‘We need a real people’s constitution’

Babafemi Badejo, a lawyer and seasoned multilateral diplomat, is an expert in peace operation and arbitration. He was a senior adviser to two former presidents and Senior Adviser to the Court of a Prime Minister. He retired from the United Nations (UN) after 24 years of service. He was Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Chief of Staff, UN Peace Operations and Head of Political Affairs at many UN Missions. Before his UN years, he taught at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and the University of California, Los Angeles. Badejo is now a consultant for the African Union (AU) on disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness. In this interview with JOSEPH JIBUEZE, he speaks on restructuring, corruption, leadership, judiciary, rule of law, 2019 elections, insurgency, foreign policy and lawyers’ role in tackling corruption.

What is your position on calls for restructuring?

Restructuring is being talked about  in a way  that  is a little bit unclear as to what people mean. It means different things to different people. Perhaps the clearest articulation might have been by Chief Olu Falae, who more or less said: ‘Return us to the Republican Constitution’. The problem is whether we can go back that easily. It involves a lot of discussions as to constitutional changes that are necessary. But it’s possible to have fiscal federalism in which, like in many federations, a number of responsibilities are given to the states. I also think that restructuring may not really be the main problem facing the country. None of the 36 states and the centre is corruption free. The main thing to focus on is corruption. If you can show a state among the 36 that is corruption free, then I can say, maybe, if you have more resources in the hands of the states, the lot of the people would be by far better.

Do you agree with calls to revert to regional governments with autonomous constitutions to make the centre less attractive?

It’s reasonable to consider every argument that is put on the table. We had four regions before the military intervened. Now, the complexities of the country resulted in 12 states, now 36. So, if we’re going back to the regions, it should be provided that we’re not going to be talking about states under the geo-political zones. We’re not thinking about the problem of rulership in this country. In many other countries, people are much more focused on governance and what they get out of it. We need to consider what it will cost to maintain a geo-political region and states under it. You are going to have increased cost of governance by creating four levels of government – central, regional, state and local government. It’s too much. I think that our focus should be on how to minimise the cost of governance and ensure that the money that is distributed is appropriately spent. Yes, you can use fiscal federalism to reduce what is in the hands of the Federal Government and its  responsibilities provided a set of potentates are not stealing the increase at other levels. There is no doubt military rule resulted in a situation where we became more centrist. But we need to address the question of quality of leadership and corruption before talking of going back to what we had before.

Should there be a return to parliamentary system of government?

That is a good question that you have posed. But for me, the issue is not about whether it is parliamentary or presidential or monarchy, because we have gone through a number of them. The same problems have been identified with them. We have a situation in which we see people who see governance as their birthright – to receive from the people and not give service to them. Whether we go back to parliamentary system of government or retain the presidential system, it is the overall leadership arrangement that we need to change. The successes that we had under the regional governments were situational. Sometimes I ask myself: If you wake Awolowo up and ask him to take charge of Nigeria today, he probably would run away and say we are beyond redemption. People talk as if we can just reverse all the decadence that we’ve gone through in one day through restructuring or a new system of governance.

How pervasive is corruption and how can it be tackled?

Corruption is a big issue. If you were to ask me the main problem that we face in Nigeria, I will say corruption, even though I could be forced to consider leadership. But you cannot talk about one without looking at the other. The tendency is to focus on the government. But we also have to look at what happens within the so-called private sector. When a private entity is going to the bank for a loan, and the bank manager is taking a portion of that loan, before the citizen gets the facility, that is corruption. We regularly oil the wheels for services in the private sector. Importantly for me is the addition of the social sector to our focus on corruption. Many religious institutions are worse than the government when it comes to corruption. They intimidate the poor and justify taking the little they have and encourage thieves by taking from them in exchange for prayers to free them from the sense of guilt and fear of punishment of entire family that made people avoid corruption and theft in the past. I can point to many aspects of our lives that is full of corruption. There is also the problem of nepotism which our constitution encourages through the haphazard implementation of federal character. Perhaps one of the major problems of the government is nepotism.

How best should corruption be fought?

To fight corruption is more than a focus on what the anti-graft agencies do. It should be fought at a holistic level and should go beyond punishment. The punitive measure is necessary but we see that it has not worked because nobody is scared. The corrupt can also settle with those with state authority to carry out the punishment. So, what do we do? We need a total change of orientation. I’m not going to suggest that we go to the level of the Chinese who have been serious about fighting corruption. All they need is just a bullet aimed at the right place so as not to destroy vital organs that can be harvested and given to needy people in the society. The problem is that we are becoming more and more accepting and living with corruption and not wanting to do anything about it. So, it’s a societal, cultural thing. It is beyond a focus on one man as President.

What do you make of the Federal Government’s anti-corruption strategy?

The present administration put in place a national strategy against corruption. I have confidence in Prof Bolaji Owasanoye, Executive Secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, who was to be the chairman of ICPC. But what can that Presidential Advisory Committee achieve when they obviously have little or no power?  The problem is always implementation. Part of the holistic approach is the socialisation of people daily against corruption. When I was a kid, if your father is accused of being a thief, everybody turns against you. Nobody wants to marry into your family. They will sing about your name. Today, as Fela said, we no longer call a thief a thief. We say he’s a money launderer. It doesn’t give the image of a thief. If we start shouting ‘ole’, ‘barawo’ at many of them, their children will ask them questions. When this government came to power, the President said he was not going to have in his administration anybody that is corrupt. But the money that enabled him to be president came from corrupt people. He knows it himself. We were carried away when he said ‘I belong to everybody, I belong to nobody’. But all the people who had cases at EFCC became his ministers and he smartly told us they have not been convicted. Please look at the number of people the ruling party, with the endorsement of government, has received, with unexplained wealth, just because they decided to join the ruling party from the opposition.

Let’s zero down on the role of lawyers. What is their role in the fight against corruption?

A lawyer must be allowed to defend who he wants to defend. Rule of law means you must allow someone to defend himself even when it is clear that he is a very corrupt person. But can’t the state have the best lawyers? It is obvious that there is a problem with prosecution. EFCC has secured some convictions, but how many big cases have been concluded in court?

Should lawyers question the source of their fees?

There are many things that we need to streamline. Many of our governors feel they can spend whatever has been allocated as they wish. We do not implement whatever rules we have. We shut our eyes. We should blame the system that allows a governor to pay a lawyer with state resources for a private matter. Rather than focus on lawyers, we should focus on our society. A lot is wrong about it. If we raise the bar on what is propriety, integrity, which is the most important thing for leadership, even the lawyers would not want to be seen with such persons.

Do you agree that corruption is fighting back with stolen resources?

If the state is serious, it can look for lawyers who are very good. Executive Order 6 should have led to a lot of asset confiscations. What have you heard about the order’s implementation in spite of the fact that there was support for the President from a court? The government ought to have seized a number of unexplained wealth, especially from people who are consistently on the Panama and Paradise Papers. But nothing seems to be done to them because they are powerful. If you’re a corrupt person in the opposition party and you declare for the ruling party, your case is forgiven. There are many instances.

Should Nigeria continue to retain Federal Character principle in the Constitution?

Federal Character principle is something that I had gone to the Supreme Court against. It involved my daughter Yinka Badejo vs Federal Government, which, with now Justice Doye Olugbemi and the late G.O.K. Ajayi, was fought up to the Supreme Court. There is no doubt in my mind that Federal Character hurts this country from moving forward and developing the way other countries have. It is one of the things that continue to breed mediocrity and fan nepotism. For me, there is a lot that needs to be done about our Constitution. It needs to be thrown away and replaced with a real people’s constitution. Our problems and proper values for a good developmental society must be addressed and not just cries of restructuring.

Does Federal Character not enhance inclusion?

What do we mean by exclusion? We have to stop making some parts of the country feel they have less brain endowment than the other. It is a question of what you put into developing the brain. It’s not because you come from a part of Nigeria that makes you necessarily weaker. Some kids from those parts now beat their counterparts from other parts of the country. But don’t give me the impression that someone who has a weaker performance should be given an advantage from primary school till university and on the job through to the grave. That is outrageous. You can selectively arrive at an inclusive process if a careful effort is made.

You consult for the African Union (AU). What is it about?

Right now, I’m working on a contract for the African Union through my consultancy outfit. The whole idea is that the heads of states met on 30 January 2016 and came to the conclusion that we have a number of disasters on the continent – some man-made, some natural – and that there is the need for the AU to be at forefront of supporting regional mechanisms and national governments to meet the challenges that we face, and that we should not always be running to Europe and America begging for help when we have not done anything for ourselves. They came to the conclusion that there was the need for an agency that could carry out the responsibility that AU can show to its own people, that it cares for them when they face any disaster. It’s not a question of only being prepared, it’s about reducing disasters. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive. If you know that a place is prone to earthquake for instance, then you don’t put heavy structures that will kill people if an earthquake occurs. In places like Los Angeles, they use wood for much of the housing. They only plaster the outside.

How far have you gone?

I’ve been at it now for two-and-a-half months. The decision was made in 2016. But the AU appointed me following my submission of contract bid in competition with others in January 2018. I got a contract to sign after winning the bid on 25 of September. I started work on October 1. I am expected to travel widely, to consult many of the regional mechanisms and to also look at some of the best practices in the world. The Asians have a mechanism in Jakarta that is similar to what we want to do. There’s another in Barbados. The heads of state in this instance want to have the resources for humanitarian support on the African continent come from Africans. This has been happening. When there was Ebola in West Africa, the chairman of AU called a number of high net-worth individuals – don’t ask me how they got their money – and was able to get some money to mobilise support for governments in tackling Ebola. It is to put forward an organisation that is able to ensure inter-operability of the different mechanisms in different countries so that you can have a set of experts from Mozambique move to Sierra Leone for instance, under the AU auspices, and make the AU more relevant to people at the grassroots level.

With your peacekeeping experience, what would you say about conflict and peace on the continent?

I should point out that a lot of effort has gone into handling conflicts in Africa. When I joined the United Nations, there were so many conflicts on the continent. That was when Sierra Leone was raging; Liberia was raging, Cote D’Ivoire joined, as well as Somalia, Mozambique and others. But there is reasonable reduction. There are a number of efforts in trying to ensure that causes and drivers of conflict are understood and addressed. Everybody understands the importance of rule of law as being very crucial in reducing conflict. We’ve also gotten to know that conflict is also a developmental problem. When there is inequality in the distribution of wealth, people are more likely to engage in conflicts. The process of negotiations has resulted in building the capacity of nation states and regional organisations, such as ECOWAS, which added protocols to address governance issues in their operations. So, these efforts have helped.

Do you see an end to insurgency in Nigeria and is negotiation an option?

One of the things I have learnt is that to solve conflicts, patience is required. There are several conflicts around the world, some as old as 70 years. Those that began at the end of the second world war, the conflict between Palestine and Israel, and even Cyprus, come to mind. I’m not saying Boko Haram has to remain for that length of time before we address it. No. We need to constantly find ways to address the problem. We must analyse the root causes of the conflict itself. You can reduce the number of people they have to fight for them by taking care of youths in the area. But that will not take away the problem until you are able to find the fundamental root causes and the drivers of that particular conflict. If you’re able do all that, then it will be possible to sit down and have a dialogue. You should always open the line of communication in order to find if there will be an opportunity for peace.

How can the issue of Shi’ite movement be handled to prevent it from escalating?

The government should not allow any particular group to be a law unto itself. At the same time, the government cannot afford to be high handed and refuse to respect the rule of law. There is much that can be done to enter into a negotiation phase to find some accommodation, because it’s not every time that you fight to finish.

How do you rate this government on rule of law?

There are a number of cases in which the government appears determined not to respect court decisions. Two of them easily come to mind – Dasuki and El-Zakzaky. Anybody’s right that is violated is a slap on all of us. If the government could not support its case before the judiciary, then I don’t think the government should continue to defy the courts. But that’s not enough to suggest a total absence of rule of law, because it’s in degrees. However, there is no doubt that our country, with Boko Haram, disrespect for decisions of the judiciary, the level of corruption, our country is being seen as a failed state. It’s among ourselves that we try to drink our beer and forget about what the world is saying. A friend who is very strong on Wall Street called me from the US and said he was reading in the Financial Times that Nigeria is being described as a failed state. But those are facts that have significant impact on our development prospects. If you’re seen as a failed state, who wants to come and invest? And the people who have stolen your money are also not investing. They are hiding it outside. Read the names in the Panama and Paradise papers and we’re not asking questions. I don’t want to say we’re all corrupt but it’s getting to that stage. What’s happening in the society affects all of us. For instance you want to get a licence for N6000. But they put all manner of clogs on your way and you’re forced to pay extra to facilitate the process. So, we’re co-opted into the system and we’re not doing enough to fight it.

What about the anti-graft agencies?

Our focus should be holistic, not focus on the lawyers, judges, police. But it was not this bad and it did not start with this government. The degeneration had been on a gradual basis that today, people don’t think twice to take out of national patrimony. And we’re hailing them, which is the unfortunate thing. We’re no longer calling them thieves as it was before. There are fundamental cases. How did Maina return and even got promoted, and what has happened? Can he not be found to account for what he did? The Attorney-General never gave any explanations. The President has a style, which is to keep quiet and allow things to go on and on. How many allegations are on the table about people in the current government? How many are being seen to be handled seriously? How many people are being accommodated by the ruling party and cases against them pushed under the carpet? The President’s wife told us we’re no longer men. She said we are docile, and that two people had made all of us irrelevant. And you (the media) are not writing about it by making an analysis on who are the two people. Did we elect them? And more importantly, what can we do to halt the slide towards being a celebrated failed state?

Ahead of 2019 general elections, what are your expectations?

There will be election. And there will be selection. There will be violence. At the end of the day, it is looking like you cannot avoid either Buhari or Atiku being President. I feel unhappy and ashamed that our choices as a people are so limited. I’m sure that many of the younger candidates outside of these two, when they go to bed at night, know that they’re not going to be President come 2019. If you look at the geo-political situation of the country, the ethnic issues that affect our elections, the distribution of resources, the level of consciousness of the voters, your choices are reduced to two. The younger candidates are talking nicely. But even if they all agree to join forces and have one of them join Buhari and Atiku, their candidate will come a distant third. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the reality. Whether we like it or not, we have two guys to choose from. It is like 1999 when the choices were between two Yorubas. This time, it’s between two Hausa-Fulani. I am against that kind of situation. I am against rotation. I am against federal character. I wish people could come forward on the basis of merit and we build this country together.

Why is this so?

Even if you have a brilliant Hausa-Fulani youth as a presidential candidate, he’s still going nowhere, because of the people who grabbed the control of this country from Abdusalami Abubakar. They have developed such formidable war chest and organisational arrangements that you end up either in APC or PDP. We thought there was going to be an alternative when it appeared that PDP was going down, but PDP resurrected fantastically and unbelievably. All the other options are disappearing. APGA for instance is fielding a presidential candidate that I think people who own APGA will not even vote for.

Are you endorsing any of the candidates?

I’m political, but not partisan. As a result, I would easily say that I can assess the two. I have registered to vote, but I will not vote, because I do not feel comfortable with the two choices that I have.

If you and many others don’t vote, how can the right choice be made?

Each individual should assess the two and choose the better of two evils as I see it. But I am very political. I have always been. But I only voted once, and that was in the 1983 elections. I am happy that Lateef Jakande won in that election and I am one of those who feel that he set Lagos State into the better position that it is in today from those efforts. I am not in a position to know whether the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo won the election and he himself said he was not going to court. The reality of it is that the hopes that people like me had as university students, that we would transform this country and even got into ASUU – much of that has been rendered useless by the reality that we face today. But at the same time, I am not saying we should give up. When former President Olusegun Obasanjo came up with Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM), I was very excited. I registered to be part of it because I was hoping for a strong pressure group that would put anybody in power at check, that would use that kind of platform of Nigerians coming together to say no to day light robberies that we face. Unfortunately, it was not possible to have CNM growing as a strong pressure group but transformed to a political party. I did not move with it because I did not think the answer was another political party.

What are your thoughts on INEC?

I have not paid a lot of attention to the person of the INEC chair. But I don’t think he has the calibre of Attahiru Jega. He is already in office with his commissioners. So, there is little we can do about his appointment. But we can only hope that the people will build viable grassroots efforts to checkmate any attempt to affect the expression of the will of Nigerians. And I don’t want to go into this question of the will of Nigerians, because I used to say that you need to think about how you have come to think what you think you think. For most, it’s about what they will get, or about ethnic relationships and where their group would go.

What can you say about Nigeria’s foreign policy thrust?

I would say that I am as disappointed in our foreign policy as I am disappointed in much about Nigeria. We were taken serious on this continent at a time. We stood up for many things. But now we’re a laughing stock in the large part. We used to have a very strong Nigerian peacekeeping capacity. And we were respected at the international level. But the reality today is like we once had an army. Their performance outside has been radically affected by the corruption at home. You send them out there, you sit on their allowances paid for by the UN; you sit on the facilities UN had paid the country for. You’re supposed to have a composite battalion that has its feeding arrangements taken care of, that has its utensils and everything, but you “chop” the money and they would go and be cutting trees to make their fire, again destroying the image of the country with respect to the environment.  I saw that in Liberia. David Mark visited as Senate President. We told him about some of that. But what happened?

Are you saying Nigeria is no longer giant of Africa?

When you look at several indices of power, we deceive ourselves when we still continue to say that we’re the giant of Africa. Imagine the brains that went into our foreign policy in the past, but today you find one or two persons sitting in their cabal and deciding our foreign policy without looking at several factors. We fill positions on the basis of nepotism and they fail at the international level. We have candidates that we could put forward and that the rest of the world will say: ‘This is formidable.’ But what have we been doing?

Do you agree with Amnesty International’s assessments of rights abuses by Nigerian soldiers?

In my experience in Sudan, there was a particular case in which Amnesty was talking and made fabrications of their own that was far from the truth. So, I cannot make a blanket endorsement of what Amnesty is saying. But the government can work with the UN office for human rights, throw its doors open and allow an interaction. If there are errors, which can happen in wars, accept them, apologise for them, compensate for them, and put in place measures to stop them.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our Newsletter

* indicates required

Intuit Mailchimp