Former Minister of Health, Prof ABC Nwosu, has weighed in on the clamour for a return to the parliamentary system of government by some interests in the country, noting that the system might emplace instability in government.
He noted that the precarious ethnicity problem in Nigeria could lead parliament members into voting out many prime ministers.
In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Nwosu appraised the current administration of President Bola Tinubu, noting that Tinubu’s government isn’t doing well.
Nwosu, a former member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees (BoT), said the PDP was formed to promote justice and good governance, regretting that its pursuit of money rather than ideals and good governance and the goods of the people of Nigeria led to its downfall.
The Patriots, a group of eminent Nigerians have called for a return to the parliamentary system, saying that the presidential system, which the country is presently running, is costly. What’s your view on that?
It is open for discussion with figures and data to go either way. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and they have been well discussed in past conferences by Nigerians. It is not a cut and dry situation.
Both the parliamentary and the presidential have been tried and they have their advantages and disadvantages.
For example, in the parliamentary, a vote of no confidence depends on the number of seats. That was the system we had before and we found out two major disadvantages. In the first place, there was a preponderance of the north, and eventually the higher number of seats in the north was of great influence; then the people with the majority will be called to produce the prime minister.
If once you have a vote of no confidence, the prime minister goes.
So, with the unstable ethnicity problem of Nigeria, there will be instability, as the parliament members will be voting out many prime ministers.
Then, the presidential came in 1979 because the parliamentary made Nigeria weak in taking decisions. There may be a decision you want to take, and a vote of no confidence would be passed on you.
The presidential system is a system that has cost, the same thing with parliamentary. In order to make Nigerian governance more effective, they introduced the presidential system, which made Nigerian governance more effective, and the president to be elected by the entire country, not by a part of the country. The presidential system makes the presidents more powerful, and they became almost the most powerful heads of state.
We have tried that now and we have found that where you have an incompetent president that everybody wants out; and I think it is what is happening because of what we are now facing, and we want to change again. We can’t apply the checks and balances very well.
The presidential came in 1979, if we want to change that. I think the biggest suggestions for change came actually in 1979 by the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) government and by the NPN as a political party through the introduction of zoning. The party suggested zoning and the rotation because the basic problem is that a section of some parts of Nigeria thinks that they are superior to others, and were bent on treating others as unequal. No part of Nigeria, even if it is the minutest geopolitical zone, thinks it is less important than any in equal opportunity. I have said it so many times that nobody will accept to be treated as number two citizens in Nigeria; that there are senior and junior Nigerians. Once we accept equal opportunity and accept to treat each part as equal, there won’t be problem.
There are inequalities in Nigeria. There are inequalities in education. And this is most important. The inequality in education in particular has to be redressed. If it isn’t redressed, and then you work on justice and equity, we can’t get there very quickly.
But, when you refuse to get educated properly, and you insist on bossing it over somebody who is better educated than you because of born-to-rule attitude, it becomes difficult. Nobody will take it. So, the person who is better educated may choose to go private rather than serve you because you are born-to-rule. He will not accept it and we have seen it in the years now.
Many groups are agitating for the creation of more states in Nigeria. The National Assembly has been having meetings in the six geopolitical zones for an amendment of the 1999 constitution. What is your position on this?
The constitution has to be amended. We don’t have a constitution that is acceptable to the people; we have no constitution presently that can be called – ‘We the people’. A new constitution is a must if we must have a nation. From the word go, all the past leaders before, from, the great Zik, to Awolowo, to Okpara, to everybody, except the north, said, we need a new constitution. Even 2014 Jonathan conference, which I was part of, proposed a new constitution. Like the 1995 Abacha constitution, where everybody proposed a new constitution and put a draft there and forwarded for enactment. They didn’t do it. The most annoying was that the 1999 constitution was given a decree.
It was in 1979 that we had a constitution that the presidential system of government was well drawn up by two of our very eminent lawyers, Chief Rotimi Williams and Professor Ben Nwabueze, the two leading constitutional lawyers, recognised everywhere and anywhere in Nigeria, and the world.
That constitution introduced the very major items. One has come into practice, which is the presidential system of government. The other one was fundamental issues in government; the objectives of government – education and other things, democracy dividends that people must have; the essence of government.
As usual, Nigerians will take the one they will immediately personally cash to their own advantage and abuse, to the other people’s disadvantage.
So, one is taking the upper hand against the other one on what to get out of government. Therefore, because they can get many things from government through presidential, they emphasise that and then tried to abuse it, which has led to the concentration of power at the centre.
What was seen is that, the items on the Exclusive list have moved from about 20s agreed to by all parties at independence to about 62 items of power, centralised now, without discussion.
So, the major thing before us now is the decentralisation of power, devolution of power. The thing that must be agreed is the devolution of power; we must devolve more powers from the centre to the federation units. I hate to use the word ‘states’ because we should have federating units.
People are trying to say if 36 states share one trillion naira, they’ll get this and that.
The current thinking is bad. What they are saying in fact is that if you have many states, the federal governments cannot sustain them; they are thinking of taking all the money to Abuja and then coming at the end of the month to Abuja to share money. That’s why you can see some states, which take home money that cannot support a local government, yet they are looking for more states because they want to share money.
When you want a state, it is because you think you can maintain it. How could a person who has no ways of sustaining himself, his internally generated revenue is virtually zero and then collecting all the money from Abuja and wanting more states? That is just all about the quarrel of wanting more states. Anybody who can maintain himself can have many children and send them to school, and nobody will be worrying about them. But, if you cannot maintain yourself, how can you marry more than one wife and have many children that you cannot send to school?
What is your take on the coalition that is building up for 2027 elections?
I have fears. The incumbent doesn’t want to go; the opposition wants to take over.
And given the way politics goes in Nigeria, I’m apprehensive.
Why are you apprehensive?
Because of the way politics is played in Nigeria. You either buy everybody or you kill everybody.
What will determine the outcome of the 2027 election?
I don’t know. That’s why I’m apprehensive. Look at the level of violence, and the failure to introduce checks and balances. Look at the number of times the state p,olice has been discussed, approved, and agreed to by Nigerians and look at the way it is resisted, and it has not been done so far. State police came before Nigeria Police Force in Nigeria. Why shouldn’t I be worried over the number of unaccounted deaths?
The PDP was once a behemoth; a political party that claimed to be the biggest in Africa, but right now PDP is a shadow of itself. What led to this?
There are so many reasons and I have been part of groups looking for reforms in PDP, looking for equity and justice in the party itself. So, after so many attempts, I left the Board of Trustees.
Do you see PDP coming back to where it was?
I don’t know. I left PDP. I haven’t joined any other party and I will not join any other party. And I don’t think that at more than 80 years that what is uppermost in my mind is how to still advise PDP, which I was one of the founding members.
But when you look back, your efforts and others in building the PDP to where it was, and how it is now, do you have regrets?
The PDP that was formed to promote justice and good governance started the pursuit of money rather than ideals and good governance and the goods of the people of Nigeria. They started pursuing other things.
All the things we said at the formation of the party were breached.
We started a reform group, and we were expelled by a faction, many of them weren’t even in politics when we formed PDP. We were later recalled.
How can you assess Tinubu’s two years in government?
The government in my view is not doing well and this is not coming from hatred or routine opposition. Things are not going on well. I’m talking as somebody who personally has every room to be friends with Tinubu; I like him, but the fact is that it’s going to be hard to recover from the foreign exchange. Unfortunately to me, I have every reason to like the people in this government starting from Mr President, and many of them of which some were my students. The Central Bank Governor, I taught in St Gregory College, Lagos.
When Obasanjo was there, I said: ‘Sir what can we say we’ve given to the people?” Obasanjo went in and coined the phrase, ‘Democracy dividend’.
You must assess your government by the phrase – democracy dividend.
We had to look at democracy on what the citizen will take home for giving his support to the government. When you assess yourself that way, you will come out with a proper answer – what you have gained and how you have grown. Don’t get intangibles; something you can’t touch, but something you must take home as democracy dividend.
They should look at it their own ways and when they have done that, they will get the answer themselves. For example, the prices of food items that you put on the table, the school fees etc, which we can touch, they will get the answer themselves.
So I think that is what they should do.
There is suffering in the land, it is palpable, you can touch it; you can feel it in the air.
I feel pained. Those of us who are retired can hardly maintain a car. When I was a minister, I didn’t know how they maintained the car for me, so I didn’t need to do it.
Which minister can buy all these flashy cars from his pocket?
When we started, we had a Peugeot 504 as official car, I remember ministers being queried for buying Peugeot 607 car and they quickly reverted. Later, we started using Peugeot 505 cars. Not even from your private pocket. You cannot be a minister and you then go and buy one of these outrageous cars and say no, it is not the official car. Even if you could afford it and you were a multi-millionaire before you became a minister, there were things Obasanjo didn’t allow and he would query you. Not only that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion, she must have the appearance of being above board. And she must also behave above board.
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