Buhari should make public office less attractive –Odom, former minister

As Nigerians await the swearing-in of Gen Mu­hammadu Buhari as Presi­dent on May 29, there are those who insist that it is not yet Uhuru. People in this school of thought believe that even though Buhari is a big brand, his adminis­tration will have so many challeng­es to contend with.

Chief Chuka Odom, former Min­ister of State for Environment, Housing and Urban Development in this interview, says that it may be too early to celebrate the change of government. He speaks on various issues here. Excerpts:
What are your reflections on the recent general elections?
I have said it in a nutshell that elec­tions represent the will of the Nigerian people. It may not be perfect, it could have been done better; the card reader saga and the failure of the device to work in many areas was a debacle which could have put a dent on the credibility of the election. In spite of all that, the question is,-does the outcome represent the will and desire of greater number of Nigerians? The answer is yes! Whatever it is, it is an election that represents the interest and the views and positions of most Nigerians and to that extent, it is credible.
But some members of the PDP are not happy that President Jonathan conceded defeat too early
This is the normal cycle; elections are won and lost and the losers concede to the victor. President Jonathan’s action is novel in the sense that this is the first time that an incumbent is being taken out of office in an electoral contest without him trying to manipulate things and I say he deserves all the praises he gets. But then, that is the norm. People should not be praised for doing what they ought to do. He is getting all the praise because what he did is novel in Africa. We have to build this system to the point where nobody will be praised for doing what they are supposed to do.post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com
What is your take on calls for a government of national unity and reconciliation across board?
What are we reconciling? Did we fight a civil war? The dynamics of politics will always be there. If you can recall, after the independence, the Hausa-Fulani North and the Igbo of the South East have always formed alliance. That has always been the political configuration of power because Nigeria’s political stability is built on a tripod, the three major tribes-the Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo, these are the major tribes. . The dynamics of governing Nigeria has always revolved around these three ethnic groups. But today, the pendulum has swung in another direction, it is now Hausa-Fulani and the Yoruba coming together to put the Igbo in opposition, so it is not going to last forever and it is not a war or battle, it is political engineering. So, if you are talking about national reconciliation, you will be thinking of genocide or actions that created rifts and are too difficult to close. These are results of political engineering. If Jonathan had been able to secure a good chunk of votes in the South-West, if not for the problem he had with Oyinlola and all these people that control the party in the region, and if he had picked up two or three more states in the North Central or North West, he would have won the election because the margin is about 2 million votes. If he had done that, these people would have gone back to the drawing table having come this close to gaining power. For me, these are political evolutions pointing to the way power is being managed in Nigeria since independence and it is not something for political or national reconciliation. What I think we lacked in Nigeria is integrity in our management of political power in Nigeria. Most people do not understand why they should remain where they are when they lose power and that is what is called developmental politics. You can’t be running helter-skelter because you want to join a party that just won election. Why did APC win election? For 16 years, they have been trying to get power at the center, they had tried everything. CPC, ACN, ANPP contested election in the past, but they lost. They realized that there was no way they can make it except they come together. So, the ACN, CPC, ANPP and other smaller groups came together and creates a platform. As soon as that merger was approved and registered by INEC, that was the day I knew that the business was over because they completely redrew the political map of Nigeria as far as power sharing is concerned. So, what is left is for those in opposition to sit back and look at the redesigned power map of Nigeria to see how this power will come back again. Who are we going on this journey with? Are we going back to form alliance with the North who is our traditional ally? They are no more in bed with us. Nobody knows how long this Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani marriage will last. We don’t know whether it is going to be a permanent marriage or it is going to break down somewhere along the road. So, there are so many possibilities we can’t see from now. What makes democracy interesting is these dynamics but it is the players that have made it look cheap. If they can be patient and work for the people and see how the Buhari administration performs; the PDP will not be doing a national or patriotic duty for the country if all of them run to APC, they will be doing Nigeria a patriotic duty if they stayed back in PDP and find out why they lost the election, build the party and present a credible, viable opposition to the APC. That is where the seed of the new power configuration will emerge. So, if the interpretation of reconciliation is for all of us to troop into APC and hug Buhari and say Nigeria is one united country, let us move forward, let nobody criticize any other person, that is the most silly and simplistic things I have ever heard in the history of democracy. It is constructive engagement and opposition that makes democracy interesting. So, the issue here is that we should expand the scope of credible, creative opposition, not destructive opposition. We must be an opposition that brings out the best in the ruling party and puts them on their toes to remember what they promised the people until that government is replaced by the opposition. That is how it is done in advanced democracy. What drives development in democracy is a government that is committed to the people and no individual will be as committed as he ought to be if there is nobody at his back willing to take that power again. That is what drives that commitment. No one individual should be trusted with power on the basis of his good faith or love for the country. So, if anybody is patriotic, you should stay in your party. It is not a sign of patriotism for people to vacate the ship barely four weeks after a shipwreck and jumped into the new life boat to start selling the same news story you have been selling here. We are moving gradually as a nation and the new breed of Nigerians who are not relying on politics as a means of livelihood is emerging and that is why Buhari comes in because if the only thing he will achieve in the four years he will run Nigeria is to make public office less attractive financially, it would disengage some people to go and look for food elsewhere and leave politics as a career to people who are eminent and competent to run the affairs of men.post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com
Do you agree with insinuations in some quarters that the South- East played politics of naivety by putting all their eggs in one basket?
The South-East followed what I called political conventional wisdom. They had supported Jonathan in 2011 and he won. The odds are that the op­position would lose as usual. So, it was not a conscious decision, it was not as if a meeting was held that they were going to support Jonathan, they were just following conventional wisdom even in the face of emerging signals that the business was changing. The argument was that this is Africa and the incumbent government with all the ap­paratus of the state, maybe the election will be closely fought but is unlikely PDP would lose. So, it is not naivety, it was miscalculation and we should call it by its name. The Igbo did not hold a town hall meeting to decide that they wanted to support Jonathan. There were factions in Ohaneze who were saying that they were not interested in these blanket support for President Jonathan but they were voices in the minority and they didn’t represent the mainstream Igbo political thinking. Having been out of the political power loop for a long time, and Jonathan presenting to them some glimpse of relevance, it was so easy for them to believe in continuity. So, for anyone to say that it is naivety on the part of the Igbo, shows abysmal ignorance of the political thinking pro­cesses in Nigeria. The election caught them unawares, it caught them off guard and that happens all the time not only in Nigeria but even in the United Kingdom. It happens everywhere where you have true democracy. People make calculations and computations and it fall flat on its face. They don’t run back to the winner and throw their hands in the air that they surrender, they go back to redraw. There is no way Buhari would form a government without an Igbo man in his cabinet because there are Igbo people in APC.
What is your perspective on the concept of power sharing?
The concept of power sharing is as fraudulent as the way politicians run the affairs of this country. They will say this zone will produce Senate President but how does that benefit them because you are giving it to an individual who will use the position to enrich himself and probably his village for the period he is there. How does it concern the North East zone if they get the Senate President? Some of these things are what we have been branding around; nobody has critically questioned their relevance to the greater majority of the people. It is better for them to say that they are using it to balance power, to spread it based on the constitution but don’t say it will attract anything to that zone because it doesn’t. I am not opposed to it but don’t use an argument that you are bringing something to the zone as the basis for it, you can bring up any other argument.
There are calls for the resignation of PDP National Chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu and the NWC. Don’t you think this development might reduce the PDP’s power from being a virile opposition?
No, the PDP will form a credible opposition but it will not form a credible opposition under the current leadership of the party. In fact, what happens in other clime is that Mu’azu and his team should not have been told to resign, they should have resigned. This whole idea of playing bull in a China shop is unnecessary. You have lost an election massively, you have mismanaged the party, honor demands that they should quit and create room for a fresh, virile leadership of the party to emerge. A leadership that will create a team that will move the party forward. If you have a key member of the conservative party in the United Kingdom go to Labour Party at the end of an election, the entire administration will give up because it is a fundamental collapse of ideology and those who presided over it need not to be reminded that they have failed. We should not glamourise failure in any form or shape. Elections are made to be won and lost and this election was lost. For this people to continue to say they want to stay there till next year underlines the attitude that led to the loss of the election and that is power for power sake.post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com
There seems to be anxiety about the composition of cabinet members in the next dispensation. In your own view, who and who do you think should be in the cabinet if we must move forward as a nation?
The only person who can answer that question is the president-elect and his team; they need to know who they want to use to work. Nigerians have come over the years to trust Buhari as a brand by his patterned lifestyle, past records in office and total disdain for primitive and crass accumulation; that is a welcome development. This election was won by a brand, the Buhari brand. There are no two Buharis in Nigeria and he is not going to import people from outer space. The people who helped him win this election don’t share his perspective or lifestyle but they are the ones who dressed him up for the victory. The truth is that he has to manage them in such a way that he will not devalue what he represents as a brand and that is a major challenge before him. The other challenge is to be able to now bring them in. Because they are going to say we funded his campaign, we bought his shoes and the agbadas, we brought the plane, so he has to let us recover part of it. So, how is he going to walk this tight rope? From where will they recover it or are you going to tell them to forget whatever investment they made that it was in the interest of Nigeria.
What quick fix should the in-coming government focus on from May 29?
Unemployment should be tackled because it is fueling the insecurity in the country. The number of those who went to the stadium for the Immigration recruitment has increased more than they were in those photographs we saw. Also, energy crisis-we need to have stable power if Nigeria is to join the league of industrial nations. Like Singapore and other nations, we must deal with the fundamentals and this includes that we have to create an enabling environment for business to thrive. We have to diversify the economy in the true sense of it in the face of dwindling revenue from oil. Nobody is better to do it than Buhari right now. He can start by creating an economy in the North East and North Central.
That is where the diversification would start, the cash crops. He should build up a new modern Nigeria that is based on diverse sources of revenue, not just oil. As we match forward in the era of clean and sustainable energy, you will find out that countries are investing more in alternative sources of oil. So, the issue of power is key and critical to development. If he takes care of these fundamentals, he needs not to worry about political stability. Finally, he should tackle the institutionalization of corruption. It has gone from pointing accusing fingers and he must start from somewhere using the platform of the judiciary and investigative agencies to get to the root of this massive looting and hemorrhaging of the economy by people who are entrusted with the powers to superintend over our commonwealth. It won’t be witch-hunting, all he needs to do is to put structures in place and give the anti-graft agencies a free hand and empower them to look at the whole thing, evidence-based and find the truth. We are not interested in witch-hunting anybody and he knows he will run into a blind ally if that was the motive. The motive should be to create a new Nigeria where certain codes of behavior are unacceptable. And the only way he can do it is to strengthen the judiciary, create credible anti-graft agencies and let them do their work. We must divest power and make it a true federal state. If you create strong institutions, people will do their work independent of you; all they need is the body language that the president has no hand in it.post by expdonaloaded.blogspot.com
Are we heading to one-party state as Nigeria?
Nigeria is not heading to a one-party state because the dynamics and the conflict of interest that are inherent in the polity we operate will make it impossible for Nigeria to head to a one-party state. I know a lot of people for economic reasons have moved over to the APC, and they will continue to move. Don’t misunderstand me, if people have a reason to move over to another political party and that reason is cogent and it is done in national interest, of course, that can be understood. But not in the sheer mass exodus we are witnessing where almost one-third of the party in many states is moving over to the other party; it shows that there was no ideology, no conviction. It was politics of the stomach like the Ekiti governor would call it. Trust me, in spite of all those defection, they will still come back. The dynamics will create an opposition.
What should the PDP do to maintain a virile opposition?
The leadership of the PDP at the national and state levels should resign to create room for a national convention of the party so as to elect fresh bloods that will create this opposition. PDP will be a good opposition party but not with these characters that traded on the party’s goodwill for 16 years and brought about this massive collapse. They should just resign as a matter of principle and the president as the leader of the party in opposition chooses and selects a committee to look at what happened to the PDP. They will visit all the states, interview all the players and submit a report. The report should set ou new modalities for creating a new PDP.
How would you rate the performance of PDP in the Imo guber contest?
My assessment of the election is that we (PDP) handed over the state back to t he APC voluntarily because the same problem PDP had at the centre is the same problem we had at the state-blatant impunity. From the delegates election, in my constituency, somebody sat in his house, compiled the delegates list and sent it to Abuja. And in Abuja, they were trading cash there to change them after the election. So, what do you expect because at the end of the day, there was no party but a criminal enterprise. So, it was bound to collapse. There was so much arrogance and confidence because they believe that money answers everything but at the end of the day, it turned out false.