ONE year after, what is your take on the President Muhammadu Buhari administration? So far so good. We thank God that the administration came on board; and at the time it did, because it would have been terrible for Nigeria. By my own reckoning, the rate at which we were sliding down the slope, it was obvious the country was moving towards anarchy. As a matter of fact, the situation of Nigeria would have been worse than that of Greece if we had allowed the rot that was in the system to continue. President Gooodluck Jonathan was just not in charge. Everybody was doing what he liked. The ministers were behaving as if we were in the jungle. And it was so bad that the president himself was not in a position to arrest the situation. I have no regret for the role I played in bringing about the change. The change appears to have become a nightmare in the face of the economic hardship the country is experiencing now. How do you feel? Naturally, when change is about to occur, there would be some teething problems. It comes with challenges. What we are facing now is temporary. Having said that, I think we need to be patient. Things were so bad. Many people do not know the extent of the rot in government. When you see some things that happened under the former administration, you would be wondering if you are in the right country. While you think he has sincerity of purpose, this government also seems to thrive on impunity as illustrated by Femi Falana. Of course, when it comes to the issue of the rule of law, I think Femi Falana was right. He was actually echoing the minds of many of us. Like I did say, if a man wants to fight the rot, he needs to go the extra mile by thinking outside the box. He had the golden opportunity which was presented to him by the 36 state governors in the country who suggested to him to declare state of emergency because of the adverse economic situation in the country, but he refused to seize the opportunity and probably suspend rule of law for one year so that he can confront the hydra-headed monster of corruption headlong. Doing that would have meant the relegation of the judiciary to the background. Some people may even say we are back to the military era. Not necessarily. That is one thing about us in this country. None of our former leaders was creative. Many of them were not thinking outside the box. Take the issue of corruption, do you know you can fight corruption without breaching the law? There are enough laws in our statute books, but our inability to think outside the box or to be creative is causing problems. Is it being creative or lack of will? No. It appears there is dearth of knowledge. There is that lacuna in policy formulation and in the thinking level of the formulators. For instance, you don’t need rocket science to fight corruption. There are enough laws in our statute books. This issue of anticipatory declaration of assets was first mentioned by me at a conference. I said most of our public officers declare what they don’t have and then try to meet up what they declared. No problems. All you need to do is call for his asset declaration form and call for his tax clearance and balance it. The tax laws are there, exploit that to deal with the situation. If what you declare is not commensurate with your salary, you go to jail. The laws are there. Is that still not lack of political will on the part of the leadership? You don’t give what you don’t have. The truth of the matter is that most Nigerian leaders don’t read. And, over the years, it has been like that. We didn’t start today. It has been between the government of the illiterate by the illiterate for the enlightened. For example, the fellow who sold the idea to President Buhari to prevent people from running domiciliary account was an economic illiterate. Because statistics shows, as explained by Senator Ben Bruce, that over 20 million Nigerians earn offshore income. Now, compare the number with those of the thieves against whom the policy was in place. The number of the so-called thieves, if you count them, is not up to 5,000. So because the few, who are less than one per cent of the population, you prevented people who earn legitimate income from bringing foreign exchange into the economy. And the resultant effect was that the dollar jumped against the naira from 200 to 350-380 and above to one dollar. I know that there are over 1,000 Nigerian lawyers who are international arbitrators, including myself, who earn foreign income. There are many Nigerian doctors outside the shores of this country. All the countries I know all over the world encourage their citizens to bring in foreign exchange. What they do is to prevent them from taking it out. I think that should have been the policy that our country should have evolved. Do you know that this no domiciliary account policy improved some other countries’ economies? Go to Ghana, banks in that country were advertising to Nigerians to come and open domiciliary account. The banks involved have branches of here in Nigeria. And this fact is known to the Central Bank of Nigeria. By the time the policy was reversed, the damage had already been done to the Nigerian economy. It was because of the activity of just one person whom I describe as economic illiterate. So, the truth of the matter is that most of our leaders are either economic illiterate, legal illiterate, political illiterates, so that it becomes the government of the illiterate by the illiterate for the enlightened. I think that person has done incalculable damage to the Nigerian economy than anything. I don’t know who the fellow is. But I would not know if Mr President is still keeping such a person in his team, whether at the Central Bank or the cabinet. What do you make of the system being run in the country? The system we are running is a problem on its own. We are operating a centralised form of government as against federal form of government. We need to have devolution of power. We have centralised so much that it breeds corruption. It breeds inefficiency. If we have a federal structure where state government can take certain decisions on their own. Tell me any federal state in the world that practices what we are operating here in Nigeria. It is the over centralisation that is causing these problems. We should seize the opportunity of this new dispensation and know that all of us have to live within our means. We have to know our limitations. There is no reason states like Ekiti, Ebonyi should have more than five commissioners. Why should Ekiti want to compete with Lagos, or Ebonyi want to compete with Bayelsa? Ask me, why should you have Director of Agric in Ibadan, where is the farm? It is because we don’t know our limitations. We are operating a central uniform kind of government. Talking about the trial of the Senate President to which you were quoted as having reservation about, what exactly is wrong with the trial? My comment I thought was innocuous. I never spoke with any newspaper. I only spoke with Radio Kwara. And I spoke after so much pressure to hear my comment. I guess the pressure came because they knew I had been involved in cases of some political bigwigs before the Code of Conduct Tribunal before; that actually reinforced their push for me to speak. I gave my opinion which I am entitled to. It is rather unfortunate that some ignorant people out there have been dishing out lies, blackmailing me like asking how I was paid by Saraki. One of them even said he had on good authority that Saraki gave me one million dollars. Saraki is the Senate President, but I don’t think he can identify me in a crowd. He probably knows me through my reputation and name because of my status in the society. And all my life, all the cases I have been handling, it has always been against Saraki’s interest. And my position on the issue of corruption is very clear: I want corrupt public officials to be tried and executed. I have said that severally. It is a known position that I took long ago. However, my grouse with the case is the procedure. I was asked a question. I never spoke about the merit or demerit of the case. I only spoke on the procedure that we already have precedence. That, if it was true, like the question they asked me, that the composition of the tribunal was two against three people, I said that would be wrong. I led the team when we disqualified Prince Oluyede who was a member of the Code of Conduct Tribunal when former Vice President Abubakar Atiku was being tried. And the tribunal confirmed that it could not sit because the Code of Conduct Tribunal Act was very clear: There shall be three members. It made no room for any other interpretation. It shall be three members. And the Code of Conduct Tribunal did very well to get another person, M.A Sanni, SAN, from Kwara, to replace Prince Oluyede. And the case of our leader in the South-West, Tinubu, I was in the team. I was not the leader then. And what our leader, Chief Olanipekun, did was to say, ‘Look, this man has been confronted with the allegation, he has not been asked, he has not made any statement’, just like the Saraki case. And all I said was that the Code of Conduct Tribunal should follow the same procedure. It is as if there are two sets of laws for different people. And that in itself has tainted the trial. And the tribunal would need more than Jesus Christ and Muhammed to convince any discerning mind that there is no more to it than meets the eye. And you still stand by that? Of course, I stand by it. And if you read the body of the story carried by the dailies, you would discover that most newspapers reported and sensionalise it; that is fallacy of assent. The headline they gave to it was quite different from the body of the story. There was no where I said Danladi should not sit. I never said so. I said, one: I don’t know Saraki from Adam. Two: I am not holding brief but I am speaking as a lawyer and an objective person. I also frowned at the media role on the trial and I said it was quite unfortunate that the legal profession was becoming media-driven to the extent that the legal profession is now tilted towards public opinion and what the media says, particularly the social media. Morality is an unruly horse; when you are on it, it takes you to where you don’t expect. For example, it is normal in some communities to entertain their guests with their wives while it is frowned at in other communities. But we have these disco critics who only listen to themselves; no power of reason whatsoever, they just resort to sentiment. And any society that bases its rule of law on sentiment and moral persuasion is doomed. Like I always say, law must be certain. Every citizen must know what the law says on a particular issue. Last year, the Chief Justice of Nigeria sent to all the chief judges across the country, the letter which he addressed to the Chairman of Code of Conduct Tribunal, telling him he is not a judge. ‘Don’t address yourself as a judge, don’t answer my lord, you are just a member of tribunal.’ And the CJN copied all the CJs, and, of course, copied the bar. For those of you in the media, you have not done a proper investigative journalism to get that letter. Some of you guys are now writing rubbish such that anyone who fails to key into your own way of thinking must be a thief. Because of the level of poverty, people have lost their sense of reasoning. They just comment on things they know little or nothing about. These are people who have not made any contribution in their lives to national development. They are busy condemning lawyers, forgetting that, without these lawyers, Buhari will not be where he is today. They are now more Catholic than the Pope. Anybody who disagrees with government policy must a thief. That is their mindset, to the extent that people are now afraid to talk which is rather unfortunate. What is your take on the raging herdsmen controversy in some parts of the country? I think the government should act as fast as possible so that there won’t be breakdown of law and order. First of all, I think the Federal Government should initiate a law that whoever wants to be pastoral, there should be a form of green area where the cows would be feeding, not to go to peoples farmland and destroy it, all in the name of wanting to feed the cows. The cows can be restricted to where they are reared. I remember in those days, the Nigerian Railway was bringing cows down here, whenever they were needed. It is not like the grazing bill. Such a bill will never work, especially in the South West. I think we must respect our differences. Who are those mostly involved in the business of cattle? Is it not from the North? How do you now impose a law that you know is mostly workable in the North? We are not pastoral in nature in this part of the country. So tell me, who are most beneficial of the bill if and when passed? Why would you bring your custom and lord it over me in my territory? Just as the governor of Oyo State, Ajimobi, said, it can never work. All these problems are still part of the way the nation is structured. In order words, until we are truly federated, not this kind of centralized form government, we shall continue to experience these problems. We are not a federated state. In a federal state, there is only union, not unity, not this kind of forced unity. Source: tribuneonlineng]]>