Celestine Omehia was the one who campaigned. Why must we politicians drive ourselves to that level? It is the height of political immaturity.
All the political parties in the country are about the same but there seems to be varying degrees to this political immaturity you have talked about. Which one among them is fair or which is the worst in mischief?
All of them… they are all in the same boat. Look at the PDP before now: removal of national chairman, removal and rotation of senate presidents then and all kinds of things. They now leave PDP to go and join APC and now, APC has learnt all those bad behaviours from PDP. So they are doing it because we are recycling the same people.
