Speaker of the House of Representatives, during the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo when bribe money was brought to the floor of the House, Alhaji Ghali Umar Na’ Abba, in this interview with AUGUSTINE OKEZIE spoke on the overall effects of corruption on the polity and why government should fund democratic structures to deepen democracy. Excerpts:
What are your thoughts on the issue of lack of internal democracy amongst political parties in Nigeria?
Whenever you pull out internal democracy from an election, then you are inflicting heavy damage on the polity. But today that is what is going on, and that is why we have so many economic and social problems. Because the polity is not growing, the economy is not growing and the society is not growing. So this is why I thought this platform has provided us with this opportunity to look at these things and then try to bring succor to our democracy.
What is your response to the issue of consensus building amongst politicians and political parties?
On political consensus in our polity, whatever political party we belong to, there must be a consensus that we must work for our democracy, and that winners and losers must always be recognised. When someone looses or a party looses an election, we must acknowledge the existence of the losing party and carry it along. Whoever the looser is must accept defeat and we want a situation whereby winning and losing will be fairly and freely decided, so that whoever wins, will know that yes, it is on merit and whoever looses, we will be sure he is not deprived of one thing or the other.
How do you see the growth of Democracy in Africa?
It is everyone’s wish that Africa be democratised and we thought that if we are free, we must not be indifferent to another’s freedom elsewhere particularly in our continent. In Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, there are growing challenges of democracy. You see, when you leave people with no choice, they will resort to violence, and that is why there is violence in many African countries, because people are being deprived of their right to choose their leaders.
How do you view current efforts aimed at sustaining democracy in Nigeria?
Well, I believe that most of the conferences and summits that have held in the past must have been organised in good faith with the objective of making our society better. I strongly believe that efforts aimed at ensuring the sustenance of democracy requires a lot of financial backing and that structure must be funded. And that is why in certain developed nations, they have endowments, these endowments are funded by their governments. For example in the United States, they have what is called National Endowment for Democracy-this is funded by the government and it’s a body under a state department and it’s responsible for funding political institutions to achieve their objectives. It is this body that funds institutions like the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute.
The role of these institutes in the political revolution of a lot of African countries cannot be overemphasized. Even when we started this democracy in 1999, they used to come and put us in many aspects of democracy, from appropriation process to various ways of legislation. That continued until I made a personal effort to bring them to Nigeria on a more permanent base. That was when they established offices and had permanent bases in Nigeria. So, we would want Federal Government to buy this idea of institute for democracy. It will be a means of examining some of this our programmes with a view to stabilising and helping our polity. Looking at governance in our country today, many quarters have been crying foul over what they described as threats to democracy.
Do you think our democracy is under threat?
Well, my believe is that so well as there is no internal democracy in any polity, that polity is definitely at threat. People are underestimating the importance of internal democracy. It is within the structure of internal democracy that you know the souls. As long as we go about democracy disorderly, it has a way of hitting back and that is why we see that today, because of lack of internal democracy, we have many security issues such as insurgency, kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism and many others numerous to mention. Whatever sector one is, ultimately, what determines whether you live at peace or war is good governance Today, the premise within which people are recruited is faulty and out of sycophancy, so when people become sycophants, what happens is that the incentive is killed. Because when you are a sycophant and I see you are the only one making progress, I will convert myself into a sycophant too. I will not waste my time studying hard for me to be able to succeed. I will regress and come down to your level thereby killing my intellect. It is always unfortunate to see people that their intellect is questionable running the affairs of the government. We are killing intellect in Nigeria through systematic subjugation of internal democracy. The fight against corruption has been described by many quarters as witch hunting and vengeance against perceived political enemies and oppositions.
What is your opinion on it?
My take is that the institutions fighting corruption should be allowed to do their job independently, because a lot of times, the moment people begin to perceive politics in the prosecution of corruption cases, it weakens the institutions and I believe that with time, this must be addressed. Secondly, in the issue of fighting corruption, I believe must be carried along with the philosophy that emphasises the fight against the things that bring about corruption. Because corruption is a social phenomenon, it doesn’t exist in isolation. When the majority of the people lack basic facilities needed for livelihood. Nigerians lack them because of institutional weaknesses and people resort to self help. In a country where people have to own their own power source, own their personal water source and health source. People find it difficult to even own a roof of their own. I believe that fight against corruption must be fought simultaneously against those things that bring about corruption. Again, there is this thing about security. People want to be secure.
During the Murtala Mohammed/ Olusegun Obasanjo administration, a lot of civil servants were dismissed from service. This was a government that came out to say they are going to fight corruption. They dismissed a lot of civil servants that were said to be corrupt. It was during that government that corruption became more entrenched because the remaining civil servants realizing what became of the civil servants, who were dismissed, tried to secure themselves against any eventuality. So, this kind of things must be looked into, people must be made to be secure. In an environment of insecurity, people might resort to self help. Infrastructure must be provided as a means of nipping it in the bud and as the best source of fighting the root cause of corruption. – Culled from Daily Times.
