Ayo Obe is a legal practitioner with 40 years of practice in her bag. The name also rings a bell in the civil society circle. She is well informed about issues vocal with her views. In this interview with Assistant Editor, CHINWE MADUAGWU, she says “democracy gives you the right to choose those who will govern, but if you choose a government that’s not delivering, that’s your choice.
TNE: Where do you stand on restructuring?
I’m not one of those who pander to the restructuring idea. The Vice President made a very good comment on that in his response to Atiku. I think the issue of restructuring means different things to different people. If I speak to my friends from the South East, it absolutely means we should have the same numbers of states as every other geo-political zone. And when I ask them how many states do the Idoma have? They have no answer. We can’t all have the same number of states. And the fact is, as we were shown by the June 12 incident, we are all minorities in this country. Nobody can do everything by themselves or by their own ethnic group. You have to make alliances and if you can’t make alliances, even if you have seven ministers rather than six or six ministers rather than five, you won’t succeed. That to me is a problem but I understand that that’s what it means to my friends from the South East.
To my partner here at work, Chief Shonibare, who is a leading member of Afenifere, restructuring means that we should have regions. Again, I’ve said I’m not a big believer in regions because we already have our geo-political zones. They are not cast in stones but now you want to introduce regions as a level of government, which one are you going to dispense with because I can assure you, nobody is going anywhere. I’ve always said to him, the most you can hope for is that maybe at the federal level instead of having a bicameral legislature, House and Senate, we may get rid of one of them, probably, the Senate. But beyond that, what you are doing is that you’re putting between the states and the federal government another costly layer of government; because let’s look at the states that have been created, how many of them have said I’m only going to have three ministries or I’m only going to have three special assistants? They replicate in all its wastefulness everything they see at the federal level and it’s worse because there’s even less scrutiny and opposition at the state level than there is at the federal level. So that is a problem. It’s going to be costly and then, if you just created this tier of government and you don’t address the issue of what are the respective powers of the federal government and whether it is the regions or the states, you must adjust and the money that goes with it must be adjusted. One can adjust the exclusive legislative list and remove some of the powers of the federal government and the money that goes with it, why do you need to insert regions? Why can’t states exercise those powers and be autonomous as they are. Already in this part of the world, you have the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria, the states that want to cooperate are cooperating and they’ve set up machinery and all of that without an expensive level of government.
In the South South, you have it, in the South East, you have it also. You have it in other zones maybe not the same level of integration but nobody is stopping anybody from doing it such that you can operate as a region if you can. At the same time, if you as Lagos state wants to reach an agreement with Kebbi state, that we are planting rice and when it’s Christmas or Ileya you bring us the rice, you can have that alliance. You can go into partnership and corporation with any state that you choose. That to me is a plus with the current system.
Now look at the regions, it means you are locked into a geo ethnic kind pf straightjacket. If it happens that you are not on all four with the people in Osun state, you are stuck with them. Worse, we all know how our states have treated local governments. We know what local governments have become under the hands of states governments. In most cases, the opposition hardly gets a smell at all. What is the guarantee that if the regions are as strong as those who advocate for them want that states would not dwindle into the same kind of thing. I think we should remember that history repeats itself; first time as tragedy, second time as farce and in Nigeria, we keep on repeating it and hankering back to the good old days. Those good old days when we had regions, we didn’t have states. It’s a different ball game now and the question is, is there something a state should be able to do that it can not do because it is not a region? I don’t see it. So I don’t buy into the restructuring talk that’s why I say the Vice President was spot on when he talked about geographical restructuring.
TNE: And what’s your take on State Police?
I chaired the Civil Society Panel on Police reform and we recommended State Police but we said there’s already a big mistake about the Nigeria Police Force at the federal level in the sense that the President not only has control of policy, he also has operational control over the Nigeria Police Force and that’ is a problem. In the early days of Obasanjo’s administration, Segun Osoba had a problem in Ogun State and he called on the Police chief, but the man said he had to get clearance from his oga at a the top, from the President before he can respond. So that’s the problem. The Police should have operational control of the Police. The Inspector-General should have operational control of the Police. But what many state governors want is to have the same power as the President. They too want to have the same power to say arrest this one and that one.
We said correct that mistake first. If you are going to establish state police, it can not be on the same terms. That’s important to me. When we use terms loosely like restructuring and state police and so on, we need to be very clear about what we are saying. For me, state police is something that is very doable, it’s important, it should be supported, there is a but, and by the way, we are still at the point of trying to amend the 1948 Police Act. So we have a long way to go.
TNE: Recently, the President said that National Security should supersede the Rule of Law, is that right?
I think, first of all, the President fortunately has since clarified what he said and he has recognised that the rule of law takes account of national security. So if there is an issue, you can go to court. Where the problem is, is when orders of court are made and you don’t obey them, you don’t go and make your case in court, you just disobey. That is not honouring the rule of law and that can never be excused. It just can’t. You shouldn’t have gone to court. In a democracy that we strive to become, you must obey the courts. That’s one aspect of it. To me, that’s the simple legal fact of it.
READ ALSO: SPECIAL INTERVIEW: Nigerians are Responsible for Failure of Governments – Ayo Obe (Part 1)
Then there’s the moral aspect of it because when you don’t air your matter in court, you just lock people away as we saw with the journalist who was recently released it’s wrong.When the previous administration locked up hundreds on the excuse that they were Boko Haram suspects, they were just kept in jail, they were not taken to court, they were not even kept pursuant to court order. They were just locked up. Fortunately, the current administration organised series of trials in barracks. High court judges streamed them, those whom they felt should go for trial were tried so that people now knew that they were in for a period. So the moral aspect of it is that it’s just wrong to lock people up or to extra judicially execute them and feel that you are standing on a firm foundation. But then the worst thing about it is that in practical terms, it doesn’t work. You remember there was a time when Boko Haram was just a sect who had withdrawn from public life. They said that everybody was corrupt. They were confined to what they were doing. Then they got into problem with the police and there was argument between them and the police. Their leader kept on being arrested. He would be taken to court, the police would not bother to put up any useful case against him. And then he was captured by the army, and this is against the backdrop of the fact that the police have been doing what they have been doing, the people said produce our people and let’s talk. They could not produce the people. That was deciding not to abide by the rule of law but by the rule of self help. What was the impact of that? Boko Haram now felt they had to learn to defend themselves and the went to Somalia to take lessons from Al shabab. They came back worse than they were and what did our leaders do? They took their leader and killed him. Did that solve the problem? It did not.
There was a time when MASSOB was the big story in the South East. I remember when we went to bury Chima Ubani, they were very adamant that we shouldn’t cover his coffin with the Nigerian flag. So there was a time they wanted to do ordinary football match, police invaded and scattered them. What was the result of that? We now had IPOB. So when you think you would deprive people of their right which the law guarantees them, freedom of association, and you keep on adopting this ‘we can crush, we will crush and succeed,’ I don’t see where that has worked. I’m a big believer of enlightened self interest. If you can’t do it because it is the right thing, if you can’t do it because it’s the lawful thing, at least do the thing that works. That’s my view on that.
TNE: How do you see women’s participation in Nigerian politics?
It happens that a couple of weeks ago I was reviewing the book written by Prof. Remi Sonaiya about her run for the presidency in 2015 when she was the only woman who was running for president. This year there are many more women who are running for president. I think it’s difficult at this stage to get beyond the fact that there are women running for president because at the end of the day, it’s really irrelevant that you are a woman running for president. What are you going to do when you become president, what are your plans, what are your expectations? I know this is a common theme in Nigerian politics; just vote for a good person and everything would will be fine, but I don’t believe in that. When I was reviewing Prof. Sonaiya’s book, I made a point of saying so. You can’t just be telling me everything that’s wrong in Nigeria. We know what’s wrong. We know that things are wrong. I want to know what you’re going to do. I want to know what are your policies, what are your programmes. If you say you are going to spend more on education, how much more, what percentage of the budget are you going to devote to it and from where are you going to remove the money in order to spend and how are you going to spend it. I want practicalities. I don’t want to hear the problem is bad, a good person will solve it. We remember Dr. Oby Ezekwesili when she was minister of Education. She was a good person in government but when she said wanted to make some changes especially concerning unity schools, she couldn’t. It was a big lesson for her. I’m always interested in what are the policies you are running on and what specific things do you want to achieve. The important thing is that the women are taking the courage to come out and the more that happens the better. It’s not that I will vote for you because you are a woman, but if all other things are equal, I may be more inclined to vote for you because you are a woman and I want to see the normalisation of women in politics rather than these elderly men.
You know when people say they are running for president, they go to a series of generals and announce themselves. Which woman have they gone to, to say I’m running for president support me. I would like to see some of that too.
TNE: Do you think women should be given concession in politics? Do you think certain positions should be left for women to fill?
Well I observed elections in Kenya the year before last and they have certain seats that only women can run for in any province so that they are guaranteed a certain number, but that didn’t mean that women who did not get the nomination for those special seats could not also come through the ordinary system and many of them did. We don’t have that here and I have not seen any political party that has taken the bold step of saying we are going to reserve some of the seats that are being contested. The big hurdle in Nigerian politics is, it is one thing to say you are appointing women to fill 35% of offices or that the gender imbalance should not be more than 35% but when it is a matter of people being elected, then it is harder to achieve that. We don’t have proportional representation as they have in South Africa where you vote for a party slate and so on. I mention this because these are ways we can address the issue but since 2019 is round the corner, that’s not going to happen. But for this election, is anybody campaigning on the platform of this is one of the changes I’m going to make?
There is a kind of a wave of more women coming out, though to me running for president is one thing but there are lots of other offices women are running for and I think also that it is not only by running or being in a political party that you take part of the political process.
TNE: Women constitute about 49% of the population, yet when a woman vies for an elective office she doesn’t get that many votes. Are women their worst enemies as some people would suggest?
I don’t answer such questions because I don’t believe in it. I won’t simply vote for a woman because she is a woman. You have to come out with your policies. But I’ve said that all other things being equal I’m more likely to vote for a woman and if it is a slate of candidates I have not bothered to inform myself about, equally, I’m more likely to vote for the woman than for the man. If I don’t know anything about the men, I might as well not know anything about the woman.
I think it is patronising to say women are their worst enemies. When people use that expression basically what they are saying is ‘ don’t think about any thing else, don’t think about issues, just look at the person, she is a woman and if you can’t do that, it means you are her enemy, because you are asking her to come up with policies and procedures.