Former Imo State governor, Chief Achike Udenwa has dismissed the townhall meetings being organised by the National Assembly across the country to discuss amendments to the present Constitution of Nigeria, insisting that the lawmakers lack the courage to do anything about the constitution.
According to him, if the lawmakers are serious, they should call for the 2014 National Conference report, which would be their starting point to get Nigeria on a better footing.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, former Minister of Commerce and Industry, noted that there is nothing to celebrate over the quantum of money the three tiers of government are receiving because the value is not there.
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What is your view on the state of the nation?
The state of Nigerian nation is right now very deplorable. There are so many issues – some are economical, some are social, some are even threatening our entire existence. There is hardly any sector to cheer. Every sector looks gloomy.
So that’s what I see. And beyond the horizon, you don’t even see what the future holds. I still don’t see it. I think we must wake up if we want to exist. If we want to be a nation, and give our people some livelihood, then we must wake up and start doing those things, which probably we should do.
Right now, the Nigerian nation is wobbling and wobbling very fast. I don’t know from which angle you want to look at it.
You said Nigeria must wake up and start doing those things that she is supposed to do. What are those things?
One of the greatest problems we have right now has been the question of insecurity. Honestly, you cannot do anything in the presence of insecurity, where your people are always afraid to go out, afraid to go to the farms, afraid even to go to work, and afraid even to sleep in their houses. What can you achieve in such an environment? That’s where we find ourselves and we must tell ourselves the truth. What is the cause of insecurity, why is insecurity persisting, why are we not able to fight insecurity, what is the problem so that we look at it holistically? We’ve heard a lot of rumours by the side of a well-paced people being involved. Is that true? If that is true, can we get such well-placed people funding the insecurity?
We got to tell ourselves the truth, we cannot pretend we are fighting insecurity and at the same time we are sponsoring insecurity. How does that work?
That’s what I mean by doing those things which we should do. On that sector of insecurity, look at our roads. Hardly do you see many people travelling by road any longer. Only those who cannot afford air travel are going by road, otherwise they go by air, because they believe that the airfare, no matter how high, is cheaper than ransom money if you are caught. So, many people now fly by air instead of going by road. How can the economy depend on air travel? How many people can afford it?
These are some of the issues that need our looking at, which we should sit down and talk. The issue of insecurity is our number one problem now, and so, the fighting of insecurity should be our priority nationwide. Hardly any place is secured. We have all sorts of insecurity everywhere – you have the Boko Haram, you have the bandits, the insurgents, and you have the local ones. To me, that is very important.
So much money is going to the federal government, likewise the state and the local councils, but yet the cry of hardship and hunger is overwhelming. How can you reconcile the two?
You can reconcile the two because by and large, having so much money is not important, but what goods can this money purchase? If I give you N10, 000, and you go to the market, buy all the things you need with that amount, are you not better off than if I give you N1 million and it cannot buy you much?
So that’s the paradox. That’s where we find ourselves. You could say we have so much –billions and billions, but what can these billions purchase? Nothing!
You yourself go to the market, and you find out that no matter the amount you have taken to the market, you come back almost empty handed. So, it’s not a question of the quantum of money in circulation, but what is the value of this money?
President Bola Tinubu, during his October 1 broadcast, said that his administration had spent N330 billion as palliatives to about 80 million vulnerable Nigerians, with each getting N25, 000. What’s your take on this?
To start with, the palliative of a thing is not really the solution to our problem.
But at the same time, I also think that the palliative is coming too late. Before you removed fuel subsidy, palliative should have been in place to cushion the hardship. It should have been from the beginning. What is our GDP, what are we producing, what are we adding to the economy? It is still a question of maybe, so much money chasing little goods in the market. By and large, the most important thing is productivity. You can see that in most cases we are being fed from outside, our farmers are no more working; they cannot go to the farms because of insecurity. So, our productivity is very low. Whatever comes in from outside, the little money you think is so much cannot purchase it. What is the exchange rate? Whether you have one N1 billion with you, but you still have to purchase goods that were bought with foreign exchange. That’s our paradox; that is our dilemma.
The PDP ruled 16 years, and APC has ruled for 10 years. How can you assess the two parties?
The assessment is quite clear even to the blind man. During those 16 years, Nigerians were not hungry. Today, Nigerians are starving.
I can tell you that up to 60 per cent of the Nigerian population are below the poverty level today. It has never happened before. It’s not a question of rushing to get into government, but what programmes do you have? What do you want to do?
Check the amount of borrowing that has happened since APC took over. And till tomorrow, we are still borrowing every day from all institutions.
We are borrowing from IMF, World Bank, individual nations, EU, and we are borrowing so much from China. So, when are you going to pay this?
But during the time of PDP, the government even paid the debts that were incurred before it came into office. You remember the Paris Club?
We even got a waiver after that. I remember that time, I was a governor, and I knew what was happening; I knew how much that was being deducted from my monthly allocation. I know how much that was being deducted towards the payment of Paris Club debts. We kept paying from 1999; we paid up to the beginning of 2006, and they waived the remaining balance.
So you cannot compare that period of PDP. Today, check from 2015 how much we have borrowed. Even when you’re talking about borrowing, it is not just borrowing, but, what do you do with the money you have borrowed? What did you set up with the money you have borrowed? Can that repay itself?
What is the additional infrastructural development you have borrowed money for?
Is it the railway that is being revitalised? What?
You talked about borrowing. This government came in when the external debt was about N77 billion. Now, it’s hitting over N200 billion, in spite of subsidy savings and other money from taxes and MDAs. What is your take on this?
I don’t know whether we are honest with ourselves. One expects that after the removal of the fuel subsidy, we will have a lot of cash.
The government will have a lot of cash. Instead of saying, now, we have so much money in our coffers; we have used it to do some investments in the critical sectors, like agriculture, health, education and roads. Instead, we are talking of additional borrowing. We should ask the government what is this borrowing for on top of what they have already inherited?
Today, I hear that our debt servicing is getting up to 96 per cent or so of our income. Can you imagine that? So, what do you have for development when we are repaying debts?
That’s why we need something drastic to happen. It is drastic in the sense that we need a better orientation of our people to know that they need a party that will take care of them. The APC government has failed us. Since 2015 to now, it is 10 years of horror; 10 years of abject poverty. Go to the average family, they cannot feed themselves any longer. What is governance all about? It is for the security and welfare of the citizen, which is the responsibility of the government. We have gone down and continued to go down. Every day we are going down and down.
You are talking about a better orientation of the people to have a better government, but the PDP, the main opposition has passed through a lot. Do you see it rising again?
Remember, PDP is my party. We hope it will rise again, there’s no doubt about it. But, it is still the same people, whether internally or externally that are holding PDP. You are in government; you want to remain in government by all means, without adding any value. So, we hope one day PDP will still come back.
Is it that some people are greater than PDP? Because Nigerians have heard of some of the members saying that they are in the party to deliver some parts of the country to APC, and some others will say, they are in PDP to deliver their states to ADC?
That is the dilemma we find ourselves. It shows you that even our democracy is not on a solid ground. In other democracies, how many times do you hear that an office holder or a person who has just won an election on the platform of one political party has defected to another political party?
But every day, it is the order of the day, and the party cannot do anything to such people. That is the bane of the politics we are playing. That is the bane of our democracy. You see people who are in PDP working against PDP, and yet nothing happens to them. To the extent that even a governor. It was unthinkable that the governor, with the mandate of a political party, would defect to another political party and nothing would happen to him.
Even if it is not expressly stated in the Constitution, even morally, can that happen?
What one expects that if you contest elections on the platform A, and get into office, you want to go to B, you relinquish that position and go to B.
Nobody says you can’t go. You go and re-contest on your new platform; you test your strengths on the new platform, because people voted for you on the other platform. In the actual sense, that brings us to who is actually contesting the election? Is it an individual or the party?
This has been a very crucial issue that has been on the furnace for a long time.
So, it is still the same thing we are asking today. It’s part of what is killing PDP. What is killing PDP is coming internally, fuelled externally. We all know it; we all see it, but PDP looks helpless. The party can hardly do anything about it.
It is even part of the problem we have – weak institutions, the electoral body- the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and the judiciary are weak institutions. If they are strong enough, they should be able to restore democracy in Nigeria, and instil discipline into democracy.
But when a person sees that if he jumps from one party to the other one, nothing will happen to him, and he continues as if nothing has happened. Then he continues on that line. That is our problem.
What do you say about the coalition that has adopted African Democratic Congress (ADC), as its platform?
We’re here to see their ideology; we’re here to see the direction they’re going. Some individuals who constitute that party are quite good Nigerian politicians, but time will tell. It is not just only to take over government, but also to work for the welfare of the people. That’s just the bottom line. Our people are suffering and they have lost confidence in governance, they don’t believe that there is government any longer. It is easier said than done, it’s not to go and take power. You must have a programme. You must be courageous enough to face certain realities, which include providing security for lives and property. That’s number one responsibility, tackle the economy, provide the social services – what is the state of our education, health etc.
I’m looking forward to a government that can address these basic issues.
It’s not the question of tomorrow you hear the government has purchased 13 new SUVs, the best in market, acquired new jets. How does that improve the living condition of our people? I would like to see agriculture working. I would like to see technology. In this age of AI; how are we bracing up? I would like to see certain things. That’s where the world is going.
I would like to see improved health services. We only hear it when probably one prominent man has died and then we begin to see how poor our health services are.
But, many die every day not because the sickness is untreatable, but because of the lousiness of our health system. You read it every day. Somebody could have an emergency and never receive treatment even in the next 12 hours. And meanwhile, the situation has deteriorated and the patient has given up. And being as religious as we are, we just say, well, it is God’s time. But if we had adequate medical facilities, it wouldn’t be God’s time. I’m not interested in your rhetoric. I’m interested in seeing a government that should come up and tackle the needs of the people. I know we can do that. I know we still have people who can do that, but can such people win elections in our present circumstances? That’s another thing.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan is being rumoured as gearing up to contest the 2027 presidential election. Even though he has not made his intention open, but the presidency is already attacking him. Does it mean they are afraid of him? What do you say to this?
It’s still a rumour we are hearing that whether Jonathan is going to contest or not. If I were him, I would not contest. He should continue to stay by the side and maintain his dignity. The people who are calling him now are the same people who betrayed him in 2015. They are the same people who betrayed him, and they are calling him because of their selfish purpose, because amongst the candidates who are coming up, it is only Jonathan that will have four years to go. So, statutorily, they are sure that after four years, Jonathan must go. That’s the only reason they are clamouring for him, not that they love him. They were the same people who pushed him out. So, if I were him, I wouldn’t try it.
I’m not thinking that the government is afraid of him or anything. But he should just stay his distance.
Tinubu was Lagos governor when you were governor of Imo State. Whenever he invites former governors of that time to meetings, what do you tell him?
At such meetings, we tell him the state of the nation. We will not tell him a lie; we will not be there to just sing his praises. We tell him the state of the nation, and he also tells us his handicaps. So, by and large, we are not members of the government. Whatever we do must be in an advisory capacity, and that’s the relationship.
The National Assembly is holding meetings for the review of the 1999 Constitution. What’s your position on this review, and what do you want in the new Constitution?
Ask yourself, are they serious? There’s been no National Assembly that has gone without talking about review of the 1999 Constitution, and at the end, they end up doing nothing. I’m not excited when I hear it because they don’t have the courage to do that. There are too many things wrong with the constitution. In fact, what people are even talking about is not a question of amending the constitution, but rewriting the constitution.
There is so much wrong with the constitution. I’ve just mentioned one small one. One major one is the issue of crossing from one political party to another. The constitution should come out expressly to say, once you are elected on a political party, if you cross over to another party you vacate your office and if you want to, you will contest in your new political party. The constitution should not be ambiguous on such an issue.
There are so many things wrong with the constitution. So, I’m not excited if the National Assembly wants to review the constitution. I don’t see what they can do.
The National Conference of 2014, where I was a member, dealt comprehensively with the constitution, which is something that could have given us the next step and since then, we are just prevaricating, nobody is doing anything about it.
We should have been able to review the report of that National Conference; review the findings and come out boldly and courageously with a new Constitution that can take us forward.
We know the 1999 Constitution has a lot of flaws, too many flaws. One of the issues again is the exclusive legislative list, there’s so much left for the federal government. The federal government is putting its hands in too many things that should be left for states in the concurrent list or the residual list and the local governments. And that is part of our problems.
Over centralisation has made it possible that we can’t move.
If the National Assembly is telling you about amendment of the constitution, I can assure you that they will do nothing. Their tenure remains only two years. They will do nothing. We have had it before severally years and at the end, nothing happens. If they are serious, let them call for the national conference findings.Let them make the report their starting point, and they can get Nigeria on a better footing.
Tinubu was an apostle of restructuring. Many people had thought that his emergence as the president will bring about restructuring, but nothing is happening in this regards. Is it a question of playing better outside the pitch?
Let me put it this way. When we were in government together, the present president was one of us who believed in true federalism, in good federal structure. He believed in it. Even when we were challenging the federal government, he was in the forefront on many issues. So, I believe he’s still an apostle of true federalism. I believe he is. Maybe, because of the circumstances, because of the crisis, he has not been able to really face that side squarely. I believe he is. And I believe he still has plans to do that. I believe that. He’s a federalist. I know that.
The president, in his October 1 broadcast, said that his reforms are yielding fruits, and the lifestyle of Nigerians has started to change. What do you say to this?
I’m on the other side of the fence, I don’t belong to government; I belong to the masses and I can only say that we are waiting to see the result of these reforms. We haven’t seen them practically, maybe they are coming, but we haven’t seen them. When they arrive we shall know they have arrived, and our lifestyle will change, but as at now, our lifestyle has not changed, it is getting worse and worse by the day.
Prices in the market have not changed, and other indices that should show you that we are now on the brighter side have not told us so.
I hope he may be right in the sense that maybe, his technocrats have probably told him that the changes are coming, but we, on the receiving end are yet to see the changes.
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