Dialogue with Boko Haram is inevitable – Senator Ojudu

BY BASHIR ADEFAKA
Senator Femi Ojudu, a journalist, represents Ekiti Central Senatorial
District in the Senate. He spoke to Sunday Vanguard in his Abuja
office on several national issues.
When you wake up in the morning andyou look at the Nigerian situation,
what comes to your mind?
What comes to my mind is that things could be better and ought to have
been better if we have taken Nigeria seriously.
How do you mean taking Nigeria seriously?
I have a feeling that those of us who are leaders have not taken
Nigeria seriously and there is a need for us to do so, quickly, before
things got out of hand. There are so many problems thatneed to be
solved quickly. And I look atthe environment and see most of our
people moving around without hope; that does not portend a society
that will create a future. Today, the young ones do not even have any
compass as to where they are going, and we are not assisting them to
know. So, how dowe have a future that is going to be better than
today?
When you have a problem and you have a solution, you are happy that
things will get better. But we have so many problems today and nobody
seems to be addressing them or, do I say, they are not being addressed
seriously. There is no hope for a better future if we continue this
way.
When one observes the Nigerian situation so well, it is possible to
see a disconnect between the leadership and followership, which makes
it difficult for anybody to want to believethat there is any good
leader left in the country. What is the problem with Nigeria and the
leaders?It is true that there is a gulf between the leaders and the
led. And this is dueto the fact that the masses lost hope inthe
leaders. Anybody in the position of authority, either at the
executive, legislative or the judicial level, is seen as a thief. And
why it is so is that the people have been betrayed over the years by
the leadership. You believe insomebody and you sing his praise to high
heavens, he gets to the position of power and he begins to do things
contrary to what you have known him to profess. Under no circumstance
would you then believe in such personagain. So, we need to work very
hard to return that credibility into the person because if you are not
trusted by those that you are leading, there is no way they would
follow you. We must work hard to return that credibility.
You were one of those who had it rough under military regime. But
given our current experience under civil rule, some people have been
tempted to say things can be better under the military. What do you
think?
Under no circumstance would I glorify military regime. I believe that
what wehave today, as unfortunate as it may seem, is much better than
the military.Again, we have to be cognizant of history. How did we get
to where we are? History will show you that we were brought to where
we are today by the military. The few years that we had civil rule
before and after independence showed the giant strides the country
made. Suddenly there was military intervention till 1979 when soldiers
handed over power briefly and they came back again up till 1999. So,
all of the things you are seeing today are symptoms that came into
being when we were under the military. Therefore, glorifying the
military is not going to help.
Sen Ojodu
The problem with the country is that our yesterday is always better
than ourtoday and our today, the way things are going, will always be
better than our tomorrow. But we have to stem the tide of this
abnormality.
But what it should be is that today should be better than yesterday…
But it is not so here! That is why somebody, during Obasanjo
administration, say, "Oh, Obasanjo is not good." But now that Obasanjo
is not there, they say, "Oh, Obasanjo was much better than Jonathan."
Today they say Jonathan is not good and may be tomorrow somebody comes
in and they say, "Ah, Jonathan was much better than this." It is so
because, by our attitude to life, our today is always better than our
tomorrow and our yesterday always better than our today. And by that,
you can explain that we are not planning and we are not progressing.
We are not thinking of development. Ifwe are thinking of development,
why should we stop our national planning process? For more than 27
years ago now, we have stopped the national planning process. We
suddenly stopped and nobody cares. Budgets donot get announced in
January any longer and budget for a year gets announced or starts to
be implemented mid-year. That is why we are in this state of ass and
why our people are becoming so despondent. They are becoming cynical
about society. I am saying now that we all have to come together and
say enough is enough and put a stop to this drift.
People like you have always spoken about the way out of our problems
but none of those in positions of authority to make things work seems
to be interested. What new thing is the opposition putting together to
ensure that, whatever it takes, 2015 would be the time to really come
together and say enough is enough?
People are worried, they are concerned and, as a result of that, they
are organizing to ensure that there is change in Nigeria. What I
cannot assure you is whether this is enough or not enough. We again
may have to wait and see how it translates. But I can assure you that
in our different level we are organizing.
Nigerians as a people don't seem to know what they want from the
leadership. And I think this is part of the problem facing us
generally as a people…?
I disagree. I do not believe that Nigerians do not know what they
want. I have my reason for that deduction. For instance, when
President Jonathan removed subsidy in January of 2012, he and his
lieutenants promised heaven and earth as to how funds from the removal
would be reinvested for the good of Nigeria. Today, even the busesthat
were said to be part of the measures to mitigate the effect of the
subsidy removal in Nigerians have been withdrawn from the roads
without anybody talking. And when Mr.President directs FERMA to patch
a portion of a road, you hear people singing his praises. It also
happens in the case of the governors.Again, it is the failure of
leadership at different levels. And when we talk of leadership, we are
not just talking about those in positions of president, governor.
Although we have leadership at the levels of social organizations and
families, it is about lack of vigilance at all levels. We are too
concerned about immediate survival. We want to eat good food, wewant
to live in good houses and we want to ride good cars. And that is what
we are focusing on. We are not focusing on building a society that
will ensure where all of us can live a comfortable a life; where all
of us will leave legacies for those who are yet tobe born.
That is why we are not often consistent in our assessment of
things;that is why you have people say, "Oh, this system is good
because I have benefited from it and that one is bad because I have
not benefited. If I support this, may be I will benefit in future."
Look at the type of trivialities we are all concerned with. People
whochange societies do not look at 'what do I gain' from this thing?
They look at it from the collective interest. Even if I die in the
process of pursuing this, I will have left the society better than I
met it. People who are real and true leaders, that is the way they
think and that is the way they look at life. But here, we are too
short-term in our approach to matters.
Senator Ben Obi, Special Adviser to President Jonathan on Inter-Party
Affairs, has called on all parties in the opposition to come and join
hands with Mr. President to enable him moveNigeria forward. What is
your comment?
That is calling for one-party state and, when you have one-party
state, you donot have a democracy. When you talk of democracy, you
talk of having choices to make as to whether I have to go for Party A
or Party B. When it comes to a point whereby everything becomes come
and chop, then we do not have democracy.
And that is the wish of the PDP, that Nigeria should become one-party
state. But that is not going to happen. That is why some of us raise
up our voices in the Senate to say, "Look, some of us are in
opposition and we should carry out the role of opposition." We cannot
continue to berobots that must be led on. So, no matter the
lamentation of people like Obi, Nigeria cannot become one-party state.
This democracy must stand. There must be progress in Nigeria. There
must be plurality of political parties and there must be plurality of
views.
How workable is the emergency rule as solution we all long for in the
North to the insurgency there?
From information from the military chiefs who came to brief the Senate
Committee on Defence of which I am a member, on how far they have gone
inthe course of the emergency rule in those three states, what they
told us was reassuring. They said they had recovered all the grounds
seized by the insurgents and that normalcy had returned to those
places. People are now moving freely. If we have been able to achieve
that, I think we must commend the military officers and men on ground
and those who are managing the emergency process.
How does that affect the issue of call for dialogue by leaders like
Prince BolaAjibola, Chief Olu Falae?
In fact, if the report given by the military chiefs to our committee
is anything to go by, it is about time to dialogue. You dialogue at a
time when your enemy is at the weakest position.You do not dialogue
when the enemy is as powerful as yourself. But when you have pushed
him to a point of surrender, you can then invite him for dialogue.