Africa Confidential, August 2010
NIGERIAInterview with Father Matthew Hassan KukahFather Matthew Hassan Kukah is a remarkable Nigerian. A Catholic priest
born in Kaduna State in northern Nigeria and fluent in several Nigerian
languages, he has worked hard to promote understanding across ethnic
and religious fault lines. An idealist in the sense that he wants
Nigeria to be a far better country than it is and that he believes its
peoples have the capacity to take it there, he is also a brutal realist
in his assessments of the country's current political and developmental
state.
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Father Matthew Hassan Kukah is a remarkable Nigerian. A Catholic priest
born in Kaduna State in northern Nigeria and fluent in several Nigerian
languages, he has worked hard to promote understanding across ethnic
and religious fault lines. An idealist in the sense that he wants
Nigeria to be a far better country than it is and that he believes its
peoples have the capacity to take it there, he is also a brutal realist
in his assessments of the country's current political and developmental
state.
In demand by governments and civil society as both a mediator and an
analyst, Father Kukah has worked with a wide range of Nigerians and
foreigners who are trying to address the country's chronic
underdevelopment.
His disinterest in taking up partisan positions in Nigeria and his
drive to bring the country together gives Kukah an important role as
both actor in Nigeria's political dramas and spokesman for those
Nigerian nationalists who have been trying to push the country forward.
Africa Confidential's Oladipo Salimonu interviewed Father Kukah in
London recently about the prospects for political change and economic
reform in the run-up to next year's elections:
AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL:
Professor Attahiru Jega was recently appointed chairman of the
Independent National Election Commission. You were a member of the
National Electoral Reform Commission. What do you think the appointment
means for the work of that commission?
FATHER MATTHEW HASSAN KUKAH: With Jegga you can only run out of
superlatives. He is a fantastic gentleman, a fine scholar, he has paid
his dues and served on quite a few committees: President of ASUU, etc.
His appointment is a departure from what is expected and evidence of
the fact that the president is determined to depart from the bad ways
of the past.
Do you think that
appointment is going to be enough to change elections in Nigeria?
No, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. He comes from
the north and is a Muslim but has great appeal beyond his immediate
constituency. His appointment should inspire confidence. The knock-on
effect of that is that people will appreciate that the government is
serious and that, given Jegga’s antecedents, he will not brook nonsense
and will be clear in what he needs to do. He cannot be considered a
captive to any constituency, religion, region, ideological or
otherwise. You know where he stands when it comes to issues relating to
public behaviour, morality and the minimum standards that the
international community has set for Nigerians.
Out of the work of your
commission, what are some of the things that he needs to do the best
job as chairman? Is he likely to get the support that he needs?
The most important thing is for him to get his hands around the
important issues. He is not a bureaucrat. The biggest challenge I think
will be overcoming the frustrations of bureaucracy but this has also
been taken care of by the fact that our committee recommended that INEC
should be free from the encumbrances of bureaucracy. An independently
funded INEC that is not held hostage by government forces will be the
first victory. The second will be how to navigate an institution that
has great appeal to politicians wishing to compromise it. It depends on
his commissioners and on the technocrats that he has on the ground and
the willingness to move in a different direction. It is impossible for
him to accomplish everything in a short period of time. He should
acknowledge that the resources are too few and the time too short to
organise an election that will really leave an imprint of what his
aspirations might be. He must condition Nigerians to expect the best
that can be achieved in 2011 but look forward to the 2015 elections.
So you think that the
2011 elections are going to be more of the same rather than a clear
departure from the past.
Yes, because the average elected representative in Nigeria simply
doesn’t take prisoners. No governor expects to be governor for only one
term, the same with presidents. The system is such that state
executives and office holders don’t even hide their conviction that
state resources and the apparatus of power can be deployed to achieve
that end. It stretches the imagination if you expect the appointment of
Jegga to have too much of an effect. Perhaps, even more than INEC, the
body that needs repositioning will have to be the forum of governors.
Beyond the presidential elections, every other election hangs on the
governors. The state independent electoral commissions (SIECs), when we
traveled around the country, people expressed dissatisfaction with
SIECs, saying they were just appointed by governors and only did their
bidding. Unless they loosen their hold it will be difficult to have
what you would call free and fair elections, even in the best of
circumstances.
How much of the report
that came out of your commission will be implemented into law?
Even if the president took the entire report and accepted it, the
report is not sacred text. Its legitimacy will have to be tested when
people vote. There will be aspects of human behaviour that that report
will not have been able to predict. But over and above that, it is for
the political class to create an environment in which ordinary
Nigerians can feel enthusiastic. Part of the problem is that there is a
situation in which agents, the politicians themselves, ordinary
Nigerians are complicit. Ordinary citizens are not free. The man who is
prepared to cheat and not pay his bus fare, cheat in an exam,
compromise standards in exchange for money or benefit. None of these
characters can have the moral wherewithal to challenge the outcome of
INEC. What we are doing in our own various areas of engagement, in the
market, the bank, or the church, there is a lot that needs to be done
as individuals in the area of personal discipline. We don’t imagine
that tainted characters who are so in their place of work can arrive at
the polling booth and do something different. This is why I've always
argued that rather than focusing on the failures of electoral
processes, we must see this as a symptom of the greater rot in society.
Every day this corruption is manifesting itself but when we talk of
corruption our attention has tended to focus on money. We expect INEC
to do its job but we must also try to set better standards of conduct
and behaviour for ourselves. In the World Cup it isn’t a question of
what the referee does but how the players choose to conduct themselves.
I believe that we ourselves as citizens need to reposition ourselves
and think seriously of the role each of us has to play in achieving
free and fair elections in Nigeria.
Do you think President
Goodluck Jonathan will run in the 2011 elections?
I don’t know. And I don’t think that the speculation is healthy. I
think it’s unnecessary distraction and it could end up heating up the
system. What you are going to have in the future is that people will
start positioning themselves and if you live in Nigeria long enough you
will learn to be humble in terms of one’s expectation because you don’t
know who’s going to be alive in 2011. I suggest that let’s focus on the
some of the main issues about delivering on some of the fundamentals
that have held our country back and when we get to that bridge we shall
be able to cross it.
Do you think he should
run?
Jonathan cannot run without severe implications for Nigeria. There are
a lot of issues that I think we need to address were he to decide to
run. They include the agreement, the zoning provision, which is purely
a political issue. He will have to find a way of pacifying other
segments of Nigeria within the PDP who are taking that policy as a
given with all these structural deficiencies. I also think that we
haven’t gotten to a point where we can pretend that region, religion,
ethnicity and community don’t matter; tragically they do matter. We
cannot create a vibrant democracy without creating an environment where
everybody feels that their voices matter and everybody feels that they
are part and parcel of that process. Now, it seems to me to be a lot of
work done in that regard and if Jonathan wants to run I don’t see why
not, as a free citizen of Nigeria. But as president he hasn’t really
had to face any challenge yet, so the system has not tested him. We
don’t know what he is made of. Maybe no challenge will come, but, in my
view, I think that it depends on what happens in the next few months.
If ordinary citizens can see results and if he has the right
conversations with the right people and the right segments of this
country then I think that the decision to run will be based on what the
environment dictates.
What are some of the
advantages or disadvantages to his running?
First of all, Jonathan is a member of the PDP. It has its own
arrangement. I believe that in the end what we think will not matter.
What will matter is who the PDP decides it is going to field. If
Jonathan is able to convince sceptics within the PDP that it would be
in their interests for him to run. I think that simply because he is
there now doesn’t necessarily warrant his claim that if he wanted to
run he would win elections. The party has to field him first and if it
doesn’t and he decides he wants to jump to another party, these are
very complicated issues. Nigerians will have to choose between Jonathan
and a range of other people, if the PDP presents him. If they want to
present him that will be their business. But until that happens,
ordinary citizens have very little to choose from. You can only choose
from the presidential candidates that the parties throw at you.
You mentioned earlier
that some other ethnic groups within the PDP might have a say in
whether Jonathan runs or not. Which groups are these and what do you
think their concerns might be?
For example, if you listen to the Igbo, they believe that if you follow
the zoning arrangement, it should be their turn in 2015. As a Nigerian,
I think that these sentiments are legitimate. Secondly, there are those
on the opposite side, the northern political elite who believe that if
you follow through the zoning arrangement you are just completing the
late Yar A’dua’s tenure, and when that tenure is completed, you
(Jonathan) step aside, we will find somebody from among ourselves who
is going to complete that tenure. Now, as I said, it depends on how the
big boys in the PDP negotiate that. I believe that some of those
discussions may be outside the control of Dr Jonathan. So it depends on
how the system plays out. Thirdly you have many Nigerians like you and
me who really couldn’t be bothered where our next president comes from
as long as he is competent. Dr Jonathan has not had the opportunity to
prove that he is competent. We have nothing to show yet. The honeymoon
is still here, policies have not been so clearly articulated. He has a
team, whether that team delivers on some of the promises is another
matter. I am sure that the promises are not different to those made by
Obasanjo or any others made. So in many respects it’s not just about
good declarations but whether you can mobilise the bureaucracy and
other arms of government to support his initiatives. I believe that, if
at the end of all this, Nigerians feel convinced that Jonathan is doing
a good job they cannot make him president unless the PDP presents him
as a candidate. So that’s why I’m saying most of the conversation will
depend on how the party wants to deal with the issue.
Within the leadership of
the party, who do you think are the key decision makers on whether or
not it’s going to be Jonathan who is fielded in 2011?
There is a board of trustees and many people argue that General
Obasanjo who is not very popular among a lot of people from the north.
But also the interesting thing with Obasanjo is that a lot of people
feel strongly about him, a lot of people feel strongly against him. But
either way, the truth is that he is definitely strategically placed
since Goodluck is a product of his own decision. I believe that unless
something happens to that relationship we will have to rely on Obasanjo
to convince the board of trustees. Key will be people like Dr Alex
Ekwueme, an important voice and an Igbo man; Dr Solomon Lar, the first
chairman of the PDP; people like Adamu Ciroma, who is also a very
strong voice in the North. From the point of view of the Governor
Lamido of Jigawa State, Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger state and
Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State, there are a number of
governors that you really need to have in your camp and some very key
political allies outside the PDP, whose voices matter. They include
traditional rulers, they include retired military officers...There are
many very important stakeholders in the process.
Obasanjo has denied that
there is an unwritten agreement to rotate power within the PDP.
I think the important thing is that it is not about reneging when
things seem to be convenient. We need to have the sincerity and in my
view, the way the country stands now, almost everything has been based
on zoning. That is why the PDP insist that the Igbos will lose chairman
of the party. It’s on the basis of that understanding that ministers
and their portfolios, a lot has been done to reflect those
realities. It is within the context of that spirit...after all Dr.
Goodluck Jonathan could have chosen an Igbo man to be his
vice-President or a Yoruba man to be Vice- President...let’s not get
carried away by the sentiment and the expediencies of the moment. I
think this is not a conversation that we should be having so early in
the day. I think that we must allow the political forces, the cultural
forces within the system to play themselves out. But clearly, a lot of
people need to be convinced, including many Nigerians. What is popular
in the media does not necessarily equal political expediency, so
definitely we cannot run Nigeria without serious considerations about a
sense of fairness and justice. It may be convenient to say that zoning
was only a temporary arrangement but let’s not forget that if Goodluck
ran for the elections, he won’t be president forever, this thing could
turn any way. What if it comes back to the north and the north decides
it doesn't want to share power with anybody? So I think we need to
think through the issues more dispassionately rather than just throwing
stones. I fear that we could end up polarising the country, and we
don’t need any of that.
Do you think that zoning
and rotational arrangements are the best way forward for Nigeria? You
have referred to the community you come from as a minor minority, when
would you say the PDP chairmanship be zoned to them?
There’s a difference between being in office and being in power. Some
of these offices are fairly symbolic. If they meant so much northern
Nigeria would not be the poorest part of Nigeria; because northerners
have been in power for over 30 years, literally nonstop. But the north
is still the poorest part of Nigeria. I do not believe that because Dr.
Jonathan is president therefore every Ijaw man necessarily will become
a rich Nigerian. There will still be poor Ijaw people, jobless Ijaw
people, even if Dr. Jonathan were president for 10 years. Beyond the
symbolic gestures, the important thing is the sense of calming frayed
nerves. When you look at a country like Germany in the World Cup and
you see a black man playing for Germany, it does something to you. So,
for me, a lot of these things have symbolic value. And, let’s be clear,
we are still negotiating, we are still moving on that road. We haven't
gotten there yet and it is going to take us a while before we can say
that these things don’t matter. But we see, even in certain
democracies, like America, where we always pretended that these things
don’t matter, without Obama being president there wouldn’t have been
the Tea Party. There are quite a few white people that still cannot
live with the fact that a black man is president. But this is a country
that has for the last 200 years been experimenting with what we are
just trying to experiment with. But let us be fair to ourselves, not
every country has over 400 ethnic groups. The reason why identity
matters in African politics is because schools, hospitals, roads need
to be built, people need to make state money, employment needs to be
provided. Sadly, because we are still unable to design the architecture
that can create a sense of belonging and a sense of wholeness, is why
every public official is like a big village chief; his responsibility
is to his community. Although this is slowing down our march towards
modernization, you must appreciate the fact that there are limitations
from neutralizing identity. This can only happen when some quantum of
modernization has taken place. I mean, here, there is no way that you
can try to run for office by telling anyone in the UK that you are
going to build schools and improve the health service, you might talk
about improvements but you are not going to say that because you are
from Bradford, you are going to become Prime Minister by saying what
you are going to do for the people of Bradford, it doesn’t work like
that. Based on where we are we need to inch our way and you must
appreciate the fact that true leadership will have to emerge before
people can look at themselves in the mirror and appreciate the fact
that there goes my leader. For now, the unfortunate thing is that that
is a reality we have to live with. In a complex society such as ours we
need something that creates a sense of belonging for people. In flashes
of frustration Nigerians got so fed up with the military that when
Abiola ran along with Kingibe—two Muslims—Nigerians couldn’t be
bothered. It didn’t mean that the problems of religion had ended, it
just meant that Nigerians had become so fed up with the military that
they could have put out anybody. Which is why Abacha was clever, when
he came to power, he didn’t allow even a dog or a goat to run along
with him because he knew that the way Nigerians were feeling, even a
dog running against someone in a military uniform might win the
election. Take the two together, you cannot say that these things don’t
matter, we must also be realistic, that we have a complex mosaic and it
is important because this test, its resiliency will depend on a feeling
by everybody that they are adequately reflected.
Moving away from politics
to issues of citizenship, what do you think are some of the issues of
minority groups in Nigeria. Nigeria is often described as a country of
three major tribes. What are some of the grievances of some of the
minority groups in Nigeria that are not being addressed?
There are issues related to a sense of belonging. If you look at the
so-called minorities, you are looking at an imprecise concept, because
the thing about ethnicity is that it doesn’t make much sense. There are
a lot of Igbos who don’t speak Igbo, a lot of Yorubas who don’t speak
Yoruba, a lot of Yorubas who speak better Igbo than Igbos themselves. A
lot of people who make a claim to a particular ethnic identity, but
they don’t speak the language. So there’s a sense in which most of the
conversation is an exercise in hostage-taking. But in reality if you
look at under the military, at an individual level, some of the richest
Nigerians today, especially among retired military officers actually
are from minority groups. Sadly, their wealth has not spread around
because it is all individualistic and sometimes not obtained in the
proper way. But to the extent that a lot of communities feel...because
under the military there was a lot of abuse...local governments were
created...those who were members of the provisional ruling council took
local government headquarters to their villages and projects of
government were diverted to those communities. And so, psychologically,
people began to feel, we don’t have a voice because we don’t have
somebody in power, and we don’t have somebody in power because we are a
minority. So gradually people began to get low self-esteem, but, my
argument is that if you massively create infrastructure and increase
movement and make electricity work, this is how you can blunt the
cutting edge of ethnicity and minorities. The word has become an
explanation for a feeling of what Nigerians call marginalisation and
the sad thing is that once you use ethnicity as a means of defining
that concept you will never escape it. I think it is just another part
of the vocabulary of bad governance which has been seen throughout
Africa.
In one sense that would
mean that we need to lessen the conversation about ethnicity. How do
you align that with the previous point, when politics is based on an
architecture of ethnicity and rotation along ethnic lines?
I consider where we are now as a state of evolution. We have denied
ourselves the energies of our people. Nobody believed six months ago,
that anybody from the Niger Delta or from the Ijaw ethnic group would
produce a president, it was inconceivable. Vice-president is, as they
say in Nigeria, a spare tire. It was assumed that Goodluck Jonathan
would warm the seat until things change. When we spoke about the Ijaw
you spoke about militants and kidnapping, bunkering, the destruction of
the environment. This was it. It was the part of Nigeria that
exemplified all that was wrong with Nigeria. Suddenly we now have a
president who is from the Niger Delta. The point is, the way these
things go, that somebody can come from that background to be president
could also serve as a signal to other people that you know what,
perhaps we are in this game too. You take a state like Kaduna which has
benefited in a collateral sense from this. Our governor moves from
Kaduna to become vice-president and Kaduna state has a governor who is
a Christian, something that never really happened. The northern ruling
class had always treated Kaduna as some sort of sacred Jerusalem that
could not be desecrated. Suddenly, this has come without anybody
raising a hand or casting a vote, in a sense that God designed his own
ballot box and paper and there we are! So for me, and I don't want to
sound too esoteric, but a lot of things are happening in Nigeria, and
the more these things happen, the more everybody begins to feel that
there is a hopeful future for us. The idea of rotation and zoning may
have served its purposes, but it is is still very useful. But while we
are on that road, let us know that the greatest antidote to this
concept is development. People clutch ethnicity because they have
nothing else.
At the swearing-in of
President Jonathan you said that something had happened in Nigeria that
might not happen again for 200 years. What did you mean by this?
I just meant that it was unprecedented. An individual becoming deputy
governor, becoming governor, becoming vice-president, becoming acting
president and now president all within a period of less than six years,
paying no penny and nobody casting a vote for him, this has never
happened anywhere. It was not a statement about Goodluck himself but
more an expression that God is saying something to us in Nigeria;
namely that those who have often thought that you cannot be governor or
president unless you have a godfather or tons of money or have stolen
money, which has driven Nigerian politicians to accumulation.
Corruption is not a necessity for power. If we became more humble and
more circumspect and appreciated that power is not something you can
pray for or capture at all costs. Being such a religious people we
should appreciate that power comes from God and God speaks to us
through ordinary people. Then we can become a bit more relaxed and if I
go out there to contest an election and lose, it is not the end of the
world and we can stop seeing politics as a zero-sum game.
President Jonathan is a
member of the Ijaw community, the fourth biggest in Nigeria, and from a
state that produces about 40% of Nigeria’s revenues. After 50 years of
being excluded, a person of that community is now at the helm of
affairs and he is being asked to step aside after months because of an
an unwritten agreement...
To create the impression that Nigeria owes the Ijaw people is to
misrepresent issues. I don’t think that the presidency is an award to
anybody for good behaviour. The oil is not just being fetched with a
bucket, a lot of people have paid their dues in different way. Without
Nigeria there is no Ijaw oil. The issues are more complicated than
that. To suggest that somebody will become president simply because his
people have suffered is wrong. There is no community that has not
suffered. Dr Jonathan should expect no sympathy if he doesn’t perform.
The steering is in his hands, if he allows himself to go into overdrive
as a result of those kinds of sentiments. The Ijaw people should
support him, as every Nigerian should. He is President of Nigeria and
he just happens to be an Ijaw man. I don't think that every Ijaw person
will necessarily vote for him. The challenge is for him to rise beyond
those limitations and assert himself as president. Symbolically, he is
trying to do that by trying out his agbada, and trying on one Yoruba
cap today and one Hausa cap tomorrow. Those are symbolic gestures; the
important thing is to realize that, like they say of Washington, Abuja
is where boys from the small town come to be big people. He has a
chance and a date with history so we can only expect that he will rise
to the occasion.
What realistically can he
do in the months before the elections that can be of significance?
We are answering questions that nobody is asking. Everyone is focusing
on NEPA and infrastructure and so on. Given the fact that that
institution has become a den of thieves and is now like a mafia, you
are not going to break through that system easily. So he needs to pick
very carefully the battles that he can win and not follow the mistakes
that Obasanjo fell into. People like Bola Ige put their lives on the
line to deal with the problems of NEPA and failed woefully. If you
promise people power in Nigeria and you know the negative forces that
can build against you and you are unable to deliver then you know that
that is what people are going to judge you by. Even if Jonathan were
just to develop the capacity to frame the issues of where and how to
position Nigeria in the next 20 years and framed the questions
correctly and got Nigerians to come to a proper understanding of what
needs to be done. Just a dry skeleton of what this country might look
like. This template would help Nigerians to realise that this is what
we are looking for. We are not going to have some classroom teacher who
wants to be president, or someone without a university degree, this is
what we are looking for. If Nigerians ask the proper questions then
these questions will help them to select the people that they should
entrust their country to. This would not be a small achievement.
Do you see any signs that
he is on the way to doing this?
I don’t know anything about the composition of his team. Maybe he is
running away from the provincial arrangement that undid Yar’Adua, the
so-called cabal that held him hostage. You can’t take away one of the
most exciting things in Obasanjo’s time...Nigerians have a way of not
remembering things. When you knew that El Rufai, Ribadu, Ezekwesili,
Charles Soludo were literally in charge and that we had an economic
blueprint, for good or for bad. The important thing will be for him to
pull together those kind of people, with non-partisan backgrounds that
can help frame the larger issues that he needs to address. There is too
much politicking and too many people holding public office concerned
with running for re-election and with the other things that come with
public office in Nigeria, stealing and appropriation. He has limited
time and he is also a comparative newcomer in government and he needs
to avail himself of all the help that is available. International
conferences, all the hand-shaking with big men may be important things
but they are not going to fix Nigeria. Understanding the nitty-gritty
of where the fault lines are in Nigeria is the most important thing.
Even if Jonathan wants to run in 2011, it will not be a complicated
thing. There are certain fault lines, there are also negatives and
positives about Nigeria, several constituencies that you need to get a
handle of before you can aspire to the presidency. The problem of his
being a newcomer, not having functioned beyond his immediate
environment come into play and undid someone like Yar'Adua. When you
become president you must make new friends and judge them. You award
portfolios and you discover who has the competence. And he doesn’t have
the time to deal with some of those issues. He needs people who are
non-partisan and are not thinking about contracts or about elections.
You have said Nigeria is
under civilian dictatorship, what did you mean and what prospects do
you hold of it changing?
What we've had in Nigeria for the last ten years is more of the same.
The same cowboys who were contractors under the military, people with
military connections, many of these have navigated their way into
power. We ended military rule but we still had a military head of
state. General Buhari still wants to be president, General Babangida
wants to be president, there are many soldiers who want to be
governors, our Senate president is a retired general, etc. These things
have a way of recurring. It is not easy for people who have lived all
their lives in a non-democratic culture to suddenly become democratic.
These are some of the demons Obasanjo had to wrestle with; in many
respects he couldn’t handle opposition as the president in a democracy
should. This was not about being a bad man, but could a leopard just
change his skins, just like that? I made the point that when a country
has gone through a dictatorship what tends to happen is that if you
don't handle the thing well, you get more of the same results. The big
boys of yesterday change their uniform but there is little other
change. This is why in Nigeria you still have people who have been
governors under the military and they are still hanging around power.
Not to take anything away from them, there is a political environment
where money matters and to have been in office is how people
accumulated resources. It is an asymmetrical process in terms of the
process of competition if people feel they can't compete without
resources.
Another commission you
were a member of, the Oputa Panel, was commissioned to investigate
human rights abuses in Nigeria between the first coup in 1966 up until
May 1999, the day before the civilians took over. Why hasn’t the report
been released?
The report is out there, not released officially by government, but it
is in the public domain. I am planning to publish it myself at some
point. My book on the Oputa Panel is coming out this year and it throws
up some of the issues and hopefully we can have more conversation
around the fall-out of the commission itself.
What do you think are
some of the more salient issues?
Nigeria must be very grateful. Beyond the noise, let me put that way,
that is made, we really didn’t do so badly in comparison to others. I
don’t want to be insensitive but when you compare what happened to
other countries, our system never really spilled out of control. Even
when people came with all the bad things that were said about Abacha,
it’s a bit of a pity that he died because if he had been alive to deal
with these things himself, there would have been a totally different
outcome. Even when people came before us on the Oputa panel a lot of
the things that have been in the popular imagination about the things
that Abacha did, when those people were subjected to interrogation, Al
Mustapha became the bad boy, a lot of the people who had cases against
him (Abacha) just couldn’t prove the cases. There was a lot of
exaggeration and people were not as innocent as they proclaimed to be.
The two coups were denied but they were not fantasies. And in fairness
to Abacha, unpopular as it may sound, but these are verifiable facts,
he was the only military head of state to have tried coup plotters and
not to have killed them. Not once, but twice. It’s a pity and it may be
an inconvenient truth but if we were to subject a lot of things about
Abacha to public scrutiny then you would be surprised about what the
outcome would be.
Another commission you
have been a part of is the Shell-Ogoni Reconciliation Commission. What
are some of your lessons from that experience?
It’s been a very humbling experience for me. Just the fact that I have
lasted for five years now and am still there. But I also learned a lot.
Firstly about the possibilities in our country and the human capacity
to be magnanimous. One of the challenges was how to deal with
effectively getting some reconciliation. People have been gracious but
perhaps the biggest achievement has been moving beyond that to the
clean-up in Ogoniland. We are just concluding the technical base lines
study that will enable the cleanup to commence at some point next year.
To that extent it has been a successful exercise. President Yar A’dua
set up an inter-ministerial committee to try and see what we are doing.
The Ministers of Environment and of the Niger Delta and of Petroleum
sit on our committee so our hope is that we can create a template that
can be replicated elsewhere in the Niger Delta. Without sounding
immodest I think we have been quite successful in the assignment.
In 2007, after you were
attacked by a group. You named Ledum Mitee as being behind the attack.
What is your relationship with him today?
We are together in Abuja, I have nothing personal and I don’t think he
has anything personal against me. He has done a lot for his people,
though we have areas of disagreement. The good thing about what
happened was that coming as far as we have come, I am grateful to God
that I feel 100% vindicated. The things that Ledum and others were
saying, I didn’t have a problem with their objections but I said if you
don’t agree or don’t understand then come to the table. We had
disagreements in terms of procedures. I was not appointed by the Ogoni
people but by the President and I didn’t think in conscience I had done
anything untoward. Their accusations against me, spawned by Ledum and
his people, were that I was probably walking on the side of Shell but
as I said I feel vindicated because a lot of the things that were said
were not things that were verifiable. By in large we have no personal
problems. When I write my memoirs about his initiative there are a few
things that I believe that will come up but for now I remain eternally
grateful to God. I have stayed so long on the assignment, my
predecessors were not so lucky.
Do you think Shell has
done what could be expected of it in this commission?
In fairness, Shell has been 100% behind me. I think they also realised
that perhaps I was the last bus leaving town. It was wise for them to
try to find a seat on the bus. The technical baseline study being
undertaken is being paid for by them, though perhaps not out of their
pocket. Like we say in Nigeria, you catch fish out of water and then
cook it with water so it is not a favor they are doing. Shell is
involved in a joint venture, not a charitable organisation. Under
international law they know that they have to pay for the damage that
they have done to the environment. But we have had a good
understanding, I was lucky that I came in at a time when Shell was in
the hands of Nigerians.
Soon after the BP spill
in New Mexico, Shell released documents that said that the spillage
that occurred in the Delta from its operations last year was 100,000
barrels. Does that accord with your understanding?
I have no idea.
The amnesty that was one
of the hallmarks of President Yar A’dua’s time in office seems to be
coming apart at the seams. What do you think are the prospects for
peace in the region?
The media has a way of hyping things up. To put this in context, you
cannot have a bad peace or a good war. Securing peace as Yar A’dua did
was unprecedented and a measure of the man. To literally go down on his
knees and accommodate these people let them come into the villa, and
had conversations with them, even under circumstances a lot of his
lieutenants considered literally unacceptable—let us give him the
appropriate commendation. Next is to appreciate that an environment of
violence or injustice and it spans a long period, when it becomes a
meal ticket and a basis for self enrichment, it is like fighting drugs.
The crisis in the Niger Delta had become a criminal enterprise. You are
dealing with people who a lot of politicians knew but no one had the
courage to approach the subject head-on. You must consider, if you take
this away, what will you offer in return? Yar A’dua didn’t live long
enough to see through the amnesty. Even his ailment served as a
drawback and those kinds of situations don’t want a vacuum. But I think
it overstates the issue when people talk about the amnesty collapsing.
Not everybody involved is occupying the kind of seat they would like so
there will naturally be posturing. These things happen when you have a
protracted war situation and it comes to an end. The assumption of
office by Goodluck Jonathan should, at least symbolically, let the
people of the Niger Delta know that they are in the public sphere. How
they drum and how they dance is up to them. I don’t believe that anyone
can improve this issue better than President Jonathan considering he is
from the area. I think that people should be patient and take politics
away and remember that we are dealing with issues of the survival of
ordinary people.
Earlier you referred to
fault lines that President Jonathan must understand. One of those fault
lines in Nigeria historically has been the issue of religion, most
recently in Jos. Where do you place the Jos violence in your long study
of the interplay of religion, power and politics in Nigeria,
particularly in the north of the country?
The conversation about religion everywhere you turn is quite
complicated. You mustn’t forget that our situation in Nigeria is
peculiar because so many factors are conflated. That religion developed
such a sharp edge is not unconnected to the long period of military
rule, in the same way that, under apartheid, religion achieved that
kind of significance in the lives of people. The way the British dealt
with issues of identity, ethnic, religious and so on, is still being
played out in national politics. Now, if you take Islam, a lot of
people mistakenly consider when you think of Islam it is the same thing
but even in the days of the Jihad, when you read some of the literature
you see the Borno conversation was different from the Katsina or Sokoto
conversations. A lot of that has not changed. You then have the
introduction of other brotherhoods, the Tijanniya, the Izala movement,
and so on. Over and above that is the larger impact of international
Islam with what is going on in Nigeria. There are substantial numbers
of Nigerians who are in sympathy with Saudi Arabia and Iran or Libya.
All these things have implications for domestic politics and for
domestic Islam. People are collecting money from different parts of the
world. Where they build their mosques and who worships in those mosques
has an impact. There is a sense by which Nigeria continues to suffer
what I would call collateral damage from conversation going on
elsewhere. If you fast-forward to Jos, the picture has been slightly
different. Jos became the major outpost for Christianity. Coming from
Southern Nigeria it took 100 years for the missionaries to come to what
is now Plateau state. Catholic missionaries activities are about 100
years in some of the major parts of the Plateau. Subsequently, the
Protestants came. Consequently, Jos became like a buffer zone between
the Caliphate and the rest of central Nigeria. For ordinary Christians
Jos has had the sense of almost being a Mecca. In fairness to the
Plateau, it is one of the most accommodating areas of Nigeria. Ibos,
Yorubas, all kinds of people rose to economic and political prominence.
I think what has happened in Jos, tragic as it is, must be placed in
context. In my view it is a question of the failure of the architecture
of governance and the lack of capacity of those in power to manage
plurality. That is the only way I can put it. Part of this was
triggered by Obasanjo’s misguided declaration of a state of emergency,
once that happened the healing became difficult. If you take Kaduna,
which was more volatile that Plateau, a much more resilient governor,
with greater sensitivity and craftiness in managing differences was
able to get a handle on that issue. Kaduna hasn’t had a crisis of this
nature for more than seven years. It is easy to forget that the
religious leaders themselves have very little to do with this crisis.
What you are dealing with is the failure of law and order and with no
thanks to the media and the inability of Nigerians to understand what
is going on. We are dealing with issues of episodic violence that can
happen anywhere and have very little to do with religion. The situation
in Jos is complex but 90% of it, in my view is due to the inability of
the political class to manage diversity.
What about the issue of
settler and land certificates? How do you see that playing out in that
mix?
In an environment that is as dysfunctional as Nigeria, naturally, a lot
of this comes down to the economics. People in Plateau, as in the rest
of Nigeria, have made wrong choices. Some indigenous people made some
wrong choices and they may not have had their own sons and daughters
rise to prominence. So 30 years ago, a piece of land sold for 100 naira
has taken a completely different turn altogether. You have the same
situation Lagos and in all the major cities in Nigeria. In my view it
all comes down to economics. Why do we say that violence is about
religion? Why is it that the violence never takes place in Victoria
Island or the places where the big boys live? If it is about Muslims
not liking Christians or vice versa but have you ever heard of the
violence taking place in the posh parts of our cities? If you
have the resources you get the land. In my view, the issues we are
dealing with are not about indigenous or settler politics, but rather
about poor people venting their spleen and the politics of relative
privation. The realities are slightly different, for the first time in
the history of Plateau, a man who is a Birom is the governor. There
will be a lot of exuberance, how will this be managed? The same is true
in the Niger Delta when Goodluck Jonathan became President. It depends
how they conduct themselves. People will be excited but it depends on
how you manage that excitement. In my opinion, the situation in Jos
hasn’t been managed properly.
In the rest of the
country, what are some of the things that are going on in religion that
you think are worthy of keeping an eye on?
I think there is great potential. A significant event took place on the
20th of April when the leadership of the Christian association of
Nigeria organised a seminar called ‘Know your Muslim neighbour’. The
Sultan of Sokoto delivered a fascinating speech that attacked the
distortions that are characteristics of the relationship between
politicians and the religious classes. He said clearly that he
condemned the idea of people spending money on cremation, whether
Muslim or Christian. This is the first time that such a serious
statement had ever been made and he made his point eloquently, that
religion needed to distance itself from the state in order to speak to
power. Through that initiative Muslims were able to listen to what
Christians thought about them. Two weeks ago I met the Sultan and after
we spoke I had a call from the secretary general of the Supreme Council
for Islamic Affairs inviting me to a meeting in Kaduna. The first
meeting in the history of this Council that invited Christian leaders.
These developments were unprecedented. I spoke for a few minutes and so
were other Christian leaders. The realisation by religious leaders that
they need to stand away from politics now means that, hopefully, we can
begin to deal with some of the issues on our own before they become
very complicated. Part of the difficulty we have had is that many
politicians of dubious character have used religion to elongate their
personal ambitions. These developments are very positive and I think
that it will be a good way to insulate religion from politics.
One of the peculiar
aspects of Nigeria is that it is almost evenly split between Islam and
Christianity. What are some of the particular challenges that this
split brings?
I was a consultant to the Vatican for 5 years and I tried to make them
understand why problems arise in Nigeria between Christians and Muslims
and not in Gambia or Senegal. In each of those places Muslims are
either majority or an insignificant minority. Nigeria is the only
country in the whole world where you have an almost equal percentage.
This is why I think that we have a very special responsibility to prove
that these religions can live together. Our major drawback has been the
closing of the political space. The opening of this space brings its
own challenges but this is the only part of the world where we have
this interesting challenge. If you consider that Islam predated
Christianity in some parts of Nigeria by 700 years or so, Christianity
has grown enormously and has consequently generated some nervousness
for many Muslims. It has become ubiquitous.
In the South West, which
is one of the regions in Nigeria that is absolutely equally split,
there is a quiet resurgence of Muslim politicians, for instance, with
Bola Tinubu and Raji Fashola prominent politicians. What do you think
of this?
The thing about Yoruba religion is that it is peculiar. The fact that
the Yoruba privilege their culture over and above anything else and
there are nuances in their culture that predispose them to a certain
level of tolerance. They have a belief that the God you are going to
worship is assigned to you at birth. It means that to quarrel with what
religion I practise is to quarrel with the creator. The Yoruba feel
that their culture is pre-eminent to others and they consequently feel
that they are Yoruba first and religion comes second and I think that
this has created the necessary space for people to relax. Why will
anyone worry if Tinubu is governor, or Fashola? I wish we could
replicate that template in other parts of northern Nigeria. I hope that
this resurgence will bring along with it a certain accommodating spirit
that can be learned from by other Muslims and demonstrating that
religion ought not to be an obstacle to closer collaboration.
The resurgence should at least help to demonstrate how policies can be
played. Namely that these differences ought not to be the sources of
conflict. And one of the sad things that is not happening in northern
Islam, which I think they can borrow from the Yorubas, is the lack of
accommodation and toleration that can enable people to marry across
religious divides. When I consider the fact that many Northern Muslims
have married women who were not Muslims and they are living, some
people who have managed to do that, those who are from around the
middle belt but from the point of view of the North, the belief is that
if you marry a woman who is not a Muslim then she should automatically
become one. So I am hopeful that that kind of freshness about what
educated people can do with religion, hopefully can have an impact on
what happens in Northern Nigeria.
How much of that do you
think is a feudal expression as opposed to a religious one?
I think it is actually not religion, you know, I was reading a book by
Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan professor of sociology. She’s done an
excellent little book on Islam and democracy and she actually makes the
case, which I thought was quite fascinating, which was that it is lack
of information, rather than anything else, which has made the Arab
world become what it has become. Similarly, consider the level of
literacy in Northern Nigeria. You can appreciate why people have not
opened up to what their religion really teaches. A lot of culture is
being presented as religion. I don’t think you will find that many
Uruba, educated Muslims who are married to two or three wives. Polygamy
is only prominent part of northern Islam and all that goes with the
level of people’s literacy and their predisposition to culture. So I
think that unless the North opens up and people get a bit of education
and stops fearing education as a corrupting influence, we will not see
the end of violence. The reason why violence remains such as major
feature of religion in Nigeria is that it is not perpetrated by anybody
other than this hoi polloi so to say. There is no history in the whole
story of violence and which, to use a word, Christian, there is not a
single conflict that has been started by what you might call the
members of the Christian community. It is always, and the people who
start these conflicts are not the people I like to call Muslims. I just
call them miscreants, they are layabouts with no education and because
of the closedness of their minds, they just don’t understand that there
is another religion other than Islam.
So for me this is one of the major challenges. Right now we have more
than 50m almajiris who are walking the streets in different cities in
Northern Nigeria. That is a huge number of uneducated people to cope
with. So for me these are some of the major challenges and it is not
something that anybody else other than those who hold power in northern
Nigeria can deal with.
Two questions: First, if
you were a betting man, outside of everything else, who would you say
is going to be the President of Nigeria come 2011?
I don’t know, and I don’t think that anybody should know.
You’ve summed up Nigeria
as being like a Catholic marriage. It may not be happy but it doesn’t
break up. What holds Nigeria together in your view?
Well, that saying is not original to me, it was first said by a man who
is actually a Muslim. I think what holds Nigeria together, and which
unfortunately, is not difficult to find when you are not looking, is
the sheer resilience of it and the fact that whatever else the British
may have done, I think the positives of the Nigerian project outweigh
the minuses. I don’t want to sound esoteric again by talking about
God’s plan and project for Nigeria. But I think that the country in
terms of the sheer amount of energy and the sheer amount of human
material and resources that it has must be a very special project. It
is a pity that we have not had the men and women with enough vision to
rise beyond the dung heap and do something more visionary. But I
believe that the end of military dictatorship and the beginning of
democracy, with all its foibles and so on, should set us on that road.
Internet, a vision, it should hopefully replace all the semi-feudal
structures that have held Nigeria down. When I talk about semi-feudal
I’m not even talking about Northern Nigeria but that virus has now
pervaded the entire political and economic structure. The result then
is that we have imbibed an unbelievable culture of envious celebration,
outright laziness, a culture of waste, which you find manifested in the
endless, dubious, traditional titles that people are taking, endless
awards that are given out to people in an economy and society that is
not working in many respects. For me these are some of the excesses
that hopefully men and women with vision and who appreciate talent can
find a way of eliminating and we can move forward.