FG should not determine minimum wage for states – Agbakoba

Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, former president, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), in this interview speaks on the national minimum wage and anti-graft war in the country among other issues. Excerpts:

What informed a recent letter you wrote to President Muhammadu Buhari? We all know that there has been state of anomy; nothing is really working in the minds of the people. The president has finally set up a cabinet of basically technical people in my opinion who have a strong mind to deliver on infrastructure, the economy and the soft institutions. What we now need to see as they settle down into office is the product of agenda of government in the first quarter of 2016.

There is already a supplementary budget and 2016 budget is the highest budget ever; it is between N6 to N8 trillion. The government said it would focus on primarily social democratic issues that promote policy. It has already got a huge chunk of issues to deal with: giving money to disadvantaged members of the society, people who are unemployed even though it is difficult to say how that will be achieved and who are likely to be among the beneficiaries. Quite how that will be arranged remains to be seen. My view is that apart from the late Chief Awolowo, this is the first time I am seeing a government based on ideology. Nigeria essentially runs a corporatist state policy where the government favours the rich. The departure here is that the government has identified itself as left of the centre. This is the first time we are having such and anyone who is familiar with the left of centre parties will know that the left of centre delivers benefits at the bottom. I have heard Vice President Yemi Osinbajo repeatedly say we will legalise chapter two of the constitution that deals with social welfare but that is not enforceable in the court. I think those are very fantastic and lofty ideas that need to be supported.
Some governors are saying they cannot pay the minimum wage of their workers, is this part of the elite’s conspiracy? No, I think that is a different thing. The problem is that the governors can’t pay and it also strikes me as absurd that there is one national minimum wage because I can tell you, in some parts of the North food is very cheap. You can’t say you will pay everybody N18,000 as minimum wage and I found it absurd at the national conference. I sat next to the deputy president of the Nigerian Labour Congress and I thought he would support the devolution of labour as a national issue. It is for various governors to discuss with their labour to decide what they can pay, why should it be a national issue? Why should there be a national minimum wage? You pay what is relevant to local situations.

What is your assessment of the ongoing battle against corruption embarked upon by the present administration? The war on corruption even though not well clarified in my view, is the most serious attempt to deal with people who have stolen public funds in this country even though it can still be better institutionalised. I think it represents the most far-reaching, concrete attempt to tackle it and it should be applauded. We have people who opposed it and it is not the common man that opposed it, it is often the elite. So, I have classified those people as the conspirators, those who want business to continue as usual and I might say that I am an elite and that I suffer greatly from the impact of the tight foreign exchange restriction. Our law firm cannot remit funds, you can’t believe it, we owe things with like 300 pounds to pay for subscriptions but that is the sacrifice that I am ready to undertake because people have abused the system and what they want is business as usual. I think it would summarise what this government is going to do, mark you, it hasn’t done it yet. I make no judgment as to whether the government has succeeded. I am certainly making comment that if you review where we are and compare it to the government of the past, what are we likely to say? All through my public life I have been a left of centre person and I make no apology about that. Whilst I am happy to have money, I am not happy to have it to the exclusion of about 180 million Nigerians who are hungry. Why should I be a rich man when everybody around me is so poor, it makes no sense. So, if there are crosses of equalising our natural resources which is what the government intends to do, then I would have to support it. But, these conspirators you will find in both APC and PDP and I can assure you that if there is the possibility of PDP returning to power and there is a very strong likelihood that it would succeed, 70 per cent of politicians in APC will cross over to PDP. That is how non-ideological our political parties have been. So when you have parties that are not driven by ideology but by their pockets, when they see that what this government intends to do is to shut them out from the usual largesse and patronage, they are not going to be happy. They are the ones that are making the president look bad, however, that is not to say that the president couldn’t have done things better. For instance, the delay in appointing his cabinet ought to have been faster and lack of clarification of what he is doing. I don’t see why he has Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu as press secretaries which is not done anywhere else. Either Femi or Garba should be the president’s secretary, reporting the president’s diary and the other one is reporting government activity. The government said it has recovered a lot of loot running into about N10 trillion. Why are we, those of us that are informed, not having access to information that ought to be in public domain? The government has not communicated enough and it’s that failure to communicate that gives the impression that people are not clear where the president is going.

Since the advent of democracy in 1999, human rights crusade is no longer what it used to be. What would you say has gone wrong? What has gone wrong is that things have changed. In 1991, I was a big opposition in the country because all the ambassadors were very happy to ask me what I thought about this and my opinion about that. We led the opposition movement across Africa to various regional, European and the Commonwealth countries. In fact, the last place we went was Oakland. So, there was that relevance of human rights because there wasn’t anything else. There was a military government versus the people, therefore, we had that role because human rights were actually more limited in Nigeria. But, we expanded it because of the role we had to carry out at the time. Now, by 1998 politicians came and the real challenge was whether we would want to cross over into politics, we made a mistake not to have crossed, as in not crossing, nobody elected me anyway but, the man who is elected from the constituency is the person who represents you and should do all those things that there was nobody else to do. So, you are taking far too much on the shoulders of the human rights actors. I think as at today they would be as relevant as they were when there was a need for them to do it, but don’t forget that we also have specialised kinds of issues and struggles. I mean Oby Ezekwesili has led the #Bring Back Our Girls; there is the budget issue, there is the issue of enough is enough. So, the debate has continued but not under the same name. The current name now for activism is governance and we have a lot of them talking about governance, making sure that things are well monitored so it continues but in a different way.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo demolished toll gates across the country few years ago. But, the present administration is resolved to rebuild them across the country. What is your opinion on this? This is the conspiracy of the elite. Whether they are traditional rulers, the media jumped there; you go and cover them, you make them look important. They come to churches and occupy the pews; these are people who should actually be afraid to come out but they are not afraid because they are adored and sanctified. The only man in religion who spoke the truth is Rev. Fr. Mbaka, all others were laying hands. How come the country is so poor, I don’t know what the statistics is but I think it is about 70 million people that are poor. All I hear are how pastors, chiefs, lay hands on people and part with our money and you journalists are the ones who promote them. Those are parts of the conspiracy, they will take the money and they will dine and wine with political the elite. The business elite, the men of cloths, the traditional rulers and you will report them in packaged newspaper handouts and we glorify them when we should be asking them to leave the seat. Obasanjo is so adored and glorified by the media yet he has absolutely no value. His time is gone, he should go to Commonwealth heads of government, AU meetings and create a foundation like Jimmy Carter who is 90 years old or Bill Clinton who has the Global Initiative.

That is the area, not for him to be contesting for political space. He has been president once and twice, what again? Have you seen what has come out with the scandalous money meant to fight Boko Haram? And it has not even started. We have not gone into how oil money was looted. That is why these people cannot leave; they are prepared to kill their friends and mothers to be there, that is the challenge. You don’t understand that these people are the ones holding the country; they would not allow it to shift. You think they want national conference? They don’t want a national conference; they want everything to be in confusion so that they can continue. Why shouldn’t the governor of Anambra State be able to run his affairs without interference from Abuja but, it won’t happen.

What is do you think of the constitutional crisis that the recently conducted gubernatorial election in Kogi State generated? I got phone calls while I was on my way outside the country to Malta and journalists were asking me this question and I said to myself that our media has become insensitive to the fact that somebody died. How will someone die and the question you are asking me is, who will succeed him? You are not interested in the fact that the man died, you are interested in who will succeed him. Shame on you people in the media. A man had died, I thought you will be calling to ask me what I think of the death of Audu. No, you are only interested in who will succeed him. His son joined the race, is it a hereditary position? You know why we can kill our mothers for power here? Rotimi Amaechi got N1 billion a month for eight years and that is N12 billion a year multiply it by eight years totaling N96 billion allocated to him during his tenure in office that he is not accountable for. Then he uses it to prop up the APC during elections. Those are the conspirators. I can assure you that if circumstances made it possible for Jonathan to come back, all these men in APC will decamp. That is what the media should focus on. In the United Kingdom, we have the conservatives and we know what they stand for and we have the Labour Party, we know what they stand for too. David Cameroon will never drop any of the major plans of the Conservative party, he can never sacrifice it and in fairness to him, he is showing results. Neither will the Labour Party drop any of its cardinal programmes but in Nigeria because there is no ideology anyway, you will see that happen. It is a shame.