Ekiti State
Governor Kayode Fayemi spoke with reporters in Lagos on his endorsement
for a second term by the party leaders, national security and 2015
elections.
What is your position on the removal of immunity for the President, Vice President, governors and their deputies?
I
have both conceptual and practical problem with the constitutional
reform as being carried out by the National Assembly. With greatest
respect to the
members
of the House of Representatives, when they claimed that they have held
365 meetings in their constituencies to gather feedback from the people,
I think it is fundamentally flawed and disingenious way of conducting
constitutional reform process. Either in the best global practices or
even in the terms of elementary feedback mechanism, I don’t think it
qualifies. What has happened has not met the basic aspect of legitimacy.
I
am of a thought that this process will end up in referendum that all
Nigerians will have a say. Constitution is a serious matter to exclude
the citizenry from it. On immunity, my own position tallies with what
they say. I have consistently said immunity should be limited to only
civil matter and that anyone who commits a crime and expected to be
protected by the law is first, not democratic and second, not interested
in good government.
Since we all agree that the bane of our
country today is corruption, criminality in high office, whether it is
electoral criminality or grand theft of the public treasury, criminality
is criminality. I have always believed that the only justification for
immunity is when a politician designed to distract person doing a job
from delivering the job with pedestrian and irresponsible cases in
court. That has nothing to do with criminality and I think I still hold
strongly that view. Immunity for civil matters should be adhered to.
However, lawyers can be dangerous and difficult. They can turn civil
cases to criminal issue depending on what they are fighting for.
In
that wise, I don’t think immunity is a matter for just the National
Assembly to decide. Majority of the proposals that I have seen from the
Lower Chamber have truly undermined the spirit of federalism throughout
the world. As a matter of fact, in some part of the world, the unit that
is responsible for election is the local government or county that runs
election. It is from here they calculate the election from the number
of local governments across the country. Many countries don’t have what
is called Federal Electoral body; Britain, USA, all of them.
I
don’t know many countries with federal electoral bodies. We only do our
own thing in Nigeria in reverse order and yet, we expect to get correct
outcome. It doesn’t work that way. There is logic to principle of
federalism and that logic is subsidiarity. But in our country, we want
to be unitary state, yet masquerade as a federal state. But I do know
that many of the National Assembly proposals for constitution amendment
may not see the light of the day unless they are not coming to the
States House of Assembly.
What is your reaction to your endorsement for a second term by your party?
I
have come to be very wary about this term, endorsement. It has become
bastardized word courtesy Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF). Seriously
speaking, I think it is a burden when people say that you have done
well. The burden of doing more becomes enlarged. That is what has come
out of the endorsement that our leaders gave to me last December and the
affirmation by Chief Bisi Akande and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. I also think
seriously that what we have learnt from Lagos and Edo experiment is that
if good governance is entrenched, it will be useful and helpful for the
parties not to change candidate arbitrarily unless there is a
compelling reasons to do that and those reasons should include those
conditions listed in the Nigerian constitution like temporary or
permanent insanity, ill-health and others like that.
If we are to
consolidate on things that we have achieved, then it makes sense unless
the candidate chooses not to contest. Our constitution allows second
term. Obviously, you cannot legislate against ambition. With the
endorsement, I felt a sense of elation on one hand and surprise on the
other because it imposes enormous burden on one, not just to do well and
protect the things that have been made but to also protect our people
because I am sure Abuja is eyeing Ekiti State very interestingly. They
considered those of us in the Progressive Forum as governors to be taken
out at all cost. But they will discover on the ground that they will
have very little to sell to our people.As far as we are concerned there
are clear and consistent changes in all of these states.
What will the opposition be bringing to the market to sell to the people at the end of the day?
The
important point here is that endorsement is not an election. We have a
lot of work to do. It’s great that our leaders recognised the work that
we have done so far but election is not going to be a child’s play. We
have prepared for a very tough election because we know full well that
the other side will not sit idle even before 2015 and the election in
Anambra, Ekiti and Osun will be a dress rehearsal for 2015.
Is it not confounding to you that insecurity has persisted in the country?
We
have almost moving to a point where our leaders need a serious
strategy; and economic cum security strategy. I don’t know how that is
going to come about but the Council of State and opinion leaders might
need to step back and look at the possibility to organise Security
Summit. One, there is a body led by the Minister (Turaki) talking to the
various players in this unfortunate development. But I do think what we
are confronted with now is poverty insecurity complex. That is the
challenge that we must address.
How do we tackle it?
The
last time I spoke about five sides to issue of Boko Haram. The most
prominent one is the religious angle, but it is not devastating like
economic strand. It is when people feel they have nothing to lose that
some of these things happened. We ought to pay more attention in
involving of the military in civilian affairs. I know the implication is
that you are not in charge and that they should come and rescue you.
That rescue can be defined in elastic by involving military in civilian
matters. You are sending a sub-minimal message to the military that you
cannot take good charge of the situation and that must be worrisome in
the light of what we have seen in the last two days in Egypt. It should
worry us that we are playing with fire.
What is our youth development programme in Nigeria?
We
have 60% population under 25, and majority of these young people are
totally fed up with Nigerian state. For one to be young and idle, other
forces will find use for you. That’s the part of the country’s major
problem and we are not dealing with it the way it should be done. Those
who are in the power corridor seem to be totally detached from their
people. We certainly need coherent strategy and that strategy must
almost be a marshal plan. State of emergency should have been a
component of the comprehensive marshal plan that we need in this
country. And the plan must be based on special economic security because
we must be able to cut off the oxygen that is fuelling what is going
on. If you don’t cut that oxygen, it will continue to get to other parts
of the north. I happen to know the governors of Borno and Yobe very
well. The governor of Borno, Kashim Shettima is one of the smartest
governors we have in this country and it’s been so sad that Boko Haram
has diminished the impact of the work he is doing in Borno State. People
know what the governor is made up.
What is the implication of the insecurity for 2015 polls?
I
think there is a fifth columnist in this government that is desirous of
this crime being perpetrated becaus of politics in 2015; or it helps to
put the President in the bad light. It could be either way. Those who
are out to get the President and destroy him and those who seek to
protect him and protect his agenda of return. Maybe, their thinking is
that, if we keep the north perpetually busy with these crises, election
may not take place there in 2015 and that we can annex the area. That is
likely where our own will come from. I’m throwing this out as my
reflection rather than certainty. But we are not the only country
afflicted by this kind of challenge but it refuses to go because of
little attention we pay to intelligence.
Up till now, the police
intelligence unit is virtually zero, military intelligence is not as
impressive as one expect. We are just left with the State Security
Service (SSS). That seems to have a bit of the arm of it. And that
leaves us with enormous challenges. Almost coming to the reality of
national intelligence report as we go near 2015. Maybe there is
something the American saw which we didn’t see that Nigeria may
disintegrate by 2014. But,we don’t need to resign ourselves to fate. We
need to make a clarion call to Mr. President and all of us in the
leadership position to begin to respond to issues. This is one of the
issues discussed at NGF that we should make resources available to the
afflicted states.
In our view, you cannot have about 10 million
children there outside and not see correlation between helplessness and
hopelessness of these young people. There is correlation somewhere,
poverty and violence are related and we must do certain things to
separate them. We can take specific steps. Right now, the bulk of what
is happening under the state of emergency is being paid for by those
states where the rule is in place. So, you can see what is happening
that if Borno State gets a monthly allocation of say N5 billion every
month and it devotes N2.5billion to keep the Joint Task Force in place.
That is zero-sum in economics.
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Residents of Lekki Phase 2 Estate , in the Eti Osa Local Government area of Lagos state, in Nigeria’s South West have appealed to Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola to come to their aid urgently to fix their deteriorating roads.
Below is what she said about her desire to get married:
