Enechi Onyia is Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and recipient of the award of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON). He is also a former vice presi­dent of Ohaneze Ndigbo and member, Igbo Leaders of Thought.
Onyia recently appraised the ongo­ing NationalConference convened by President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja and concluded that despite its chal­lenges, something positive has come out of the conference. He also reasoned that Nigeria needed to do more to overcome its myriads of problems and achieve its full potential.
According to him, Nigeria is currently experiencing a revolution by way of the Boko Haram fundamentalist Islamist sect. However, he maintained that it was easier for the country to remain together than breaking up because it is in the best interest of everybody.
Excerpt:
How would you describe the state of the nation?
It is very confusing. Our problem is that we have no goal. Any country that is interested in sharing its wealth only is not meant to develop. The question is, after sharing what you’ve got, what next? Our own principle of governance is sharing; that’s what the National Assembly is doing. They are not talking about how to contribute to national development. That won’t augur well for Nigeria. I understand that they are even talking of rotational presidency; it means they have no future for Nigeria. In all civilised countries, the best man rules. It may be the worst man that becomes the president but he is a man who can convince the people that he will work for the country. If you have some­thing like rotational presidency, how do you control him without creating psycho­logical imperfection? Governance will be influenced or driven by tribal sentiments. And once it has become the grund norm of the society, you can’t change it. Are we as big as the United States? Are we as big as Germany? We are not philosophers.  Our politics is cut and nail and it is very unfortunate. I want the best man to rule Nigeria; the best man is the man who is going to take Nigeria as his constituency. We don’t want an ethnic champion. I think we should review our approach to national issues. It is selfish, self-serving and discriminatory. I like the way they are going to create more states. It will give everybody the chance to develop their own state. It is not going to the states and say you want to do rotation. How do you think that place will develop? What is the purpose of zoning? It is for sharing and it is a dangerous principle. It is not demo­cratic at all. So, we have to rethink. The media must ask those in authority where are we going? How do we excel on the international stage?
Our economic system is not develop­mental; it is haphazard. It is not planned. Even as an individual, if you don’t plan your compound, it won’t be neat. So, we have to sit down and plan what we want to do and execute it. Nigeria is God’s given country to the black man, to salvage the black man in the world. That’s how I see Nigeria. But if because of our selfish­ness and lack of patriotism we start think­ing of tribalism or religious fanaticism, then we would have lost. I hope Nigeria will start thinking. Is your action in the best interest of the country? Nigeria will disappoint Africa if it does not go into the international world to protect African interest.
Do you think anything good can come out of the national conference?
Something good has come. They have seen clearly that some tribes dominate others and they said states in Nigeria should be increased by 18. So, we will have over 50 states. Each nation-state will be able to govern itself and fashion its policies. There are many tribes in Nigeria, so there is no way you can cover the interest of all. What you do is get the people who are related more, who can accommodate one another to form a state. Unless we go back to history, we cannot do anything. Let’s find a way of defining our position in the world. We must know what we want to achieve in the world, what we want to achieve in Africa and what we want to achieve in Nigeria. All these things must be considered. If you don’t consider them and you are talking of your local event, how can local event control you in Africa? Look at small England ruling the world. Look at small Fulanis ruling Nigeria, whether you like it or not. How many are they? It’s planning; it’s strategy. I admire the Fulanis, they know where they are going and how to get there.
What is the way out of the Boko Ha­ram menace?
If you ask me, the Kanuris and the Fulanis should go and have a meeting and find a way of dealing with Boko Haram. That’s all I can say. If the Kanuris and Fulanis meet and take a decision on Boko Haram, Boko Haram will go. But these two powerful groups must have what you call give and take.
What is your take on 2015 elections?
I have looked at Nigerian politics, the political parties do not have any philoso­phy. They are only interested in sharing. We can also stop Boko Haram if you have a government that has philosophical concept. How do you satisfy the common man and satisfy the big man because we are not equal? At least, you must give the common man the minutest right to exist peacefully in this country. Have they done that? You must have food to eat, you must have house and you must have education. Is there any plan for the Nigerian youth? These are the basic things the people need. It is not proper for the poor man to continue serving the rich man. As long as this continues, there will be more trouble. The common man has no land to farm, how do you want him to be a farmer. He has no money and his children are unem­ployed. How do you want him to exist? So, Nigeria must think again. The next round of elections will come and the poli­ticians will make empy promises, there won’t be issue-based campaigns and there might be pockets of violence as usual.
Do you see the possibility of Nigeria breaking up?
I have never prayed for the break-up of Nigeria. Nigeria will not break up. We have tried it before because we were being maltreated, but we saw the conse­quences. Breaking up how? You mean the amorphous north will become one coun­try? Is it possible? Can the east, west and south-south become different countries? Unless we are not thinking of the future of the black man, that’s the only time we can talk of breaking up. You have no one man ruling the whole Yorubaland at any time. You have no one man ruling the whole Hausas/Fulanis. So, it is not as easy as that. People can envisage breaking up of Nigeria but is not easy. We fought for this country, we made sacrifices. Nigeria was the hope of black man. Europeans thought Nigeria would be the hope of the black man. Unfortunately, Nigeria has become an unfulfilled mission. If Nigeria breaks up, what will happen to Christians in the middle belt? What will happen to Christians in Sokoto and other places? What will happen to the Muslims in the east and west? So, it is easier for Nigeria to remain together than break up. It’s in the best interest of everybody.
How do you access Nigeria’s 15 years of democracy?
There are many forms of democracy. But the proper definition, according to Aristotle, is government of the people, by the people and for the people. There has been no democracy in Nigeria. What you have is civil rule; it is not a democratic rule. You cannot talk of democracy until elections are not rigged. When election is rigged, the government is not elected by the people, which is an important compo­nent of democracy. So, any rigged elec­tion is not democracy. In fact, democracy portends that there should be no rigging at all; people should express their will. So, I don’t know about 15 years of democracy as some people say. I know 15 years of civil rule.
The way to ensure free and fair election is to change our psyche by not wanting to cheat. What happens is that the politicians always want to cheat. They want to get to power by all means. In the civilised countries, there is an amount you can­not exceed by way of expenditure during campaigns. If you exceed the specified amount, it becomes corruption. But here, you can spend limitless sums and nobody will ask any question. The man who is influenced with money is not a democrat. A man who can be bought and sold is not a democrat. The man doing the buying also has a question to answer. There is communist democracy. You have social democracy. In communist democracy, the people are assured of meals per day, everybody has a house to live in and everybody would work. That is what you call communist democracy. In socialist democracy, you are allowed to compete. But make sure that somebody is not too high above others. In other words, people must pay tax according to their incomes. There is also capitalist democracy. Which one are we practising? What we have is laissez faire democracy. So, young men and women should think and fashion a type of constitution that will give you your dignity. Every Nigerian, be you a Muslim or Christian or an animist or a traditionalist, there are some basic things you must enjoy for there to be democracy.
So, if you look at it that way, you will understand where we are today. Some­body is being accused of spending billions of naira when the average income of some Nigerians is not above N200 per day. What will N200 buy for you today? It can’t give you a meal, not even a good breakfast. If you make N200 in a day, it will be N1400 in a week of seven days. How many Nigerians earn that amount in a week? I think we should have a rethink and find a way of correcting our errors. We all must be involved. What I have seen that may happen to Nigeria is that there will be a time only five or six rich people will govern this country. They’ve got the money; they can buy people because people are hungry and poor. They are very vulnerable. Poverty is a disease and you must cure poverty before democracy comes in.
Do you think there will be revolution in Nigeria soon?
Boko Haram is a revolution, whether you like it or not. It is not a peaceful thing; revolution is doing things by force. We are already there. You should be ask­ing, what type of revolution is it. It may be religious revolution. It may be tribal revolution. But as of now, there is revolu­tion going on. In Abuja now, people avoid where there is crowd unless the police cordons the place and make sure nothing will happen.  It is like that in so many other places.
What exactly does Boko haram want?
I’m not a member of Boko Haram, so I cannot say exactly what they want. But they want a change. The totality of what they want is a change but I don’t know the type of change they want.
 Some people say that Nigeria is in crises because so much power is concentrated at the centre. How do you react to that?
It is not the power at the federal level that is the problem; it is our acquisitive in­stinct that is the problem. They have even refused to apply the existing constitution. If the operators of the constitution apply it, there will be no trouble. For example, if you go through the constitution, you won’t find anything like Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa. Do you find north and and south east and west? The only problem they have is that it didn’t serve their inter­est. So, they are now abandoning the constitution, bringing an interest outside the constitution to serve. If you read the entire constitution, the only place they mentioned tribe was the language you can use in parliament. They later started talking about zones because people want to be corrupt. People are now talking about northern interest, southern interest and what have you. All this is because of selfish human beings who don’t even know where Nigeria should go. Some­thing is very wrong with us. We are not prepared to study any situation; we come to conclusion without considering facts just to satisfy personal interests. If I were to be the Attorney General of Nigeria, I would have seen that the constitution is followed. And if the Attorney General makes the constitution to be followed, these crises wouldn’t be there.  You can form your opinion but don’t get people to talk in political terms because it becomes politics. You can have your Igbo social system but not politics. Our attorneys general have failed us because they are to tell the president how to enforce the constitution. Every day, we spend billions of naira talking of constitution amend­ment. The constitution we have now is very good, you can use it. Just do away with tribalism. Why are we talking about constitution, constitution and constitution as if it is our problem? The English has no written constitution but everything is working for them because they have a decent way of living. If it is in Nigeria, it will be customary law and if we take our customary law, the churches will tell you it is hearthen. We cannot be ourselves. We should be asking, how do we get Nigeria or the black man become important in society?  When I was in secondary school, the black man was regarded higher than the Chinese and we were thought that Chi­nese schools do nothing. But when they decided to fight, they had the iron curtain. They refused to accept defeat but because of their population they would have been servants of the world, if they hadn’t taken that decision. There was no way you can feed them with normal agriculture.
So, they decided to give scientific gov­ernance. They said everybody must eat in their place, one man shouldn’t be having everything. They introduced communism to satisfy their interest. Russia introduced communism because they were dying of hunger. The way to cure it is when every­body eats and people will start thinking. A hungry man doesn’t think. The only thing he wants is food to eat. How does he think? If you have no money will you be talking of sending your son to school? You want to feed that child first before talking about paying school fees. So, there are some fundamental issues people who are philosophical have to look into, not this cut and nail thing. A man in the par­liament rides the best car and he thinks he has succeeded when he has not given his nation anything. It is unfortunate.
You said that something good can come out of the national conference yet people went there with sectional agenda. How do you reconcile that?  
If you see what the people of Enugu submitted to the conference when they came, you will find we considered our peculiar position. After that, we consid­ered the position of the Igbo man because we are part of the Igbo race. Then we considered the position of the whole Nigeria, Africa and the world. How do we achieve what we want to achieve? An Anglican priest in London told me that the greatest problem of any human being is that when God answered his prayer he doesn’t know that God has answered his prayer and he is still asking God to do it for him. Is it not a stupid thing to ask God to do what He has done for you? You are confused; you don’t know what you are even asking for.
Our people fought to become indepen­dent of Nigeria. People like me had never wanted to fight. We had thought that Nige­ria could be tutored to become the greatest African nation. So, some of us advised the then government that instead of secession he should declare himself the president of Nigeria and take away capital from Lagos to Enugu. And we started analysing that possibility. But because of international relations, if you do it the foreign powers will remove you and put the man they want because we were not in-charge. If that had been done, the question of dec­laration of war wouldn’t have arisen. We would have taken Benue and other places. At the end of the day, we will come to the conference table and settle because both sides will be strong. Once you talk of secession, it is an act of war against your country. Once you declare that you are leaving Nigeria you have declared war. And that is why Nigeria never accepted we have left; they said the action was police action, not military action. Police developed into military action when they had made the whole world to look at you as a secessionist. Look at what is happen­ing in Russia speaking Ukraine. With all the powers that Russia has, they could penetrate there but the consequences are so much. So, you find that you have to take intellectuals. Intellectualism is for leadership. If you cannot afford to make sacrifices for your brother, don’t go to lead. If you are going there to find food, you are not a leader, you are a consumer.
The young people should sit down and find a solution because there is a solution. Because we want to be wealthy while the other man remains poor, it beclouds our image of what we want. You are the poorest man when you have poor people around you and you are the only rich man. You are very poor because by the time you start spending the one you have, you have nothing. Our politicians have never sat down and ponder why there is weekly payment for those who have no work in England. They are talking about private sector oriented economy, which country has ever done that? Is it England, USA, Russia or Germany? You leave your responsibility and say the private sector will get that responsibility done? How can that be? The man who creates wealth is the man with money and intelligence. The government has the wealth of the na­tion; it is either the individual steals or he works hard. And you can never be a bil­lionaire if you are working hard without stealing in 10 years unless you are lucky to meet something like chance. But how many people have that chance? So, our government must take their responsibility of building industries, creating employ­ment and helping people to become useful to themselves and society. How many industries have we built in Nigeria? The Chinese send spies to Europe on special assignment. A doctorate holder in physics and other fields will go to work as a la­bourer and photocopy virtually everything he had seen in the industry. They call it stealing but they just want to build their country and this thing helps them. Have we trained our people to love Nigeria? Everybody in Nigeria thinks of what he will get from Nigeria and not what he will give Nigeria. We haven’t started think­ing. They call people to Abuja to discuss national issues when you haven’t started from home.
I think before going to Abuja, you should have discussed what you want in your home and get the feeling of the people. If you build a house from the top, where will it stand?  If you want to build a house, you will start by making founda­tion before putting blocks and roofing it. You can’t put a roof in the air. We are always talking about constitution and amending it, what is the support? Some of these people talking are talking in vain. Look at the education sector, nobody stud­ies history now. Can you rule anybody without history? You must know the past and the present to be able to forecast the future. Many graduates do not know the number of states we have in Nigeria and their capitals because nobody teaches them such a thing. Our education system is faulty; it is not moulded towards some achievement. So, we need to think to find an answer to our multifarious problems.

Something good has come out of National Conference