Executive Director of Civil Liberty Organisation (CLO), Ibuchukwu Ezike, gives a damning description of Nigeria in this interview with Linus Aleke. He said instead of giving N8,000 as palliatives to 12 million Nigerians as earlier proposed, the Federal Government should fix all the refineries in the country, adding that it is a better palliative that the conditional cash transfer
Why did it take CLO this long before raising these issues of bad governance, corruption, and impunity in government?
That is not correct, even during President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, we were not silent. It was during that period that the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) invaded our office at Allen Avenue in Lagos and sealed it. We went to court and got a favourable decision for the police to vacate our premises, as well as return all the stolen documents, because they searched our office and took everything, our files, computers, and every other thing. The court ruled that they should also pay us N25m- that was in 2010. As we speak, the police have persistently refused to obey the order of the court. We wrote to the National Assembly, and the Presidency and spoke to all the power brokers in this country and nothing came out of it. To date, the CLO office is still sealed, so, we cannot relate with the donor agencies because the files are with the police. The funds they gave that we could not retire and all that, because we don’t have the documents to do all those things. So, how can we work? Without money, we cannot do anything, and that was the basic reason why we could not do anything. Sometimes, we speak out against the government’s unpopular policies, just as we did today. But Nigerians are also not coming forth to support this kind of advocacy that we are championing.
Does refusal to obey the decision of the court by a law enforcement agency in Nigeria not amount to lawlessness?
Nigeria is not only a lawless country, we are a banana society. There is nothing good about the leadership of Nigeria. God has given Nigeria every good thing on earth. He blessed Nigeria with both human and material resources but the problem is how to manage these resources for the betterment and happiness of Nigerians. Since 1999, we have not had a good government. We have said that Nigeria is a lawless country time without numbers. Therefore, we are just reiterating what we had said earlier. Nigeria is a lawless and corrupt country. We are alarmed that the people who destroyed this country are regrouping under the guise of ‘Class of 99’, to work with the incumbent President.
What is your view on the current price hike of the pump price of petrol because Nigerians are still trying to adjust to the hardship occasioned by the removal of subsidy by President Tinubu?
When you say government, is it the government that has the interest of the people at heart or the government that want to kill the people for their selfish and unbridled interest? So, it is not the people’s government. If someone wants to be a President and the person has no single policy that is pro-people, how do you think that the person will positively affect the lives of the people when he assumes office? Where will you hold Tinubu now, what did he tell you that he was coming to do during his campaign? The judicial officers in the country should be very careful. This is so because the threat of the Nigerian people will be worse than that of the President. If the judiciary yield to the threat of the president, what the Nigerian people will do would be worse. APC did not come to power with favourable policy and that is why they are not interested in the welfare of the people. If you die, it is not their business, if you don’t have a shelter over your head, it does not bother APC, if you don’t have food to eat, APC doesn’t give a dam, if you don’t have shoes, they care less and if your children do not go to school, it does not concern APC government.
What is your opinion on the government’s earlier approval of N8,000 for 12 million households to assuage the suffering occasioned by the removal of subsidy?
Nigerians are not beggars. So, my thought is that this kind of palliative is just a subtle way of assaulting or slapping the faces of Nigerians by the government of the day. It is quite insulting if the government has made the society uncomfortable for the people and it said, it is giving them N8,000, what is N8,000? If you enter a good restaurant now, that N8,000 will not follow you out of the restaurant. Will it buy drugs for a family of say four or five, if any of them took ill, can it pay for transportation of kids to and from school in one week? So, it is baseless. What the government ought to do after removing the subsidy, was to put measures in place to reduce the suffering the people are confronted with daily because of the removal of the subsidy?
Why do you think the government is slow in revamping moribund refineries or even building new ones?
When you take this product out of Nigeria, you pay for the transportation, when you are bringing it back, you pay for another transportation, then you pay for the cost of refining. When you aggregate all these costs together, it will increase the pump price of petroleum products. So, they are making more money, is it, not their cronies that are moving the crude out of the country, and is it not the same set of people that still import the refined product into the country? This subsidy we are talking about is being paid to Nigerians directly, it is those that are working for them that the so-called subsidy is being paid to on behalf of Nigerians. So, that is the reason why they are uninterested in fixing the moribund refineries or building new one. If they address the challenge by fixing the refineries, the money will not come to them again.
Is the killings of innocent citizens across theatres of operations, despite troop deployment, not an indication that the military and other security agencies are overwhelmed?
There are allegations of foreigners, particularly the Chinese, secretly mining mineral resources in Nigeria, is Nigerian authority complicit in this illegal mining?
Everything about running a government in this country is a conspiracy. Conspiracy of the elite, conspiracy of the political class, stealing the resources of this country through various means. Can you go to China and do a thing like that? Can you go to any part of Europe and do it? Can you go to America and do it? Without the conspiracy of the elite and the rulers of this country you cannot, so, 90 percent of the evil done in this country is done with the knowledge and approval of the rulers of this country, whether at the local or sub-national level.
What in your opinion is the way forward for Nigeria?
The way forward is what we have started doing. We are also calling on Nigerians to come together to support the Civil Liberty Organization to stop the ongoing impunity and recklessness in government. There are too many resources in Nigeria, the problem is just how to manage it to create additional wealth and employment for the people. Agriculture alone can resolve the problem of this country. I am from the southeast, I was in Turkey in 2013, and an 87 years old Malaysian woman came to me because she heard that I was a Nigerian. She asked what part of Nigeria I came from and I told her that I am from the eastern part of Nigeria. She told me that it was Nigerians that came to teach them how to plant palm trees in the 60s. The success story of the palm tree planting in the 60s was that her country became the largest palm oil produce exporter in the world, until recently when Indonesia took over from them. So, what is the success story of that for Nigeria considering what M.I Okpara did in the then eastern region? Do we still have it, all the cashews and plan plantations, have all died because of lack of attention. That was what gave the resources, upon which the University of Nigeria Nsukka was built. Today, all those things have taken fight because we now have people who come to power with a mindset to steal, rather than improve the living standard of those they are leading, and create employment for them. Do you know how much employment a farm settlement will create for the population? Where do we have farm settlements in Nigeria today, including the eastern region? The problem is that if we have credible persons in power with a good programme, the country will move forward. We are even attacking Tinubu, but the question is, does Tinubu has any programme at all that he promised Nigerian he would accomplish as a president? It was only Peter Obi who was telling Nigerians that if he becomes president, he would do so, so and so, and that was why Nigerians supported him.
