Olisa Agbakoba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, is a prominent lawyer and human rights activist and a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association. In this interview with TIMOTHY AGBOR, he expresses disappointments as Nigeria celebrates 61 years of independence and blames poor political leadership for the litany of woes bedeviling the nation. Excerpts:
What have you got to say about Nigeria after 61 years of independence?
I must say we are still on a long route to beginning our journey of discovery, journey of opportunities, economic development, political cohesion; we are still very far on that road. And it always reminds me of the late Chinua Achebe’s famous quote in his book that our challenge in Nigeria is simply lack of proper political leadership and in any musical choir, if the conductor or the orchestra doesn’t know how to conduct, the orchestra will not be good. What we really need in Nigeria and what we are looking out to achieve across the various strata of the society is leadership; without leadership, we cannot really make progress.
What are your disappointments as Nigeria celebrates 61st independence?
I want to express disappointments with some of the strong civil society institutions that would have been able to create a strong relationship between the governors, president and other political leaders, and the governed and assist to make the governors see what they should do right. Take the religious institution, if you take Catholic institution, the Anglican or the Methodist and the Pentecostals, you are talking about almost 50 million Nigerians but I can’t point to anyone who says anything. I can’t point to anyone who talks about economic development. We may have a few but generally, we don’t see the presence of religious leaders in the social life of Nigerians. While we have about 33 million unemployed, and no religious leader is concerned about it. Are you expecting the unemployed ones to gather and confront the government? No, it’s the religious leaders because they have been given certain special powers. People are moved by religious leaders and so they should be seen playing active roles in politics. That’s what liberated some parts of South America. Another one is labour, it has powerful roles to play. How many labour leaders can you say demand accountability from the governors?
The media is also a very strong institution but how many of you guys (media) really take issues, from instance, the issue of corruption, not just writing a story for one day, but how many stay with the story so that it becomes the voice of accountability? So, when all these institutions are weak, then the people are generally weak. You cannot urbanise over 200 million Nigerians, they depend on strong institutions, that’s part of the reasons why our governors feel less concerned. They are obviously not interested in what is going on. Whether there are light, where there are jobs, whether there is food or hunger, they are not interested.
Do you think the 2023 general elections would produce the crop of leaders that would turn things around in the country?
I hope so, but I am not seeing it, because all I see is two strong parties; the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party, and you don’t just hear anything about ideologies and programmes; all you hear is about decamping where someone leaves a party today and jumps to the other tomorrow. There is no clear serious thinking because what happens in a campaign process is that the people aspiring for leadership will show the agenda of what they would do. What can they do on health sector, in education, infrastructure, then it would be clear? If you look back at what Biden (Joe) was saying in his campaign when compared to what Trump (Donald) was saying, it was actually what attracted votes to Biden. So, every leader needs to have an ideology and campaign but here (Nigeria), I don’t see much of that. If there are no programmes that our political leaders desire to sell to us to win our votes and yet we vote for them. In other words, we vote for them without extracting from them any promises. So, when they go in, they are less likely to do anything for us because the best time to hold them accountable is when they are campaigning. Somebody comes to me and said he wants to be the chairman of my local government, and I will ask him how he intends to clean the refuse that I always see in my house. But if the person didn’t come and goes on to win and then there won’t be room to hold him accountable. So, there is no relationship between the governors and the governed. The governors, by governors, I mean from the president right down, do not feel accountable at all and that’s why we are in this very low state of development. That’s the problem and how that can be broken remains Nigeria’s central challenge.
Some have clamoured for constitutional amendment as solution to Nigeria’s sorry state, do you also see reasons with them?
No. Constitution is made by the people and many countries do without constitution. The United Kingdom doesn’t even have a constitution. This whole joke about if you amend the constitution, it will be the saving grace for Nigeria, is not quite true. It’s not true because right now, even the good aspects of the constitution that we have are being followed by very few governors. They don’t follow it. So, rule of law, democratic principles are not necessarily part of our political culture. So, amending the constitution, for me, is not as important as our political leaders understanding that they have a responsibility to the people that elected them. I think that’s the most important thing. Our politicians should understand that they have a responsibility, whether the constitution gives them any power or not, they will do it. Of course, a good constitution will assist in good governance but a good constitution with bad political leaders will not solve anything because the bad political leaders will not follow it. The constitution is a dead document, it has no life. It is given life by the people, so, if the people who should give it life are not doing anything, the constitution won’t be effective.
“What we really need in Nigeria and what we are looking out to achieve across the various strata of the society is leadership; without leadership, we cannot really make progress”
With these raging secession agitations in the country, do you see Nigeria better together or divided?
We are better together. Every strong, big country has an advantage. 200 million Nigerians in this massive land mass is a very important endowment. The problem is that we have not been able to manage how we can stay together due to the selfishness of the political leadership, our president and governors. It’s their selfishness that makes us feel divided. I was born in the North and I have so many friends in the North and I don’t see them in the way political leaders speak of them and vice versa. So, our problem is how political leaders use our differences to divide us. They label you an Igbo man, Yoruba man but among ourselves, we don’t feel we are different but when it comes to politics, then that difference is highlighted because these political leaders gain from our division and that’s the problem. So, I will rather be in a big country as Nigeria but hope we can have a political leader that can really make Nigeria better. Nigeria is a very blessed country. We have all kinds of mineral resources that are not being harnessed. We have the capacity to make Nigeria one of the most industrialised countries in a matter of four years if we have the right leadership to push that agenda but we don’t.
Do you think the dreams of Nigeria’s founding fathers have been wasted or not realised?
I think we are yet to get there and what I think we need to do is for major stakeholders to be involved in making our political leaders accountable.
Is there hope for Nigeria and do you think we would have a crop of leadership that we ever desired?
I don’t know because I am not a prophet who can prophesy about what will happen. But I hope we will not be in this dire and difficult situation for long because it doesn’t help to have the type of poverty we have in Northern Nigeria and it’s the poverty in Northern Nigeria that helps to drive Boko Haram because if people were gainfully employed, nobody will be employed by Boko Haram. Boko Haram is able to recruit because of the issue of poverty and if every Nigerian had access of basic economic tools, then clearly, we will not be in that kind of position and wherever that leader will come out from is a big question. I don’t have an answer to that.
