What is your position on the degenerating state of security in the country?

The state of insecurity in the country now is baffling. And in my view, it stems from a whole feeling of injustice that pervades everywhere in the country. People feel alienated. They feel as if the corporate umbrella of Nigeria is not covering them sufficiently. If you have an umbrella and it is raining and you are drenched under the umbrella, at some stage you start asking yourself whether it makes any difference to stay under the umbrella or to walk and be drenched by the rain. After all, under that umbrella, you are still being drenched. That explains, in my view, what the situation is now.

People do not feel as if Nigeria is giving them what they deserve. They believe that there is so much nepotism. They feel that there are first-class and even third-class citizens in the country. They believe that all people are not treated equally and that some people are being favoured over others, and they are not getting their bids.
Unfortunately, this has degenerated into the violence of immense proportions. And behind all these in my view, it starts in almost all cases from the very shrill voice asking for justice. I want justice in this respect; I want justice in this respect; I want justice in this respect. That is ignored. Once that is ignored, then it degenerates to the next level, and possibly violence. And it is through that violence that we are seeing people asking for justice within the federation.

We now have Boko Haram. Boko Haram has pervaded parts of the North-East for a very long time, yet Nigeria has not been able to call a spade, a spade. People are telling themselves that look, these people are Boko Haram. You call some groups, bandits. You call some people, herdsmen. And some people, terrorists. In all these people, everything about them is defined in our laws. They are all terrorists. But we pretend as if we want to give a good name to some of these people.

Impunity reigns in the land and because of that we now have pockets of violence all over the place. The state has gradually lost its monopoly of violence, which is one of the attributes of a state. So, every person is to your tents O Israel. Children are not safe even in classrooms. Parents are withdrawing their kids from school because of fear of being kidnapped. And when you have a country that even security agents have to even pay ransom for the release of their personnel, then you know clearly where we have gone. What happens next depends on how the government of the day responds to all these.

As I said, a state should have the monopoly of violence, which means they are the people who should have arms. They are the people who should confront insurrection when it raises its ugly head anywhere. And if the state sits down and only negotiates and therefore self-enforces the whole issue of terrorism, then we will go there.

If we wake up from our slumber and decide that this is the time that we would confront terrorism anywhere it rears its head; no discrimination as to whatever it is, the citizens would fall in place and then we would be able to rescue our country. Otherwise, we would be like some of these countries-Somalia and some of those areas that private armies take their own territories, guard them and then the central government loses authority.

So you believe that the Nigerian state can still bring the situation under control?

Of course. Why not if there is a will? What people are not seeing is any will from the centre to deal with these issues. Yes, the state can do something. There have been clamours for state police because of this situation. Ultimately, what is the centre doing? You control the army, police, civil defence, navy and the air force. You control all the security agencies. Why is it that you have not been deploying them appropriately? Why is that you are always doing half measures? Why is it that we are not even seeing people being prosecuted for these issues? Any country in the world where you treat crime, and violent crime at that, with kid gloves, it means that the country supports that sort of situation to continue.

But if we sit down and say now is the time to call a spade a spade. Once we see this thing happen, we are going to decisively deal with it. Only then would people take you seriously. People would see that all Nigerians are treated equally. All criminals are treated the same way and punished according.

What are the specific cases of injustice that you said might have propelled this state of insecurity given that most of the acts are more criminal in nature than political?

How did we get to where we are? First, there have been agitations that Nigeria is not satisfying its yearnings for why we should have a government. Under section 14, subsection 2B of the constitution, it says the primary purpose of government is the welfare and security of the people. Now, are people’s welfare taken care of? When people feel that the resources are not evenly distributed and they are in the hands of a minute percentage who are showing wealth disproportionate to their income, then the situations of others are getting worse. Any country that does not distribute their resources equitably, you would find out that those who feel that they are not getting enough, look for means of expropriating such resources to themselves. That is why you hear of crisis diamond and crisis gold.

So in the North-West, for instance, we have heard stories about gold mines that people are looking for some precious solid minerals and they are exploiting them even with their shovels. In the Niger Delta, you heard that people are doing what we call Kpofire, an illegal refinery. If it is something they can use a shovel, you would have seen every person dig their own oil. But because the technology is too sophisticated for local people, what do they do? They cut the pipes and try to harvest those same resources as their own means of also saying that they are not getting these things.

And if you check, these people have been asking for some resources so that they can live. These resources have always been there in the past. But nowadays, people are seeing that this man is being favoured, this one is being favoured. You are seeing people who otherwise you are better trained than them; getting employed; they are getting into politics; they are getting so much money and showing off. And now people start asking, maybe I have gold on my land. So, let me go after it. And once that happens, there will be an arms race around it because they must protect their own territories.

So, some of these nuances are happening. If you go to the Middle-Belt, you would see people feel that they are farmers. But their crops are being grazed by herdsmen. And then there is confrontation and what is the government’s response: it seems as if they favour one side against the other. If you are a farmer and you see cows just ravaging your products. And when you talk, those people shoot you with AK47. Next time you would want to arm yourself with a bow and arrow and respond to that sort of things. So the violence goes. And how many people are being held and all that?

Some of the things we get from the government do not encourage the matter because the government is supposed to stand in a situation that it treats all equally. And that seems not to happen. And so some of these issues are what generate these problems. When it comes to the distribution of infrastructure, how are they distributed? What, for instance, in the Niger Delta have we got as infrastructural development since this government came to town and then you would see that in Niger, we are doing a multimillion-dollar railway. Is it the resources of my land that you are taking to that area? And I believe that once we treat all of us equally, people will start knowing that this country is ours and we can bring coherence within the corporate umbrella of Nigeria.

Do you think restructuring the Nigerian polity can address these issues?

There has been a clamour for that, no doubt. But the state where we are now, what comes first? You can say you want to restructure. But our greatest challenge now in my view is that we should think of a means of first bringing the insecurity in the country to some manageable respect and then we can deal with the issues of restructuring.

Yes, from what we are seeing Nigeria has been operating on a very shaky foundation. The whole idea of a federation is that we want to respond to differences within the country. That is why the founding founders said though tribes and tongues may differ; in brotherhood, we stand. So, we must accommodate our differences in order to build unity.

Now, how have we accommodated that difference? What we see in structure, in the creation of states, it has been just whoever is powerful creates a state or local government for himself. It is not a response to the diversity in this country. What is the diversity in this country are the tribes. So, what is the difference between Imo and Abia? What is the difference between Katsina and Kano or Osun and Ogun? But we create those states so that each of the tribes can get something from the centre. Then, maybe you get a place let’s say Rivers State then you put the Ikwerre, the Ogoni, the Etche. You can put almost 15 different tribes together. That is not how a federation works. A federation is when no matter how small, you should be entitled to the same treatment with another group, no matter how big. That is what we should respond to. We should not respond to whoever is stronger is able to muster the power or the number to rail-road us into creating that.

That is why we have been having that false foundation. And we are not responding to that. So far as we are just sharing money from the centre, then you would be seeing people saying, ‘create me into 20 so that we can get more.’ But that is not what we should be responding to.

Discordant tunes in Edo PDP over sacking of exco members

There has been instability in the judiciary for some time now even after an Executive Order by the President that votes of the judiciary and legislature be given to them directly. Governors seem to be recalcitrant on this. Are governors right or is there something the rest of us do not know?

I don’t know whether this matter is only for states. But that one arm, an important arm of government in a country, has ceased to function for one month plus and the whole polity looks as if nothing is happening is quite baffling and frightening. That today, the judiciary and the courts have been closed and the country does not feel that there is a serious issue at stake. So many people who otherwise should have been free are in detention for over a month. And I had thought this is a matter that should not be allowed to stay for more than a week. But it continues in this sort of situation.

But having said that, I believe that what democracy calls for is a situation where we are able to look at ourselves and tell ourselves the truth that we have to respect each arm. And it is a cooperation between these three arms of government, not antagonism, that would help to bring about what we desire.

I am seeing something mainly on social media that looks like some sort of meeting that is trying to resolve the issue now. Why does it take so long to get these issues so resolved?

There have been mixed reactions about the clean-up of Ogoniland as recommended by the United Nations Environment Programme? The agency responsible for the project has declared that it has concluded the first phase of the exercise and is set for the next. As a major stakeholder, what is your assessment of the initiative?

You and I know that what has been going on is a cover-up, no clean-up. When you pass through that place, a typical one is if you are going to Trailer Park, you would see something there. In your view, is that place polluted? What in this world informed the choice of that location?

So almost all these areas where they say clean-up is taking place, hardly do you see where the locals could say there had been pollution. Some sites they are working on may have been historical, maybe from the pollution that occurred there some 30 years ago and the polluted land on their own may have regenerated. Why is that one the priority whereas there are extant issues that we should deal with so that people can get relief? Why is it that we keep quiet about some of the recommendations that we are purporting to implement?

For instance, the report recommended that $10m should be used to provide alternative employment for those who are involved in artisanal refineries so that you don’t clean and it is being polluted. Why have we ignored all that so that when you clean, you don’t have another opportunity of re-pollution and all that? I believe that the desire to show that we are doing something has taken us away from looking at the life and death situation posed by oil exploitation in these areas. And I think the more that it is seen as a real-life and death situation and not a patronage opportunity, the better.

I thought UNEP should have been involved in the monitoring and oversight of the implementation?

We allowed them. We said we are an independent country; we would do our own thing and all that. So you set up an outfit that is peopled by just politicians and political appointees and they do whatever that is saddening. And that is it.