Akin Osuntokun is a former political adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Director General of the Peter Obi presidential campaign. In this interview, he speaks on the screening of presidential aspirants and issues arising from party primaries across the country, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU reports

There are those who are making the case that the opposition is again walking into a fragmentation trap with Peter Obi, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Atiku Abubakar going into this race. They are automatically handing the race to the All Progressives Congress (APC). What is your take on all of this?

Well, you know there’s always a lot of ceremony about all these talks with Nigeria. I think it amounts to indiscipline on the part of the opposition parties not to be able to come together to form a coalition. So, people are busy criticizing APC and condemning APC but then you have what is being done at the other side to respond effectively to what people are condemning. I can’t see anything of that.

A major opposition, I mean that’s about the case and they are fragmented and of course definitely the chances of either of those two opposition parties making a lead way in 2027 has become much more difficult.

What you seem to be saying is that the opposition as constituted right now, if there’s any at all, has barely any chance and their chances are not looking too good. What role do you think zoning will play in this election?

As far as I’m concerned, elections and all this stuff about opposition, they are ephemeral. The real issue that concerns Nigeria that strategically you know even tactically is the issue of constitutional reforms. You don’t want to get into the presidency. Running for the presidency is the most destabilizing political factor in Nigeria. And until that is addressed squarely, we are going to be having all these anarchical tendencies. People are focusing on power politics at the expense of constitutional reform.

The thing that Nigeria needs to do urgently now is not really the focus you are going to; a lot of people are missing the poi Whatever constitution that gives the presidency in Nigeria, the kind of powers that the presidency has, is not a good constitution even if it’s a unitary state talk-less of federalism. So, this is why you are going to be having this kind of opposition behaviour if you can call them call it that because we are not addressing the fundamental issue that Nigeria is confronted with. It is not about who gets to where.

Running for the presidency is the most destabilising political factor in Nigeria. And until that is addressed squarely, we are going to be having all these anarchical tendencies

For instance, Peter Obi is a good candidate, if he becomes president, he has to work with a National Assembly. He’s not a dictator. So, right from the word go, it is going to be hobbled.

So, until you have decentralization, the presidency will always be prone to this syndrome that whenever it acts, the importance is so exaggerated. Look at the kidnapping in Oyo State; ordinarily the local government and the state should have led the rescue mission but they cannot because of the constitution we have. We have a centralized security system, now people are now talking about President Bola Tinubu.

I’m very happy that he has taken a bill to the National Assembly on the issue of state police. Look at how long we’ve been talking about state police until it has become the kind of emergency now that it has become. You can say that about all aspects of Nigeria. Many issues were taken from the Concurrent Legislative List and have been emptied into the president. There is an element of military dictatorship syndrome in it. It is a constitution that was made by the military in 1979.

What do you make of the phenomenon of consensus across different political parties and what does this whole thing about consensus say about our democratic process?

I don’t know which is safer because it depends on who then becomes the consensus candidate. At the end of the day, that is what matters. If you do consensus and it’s a thug or whatever, I mean, I won’t say that has been something productive in producing the presidency.

You see, there are conflicting visions about what lies ahead for Nigeria and it explains this kind of fragmentation. Secondly is that the factors that determine political leadership in Nigeria are not such that will produce a good candidate. Obi left African Democratic Congress (ADC) and when you look at the issue, it boils down to the fact that the role that money will play in the primaries and that’s why he has to leave.

This is the problem of Nigeria. What determines the vote, what determines electoral behaviour in Nigeria is not geared towards producing a good leader because you have to have tons of money. I witnessed this firsthand. If you talk about having structures all over the country, you are talking about money because it takes a lot of money, especially if you are contesting for the presidency. And this is where people may want to think about parliamentary system option all over again.

For you to become prime minister, it’s for you to win in your constituency. So, it’s your party and the leader of the party that brings you forward as a prime minister, but in the presidential system, you have to win all over the country, and of course, that takes a lot of money. People don’t take all these things into consideration because this is part of the problem that any good aspirant can be screened out by that fact alone.

How do we get the process of recruiting our leaders’ right, and for a country like Nigeria, what would you say is the best process that can actually give us the best of the best?

I think you have to depend personalize as much as is as possible the process of electing leadership so you look at the system. We’re talking about destabilization and federalism, if you do it, it does not mean that you will automatically get a good leader but at the same time the irreducible minimum achievement you are going to get is that the central government will have that much less power.

And to do damage to the rest of the country: that is worst case scenario of decentralization of power and vice versa if you over centralize power the government at the centre, it is not a quote and unquote good leader you cannot decree a good leadership.

You don’t proceed from the point of view that you are going to have good people in government but you proceed from the contrary that you are going to have bad people hence there is a need to have checks and balances and to come up with scenarios that minimize the damage t We are saying we are practicing American presidential system but this is what they do there.

They have checks and balances, separation of powers and decentralization of powers, if you don’t have that, President Donald Trump would have become a king. This is what you need to do here that the constitution is every other thing, what you call epiphenomena.

Is it the homegrown democracy we’ve been talking about all along in the democracy that’s mixed with some kind of monarchical tendency?

Look, what happened at Oyo State is also an eye-opener. If you have seen the response of the Yoruba people to what has happened there, the response largely is that we want to leave the country, let them go because we are tired, we are fed up.

That is the response right from the people that nobody sees Nigeria as something that can deliver as a common project and there is always these tensions. The government that we had before now was saying that we shouldn’t call the terrorists by their name but we should call them militants or whatever.

So, what should be my concern about banditry and terrorism with the nomenclature of what I call these people and you don’t want them to have the stigma of what they are doing. When you are in this kind of society that you have these conflicting visions and everybody sees anything that happened from the point of view of when the government says don’t call them terrorists, call them militants.

This is a problem we are faced with and it’s just like repeating oneself over and over again. Look at the independence constitution that we ha. Look at the people who made that constitution, they were not mindless. It was the best under the circumstances that suits Nigeria. A military coup came in 1966 and rubbished that and what we have normalized since then is what they said they came to do.