A former Chairman of the Nigerian chapter of Transparency International, Maj. Gen. Ishola Williams (retd), tells GBENGA ADENIJI and BAYO AKINLOYE that Goodluck Jonathan is used to the country’s corrupt system and that hosting the recent campaign fundraiser in the Presidential Villa was ill- conceived Ahead of the presidential election, there is a clamour for change in leadership. Do you think that’s the way out of the nation’s woes? People always say the problem of Nigeria is leadership. No, I refuse to agree. Our problem is followership. Among those who want to become the president of this country are clowns and jokers. But, at least they are contesting. The point is this: we as followers have seven choices to choose from. Therefore, what are our criteria for choosing the leader that we want? Nigerians are saddled with the responsibility of deciding those criteria. Unfortunately, the criteria for most of the followers can be narrowed down to one thing: the naira. At primaries and conventions, money is distributed for the delegates to change their minds. As it is, in most cases people don’t make their choice. Now, we have two prominent presidential candidates, President Goodluck Jonathan and Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. We have an opportunity to have been able to judge Jonathan over the past six years; Buhari was a former Head of State about 20 years ago — nobody knows how he can perform. The only thing we can do is look at his track record as a former head of state and the other position that he held. What we need is for people who have served under him to come out and say, ‘This is the type of person that this man is as a leader because I worked directly with him.’ One person who has done that is Professor Tam David- West. He has come out clearly that Buhari is honest and incorruptible. We need more people like that to come out and talk. The general impression people have of Buhari is that he’s incorruptible and that if he gets there he will fight corruption. However, being the head of state in the 1980s is different from being the President in the 21st century. As a civilian elected leader, no more decrees; he has to work with the National Assembly and the corrupt civil service all the time. He cannot do it alone; he has to look for people who have the same passion for anti- corruption and are ready to work with him. Can he find them within the All Progressives Congress? Or, will the APC allow him to choose the people that will work with him and not fall by the wayside in the fight against corruption and impunity? And above all, can he change the current civil service? The challenge facing Buhari (if he becomes the President) is tough; he cannot tackle them in four years. I hope he’s gathering now the team that can help him if he succeeds in the February 14 election. What’s your view on Jonathan? As for Jonathan, he is used to the (corrupt) system; life continues. And for me, the only way the President can convince me — I don’t know about other people — is to release the forensic audit (on the allegedly missing $20bn from the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation), between now and end of April. If he can do that, that will change my opinion about the system of government we run in this country. But I doubt that happening. In this case, the person I empathise with is the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. If she doesn’t release that report and she has kept quiet in spite of series of editorials and opinions written on the issue, the reputation that she has abroad will go to pieces — and, already it’s going to pieces. She’s about the longest-serving finance minister in this country or in the whole of Africa; even in the whole world. And if this government is to change, she will leave on a very low-key with the present economic situation. And as usual, she is fond of blaming others. She has never accepted responsibility for the failing economy; she’s always painting a rosy picture about the Nigerian economy. We’re however lucky that we have a largely informal economy that has not been tied to the global economy. If our informal economy had been tied to the global market we would be groaning and suffering because if we are not careful, one dollar may exchange for N200. Unfortunately, our economists have not been able to come up with a model that can transform the informal sector, build on it and make the economy more resilient. And to be able to operate in the intra-West African trade which Nigeria should dominate. Also, we should be looking into Central Africa. If you look farther a bit, the African Union wants to establish a continental free trade area by 2017. I’ve been trying to push the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take a leadership position but they have no vision; same thing with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We are a people who think of today alone. We don’t think of the future. We are not a strategic thinking and planning nation despite all the technocrats that we have in government. The focus for 2015 is the general elections. How can the Independent National Electoral Commission conduct credible, free and fair elections? I have always been against having governorship, parliamentary and presidential elections conducted by the INEC because of the logistics involved. Fortunately, because of litigation from the last elections some of these elections are now staggered. But left to me, it is not the business of the electoral commission to conduct elections for state Houses of Assembly and office of the governor. Electing governors and members of the House of Assembly is the business of each state of the federation. What is the business of INEC as a federal institution? And the earlier we de-federalise the electoral system, the better. And to hope that one day, local governments can conduct their elections — city councils all over the world, town councils all over the world and metropolitan councils all over the world conduct their own elections. Lagos City Council was conducting its elections before. It’s nothing new. If we can do that, then the states can choose their governments. People may shout, ‘They will rig; they will rig!’ At the federal level, don’t they rig? After some time we will mature. But we must start. I can tell you one thing about Nigerians: if you choose the wrong person for them, they’ll fight. If that’s done, INEC can then concentrate on conducting elections only for the Presidency and the National Assembly. It will reduce the cost and logistics of conducting elections. It will also reduce the possibility of rigging of the presidential and parliamentarian elections because the commission will not be conducting many elections at the same time. Right now, the electoral body’s principal officers are chosen by the President and approved by the Senate. An independent INEC should not be formed that way. The commissioners should be chosen by recommendation of INEC to the National Assembly. All these people should be completely independent of any political party. And there are many people in Nigeria — men and women — who have high integrity to be in INEC. Using soldiers to maintain law and order seems to have worked in the last two governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states. Will you recommend the same thing for the 2015 elections? Now coming to security, there should not be a single soldier seen anywhere. I do not accept that civil defence, police and the mobile police are not capable or competent enough to maintain electoral security — they are; we don’t need soldiers except the government has some hidden agenda. If they are talking about political violence, why do they train mobile police to be different from the ordinary police? Is it not to handle violence? The government has no excuse at all including soldiers in any electoral process. It is abominable. If I were the Chief of Defence Staff, I would beg Mr. President to leave the military out of electoral exercises. How do you feel about the level of insurgency in the country and how will you rate the performance of the military? I was shocked when the governor of Borno State announced that 20 out of 27 local government areas in the state are under the control of Boko Haram. As it is, the governor only governs seven local government areas in the state. I didn’t know it was as bad as that. Having said that, I’ll say I am not part of the retired officers that are current or have friends among the present crop of officers to get enough information for me to be able to pass a judgment but whether I get information or not, what I read in newspapers is not detailed enough also for me to determine what is happening there. I have had opportunities of listening to some of the civilian joint military task force about the condition there. From what I had read and heard from some people in Maiduguri, I get the impression that the civilian JTF is doing more of the job than the intelligence services and the Army should be doing. In addition to that, I do not know if they really know how to use the civilian JTF to the maximum effect. That’s on one hand; on the other hand, I do hope that all the challenges that we read about in the newspapers with respect to the soldiers have been taken care of. While in the military, did you play a role in any of the nation’s coups? No. I’ve always believed coups are stupid. They are stupid in the sense that they are unsustainable. And unfortunately in the case of Nigeria, we have not been lucky like some of the Asian and Latin American coups in which those soldiers who are in command and control of the country laid the foundation for some developments in countries like Brazil and Argentina. In spite of their past — and some of the coupists are already paying for their actions notwithstanding their old age — they laid the foundation for development. The same cannot be said of Nigeria even though at that time we had plenty of money to do whatever we wanted to do. There’s one general trend that I see among all Nigerian leaders, except for persons like Obafemi Awolowo and Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, we haven’t got people with great vision. In view of this lack of vision by many Nigerian leaders they don’t encourage people who have vision to come close to them. We’re a nation without strategic thinking and planning. There’s no place for think-tank in Nigeria. If you look at the civil wars that have been fought all over the world, the Nigerian Civil War has taught us a lesson that we must always find a way to resolve our differences sitting around the table rather than shooting at one another across an open field. At the end of the day, we’ll come back and negotiate. At that point of our history, the war was unnecessary. We should take seriously the lessons learnt and tell ourselves never again to walk that path. How will you describe the recent campaign fundraiser organised by the Peoples Democratic Party on behalf of Jonathan? On two grounds, the PDP fundraiser is a bad precedent; first of all, using the Presidential Villa to hold such an event. Those who have asked the President to do that must have their heads examined. What took place means that any President that is in charge of the country can call people together to the Villa to come and contribute money to his political campaign. Even if the President had wanted to show power of incumbency, he should have respected the Villa as a non-political ground. The second aspect is that — based on my gut feeling — it is not true that people contributed any money in the Villa. That N21bn or some more was already there. The money for (the 2015) elections have been building up over the past six years or, at least the past four years. Since some people have already made up their minds that the President should rule the country for another four years. If one sees people spending that amount of money one begins to ask, where did all that money come from? There were no real donations. The money was there; that event was a cover-up. If I were the President, I’d give three-quarter of that money — about N17bn — to victims of terrorist acts. I’ll not use it for the election. Those who donated that amount of money should be ashamed of themselves. They should have donated such money to their fellow citizens who are suffering; N17bn will change the lives of many of these people. Their donor action was a shameful one. Do you think the Federal Government can rescue the Chibok schoolgirls who have been in Boko Haram’s captivity since April last year? I doubt whether the Federal Government is capable of rescuing those girls because the Boko Haram insurgents have held them hostage for more than six months. I cannot imagine what those demons would have done with them. I feel the pains of their parents; most Nigerians do. We’re helpless. In fact, the whole world looks helpless, not just Nigeria. We don’t even know where the girls are right now. But the young girls being used for suicide bombing by the terrorists even bother me more. We are in a very terrible situation. Recently, Transparency International rated Nigeria the 39th most corrupt nation in the world. Shouldn’t the FG be bothered? No, I don’t think so — I think we should not bother our heads about what Transparency International says or doesn’t say. We should be more concerned about the way our own people — Nigerians — see how transparent and accountable the government is; that is the key issue because the people who feel the impact of this corruption most are Nigerians. To a certain extent, foreigners who come in here to do business or have to interact with Nigerians either inside or outside the country do run into some of these problems and that affects our business image. But if you look at what is happening in reality, there are some foreigners who have accepted that we have a system that is corrupt. But I think what is important is more about us Nigerians and how corruption impacts on our daily lives. We have been talking about corruption for the past 50 years. Like Edwin Clark said in one of the newspaper interviews he granted, corruption has been with us for a long time; it was not Jonathan that started it — we have all sorts of funny excuses from old people like that. But, does it mean corruption should continue? Does it mean someone who has been in power for the past six years cannot do anything about it? What is the need of having a President who cannot make any changes — to allow the status quo or make it worse? Such excuses to me did not make sense at all; and does not help our country. Let Nigerians decide what they want to do about this issue of corruption. As far as I am concerned, most Nigerians don’t care and that is the challenge of those who want to fight corruption. And except we get to a stage in which we can convince Nigerians that if corruption can be reduced to the minimum, we can have more good roads, good schools and better hospitals, then our lives will be better. Here’s another face of corruption: our civil servants make things worse. If for example, a civil servant in the Ministry of Education doesn’t send his or her children to the public school, how can the public school be better? Some of these civil servants take bribes and establish some of the private schools that are not up to standard and some of these private schools pay teachers about N15, 000 monthly. Things are not getting better. In view of what you just said, how will you rate President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration? I don’t want to talk about rating or not rating. What I am concerned about is the increasing impunity in all forms and in all areas that you find in Nigeria today, especially in the area of corrupt practices; that’s what bothers me. There is corruption all over the world but what is different is that they deal with it head on when a corrupt person is caught. However, in our own case, when a corrupt person is caught we pretend that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission have investigated and taken the person to court and we will not hear about it anymore. Therefore, we should concentrate our attention more on dealing with cases of impunity and talk less about corruption. In this case, the anti-corruption agencies, the law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, the Nigerian Bar Association, accountants and journalists are responsible; because journalists don’t follow up on those cases and find out what has happened. Once in a while, the newspapers will come up with a few things. The lawyers are benefitting from the situation too. The judiciary keeps postponing the cases and keeps appointing new judges everyday; those judges have refused to adopt modern information and communication technology system to enhance their productivity. These are some of the challenges that we face but in the real sense of it, if we are prepared to face these challenges, we can overcome them. We have the men, we have the materials and we have the tools to overcome them. But be that as it may, we also believe that throwing money at something or recruiting people who are incompetent will solve the problem. How do you think the issue of impunity can be decisively dealt with? One, it’s about the lawyers. If our lawyers today decide that cases of impunity will stop, the NBA will lead the fight; and as for extrajudicial killing, anytime that happens, the lawyers take it up as an institution, not as an organisation. An institution is different from an organisation in that they exist for a cause not only for their own interest but for the interest of the people that they serve too; because they are supposed to serve the people as an institution. Therefore, they are supposed to lead what is good for the people of the country but they are not doing that. Two, the accountants have to join them because for all those in the accounting field and financial field, everything boils down to money in most cases. But do they care? They pay lip service and nothing is done. Then, you come to the journalists who write all the stories, who are supposed to expose the good, the bad and the ugly side: maybe the reporters are willing, but are the editors willing? These things should not happen to people who have a sense of integrity and ethical standards — whether they are suffering or not, they adhere to these ethical standards. These three professions are very important in the fight against corruption. The day they come together and maintain that sense of integrity, I can assure you that corruption and impunity will reduce to the barest minimum. Besides the journalists, the lawyers and the accountants, you seem to hold the Nigerian people responsible for the country’s endemic corruption. Doesn’t the government have any share in this? The mistake we tend to make in this is that, how did the people in government get there? You see, we have a President who is selected by me and you. We have members of the National Assembly. You know why they are there? They are there for the purpose of oversight or to check the executive. We have the judiciary to check the executive and the National Assembly. What else do we want? And above all, we have the journalists to keep tabs on the three on behalf of the people. You publish your newspapers for the people to read — without the readers you all will be out of jobs. Therefore, what we are interested in is for journalists to tell us how the government is operating; journalists are the town- criers. They must rise up to their responsibility and do investigative journalism. That is why the government is sometimes careful; it is afraid of being exposed. Through the Freedom of Information Act, the position of the journalists has been enhanced. You can demand for information and then you will be able to get that information. If not, you can go to court.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 11:25:29 +0000
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