Democracy not doing so well, military rule not alternative — Zamani Lekwot

•Political class must mend its ways 

•FG should name and shame sponsors of insecurity 

•Willpower, political will needed to end menace 

•Age of military era is gone 

•Democracy must be supported to grow 

•One-party state not good for Nigeria 

•Politicians not following the constitution

By Chioma Gabriel, Editor, Special Features

GENERAL Zamani Lekwot (retd) served as the Military governor of old Rivers State from July 1975 to July 1978 during the military administrations of Generals Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo. On 15 May 1992, when violence erupted between the Muslim Hausa and Christian Atyap communities of Zango-Kataf  Local Government Area in Kaduna State over trading and land ownership rights, with many deaths, a tribunal set up by the General Ibrahim Babangida government sentenced Lekwot and 16 others to death for alleged complicity in the killings.

The sentences were eventually reduced to a short jail sentence.

By December 1995, Lekwot received a state pardon.

In this interview, the former MILAD speaks on the worsening state of insecurity and the need for politicians to ensure democracy thrives in Nigeria among other issues. Excerpts:

Insecurity has persisted in Nigeria for a long time and it gets worse with every regime. What seems to be the problem?

The problem has remained because the government lacks the willpower and the political will. Then the security people on the ground, the armed forces, and the police are very thin; they are few. They are supposed to recruit more to cover the country properly. And then, intelligence-gathering information is very scarce.

They should involve the traditional rulers who are on the ground to filter the correct information in time so that preemptive actions can be taken. So, this is part of the solution. Many people have suggested this. However, the government should exercise more political will to tackle the situation.

Security agencies need information from the people to be able to function well.  The country is very large. The bandits, kidnappers and insurgents are all over the country. So, if the local people provide information, the security agencies will be able to tackle the situation.  The bandits also have agents. Information should be given to these agencies. 

For example, how do they get the fuel they use? How do they get their food? How do they get recharge cards? So, proper security information should be provided so that proper action can be taken. 

It seems some of these terrorists are being taken into the system after they pretend they have repented, whereas they have not…

Well, the fact is that terrorism is heightening. The other thing the government should do is to fish out the sponsors and call them to order. So, the government should exercise more discretion in handling this. 

The killings are being attributed to religious fanatics, while some say they are people from outside Nigeria. We don’t even know what to believe. 

I don’t know either because I have no evidence. But the fact that this is happening means the government should do more than it is doing to arrest it. The solution is there: Create state police so that every state can protect its boundaries. If they need help, this is where the federal police will come in. Recruit more soldiers and DSS people. Manpower shortage is part of the handicap.

The country is very large and the military in particular has been in the field for many years. They are tired. So, recruiting more hands will provide extra force to cover the country. That is that. But they are using the police to attend to individuals. The police are very few. Even out of the few, they are guarding some individuals.

Part of the problem of the military is that they are posted to roadblocks, which is supposed to be the police’s job. So, manpower shortage is part of the problem. Only the government can solve it.

There are many roadblocks by the army and police, especially in the southeast, and they abandon the problem areas.

That is, you are confirming the cry for more manpower. And many young people are looking for jobs.

So, massive recruitment into the armed forces and security agencies will reduce the unemployment queue also. That is part of the solution. Should they stop attaching them to individual private persons? Well, I feel that increasing manpower will absorb that. Provision of security to VIPs is done everywhere in the world. 

Shouldn’t the ones that are on the expressways be deployed to where they will be more effective?

These military men are not on the road to torment the people. It is along the road that the arms are carried. So, the roadblocks are okay to make sure that the volume of arms moving around the country is reduced. That is the basic aim.

And as I have said, massive recruitment is the solution to provide the necessary manpower needed to comb the whole country.

Look, the insecurity in the country requires the attention of everybody. Individual safety should not be a consideration. That is that.

But a lot of young people don’t find the job impressive anymore. They are not well paid…

The rules are there. If they are followed, then there should be no problem. The forces should be made attractive so more young people can join, and they should be paid their dues because they have families to take care of and all that. And then serving in the armed forces and the security agencies is a major sacrifice. They should be duly compensated.

Statistics claimed that close to N19 trillion has been spent on addressing the worsening insecurity…   

Well, did they explain? Did they analyse how the money was spent? That is a general statement on which I cannot comment. I don’t have the facts. But they usually say they spend them on arms. 

They still complain about a shortage of arms…

Part of the problem is buying arms. You have to place an order. Since most of what we use is imported, you have to place an order and wait. It also depends on the international market price. Then the rise of the dollar is going to require more Naira to buy.

So, the economic factors governing international trade are there. A proper answer will depend on the availability of what the facts say, which I don’t have. 

You are a soldier. You should have access to information…

No, I am retired. I retired some years ago. So, I have no access to the documents and the facts. So, I don’t know and I am not willing to comment on what I don’t know.

What advice would you give to the people who are living in these war-torn areas? Some of them have been disconnected from their homes for ages. 

That cannot be far from what I have already said. The government must change its strategy to do more than what they are doing by involving all the strata of the system, down to the traditional rulers.

Somebody has recommended that every community should find a way of defending itself. That is the way. And gathering intelligence and then feeding the armed forces and the security people on the ground. Effective use of intelligence will go a long way to help. If what the bandits are going to do is predicted, preemptive action can be taken.

Since the military and the security people are on the ground, if they get sufficient information on the movement of these bandits, then they will be able to do something that will reduce the rate of killings.

At the moment, the armed forces and security personnel only find out after the damage has been done. That is evidence that security, information, and intelligence are not properly synchronised. So, that area should be revisited. There cannot be an effective intervention without credible intelligence.

Some of these terrorists would claim they have repented, but after they were granted amnesty, they still go back to what they were doing.

The government should stop allowing itself to be deceived. One of the effective ways of stopping that is to make sure that after training them, the system should absorb them to supervise what they are doing. Because once they are forgiven, untrained, and released, they are on their own. 

Some of them were being conscripted into the military or police but they continued with kidnapping and activities and creating problems. 

That should not be so. The way the military recruitment used to be, that I know, was that every potential recruit was investigated down to his village to confirm the authenticity of his claim.

If that is not being done, that explains why what you are saying happens. They should go back to the ground rules to make sure that the background of every potential recruit is properly investigated. We are all worried about the situation. But if the government does the needful, the situation will abate. 

There is this feeling that the North is not happy with the current administration  because of the way it handles insecurity… 

What do you want me to say? The President is doing his best. But how far can that best go? Given the type of problems he inherited, he cannot solve the problems during one term. It’s difficult.

So, if all that has been suggested is put into practice, change will come. If you are talking about the North not being happy, they are playing politics. Some of them are gunning for his position, and some for political appointments.

Nigerians are suffering. There’s so much anger, hunger, poverty, and hardship. This is beyond politics…

Nigerians have lived on borrowed time for long, such that, because of the oil money, we neglected agriculture. Before the discovery of oil, agriculture used to be the mainstay of the economy, for internal use and export.

Now, we have stopped exporting things and are importing even things that can be produced in Nigeria. How can a nation survive like that? That is against the international trade rules. The comparative advantage rule has been thrown overboard.

So, we have to go back to agriculture. And I’m happy that the government has started reversing that. Agriculture alone can sustain us. If nothing else, if more foodstuff, for instance, is produced, prices of commodities will come down.

Inflation will come down. People will now be satisfied with what they have. Then we can introduce the semi-processing of some of our agri-products before export to add value to them.   

Insecurity is affecting agriculture. People are afraid of going to the farms because these terrorists have chased them out of the farms…

The insecurity problem must be fixed first so that the farmers can freely access their farms for what we are talking about to come to pass.

But are you aware that some people would want the military to come back because they seem more disciplined than the civilians?

No. The age of the military era is gone. Democracy must be supported to grow. The military has done its best. Everything was done and handed over when another coup took place in 1983, and the handover took place in 1999.

So, there is nothing new that the military will come into the government and do. Instead, it will stifle the growth of democracy.

The political class must mend its ways to follow the law of the land. The lack of that is what is creating the confusion. The military is never trained to run the government.     Democracy must be allowed to grow from the grassroots.  There are pains because of the sacrifices people must make.

Take, for instance, why are our refineries not working? Why? If the four of them were working, that would reduce the quantity of imported fuel. The money used to import fuel would be saved for other things. So, incompetence and inefficiency are some of the contributory factors. The government must do the needful to make sure the refineries are resuscitated. All four. 

During the End Bad Governance Protest, some people were calling for the military to come back and even asking Russia to take over. What is your take on this?

Russia to take over as what? I don’t support that. What do they know about Nigeria? Foreigners cannot run the country for us. The British left a very good legacy for us based on their model. But our political class has pushed that aside and is doing what they like.

So, we have to come to terms with the fact that only we, Nigerians, can govern Nigeria by doing the correct things. But we have a constitution that is not followed to the letter. That is the problem.

So, the countries you have named, we have a boundary with only Niger. We don’t have a boundary with Burkina Faso. Our other neighbours are Benin and Cameroon. They are run by democratic governments. So, our democracy is crawling. We should help it start walking. That is the way to go. 

People are beginning to think that Nigeria is heading towards a dictatorship through defection to the ruling party…

The defections of some politicians who are position seekers are not enough evidence of a one-party state. Have they consulted their constituencies? It is during elections that the voters will decide what they want, and not the personal ambition of a few elected officials.

A one-party state is not good for any country. And I don’t think we are heading there because the voters who have the power are still there.

People don’t take elections and the electoral bodies seriously in Nigeria. They use the security forces to undermine the elections. 

That is a challenge to INEC. INEC should rise and implement electoral laws, like the issue of electronic voting. That will remove most of the encumbrances that have made elections appear not to be working. It comes back to what we are talking about; the politicians are not following the constitution. Once the law is enacted, its efficacy will be directly proportional to its implementation. So, only INEC can stop that by doing the needful. After they have done what the electoral law says, anybody who goes to court will meet a stone wall because the law has been followed to the letter. 

Since 1999, would you say democracy has done well enough? 

Democracy has not done well enough. That is why we have the problems. But something has been achieved, but it is not enough since we still have problems. That means the people in power should do more than they are doing to get us to the Promised Land.