1999 Constitution still the best and has not failed, says Awomolo

The former vice president of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar recently lent his voice to the growing agitation for the restructuring of the country. But in this interview with OLUDARE RICHARDS, a senior advocate of Nigeria, Adegboyega Awomolo says the agitation is meaningless. According to him, the 1999 constitution is the best we can have. He also spoke on the electoral reforms in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) among others.

What is your view on the call for restructuring of the country?
It is meaningless to me. Ask those who are calling for the restructuring, what do they mean? They are looking for a structure or opportunity for them to become relevant again. The 1999 Constitution is still the best we have and it has not failed. I am not trying to say we should not try ways by which we can improve on its application and its institutions. Take for example the issue of fiscal federalism. We need to look at it again and see whether the fiscal application or fiscal laws or legal regime we have is good enough. Some people are calling for each state to develop at its own pace. Where I blame the Federal Government is for encouraging the labour unions to make Nigeria a unitary country. Nigeria is a federation. Each state should be allow to pay whatever they can pay. The Federal Government can dictate the minimum wage. The constitution says so. But it is wrong to allow the Labour Unions to make the states an appendage of the Federal Government. Right now, all the states of the federation, except Lagos, are appendages of the Federal Government. They cannot sustain themselves; they cannot pay now that the revenue coming from the central has dwindled or has virtually diminished. The Federal Government should play a role to balance the federalism. The federal government should limit itself to its roles.The reason people are calling for restructuring is because we have for several years suffered under military regime which had a central command; from commander-in-chief to the last corporal. That was under the military. Now, the governor must listen to the present commander-in-chief while the governor must be obeyed by the chairman of a council. The structuring we are talking about is already there, so what are we restructuring? We have local governments, we have states and we have the federal government. Some people have suggested we have zones and regions, what is that to do for us? To create more offices, to reduce offices or to do what? I have never understood what they mean with restructuring. People who talk about restructuring are political class who are looking for opportunity to come to the center stage.

On the war against corruption, what is your assessment so far?
The All Progressive Congress (APC) manifesto had three core issues: War against insurgency and Boko Haram, which must be brought to an end and release our people from oppression, human degradation and death. To wage frontal war against corruption and abuse of office and misuse of power, and of course the impunity that was reigning at the time and lastly to fix the economy and create employment. For the war against insurgency, I want to give the president excellent marks. Before he came, substantial part of the North-East was under Boko Haram and there was no political will to fight the war. The soldiers were poorly armed. There was no programme to frontally wage the war against Boko Haram. With respect to the economy and unemployment, I haven’t seen any change. Maybe one year may be too short, but we need to see positive indications that our economy will remain one of the best in Africa. The third one, corruption, having regards to his effort to have shown personal commitment and political will to fight corruption, whoever may be involved. He has traversed the whole world saying , ‘there is much corruption in my country, bring back what has been stolen and kept in your country’. He has been able to retrieve some millions from people who have abused their office within Nigeria. He has been able to identify a handful of them and took them to court. But I must tell you, in all these, I score him 30 percent. The major issue in corruption has not been tackled. When President Buhari came as head of state, under the military regime, he had what was called War Against Indiscipline. Every young man and woman carried the badge of War Against Indiscipline. Corruption is worse than the indiscipline we were talking then, although indiscipline has grown into corruption. How many unemployed graduates can tell you he can get a job on his own merit? How many Nigerians can get official service without knowing anybody there? The corruption is very much around us. The abuse of office is very much around us.We need to mobilize Nigerians at every level to be part of the War Against Corruption. There is no doubt that the huge burden of corruption and impunity that we had last year is such that would take us not less than five years to tackle but we must begin to do so holistically. We need to create an avenue where whistle blowers can give their information and be protected. There was this case of a minister who allegedly take loan from parastatals under him and the whistle blowers were called saboteurs. That is not the language for them. Those whistle blowers are people we should encourage.Where is the money coming from in a TSA regime? It means that the N13million requested is coming from outside TSA. That is again an abuse, that is corruption! If you look at our everyday affairs in this country, corruption has gone into our brain and into our system. We have adopted it into our way of life. We need to change and change must come from every individual. There are so many houses built by public officers who don’t need them and is wasting away. There are too many things we can see as evidence of corruption. The EFCC is just scratching the surface, the problem is enormous. How many prosecutors do they have? How many investigators do they have? How many equipments do they have? Thank God for the TSA, God bless President Buhari, if not for TSA, we would not have discovered a lot of these funds that were stashed away.

President Buhari said he is not interested in the Political Reform conference report organised by Jonathan. What is the implication of this?
When President Jonathan created a forum for discussion, I won’t call that a constitutional conference because there was no law which established it. It was just a talking shop.Why should President Buhari be interested? I am sure he has his reasons. I don’t know the implication of that but what law established that conference? There is no law that established it. What law says that whatever comes out of that national conference should be employed in whatever way? Whatever comes out of that national conference can only be used by State House of Assemblies and National Assembly to review our constitution where they consider necessary. For anyone who wants structural adjustment or structural reform, it is just a political noise. It is another opportunity for abuse of office, corruption, impunity and all sorts of things destroying us now. My view is that we should support the present government in pursuing its agenda. We should not impose on them things not achievable within their tenure. We need not create another diversion for the government that would waste resources and waste its time. It is not profitable for us to be going on a wild goose chase.

The NBA has endorsed universal suffrage in its presidential elections. Do you think the idea is good?
I endorse the universal suffrage introduced for the election of the president and officers of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). It was not a decision of the president, it was a decision of the annual conference of the NBA in 2015. It became clear to everybody that the process or method of delegates conference introduced in 1998, when I was the chairman of the 44 chairmen of the NBA, that most of our chairmen exploited the candidates by inducements.They also manipulated the nomination of delegates to represent their branches. It became apparent that the NBA leadership was not being elected or appointed by the true representatives of the lawyers generally. As of today, we have more than 120, 000 lawyers all over Nigeria and any lawyer who has paid his practicing fees as at the 31st of March of the year will be entitled to participate in the election. Anywhere you are, facilities would be made available for you to elect whoever you want into the office of the president and other officers. We thought in 1998 that a situation where over 6000 lawyers gather in one hall, to conduct elections was no longer feasible. It was with a lot of dangers and risks. Somebody from Oshogbo would come to Ibadan to come and elect his own officers, someone from Sokoto would come to Calabar or to Lagos because he wants to vote for officers of the association. Though it happened during our election year and the conferences but there were too many risks involved.We adopted that system following the success recorded by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) then and some others who were doing delegates’ conference and it worked for two years. It think it is appropriate that we should be flexible with our organisations and arrangements. I agree with it. Following the 1992 problems that befell the NBA at the Port-Harcourt conference, whereby it went to comatose up to 1997, and near proscription by the then military presidency under General Abacha, it became clear that the NBA must come back as a body to ensure that people’s rights are not abridged or violated without remedies. That is why our logo bears “Ubi jus ibi remedium” which means ‘Where there is a Right there is a Remedy’. I agree it is time to take a second look at our electoral system, but now, you will vote in your branch, you won’t go anywhere else, not delegates, as long as you have paid your practicing fees and you are qualified to vote. I think it is a very good development.