He has made sterling contributions towards building the Nigeria nation. In 1976, Dr. Uma Oke Eleazu was appointed Director/Coordinator of the National Policy Development Centre (Think Tank), a post he held until the body was transformed into the present National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos and became its pioneer Director of Research.
He was a member of the 1979 constitution drafting committee. He was also a member of the committee that drafted the 1999 constitution and in 2006 he also served on the committee set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to look in to the constitution.
He had also served as Executive Director of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and a former Chairman of Petroleum Product Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of NNPC.
In 1993, he ventured into politics and aspired to be the president on the platform of Social Democratic Party (SDP).
In this interview with VINCENT KALU, Dr Eleazu condemned the centenary celebration with a stern warning that Nigeria may be heading towards disintegration if the current realities in the country persist. He, however, stated that only the forthcoming national conference, if genuinely carried out, would avert the imminent doom.
“My fear for Nigeria is that we can keep on stumbling like this and stumble into a real disaster. The disaster has not come yet, the conference that they are toying with is our saving grace and if they keep toying with it and is not held or held and decision not implemented, people won’t take it.
The young ones may get up and start a real revolution to restructure Nigeria that will suit their generation”, he declared. He expatiated on this and many more. Excerpts:
Nigeria is celebrating centenary anniversary, what is your view?
I don’t see why we should be celebrating because Nigeria has clocked 100 years. Actually, Nigeria came into being on January 1, 1900. Check the British records.
The problem was that they had two protectorates; as a matter of fact three – the Niger Coast Protectorate, the Lagos Colony and Protectorate and the Northern Protectorate. They were brought together following what was called the Lord Selborn committee report to the parliament that recommended that since the colony and protectorate of the South was more or less self-sufficient because it was being run by the Royal Niger Company, part of the North had been conquered also by Royal Niger Company and so they hired Lord Luggard for the job. Luggard came to Nigeria as a mercenary soldier.
So, they subdued the people in the North and shared the boundaries between themselves near Bussa with the French. The question was, what do you do with all these territories that you have got. Some times in their books, they referred to it as Central Sudan or South Sudan, and later on they said, it is bound by Rivers Niger and Benue, so it became the Niger area. All the territories in the Niger area what do we do with them?
Lord Selborn was to head a committee to talk about the administration of these three territories so that they would be able to show effective occupation because that was what was agreed in 1885 in the Berlin Conference that each power must show effective occupation of the area that it called its spheres of influence. So, the report of that committee after they visited these areas recommended the joining of the two Southern Protectorates and the Northern Protectorate so that the money that is made as surplus from the South, which would have been profit going to Royal Niger Company would help in administering the large territory that the Royal Niger Company had got in the North. So, it was a financial problem that the British colonial officer wanted to solve.
That report also said that there was no infrastructure holding these territories together, that they should not be merged until they improve on the infrastructures – road systems, etc. In fact, they decided that they needed to build a railway line to connect the two, so railway line was started from Lagos and by 1913 they had reached Kaduna.
They now had something to tie the two sections together and they revisited Selborn committee report and by then Luggard was already serving as Lieutenant Governor in Hong Kong and was brought back from Hong Kong to come and take over the administration since he had been in the place before. They were few people who were that good living in tropics. He was that good in living in the tropics, he had fought a war in South Africa and had been in Uganda and had been in the employment of Royal Niger Company. Luggard was a soldier of fortune.
He was brought back now as governor and he asked for a Lieutenant Governor in Niger Coast Protectorate, a Lieutenant Governor in Lagos and Colony and also in the North and as a result he became the Governor General in 1914 and said he has amalgamated us. What did the amalgamation achieve in terms of administration? Practically nothing. They continued administering the North according to what the emirs wanted, which they called indirect rule and they brought it down to the South and tried to apply it, it didn’t work. It worked half way in the Yoruba area where they could find Obas. When they came to the East, they couldn’t do it. Their attempt to impose tax was what led to the Aba women’s riot.
For me, there is nothing to celebrate not to talk about all the charade. There is nothing to celebrate about 1914.
You don’t want to agree that the celebration is that we are still one Nigeria?
It is the British people that ought to celebrate that; that the people they put together are still staying together. They should come down here and celebrate and ask us how we feel about it. They have to celebrate because all other federations that they tried putting together have all broken down. Federation of East Africa dissolved into Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. They created the West Indies Federation, which also failed and you now have Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago; they created Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, it failed. The only federation they created then that has not failed is Nigeria, which is bound to fail if we don’t sit down and talk and that is why when Biafra declared independence, British fought tooth and nail to make sure Nigeria didn’t fail because they hold it as the only success they have in the British empire. They also created the Federation of Malaysia and Singapore, it failed. The time that Biafra was pulling out was also when Singapore was pulling out of the Federation of Malay, Singapore and North Borneo. Those were federations British put together.
Had it not the been the territory the French people have between Ghana and us, Ghana would have been part of the federation. Remember, we had one currency from Sierra Leone, Gambia, Gold Coast (Ghana) and Nigeria. We had also one Appeal court- the West Africa Court of Appeal, which used to sit in Sierra Leone. It was just a matter of geography otherwise they would have made a West African Federation, which would have brought us, Ghana and the countries together.
In our own case, Eastern and Western regions got their independence both in 1956, the North said they didn’t want independence at that time and they called the Eastern and Western internal self-government because of the North. It was until they were ready before Britain granted the whole area independence as federation.
That federation was what was destroyed in 1966 and 1967 and you can’t put it together unless we go back to what was agreed in London in 1958.
What was agreed in London?
True federalism. When people talk about true federalism, they are only saying let us go back to the structure of government that we had agreed in discussion between the colonial power and the Nigerians. In that document, it was set out that each region had its own constitution; its own parliaments, makes its own laws, then we had the central government. Up till 1960, any law passed by the Federal Government that didn’t agree with the law of the regions is null but at independence, they reversed it that the laws of various regions now have to agree with the laws made at the centre.
Each region had its own development plans to develop its area. The only thing you do is that in order to finance the central government that you have to give part of the money you have made as a region.
By 1967, the Army reversed the whole thing as everything has to go to the centre and from there they dole out as much as they like to the states. The states we have now were the creation of the military. So, 1914 is not a crucial year for Nigeria. One has to go back to 1900 and 1960, and of course touching the base of the things that happened in between including 1914.
The political atmosphere is charged because of 2015, why is it so?
Everybody wants to have their hands in the till and to be the people who will be doing the sharing. Is there any difference between APC and PDP in terms of ideology if they have any, in terms of programme if they have any? The PDP has no ideology likewise APC.
In those days when we were still learning how to be democratic in Nigeria, British people taught us that political parties should have manifesto and in their manifesto they would state what they will do if you vote for them so that the electorate will say ‘in your manifesto you promised to give free education and you have not given it.’ Can you think of any one thing that PDP promised Nigerians that they would do if they win the election? What is APC telling us now? They say they are going round finding out what people want. We will see. We really don’t have an effective governance system in Nigeria that delivers what it takes for the ordinary people to enjoy having a government. All this over-heating is about who will be in charge of sharing the money. You know what is bothering me? Here is President Jonathan calling a national conference that is going to look at the constitution of the country, and on the other hand INEC comes out with election timetable for president, governor, etc. Who told them what the conference would produce, whether they will make provision for a president, governor?
At the end of the conference, will there still be presidency as we have it now? Supposing we get there as am reading some of the things that people want and the conference decides that we have to go back to the parliamentary system of government because the presidential system is very expensive and complicated and it doesn’t make for holding people responsible for anything. That is why they can’t tell what they will do but if it were a parliamentary system, where a party will say, ‘if you vote us into power, the leader will become the Prime Minister and the other members will become ministers and we are going to carry out certain projects.’ It is not so in presidential system. Supposing we go to the conference and decide going back to the parliamentary system where we were brought up. Will there be a president? So, what is this nonsense about 2015?
Many people have not looked at it in this direction…?
They will not because they are busy fighting as to who will control the money from oil. While we are doing this, Chevron is selling its oil blocks, Shell is also looking at disinvesting and divesting its shares on the stock exchange. They are not investing anymore. They are selling their investments to some other people. Guess who are buying? It is the rich people who have made so much money by having their hands in the honey pot. After they have taken it, they would not be able to pump the oil.
What has happened to electricity? We dismantled PHCN Plc built with the money of everybody and sold it in sections to powerful people who have bought the IPPs. Only few of them were green field IPPs, that is, started from the scratch like Nnaji’s. They have bought what we used our collective wealth to build and then to collect they brought what they called the DISCOs. They are giving them right to collect the money and they have realised that they don’t have the technology to collect the money, they don’t have the technology to distribute electricity to the various areas and because they have not given you electricity, they have no guts to charge you money. They realized that they can’t collect the money they spent on DISCOs and they are now talking about how the government should come and bail them out. Bail out what you have already privatised?
Within the week, one of the dailies reported that the government is talking about taking money from Sovereign Wealth fund to give to DISCOs. That is type of trading they are doing in Abuja. So, they are going to draw $700 million from the Sovereign Wealth fund to assist the DISCOs.
You talked about true federalism as handed over to us in 1958, but you were a member of 1979 Constitution Drafting Committee, why didn’t it reflect in the Constitution?
1979 constitution was directed by the military and they had a template, which they gave to the chairman, the late Chief Rotimi Williams detailing what they wanted. Some of us didn’t know at a time. It was to confirm the decisions or decrees they had already passed and to write a constitution that will now give this structure that was set up to accommodate all the passed decrees.
In 1979, people sent in various memoranda. People from the North wanted us not to have the kind of presidency that we have but to go back to the parliamentary system. People from the West were divided over the issue. I was on the committee that worked on the executive. It was for us to read all the memos people sent and then make recommendations. Usually, what comes out of the memos that people sent is not what goes to the lawyers to draft.
When it came to drafting, Rotimi Williams, Ben Nwabueze and other lawyers just sat down and drew up the constitution along the template that the military wanted.
Go and read the speech that Murtala Mohammed made when he was inaugurating the committee you find out that he had already set the stage for that structure to remain but we were now to see whether it should be one party or can we have a system that has no political opposition?
Everything was tied to have a strong central government, political party with one party system if possible so that any opposition will be inside the party. When politics started, the northerners strived very much to build that kind of party with the NPN but it didn’t happen.
What most people sent their memos and recommended is not what came out. What came is what the military that was handing over wanted to see in the constitution.
During the Abacha constitution, I was on the sideline and worked with Dr Okigbo because Abacha wanted to institutionalize zones that we have now. Again, he gave instruction as to what he wanted and how he wanted it. The people, who went for that conference, were working towards what Abacha wanted. Of course, it was truncated and never saw the light of the day.
By the time he died, a draft had already been made. It was because of that draft that Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar set up a committee called, Constitution Debating Committee. I was a member. We were to take the Abacha draft and give it to people to debate, whether they like what they see or not and we summarise. We were divided into six zones, I led the South- South zone with my own team. When we all came back, each leader of the team will summarise in their various committees and brought it together.
The issue of true federalism must touch the issue of revenue allocation and the autonomy of each federating unit. What people in the South-South said was that they would like to have a situation where we were not going back to 1963 Constitution, which was 50 per cent, but at least 25 per cent should be given back on derivation. There was an old man that called me aside as the leader, his name is Dapapriye, he brought exchange of letters between his father and Queen of England before 1919 to establish their ownership of the waterfront up to 10 kilometres.
I dutifully relayed that to the chairman of the committee.
The draft came out, the same 13 per cent that Abacha had recommended didn’t change and the structure is what we have now, it didn’t change.
It is not that people have not been asking for true federalism, they have been asking but because we were doing this thing under the military that would want to carry out orders. That is why some of us joined NADECO and said we should change this structure of the federation back to true federal structure both in the financing, in deciding who are the federating units, in the powers given to the federating units as opposed to the powers given to the centre; we have to dismantle the whole thing.
This time round, those of us who are for true federalism are out again. Until it is established, we will still be having problems in this country.
What did Jonathan get wrong with the confab?
He was not right in putting no-go areas. There is no way you call a national conference if you want it to be meaningful that you should not talk about how to maintain the unity of Nigeria. It is the other side of the same coin of secession or self-government. It is the same coin – one side is go separate ways and the other side is maintain unity.
If we go there to talk about unity we must start by saying there will be no secession of any of the units. Before you do that you have to talk about who constitutes this unit, which is a federal unit.
The government shouldn’t have tied their hands, just leave it open and say, ‘we are here to talk about how Nigeria should stay together, we have been together since 1900 till now and we want to continue like that but under what condition?’
As I read what the various ethnic groups are writing in the papers, nobody wants to really break up Nigeria. What people want is to be able to govern themselves in a way that will be meaningful to their own people and that is moving towards true federalism. We first of all decide on how we govern ourselves. I presented a paper in this direction when the Advisory Committee came to Lagos.
What do you expect from the conference?
The way it has been structured unless the chairman and the officials are going to have the strong character to put aside Jonathan’s no-go area; start and conduct a meeting as if they were conducting a meeting of gentlemen who have come to decide for the first time whether we want to live together in one country. This must be answered. If majority say we want to remain as one, then the next question is, under what condition? Who are the people who want to?
The Itsekiri people, do you agree? ‘Yes’; Igbo, do you agree? ‘Yes’; Yoruba, do you agree, ‘yes’; Tiv, do you agree? ‘Yes’, etc. It is not a question of 75 per cent, anybody who says, I don’t want to be part of this country? We say, ‘ok’, stand aside. When we finish the conference if you see the kind of structure we have set up and you decide to sign it and be part of it. That is what other countries did. Example, look at the Ethiopia constitution, Nwabueze and some Nigerians were advisers when they were making the constitution after they finished their wars with Eritrea. Even though they have a clause, which allows any of the ethnic nationalities to secede, nobody has seceded. Because it is there, it now becomes a check on arbitrary use of power.
Example, these killings all over the North, people will be cautious if they know that if they continue, they can be pushed out of the federation or the other people will say we are going to take the remaining part of the country. They will moderate their views. People talk with immoderate language in Nigerian politics; that is what heats up the polity.
Since they all agreed on that in Ethiopia, they have not quarrelled again.
For me, whatever we are going to do in Nigeria, we must have that clause of giving the people the right to secede. It is a check on the central government and the arbitrary use of power by the majority over the minority; you can’t just get up because you are majority and start bulldozing your way in Itsekiri or Ibibio lands. Even if they are only three million people in Uyo and they say the way you are treating us we don’t want to be part again. They should go. There are many members of United Nations smaller than some local government areas in Nigeria.
What is your fear for Nigeria?
My fear for Nigeria is that we can keep on stumbling like this and stumble into real disaster. The disaster has not come yet, the conference that they are toying with is our saving grace and if they keep toying with it and is not held or held and decision not implemented people won’t take it.
The young ones may get up and start a real revolution to restructure Nigeria that will suit their generation.
Our own generation is almost gone. Look at what is happening in Egypt and Ukraine, do you see people of my generation? Our generation fought what we believed on, but didn’t succeed and the rest of Nigeria didn’t learn a lesson from the civil war.
Are you saying Nigeria will pay dearly if we fail to get confab right?
Yes, we need to take the conference seriously and even suspend the elections of 2015. In my paper to the Advisory Committee, I suggested that even if we take one year or nine months to sort out this problem and arrive at what everybody will accept, the constitution which we would arrive at will then make provision for six or seven months elongation for people now to get ready to hold an election under the new constitution.
The president, governors, National Assembly and elected officers should stay until we finish this conference and then have a referendum and what emerges becomes the constitution and if it says we should have a presidential system, then people will know what they are contesting for. If it says we go back to parliamentary system, people will know what they are contesting for. It is the same thing down to the local council. But the way they are doing it, it is like the conference is a by-the -way issue.
If we hold the conference and it produces something and it is set aside and they have election, when will they implement the outcome of the conference? You see the anomaly?
The people, who should go to the confab, should face it seriously and decide on the condition that will make our unity possible. If they are unable to agree on that, then the country will disintegrate sooner or later.
