We didn’t bargain for this type of democracy —Falae

Before the president set up the Okurounmu committee, your group had always led the campaign for a conference. Given the mixed feelings triggered by the recommendations, do you still see the conference as a solution to the core problems facing the country?
There is no alternative to the conference. What is the conference? It is that we will all come together and firstly discuss the problem, the way you understand it, the way I understand it. We will also discourse your role in creating the problem and my role. Then in the course of this dialogue, certain misgivings will be cleared; certain erroneous impression will be corrected. Certain truths will be told and then, it will be time to engage each other, because it must be clear to all of us that except we all agree; there can be no country; there can be no stability. You can’t force me to forget my interest. Neither can I force you to forget your own interest, so it will do on us that
we need to accommodate one another. To live in the same country and live in peace, we must understand this. This is because we value our living together; we don’t want it to break. That is why you have to make concessions; I will have to shift a little and we agree on something out of the conference. I have no doubt in my mind that something positive will come out of the conference if it is properly led and managed because no matter how strongly, I feel I cannot impose my views on other people. If they remain adamant of my perception of the problem, I can’t take a stick and flog them; I don’t feed them and they too don’t feed me. So, the only way out is to listen carefully to one another and see what we have in common and what the differences are. Nobody can go there and expect to get 100 per cent of what he is asking for but, I believe that the consensus that will emerge will be far better than the situation we now have. What we now have is not a federal Constitution; it is a quasi, unitary constitution. In my book, The Way Forward for Nigeria, I cited a number of unitary provisions like the one which says the Attorney General of the Federation, acting on behalf of the Federal Government, can at any time during the trial of a case, enter a noli prosecui and set the person free, whether such person has been accused of an offence against a federal law, state law or by-law, even during a military regime, that ever happened when the military had power over every echelon of the society. I believe [late General Sani] Abacha put it there to enable him control the lives of all Nigerians. That is a denial of the federal principle, which says in a federation, there are hierarchies of government: federal, the state, local and that each government is supreme within the power granted it in the Constitution. But for the Federal Government to come and invade the territory of a state that is trying a criminal, it will be a denial of federal principle. There are many of such provisions or the one that denies state the power to have its own police force. What separates or distinguishes government from any other societal organisation is that a government, by definition, has the power to make laws and the power to enforce them by his own authority. The moment a group can make law and can only enforce it by a borrowed authority, that organisation is not a government. So to call a state, a government is a misuse of the word. States are not; they may be administration but they are not government because they lack that defining authority to make law and enforce them by their own authority. So, denying the state the power to enforce their own law is denying the federal principle.  Even when the British were here, there were three levels of policing, the Nigeria Police, the Native Authority Police and the regional police came later but, when we became independent, we scrapped the other two and left the Federal Police. When you ask why, they said in those days, the native police were oppressing people. But I do ask, now that the Federal Government has the monopoly of police power, did they not oppress us during the National Democratic Coalition [NADECO] era? Was I not dragged into detention for doing nothing wrong? The monopoly of policing does not guarantee Nigerians against arbitrary arrests. There are many people in detention today, in police custody that should not there. That is an abuse. The monopoly of policing does not guarantee that the citizens will have better perception.

But, considering the various political crises confronting the country, will you still support the call for state police?
I have just said that when we were a colony, we were allowed to have local authority police, regional police and federal police. Have we become less matured since 1960? Before independence, if you wanted to play politics, you formed your party without any guideline from anybody; you will file your symbol with the electoral body so that nobody else could use it and cause confusion on an election day. That was the only registration. Today, if you want to form a party, you become a parastatal. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will tell you that you must have offices all over the place that your executive must reflect federal character; you must have your primaries at this time and end it at specified time. You cannot do this, you cannot do that; this is no democracy. We were far free as a colony than what we have today, the fight for democracy must start now and i think that a conference will be the place to start it. I am the national chairman of Social Democratic Party (SDP). We are tight and hook. We cannot campaign now until they say go. When they say stop, you stop. Things were not like this. We were freer under the British. Under them, we were more federal, as every region had its own police authority and there was no clash between the federal and the regional or native police. But, because this generation has known only one police force, we think that going to a lower level will make matter worse.

You said we should begin to fight for democracy. As a leading figure in the pro-democracy battle that culminated in military exit from political about 15 years ago, are saying what Nigeria has now is not the type of democracy of your dream?
Of course not! I didn’t go to detention for two years for this, not at all and part of the tragedy is that those of us who are ready to make sacrifice for democracy were just brushed aside when democracy came. That is the tragedy of Nigeria not now alone; it has always been. When we were in detention and others were in exile, those who were collaborating with the military were the ones stealing public funds and accumulating huge funds. When politics came, they were able to buy their way. So, those of us who knew what we were fighting for are not on the throne in government today. Barring a few examples here and there, the overwhelming majority of those who govern today were not part of the struggle. Many of them were in hiding; some of them were collaborating with the military until those who genuinely believed in democracy suffered for it and are ready to suffer for it again. Nobody who fought for democracy along us will tolerate a situation where an electoral body tells you who should be your national secretary or who should be your treasurer. During the colonial period when all such things were left to the party, common sense taught the political leaders that if they wanted support across the country, they must get leaders across the land. I don’t have to be told by the INEC; it makes sense for me to have people in my party from all over Nigeria, so that I can have support in those areas. But to now reduce us to the level of parastatal is a huge devaluation.

Then having made so much sacrifice so that Nigeria could have genuine democracy, do you have any regret?
I have no regret fighting for democracy. I’m very sad that people have made a mess of what we fought for. But, the answer is to go back to the barricade and fight for genuine democracy. That was why I said this conference must hold and on the floor of the conference, we will battle again for the soul of democracy. It was the military that set up the INEC and gave it an overwhelming power because, the military by their training and their instinct, don’t like a situation where they are not in control of everything. If they are not in control of anything, they see it as a potential threat. That was why they set up an INEC that has power over everybody. The commission regulates the political parties to the minutest detail and these are parties that will produce the governors and the president that will rule Nigeria and civil servants are the ones treating them like parastatals [political parties]. It is a contradiction. You don’t treat your leaders like that; leaders must lead and no leader will go to his village and pick his national executive. Of course, if he does so, he will get zero in other areas during elections. In any case, it is not every party that should want to win power. What do I mean, a political party is a body of men who come together to advance a cause. Part of its objectives may be to ‘capture’ power, so that it can use it to change the society. It may be the objective of a political party, for example, to fight for a clean environment; they may want a platform, where they can continually canvass for a cleaner environment like the Green Party. The INEC said they want to deregister some parties because they didn’t win any election but the Constitution of the country says every Nigerian shall be free to associate politically and form party. There is no proviso that provides they win election and it is a well known legal dictum that the Constitution, being the supreme law, any right it confers on the people cannot be reduced by any lower body. That’s why the Supreme Court has ruled that the INEC has no power to deregister parties because they didn’t win election; that the purpose of forming a political party is not always winning election. It may be formed to keep an issue alive. The point I’m making is that these are areas where our democracy has been shackled and rendered useless.

Nigeria is 100 years old this year. How far has it been able to live to the dreams of its founding fathers?
I will be fair here. First, my parents were not Nigerians. My father was born in 1897, that is, 17 years before Nigeria was manufactured by Lord Lugard and they [my parents] gave birth to me. Am I really a Nigerian if my parents were not? According to our Constitution, one takes on the nationality of the parents. My parents were not Nigerians and at no point were they asked to sign on Nigerian citizenship. On a more serious note, i think being forced into the same administrations by Lugard has done some good; it has given Nigeria a sense of its own importance: a very large country with a lot of resources. It has also thrown up the contradiction in the system and the latter, in my view, has prevented the emergence of the Nigerian citizens who is passionately patriotic. Today, it is as if when a person is appointed into a federal position, his objective is to go there and steal as much money as he or she can and take it back to his own people and share it among them. In other words, Nigeria is like a beautiful girl, who is being raped by all and sundry, who no longer believes in anybody because she has become skeptical, disillusioned. So, it is difficult for any group of leaders to persuade Nigerians that they are genuine and sincere. This is the situation, very pathetic. When I was going to school in 1940s and 1950s, I only read of certain diseases in a book called Evans Hygiene. Such diseases had become extinct. But today, they are back with us, meaning that as far as public health is concerned, we have been going backward to where we left those diseases. All my days in secondary school and in the university, there was no day I turned on the tap and there was no water. There was no day we could not have preparatory class [prep] in secondary school because there was no light. Other countries in Africa are improving; they are marching ahead, we seem to be going round and backward. The educational system, that is the most pathetic, as I know of graduates who cannot write a correct sentence without having two or three errors. I pray for those, who are struggling to be president and governors. I don’t know what they can do under the present situation because if they do what needs to be done, none of them will win a second term end. Nigerians seems to be desperate about second term. When I was running for president in 1999, I had decided that if I won the election or if they allowed my victory to stay, I would not seek a second term. I told only two people, my wife and one other person because I was going to do my job. By the time I finished my four years, nobody would want me again. Don’t forget I was a product of the bureaucracy; I was going to block all the channels of corruption and stopping them alone can cause problem.