IN THE first part of this interview, Dr Omotoye Olorode explored, among other things, the leadership flaws that made the Coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria a deadly dilemma for ordinary Nigerians.
In this second part, Comrade Olorode speaks on a number of issues from the chaotic nature of Nigeria since independence, Buhari’s leadership, his social and economic policies, ASUU’s struggles over the years including the current faceoff with government on IPPIS, progressive politics and many more issues. Excerpts!
For quite a long time, Prof, going back to the 1980s, Nigeria seems to be literally hanging on the precipice. There has always been this feeling that soon, the country was going to disintegrate, as the country lurches from one crisis to the other; what some analysts have described as the curse of Sisyphus; Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah said something to that effect recently and of course you have on a number of times commented on this at one lecture or the other. In fact, my own generation was born and grew up in this state of uncertainty and we are still deep in it. What do you think is responsible for this?
Well, there are two major forces in our society, in my view. One force is the force of the under-privileged people when they are united. The other force is the force of the privileged people when they are united.
The privileged people are out largely to sustain their privileges and in the process of doing that, they unite on, for example, how much can the state do for people. They are united on this and therefore each time they are confronted with the crisis arising from their economic politics and so on and so forth.
You see; they abandon what they need to do in terms of the interest of ordinary people, the under-privileged people; and because of all of these, and because also our people have been sensitised in the past, in fact even before independence, to believe that the interest of ordinary people differ on the basis of where they come from and which God they worship, these two things, these two directions of diverting people’s attention have become very, very important for the sustenance of the ruling class hegemony.
The way they respond to, for example, to trade union demand on many issues, including the ones that they make themselves about trade unions and about the right of people to associate, even of young people; the right of students to raise questions, to associate, to make demands on the state, on the institutions where they are; the Nigerian ruling class is united on all of that. When you look at the deceit of the organisations of ordinary people by the state at all levels; you will not sleep. I was just reading some posts of what a former President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) said recently.
In 1984, you know; the NMA was hounded across our country by the military, by this same Buhari crowd. I remember this because ASUU was so central in publicising the demands of the NMA in 1984 when I was chairman of ASUU in Ife in 1984; I remember this very clearly. You know, NMA was hounded and all that and it was defeated, in a way and since then they have not been able to gather themselves together.
ASUU has been able to continue after many bans because of the fundamental character of the intellectual; and the commitment of the people along with the student movement, has also helped ASUU to be able to go around bans and reorganise to remain resilient in the struggle.
The student movement became defeated, more or less, because there was a decree; Decree 48 or so, through which the ruling class waged definite war on the students movement in 1984, ’85, ’86. So, we should not forget all of these things because when the military wing was on top of the Nigerian ruling class to sit on top of our people, very few people were talking about whether it was a northerner that was the president of Nigeria or not. When Obasanjo was on and waged this war on the students’ movement, nobody remembered that Obasanjo was a Yoruba man and all of that.
When Yerima, the former governor of Zamfara State, declared a sharia state in Zamfara, Obasanjo just shrugged his shoulders and said well, it will fizzle out. There was no definitive critique of that question. How can anybody declare a theocratic state in a multi-religious community, because in Zamfara, there were not just Muslims, there were Christians, there were animists. It was not just the state that was quiet; the other members of the ruling class also did not breathe a word. It was the media and the human rights movement, which of course cut across ethnic and religious boundaries that raised questions on this matter.
The point I am making is that we have to return to raising questions; questions on how the movement of the people responded in the ’70s and early ’80s; the students’ movement, workers, market women, women-in-Nigeria and so forth; how did they respond to the Nigerian crisis? What killed their response? And how did the divisive forces of tribe and religion begin to get dominant in public discourse?
Incidentally, I must say that this is not just about Nigeria! It is the rise of nationalism in Europe and other places. It is the nationalist response of people like Trump and so on and so forth; the local and regional responses to globalisation.
The state responses to the crisis of the world are also in a way some kind of tribalisation of the crisis of the world. That is my notion of the challenges…because people struggled against globalisation, especially in terms of the control of the wealth of the planet by multinational corporations and the countries of their origin. You know, almost at every G-8 meeting, people would be lined up to demonstrate; in Genoa, in Seattle, in Nice and so on. So we need to understand all of these things, not just in the context of the polity like Nigeria but across the globe.
In spite of all of these things that we are saying, the ruling class agrees on the humongous remuneration of legislators at all levels, with all the noise that people are making and the resistance. I heard they were just distributing the latest model of Toyota Camry cars to themselves last week, with all the crises of bad roads, expensive transportation, food, medicine; with the scare of coronavirus, they were distributing the latest Toyota Camry cars to themselves, irrespective whether they are Yoruba or Christians or Muslims or animists.
NR: Prof, let’s shift again to the character of the leadership of President Buhari President Buhari who rode to power mainly on the back of what many describe as his integrity. Many people seem not to be satisfied with his fight against corruption and as you know, this formed the crust of his governance agenda. Some even said that his government is as corrupt as that of his predecessors. What is your assessment of the Buhari government in the specific area of his anti-corruption crusade in relation to people’s perception of corruption under him?
Olorode: Well; let’s start with the whole thing about corruption. The corruption thing, for me, the slogan of a fight against corruption, is a very strategic slogan for the Nigerian ruling class.
This is in the sense that whatever way you look at it, the increase in inequality in our country has created a consciousness especially among ordinary people that there are people who have more than they need and that they acquired it through corrupt practices. And that is simply the truth!
But the point of that is also that once it is decided that a country is going to be ruled by a few people, through privatisation, exploitation will deepen. How will people whose parents are not known to be rich, who were not industrialists and all that, just suddenly become multi-millionaires?
Obasanjo regretted that though he wanted to make 100 billionaires in Nigeria but that he was only able to make only 50 billionaires. That statement was made in the midst of the inequality, poverty, bad roads and all the decay that that we are talking about.
While states cannot own oil blocks, you will recall that there was a retired army general who confessed that he was given two oil blocks. He said publically that when he sold them, he didn’t know what to do with the money. Didn’t you hear that?
NR: Yes, was it not TY Danjuma who said that?
Olorode: Yes! So, Buhari was, and is, a perfect rallying point for the ruling class that stumbled on this strategic theme of the fight against corruption. Of course it was convenient to immediately show that the predecessors of this regime had their hands on the till and had stolen a lot of public property and so on and so forth.
But then, it was not only at the federal level that people were stealing money; that is something that people did not take into account in all of these things. And, it is not just PDP people; the APC people and people in other parties also stole a lot of money. The sheer control of state apparatus gave people who controlled them direct access to the treasuries and they stole a lot of money from them at all levels. So, of course there were…
NR: (Cuts in) So, essentially you are saying that this issue of corruption goes beyond what Buhari represents in the imagination of people to a much larger problem?
Olorode: Of course, it is larger; much larger, but specifically, this Buhari thing; look, the person who was said to have been caught cutting grass with millions of naira; you know how long it took pressure from the media to get that guy kicked out of office?
NR: Yes, the former SGF, Babachir
Olorode: Yes, it took so long, and there are many people like that all over the place. I mean, the whole question of a First Lady having an office and having resources just like the MDAs [ministries, departments or agencies] to run the First Lady’s office is corruption. The whole question of a First Daughter taking a presidential plane to go and do a private business inside Nigeria is equally an act of corruption. I mean, the selectivity of the fight against corruption renders everything laughable. I think our people misunderstood the strategic import for the ruling class’ obsession with this slogan about corruption; our people misunderstood it for seriousness.
The periodic volcanoes that we then see inside the regimes itself, in terms of some permanent secretaries just having so much money, and therefore had to be retired, some persons in some parastatals hiding money somewhere and all of that; the question of legislators distributing facilities to themselves, and so on and so forth; are mere deceptions.
The fact that at the state level, nobody touches anybody, you will think that it is only in Abuja that these corrupt practices are going on all point to one thing; that there is simply no strategic commitment to any fight against any corruption, and that is political corruption.
Before the last election; long, long before the last election; the government was saying it was going to enhance the capacity of people economically, but it was not until the eve of the election that Mr Osinbajo started distributing what they called trader-money, and it was clear to anybody who cared; and it should be to everybody, that that was vote-buying; it is nothing more than that.
A big man in the ruling party was found to be carrying money in a bullion van in and out of his house when other people were being arrested for carrying money about. The person boasted that the money belonged to him and that there was nothing anybody could about it.
A minister was said to have forged an NYSC certificate and it took so long for the government to be able to do anything about that minister. Some of the people who are appointed to deal with the question of corruption were even the people defending that minister.
So the anti-corruption thing was contrived just to enable Nigerians who are deprived to entertain them; and people were deceived to be clapping for a government that they think is dealing with their enemies. It is not more than that.
The fundamental theme of the regime, accepting, like the previous one, is that they want to sell Nigeria; that Nigeria will be privatised. This presupposed the notion that they cannot do anything about corruption, they cannot; certainly not anything fundamental about corruption.
NR: Prof, you may remember that over the years in the course of Buhari’s campaign to be president, right from 2003, many people, especially from the progressive community, usually remind Nigerians of Buhari’s authoritarian tendencies as military Head of State; but his supporters had argued that that was exactly the basis for his being a better candidate as he was going to be a president that would be firm, that would be ruthless with corruption and that administratively, he would be excellent. What are your views of Buhari prior to 2015?
Olorode: My view of Buhari has remained the same, it hasn’t changed. The problem, I think, is that the people you called progressives, in a way, are divided on the matter. Some of those who think that Buhari came to bring fundamental change are abandoned. In my own view, there is the need for an independent political movement that is able to look sufficiently back and forward to be able to sustain our own agenda; a people’s agenda.
You see, this is necessary because the ERGP, the Economic Recovery and Growth Programme, is fundamentally the same thing that we have been fighting since 1984. The same neo-liberal thing we have been fighting against. Go and read it again! Of course, many of our people got tired, that is why they joined them; from PDP to APC, they joined them; they joined people like el-Rufai, moving from PDP to APC, and a lot of our people also got lost in the NGO thing. In fact, it has become what they now call civil society, and in fact, there is a civil society organisation that the APC engaged on the social media, complete with a platform; it fizzled out recently.
My feeling is that why a whole lot of people at that time thought that Buhari was going to make a difference had to do with opportunism; and we are still inside it now. We don’t have an organisation that is able to harvest our very robust response in the early 1980s; the response that produced a document, “How to Save Nigeria” or the plethora of public statements circulated massively in leaflets and documents by the Nigeria Labour Congress or the student movement set-up of that period.
So, my attitude is; in a way, we were defeated and that defeat scattered the organisations of ordinary people following the very brilliant and committed activities of the Nigeria Labour Congress between February 1984 and 1988. There is this siege on the movement and on NLC itself and NLC didn’t surface again until the emergence of Adams Oshiomhole.
So my own attitude about what we did notably didn’t change since 1984 and we have put these things on paper in terms of writing, in terms of our general response to the way things were going. Our attitude will not change.
Buhari was a strategic string board for the Nigerian ruling class in terms of material manifestation, in terms of even implementation theme like anti-corruption. Of course they were not in a position to implement any such thing, they were not even prepared to rule; they were not.
This challenge is not just of the Nigerian ruling class contraption, it has the imprimatur of imperialism inside it. That is why the Yar’Adua people have to throw Ribadu out of EFCC; they all ended up in America.
NR: But when you step out of this aggregate analysis that you are doing, how would you describe Buhari as a “converted democrat in relation to the core features of democracy such as social justice, such as rule of law, such as free and fair election and civil rights? How will you describe him in relation to all these social variables? Let’s leave the economic dimension now.
Olorode: No, you know, if you don’t believe in economic democracy, which in a periphery like Nigeria, must mean public purpose, you cannot be a democrat. You cannot be a democrat because you cannot even properly defend even democratic processes of people. You have to join party that relies on big money? You cannot even pick the ticket of your party without being able to bring millions of naira to pay your party to pick the ticket. This was what Buhari did! You cannot get into a political party without money bags that carry bullion vans that carry money about. You cannot!
You know, I call what they are doing dictatorship by means other than direct military dictatorship!
And you know the way they were arresting people, the way they have so-called public law enforcement agents who were masked during the day, should not leave in anybody any doubt about Buhari’s democratic credentials. Look our people have been hacked, the ruling class fraudulently deceived our people into thinking that some democratic dispensation was happening since 1998, but no such thing was happening.
You know, the ruling class and imperialism decided how Nigeria will be run. The money they used to run this thing they call democracy was accumulated by depriving our people. Go and read Obasanjo’s book; immediately he was elected, he went around his friends in America asking for money; and you know, they will be interested in the kind of government he would want to run; were they not? They asked them to sell his country, and he did!
You see, this thing about our democracy was founded on the fact that the ruling class in 1998 could not carry on with military dictatorship. They knew and their friends in America and Europe knew that they couldn’t; that if they had insisted, the ruling class would be committing suicide and that their own [American and European] interests were going to be terribly compromised; all their resources that are in our country and their control mechanisms, all would have been compromised.
You see, this thing they called democracy is ruling class dictatorship by means other than military dictatorship.
You will remember Abacha was determined to become civilian president. I think, when Susan Rice or the then American Secretary of State was in South Africa and stated that America will not accept Abacha and were thinking of all sorts of embargoes that they realised how determined he [Abacha] was in fulfilling his ambition.
It was then that President Clinton came up to say that as long as Abacha was not in military uniform, America will have no objection. So if anybody thinks that either US or any of its allies will do otherwise, they will be surprised. The dictatorship of capital that will enslave Nigerians by other means is what this thing they call democracy is about here in our own case.
So, we must not forget all this background. Why should it be impossible for somebody, for an independent candidate; to run for election in a local government as chairman, as councillor and so on? We were doing that before the first coup in 1966; people contested as governor, as local government chairman, as councillor; we were doing that; independent candidacy; all of these were there.
If I can go back to this issue of corruption; you see, people who have cornered so much public money for themselves have reproduced themselves such that if you jailed somebody who was a governor, there are so many other people that he has put money in their hands to continue this agenda of stealing. So it doesn’t change anything fundamentally because they country belongs to them, and all of that.
So, that is the democracy that we are talking about here. It just means that Nigerians will just be allowed to come and vote every four years. The ruling class decides who they will vote for because they keep all the resources in their custody; that is what is happening; they keep absolute control of the whole bureaucracy to conduct elections. You see the amount of money they use to conduct elections; they imported machines from abroad, the cars, printers, this and that. We have the most expensive elections in the world. It is a whole racket! That is my view.
NR: While some of the things you have been saying may have answered this question, but I will still ask it: What is your take on Buhari’s economic management capability vis-à-vis the social and economic realities in the context of the management of information, the information being pushed to the public by government?
Olorode: I don’t understand what you meant by management of information.
NR: Some people argue that the information being provided by the President’s managers suggest that he is doing a lot of work, for instance, in anti-corruption, in the fight against insurgency and that he has changed the narrative in the governance process from what we used to have; that Nigerians have gained for instance from the ban on importation of goods, for instance rice, etc.
Olorode: Well, rice is the only product I hear people make a lot of noise on about importation of goods. But I still don’t understand this issue about the management of information. The question is; will the government be doing anything that people don’t see and will be saying something different?
Well, let me talk about what I know, for instance, minimum wage. I was at the NLC-at-40 celebration in February 2018 in Abuja and Dr Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, was there. He stated that by by September 2018; I heard him, not that it was reported to me; they would have settled the question of minimum wage. That is a time gap of almost nine months after the NLC-at-40 programme. But even today, I’m not sure many states have implemented the minimum wage. That is one level of the fallacy of success being peddled around.
Let me tell you about something else I also personally know. ASUU has been yearning about the revitalisation of universities since 2013 and so many memoranda of understanding and memoranda of action and so on have been written, strikes have been engaged and further understandings have been reached yet nothing is achieved.
The current crisis, the IPPIS; a whole lot of information on it is in public domain, but is government saying that it doesn’t hear all these things? I don’t think this thing is about managing information. No matter how well-managed or mismanaged the information system is; citizens will have some idea of the reality based on how they are affected.
If you take the question of security, citizens are actually experiencing problems of insecurity. So, how does their management of information affect somebody travelling from Ibadan to Kaduna or from Birnin-Gwari to Kaduna and they get attacked? How is your management of information going to affect how victims respond to their own conditions? People applied for jobs in public service and many people know that it is the relatives of big people that are being employed and so on.
So comrade, this are the realities, but it is important that the bulk stops on the table of the leader or the president, but the leader of a business cannot be exonerated from the problems of politics or the lack of credibility of policy, you cannot.
You know, much, much before Buhari became president; he had been saying he is a converted democrat. But it is not what you call yourself; it is what people see that is happening; that determines what they believe about what you are saying.
NR: Let’s shift a bit from Buhari. There is this persistent theory of neo-colonial domination of Africa, which in summary tend to propound that African and third world leaders are not only imposed by western powers but also that their social and economic policies are formulated to serve the interests of Western economies. Don’t you think that this theory now sounds stupid in contemporary times looking at Africa’s intellectual resources and in the context of historically bold responses represented in the late General Murtala Muhammad’s remark that Africa has come of age or the actions of progressive leaders like the late Thomas Sankara?
Olorode: That is true! But intellectual resources by themselves or even material resources do not translate into appropriate politics for changing a situation on ground. Isn’t it? It does not!
What is happening to these intellectual resources? How many Nigerian doctors are in America now or Canada or UK? If there is no political mobilisation of resources, the political movement that is able to harness and harvest these resources, intellectual and material manpower, this situation can remain forever; it can remain forever.
Again, we have to go back to how to politically organise. For me, that is the question now. After all, we have done these things before, as I was saying earlier, people have organised before and we have been able to affect things, but we are not able anymore because we are not organised, because we are defeated or we just get struggling.
That you have resources per se does not change anything. You can have resources that cannot be translated into object of value. With time, other people will start using the resources if you cannot translate the resources into objects of value. As it is now, other people are using the resources that we have now; they are taking them from us. America organises lottery through which they are luring our children to America, many are in Canada. Our doctors are in Saudi Arabia, they are everywhere; our intellectuals are scattered all over the developed world.
So comrade, the control of imperialism today is real and the collaborators of imperialism are our won ruling class; it is real. There is nobody, hardly anybody in the Federal Executive Council that doesn’t have some direct link with imperialism; from Obasanjo time till now. They want to do meeting, they are in Dubai or somewhere.
We made this point in our argument against IPPIS; go and read it. We made the point that the Americans are everywhere in our ministries. If they are not there, their papers are there spelling out policies that are going to be carried out there. It is not a myth, this thing about dependency and imperialist control.
Without asking for loan, they will come and tell you that you need loan, because they need it to control you. Our leaders need it to buy some respite instead of them to stop stealing money and assigning so much of our resources to themselves, they can always take these loans which unborn generations will then be forced to pay; that is the logic of the loan.
To be concluded.
