How Nigeria can get things right again – former secretary to FG

 

The former Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Chief Olu Falae has been having uninvited guests in his farms in the last three years.

In one of the visits, he was kidnapped on his birthday. In this interview, he spoke on his frustration as herdsmen continue to destroy and set his farms ablaze and other national issues in the country.

Excerpts:

The situation in Nigeria today is frightening, how did we get here?

The military incursion into politics had been substantially responsible for our crises. As I have said earlier, the political covenant that provided stability for Nigeria was the consensus embedded in independence constitution.

For example, in that constitution, the Nigerian Police Council comprised the Prime minister and the three regional premiers, the police was not an exclusive organ of the federal government, it was managed and run by the federal government and the three regions.

In other words, if a man was going to be posted as a Commissioner of Police to a region , the Prime minister and the three Premiers would sit down and look at the candidates and would pick whoever was the best and the Premier of the region would have the major say whether the candidate was acceptable or not. So, in that arrangement it was not possible to post to your region a Commissioner of Police who would come there to undermine your authority or encourage criminals.

So, the constitution made it compulsory for the four governments to share authority over the Nigerian Police. But when the military came, they scrapped the constitution and gave police power exclusively to the federal government. It was imposed by the military and most of the military rulers were from the north, that’s the truth of the matter.

And they would post a Colonel, a subordinate to the head of state, to the state who cannot argue with his Commander-in-Chief who sent him to the state to go and rule. It was not a process of negotiating but a total authority and they were doing things which the people didn’t even want and our people who were in the military were not in a position to have an effective voice because you don’t argue with your Commander-in-Chief.

And the occasion we had the opportunity to have a free negotiation and discussion about our constitution was denied in 2014 which was not even organised by the military. Those of us from the south west went to discuss Yoruba agenda and 80 per cent of what we wanted passed through that conference. That was the only time we had a non-military tele-guided constitutional conference which most Nigerians were happy about. So, to me, it was the military rule and most of the time it was the northern military that ruled and that was what put us at a huge disadvantage over the years.

How can we get it right again?

By insisting that consensus which was the essence of the independence should be the essence of our next constitution. What I mean is, the premiers of the three regions had to agree to the form of constitution and intergovernmental arrangements they would have after independence. It was consensus but when the military took over they threw away that constitution and the consensus that was its foundation and since then there had been no other consensual constitution, we have been having imposition by the military which was one sided, sectional.

 It was only at the 2014 confab that once again, since the scrapping of the independence constitution, we were able as civilians, without the military breathing down our necks, to discuss, brainstorm and we agreed on more than 600 resolutions by consensus, meaning that we did not have to vote on a single resolution.

The Chairman of the conference, late Bishop Kutigi put big ballot boxes in front of us, boldly written and told us that ‘if you feel strongly about any resolution and you think or feel we should have a division, you just raise your hand and we will vote’. He made it very easy for us to have division and almost encouraging people to press for division but we passed about 622 resolutions and nobody, not one person raised his or her hand to ask for division.