Some Nigerians will kill, maim to remain in political office -Bamidele Aturu

Lagos lawyer and activist, Bamidele Aturu, speaks with CHUX OHAI on the 2011 general elections and sundry matters What would you describe as the most challenging aspect of the 2011 general elections?

I think that one of the biggest problems that we have as a people in Nigeria is how to get our political elite to behave differently and comply with internal rules of democracy for political parties, as well as comply with the laws that they have made themselves. The desperation of our politicians is mind-boggling. It is something that we have to view from a sociological or multi-disciplinary perspective to understand their level of desperation. In other words, the background to the 2011 elections is that we have a crop of politicians who are so desperate that they would stop at nothing to get to power. They want to clinch power by all means, at all costs; regardless of whether they bring down the whole country in the process or not. To me, that constitutes the biggest challenge that confronted our search for free, fair and credible elections in this country.

When I say there must be a multi-disciplinary perspective to this matter, I want Nigerians to know that until we begin to address some fundamental questions about our compensation or what we call reward system in Nigeria, we will not have genuine progress in this country. I will continue to make this point until I succeed in getting majority of Nigerians to agree with me. No Nigerian should earn more than N250,000 per month and nobody should earn less than N50,000. The reason some of those people who are getting billions of dollars from oil blocks and political patronage don’t respect other Nigerians is because they now see Nigerians, who are underpaid deliberately by their own iniquitous policies, as sub-human. If a man or woman is earning N10,000 a month in modern Nigeria and another person earns N15m, just because they are a senator, the latter may consider the former as less than a human being. This kind of situation breeds contempt among the people. That is why you find that our roads are impassable, replete with pot holes and dangerous traps. That is why you find that the Power Holding Company of Nigeria will not work and our hospitals have been reduced to mere consulting units. And that is why our school system is totally and abysmally comatose. We must as a matter of urgency, abolish the oil block system of compensation because it is immoral, unjust, wicked and it has bred the impunity with which the people in government bleed the nation’s treasury. It is what has led to a situation where some people are feeding fat on the resources of this country and the majority are malnourished. It is the reason we don’t have good roads, some people are living under the bridges and they cannot afford good health care service when they are ill, whereas some can afford to visit the best hospitals in the world. If the government fails to abolish the oil block system of compensation, Nigeria will not make any progress. This is a fact, not a curse. Nigeria is still a rental state or an economy where everybody loots the state for survival. In other words, if we have a system where politicians make all their money from the state, lawyers and other professionals also make their money from the state, there is no way we will have a system where things work.

So, we must find a way of dealing with this problem. Once that is done, the desperation for political office will be reduced. By the time you ensure that you run an economy in which the wage system, the compensation system or the reward system is just, equitable and democratic, you will find that the attraction to kill, to maim and to destroy will not be there. We must also make the centre less attractive, not on the basis of pecuniary gain, and we must make politics a part-time business. I know some lawyers who, as members of the National Assembly in the Second Republic, would leave the house to attend to some cases in the courts. They were doing this because they earned the bulk of their living from their work as lawyers, not from politics. Now it is the other way round. Some people are seeing elective offices as the only means of survival. So, they will do everything possible to retain their positions, even if it means killing and maiming other people and destroying valuable property.

With regard to the elections, how would you assess the performance of the present chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission?

I think I have to state clearly my own interest in this matter, so that nobody will level accusations against me. The INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, is somebody that I know very well. I knew him when he was president of the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities, in the course of our work with the civil society groups, and through interaction with him. He is somebody that I know at close quarters. When we talk about conducting credible elections for the country, the issue goes beyond the integrity of the chairman of INEC. We have to talk about the fact that we are dealing with so many officers who are working in different parts of the country as big as Nigeria where there are not less than 20,000 polling units. So, in assessing the INEC under Jega, one must factor in variants. While I have no doubt that Jega remains a very honest man, with his integrity unblemished, there is no doubt that a lot of work must be done to sanitise INEC itself.

When people talk about Maurice Iwu organising sham elections, they forget that he was not alone. He did not do some of those things that Nigerians accused him of doing alone. Many of the Resident Electoral Commissioners, who worked with Iwu to perpetrate the electoral malpractices that he was accused of, are still in INEC and they conducted the last elections. For me, I think Jega did his best to organise free and fair elections. There is no doubt about that. But the truth is that we still have some people within the system who are probably waiting for the slightest opportunity to perpetrate fraud. Despite the fact that Jega did his best, we still have some problems with the elections. Now, rigging has assumed a different dimension. People do not rig elections at the polling units anymore because they know that the results will not be announced there. But what happened between the polling units and the collation centres, your guess is as good as mine. The point I am making is that it takes the people of Nigeria to make democracy work in this country. You cannot conduct free and fair elections if you have not been tested in the conduct of free and fair elections. There were allegations, even in Lagos, that people were given money in exchange for their votes. Do you call that free and fair elections? Did INEC make any preparation for that? Can you imagine that, as I’m talking to you, there were local government areas where some people did not even see ballot papers? In some places, people went and snatched ballot boxes. In some of those places, people thumb-printed and stuffed ballot boxes. Yet, in my view, our local observers and international election monitoring groups hastily rose to conclude that all was well. But I have no doubt whatsoever that the 2011 elections were a marked improvement on the 2007 elections, in terms of the transparency of the people at the helms of affairs of INEC and even logistics.

What should be the immediate priority of the new Federal Government that will be inaugurated on May 29, 2011?

We have a social and economic system that can only produce people who will not be eager to do what will be in the interest of the people. To do what will favour the people, they will negate their own interests and the interest of the cabal that produced them in the first place. I am not willing to set an agenda for these politicians. But if I am called to do so, it means they are asking me to tell them to commit class suicide. Let us see if they can fight corruption. Let us see if they can get the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission to throw more of the corrupt politicians and public office holders in jail. The fact is that these organisations are virtually dead. The people are not working any more. Anti-corruption is very important, just as power generation is essential. I will enjoin President Goodluck Jonathan not to allow the rapacious people in government to convince him to sell the Power Holding Company of Nigeria and other utility companies that belong to the people. The level of waste in Nigeria, especially among the so-called public servants, is simply unimaginable. Jonathan should do something about this. He should do his best to reduce government spending.

What do you say to Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to challenge Jonathan’s victory in court?

I have always said that in a democracy, it is very good to allow the people to ventilate their grievances in a court of law. That is the most civilised thing to do. Even if at the end of the day, the court comes out with a verdict that the rigging was not significant enough to warrant the nullification of the results, it means that the next election will be better and those who did what he is challenging will not do that again.