Nigeria: There's No Reason for Nigerians to Wallow in Abject Poverty

from All Africa

Vanguard (Lagos)

INTERVIEW

PROFESSOR Brimmy Olaghere was in the Labour Party before now. But one thing led to the other and when he could not actualise his presidential aspirations because his party was in an alliance of sort with Action Congress and had pledged its support for the candidature of Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Olaghere decamped to Nigeria Peoples Congress, NPC, under which platform he is contesting the April 21 presidential election. An economist of repute, he was involved in the efforts that saw to the growth of the Chinese economy. China started the implementation of his plan in 1993 and indeed, it worked for them. Prof. Olaghere spoke from Abuja on why he wants to be the president of Nigeria and his plans to turn around the fortunes of the country.

How do you assess the on-going transition?

I think Nigerians have not been given the impetus they need directly by the people as such. So, things are not the way they should be. There are two factors responsible for the characteristics of the Nigerian political problem. Firstly, Nigerians are not well informed about their political rights because they let the politicians control their rights and as a result, the politicians tend to own the electorate instead of the electorate owning the politicians.

Secondly, Nigerians have been indoctrinated to believing that politics is cruel. As a result, only the rich get involved in politics to the extent that Nigerians' willingness and their ability to perform are reduced. For example, you find out that people who do not know what is going on or the economic problem that is taking shape, buy themselves into political positions. They now make decisions for those people who have knowledge about the real problems and then, they now control the affairs of the country and mis-direct what is going on in the country.

Because of that, you find out that most qualified people who should partake in the development process of the country have been neglected and many of them stay outside the political process . That is wrong and this is why you see that invariably, the development process in the country is retrogressive because decisions are now made by the people who don't have major decisions. They were only being brought in for the implementation and execution of the decisions they were not consulted or included. That is one of the problems keeping us behind in the development of our political economy.

As far as I'm concerned, the Nigerian political process should tally with economic planning and participatory method. For example, our news media are not considered as a factor for our development. If they were considered as development factors and partners, then the new information data and stimulation could be well funded by the government and subsidised, like they have done in the other countries. You find here that journalists do not have equipment. They don't have tools that they need to go to various rural areas to find out information about development, about progress, about problems and solutions to these problems. They are not informed and they are not educated in the process. And that, to me, is retrogressive. We need to provide remedy for that.

Anybody who is alive today will get education as long as he is alive. But education does not belong to classrooms alone. Information dissemination is education. As you are interviewing me now, if you don't have a tape recorder and battery in it, you would not be able to talk to me effectively and all these have costs. If you add the cost of interviewing me from Lagos when I'm in Abuja, you will find that we are both now serving the society and if people read your paper and the ideas that I'm sharing with you, they will be educated on the essentials of information, education, entertainment and they will be able to make direct correct decisions because they have information pertaining to the decisions they are about to make. But if the information they need is not disseminated on time and in a proper way, they make wrong decisions that will have direct impact on the society.

This is exactly what is happening in Nigeria's political process. Our government is not defined properly for the people to understand what government is all about. And if it is not defined by the news media, the newspaper would be blamed for no defining the government. It is not just talking about the government. Government is for people and it's for governing the people and the people to choose who is governing them. That is democracy; it is not government for the people but government of the people, by the people and for the people. But when you talk about government for the people, you are talking about autocracy; military regime. That is government of the people imposed on the people, not government of the choice of the people. If you are dealing with government of the people, you are dealing with a government of choice. A choice not selected but a choice elected.

When you look at the preparations for the elections and what you have on the ground for the polls, where do you stand?

The elections must be held in April because that is what the Electoral Act says. The constitution makes provision for it. Anything that is endemic, that can cause delay should be set aside because postponement of the election will solve no situation or stop what is responsible for postponement. For example, if there is a riot and God forbid, in the country, postponing the election will not stop riots in future. If there is a disaster, does postponing the election stop the disaster?

So, with these examples I have given, postponing the election cannot solve any problem. Rather, it is the fulfilment of the individual desire and that does not augur well for the country because you have violated the constitution we used to govern ourselves.

Leadership changes to take place at a period of time. We chose the time. We discussed it, debated it and adopted it. We accepted it as our rule of government. So, our government is a commonsense of the people-to promote themselves for the pursuit of happiness amongst themselves. In the process, we sacrifice something for certain activities or actions to take place. You don't say that because somebody died or somebody has lived long enough and then you postpone the election. We cannot say until somebody dies, the elections remain postponed. Nobody lives forever.

How would you assess INEC and its preparedness to handle the elections?

I can tell you, if there are government institutions and agencies that are efficient, credible, that have capacity to perform and the ability to produce desired result for the best interest of the country, INEC is number one in my agenda. INEC is led by a capable hand and I'm very glad. And indeed, I hope I will be able to say it loud and clear enough that with INEC in place, Nigeria has a better future and with the INEC leadership we have now and the way and manner they are conducting their work, they deserve a special place, a special recommendation or commendation by Nigerians and in fact, the whole world should congratulate the leadership of INEC. Let me tell you three major reasons why.

In the first place, INEC is not a property of an individual. It was established by Act of Parliament which voted the commission into law and set up prescriptions how it's going to function in order to execute its responsibility. It's a statutory authority.

Secondly, INEC is governed by rule of law. Not by me, not by you but by the law we have adopted as instruments and tools to govern our affairs. Thirdly, INEC is an entity, separate and different under the aegis of our law and the procedure of government. Those who are castigating INEC now are those who have something to hide. INEC has a duty and it is committed to it, to do what it should without being biased. So, I will say God bless INEC because they have the best interest of this country at heart. I pray they will succeed in their assignment.

We have had a PDP federal government for almost eight years now. What will your NPC do for Nigeria that PDP has not done?

There are a lot of things. PDP is a political party that came in immediately after military rule. We should not expect PDP to be perfect. PDP is doing the best it could and I'm not here to say anything negative about PDP. But the difference between PDP and the Nigerian Peoples Congress, NPC, is that if PDP had insisted on one thing, like eradication of illiteracy, they would have adopted the free primary and secondary school programme. But they did not do it.

NPC has adopted a free primary and free secondary school education, free tuition, free books, free lunch, free uniforms, free transportation to and fro school, all as supportive programmes for the eradication of illiteracy in this country. It is the doctrine of our political party because the situation as we have it in Nigeria today is a function of ignorance. It's only twelve percent of Nigerians that can read and write before, during and after independence and the 12% were not even well-educated but some of them could read and write. If you look at our highways today, you have many drivers who cannot read or write and they end up killing many innocent people because they cannot read road signs.

For example a person who cannot read and write cannot understand road signs or read them. When he gets to stop sign, he doesn't know what it is but if you give him a vehicle to drive, when he reaches intersection, he will not stop. The other vehicle which is coming has the right of way because he does not have the stop sign. The other one runs into him and kills innocent people for nothing and maybe out of these innocent people, there are three professors in that car. Perhaps, those professors took about twenty years to get education and teaching university students but the person who does not know how to read or write just killed them. Is that progress for Nigeria?

Also, abject poverty is a man-made disease. PDP had a golden opportunity to end abject poverty but they did not. So, NPC, has adopted irreversible, irrevocable revolution that we must end abject poverty in ten years period and that is why we adopted a ten-year master plan; ten-year economic development master plan for Nigeria. In order to end abject poverty, the following steps must be taken: There must be job for anybody who wants to work. Therefore, we are going to create one hundred million job opportunities. Second, we want to make sure, we build twenty million houses within that ten-year period so that anybody who wants a job gets a job. Anybody who wants accommodation, he has a house.

Thirdly, we want to make sure that by the time our children leave school, there are jobs waiting for them to do. They won't graduate from school and remain jobless. That is retrogressive.

Fourthly, we want to make sure that anybody who is a graduate from school or college or university is able to live a better life so as to be able to compete with the rest of the world when they are on the world stage. We are now in the fourth civilisation and it is ruled and governed by technology. If the children are not well educated, then Nigeria will not be able to compete in the technological revolution of the twenty-first century. And in order for us to ensure Nigeria's participation in this technological revolution, we have to build one hundred million new classrooms for our students, equip them with all modern technological materials and tools so that they will be able to learn like everybody else.

More importantly, we ought to make sure that our students that graduate from primary schools and colleges will go to the universities, we have to set up high technologies and high colleges in all the local governments in the country, so that you have sound educational programme at the university level. We have 780 local governments in the country, we must have 780 community colleges in the local governments so that our students graduating from secondary schools will have university level education.

We will set up 180 training schools and education centres for our nurses in the country so that our children who want to study nursing will do so for free because we need people to work with our doctors in the hospitals.

We also want to set up legal training and education commission. Our judges in our courts graduate from law schools, they practise law and are appointed as judges. They will be there for ten, fifteen years but they have no facility in place to train them and update their knowledge. The environment is changing, they have to adapt to the changes in the environmental change. Most of them don't know how to operate computers. They cannot do research and as a direct result of that, some people are in jail or arrested, left in detention for twenty years or more.

Finally, our health services are in a disarray. Our doctors are badly underpaid. And they don't have the tools to work with. I read in the papers that some presidential candidates were flown abroad for treatment after Nigeria got her independence 46 years years. So, Nigeria cannot afford a specialist hospital where they could be treated at a time like this? Nigeria has the best doctors in the world. It's really a shame. I'm also disappointed that PDP did not see all these. The teachers that teach our children are badly underpaid. We have destroyed our middle-class because they are under-paid.

Now, the NPC has adopted a new education doctrine. Therefore, it must pay the teachers, increase their salaries by 300%. Increase medical doctors, nurses salaries 300% and educate them for free, buy them the tools, the materials they need and their books must be free. We must pay and increase their salaries by 300%. We must provide housing for the teachers.

The police need equipment and we must provide that and increase their salaries by 300%. We must give them the communication materials they need to be effective and we will abolish barracks. Barracks is like a ghetto and we don't want ghetto for the police. All we want is to ensure the police are providing security for all the citizens and they are civilians. They should be free to live amongst the civilians and their children should be well prepared to contribute to the process going on in their communities. It is wrong to put the police in the barracks and dichotomise them as different people from the rest of the society.

PDP had the opportunity to do these but didn't. This is the reason why I'm seeking the presidency. I need the mandate of the people to initiate these actions and implement them. Within the first four years, we will eradicate unemployment problem in Nigeria.