Major–General Ishola Williams (rtd) is the Executive Secretary of Pan – African Strategic Policy and Research Group (PANASTRAG). In this interview with JOHNSON AYANTUNJI, the one -time director, Training and Policy of the Nigerian Army bares his mind on the state of the nation. He speaks on insecurity, the defections of the opposition governors and lawmakers to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as well as the controversial prerogative of mercy which President Bola Tinubu granted Nigerians living and dead and sundry issues. Excerpts
Nigeria has not been able to overcome insurgency since 2009. Successive governments have been voting huge sums of money for buying hardware and what have you, yet the story remains the same, with the insurgents getting more vicious and audacious in attacking military bases. What is really the problem?
We have been talking about the state of public safety in the country. Like the Zamafara State governor said not long ago, that he could solve the problem of the state in two months if he were given the chance to do what he believed was indispensable for the state. Why did he say so? He said that he knows where the bandits are. Their locations are on his telephone. But the military and security agencies are not cooperating with him. What do we have now? We have a situation in which a state government is hiring a Chinese security company from China to come and keep its own state within Nigeria. What does that tell us about the government and the military, and the security agencies of the country? It means they are helpless. The attack is not coming from outside. It is within his own state. He is not getting the sort of support that is needed.
That is why he is looking up to China. Those are already there. Having said that, you need to ask, why is the National Assembly reluctant to pass the State Policing Bill that is necessary for states that are waiting for the federal government to push them to start their own police, like Amotekun? Whatever name you call Amotekun, Amotekun, it is a State Police. All the states in Nigeria have similar organisations, but they call them different names. Whether Vigilante, Civilian Joint Force, or whatever name they call it. But all of them have been established by the Bill of their various state assemblies, which means they are legal. One then needs to say that there must be something wrong with us as human beings, especially those in government, at the state level, at the federal level, as well as the national assembly. Why do we need to wait for the National Assembly to pass the Bill? The president himself said that he is convinced that State police are needed. He said it openly that at the presidency, he is going to work with the National Assembly to ensure the needful is done.
You said a while ago that Amotekun is a legal entity as a result of being backed by law by their various State Houses of Assembly. Recently, in Akinlalu,Osun State, the IGP ordered that the Operational Office of Amotekun in Osun State be shut down. Where does this leave us?
Legally, he can do that, but legitimately, he cannot. People do not understand the difference between legal and legitimacy. This is it. Let us take the example you have brought in. Amotekun is protecting the people, which the Police have not been able to do quickly. The people have accepted Amotekun as their own. The Amotekun agents are people from the state, who are people from the area where they are working. They know more than the police, even though the police are trying to find out if they can post their own people to their own area, but they have not been able to do that. It is no longer the Nigerian Police. Why are you duplicating what the Amotekun is doing, posting people from that area there? It means the police are deliberately sabotaging the efforts of Amotekun. The governors should not allow that. Where you have the situation you have just described, the governor should ask that the Commissioner be removed from that State. That has been done so many times; when the governor says he cannot work with the police commissioner, they remove him. IGP may be right legally, but it is not legitimate for him to do so.
You presented a paper at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, where you submitted that the problem with Nigeria is not leadership but that of followership, which needs greater attention. Why did you say so?
The issue about our country is that they talk about challenges and whatnot, and they talk about the leadership that is not. I will give you another example. Nigeria cannot exist without a local government; a State cannot exist without local government. Therefore, Nigeria cannot exist without the State, which means that if the people do all that is necessary to keep themselves safe and the local government level, what is the problem at the national level? No problem. Therefore, what happens is that the federal government, President Tinubu, is deliberately creating a situation in which public safety will continue to deteriorate without giving those who are at a particular level local government and state level the legal power to use the men, women, and material they have to be able to control that. The other thing is that there is no public safety without community support. The day the people realise – the traditional leaders, like they are doing in the South west, their safety is on their shoulders, then they will take it seriously.
For example, if the people in Nasarawa are being killed by people in Benue State, and the president has got to go there, it is not his business really. But because the president is not pushing NASS and telling the police who believe that it is not to their own advantage to have state police, which, in short, the IGP does not care about the safety of the country. Those who talk against the State Police do not care about the safety of the country. They care about the position they have and they would take, and how to retain that position. The Leadership that one talks about should be at the local government and the state level. What I emphasized in that paper is this: If you live in a community and you are at peace with your neighbour, and if there is any problem, those of you in that neighborhood, will do what? Get together and find a solution to that problem.
Therefore, if your house catches fire and your neighbor does not help you to put out that fire, your house will also catch fire. That is the core issue. What we need to do is this: If you have a state, let’s say Ibadan, that feels it can exist and not bother with what is happening in Oyo, banditry and crime is a big mistake. If they have the same opportunity, they will cross over. That is what is happening in the North, from Kaduna to Zamfara, to Kebbi. They are not working together; that is why, for example, Kebbi should not have gone to get a Chinese security company to secure the state. If they chase them out of Kebbi, where would they go? They go to Sokoto or Zamfara. So neighbourhood safety system is very important, within the city, between states. That is what I call a neighbourhood security system.
The traditional rulers are meeting in Lagos, with the view of getting the National Assembly to pass a Bill which will grant them constitutional roles, which they do not have in the current constitution. You mentioned some things to be done, such as federal intelligence, state intelligence agencies, and what have you. Can you expatiate on that?
In the past, most of the presidents did not bother about the local governments until Buhari came in and sought to know about the complaints, which had been happening anyway, about state governments not giving the local governments their dues. But you should know that at the federal level, if you do not have control over the states, you cannot win an election. So, a state governor who wants to stay, or win his second term, must be in control of the local government level. The local government chairman, too, must know the community leaders. There are many communities in Nigeria, of which the leaders do not do anything apart from collecting money from the parties and making sure that the people vote for them one way or the other. Bola Tinubu has now brought this interesting idea, which emphasizes that there are three tiers of government.
He introduced an idea that is in line with El Rufai’s Report. At any level of government, that government is useless without resources. Therefore, if somebody has to hold resources for that level of government, it means that you determine how that level of government functions. So, what did he do when he came? He was giving money regularly to the states. The states are also doing the same thing to the local governments. Therefore, the structure of the three tiers of the government is part of the ‘politricks’ he can get control of through resources. Do not forget that the people were shouting for resource control; you can now see. He has opened the door for resource control.
What I was saying in that paper is this. Where you have the three-tier structure, you have to do it in such a way that you do not give an advantage to the federal government, because what the president has done now is that the federal government has become strong. You give money to the state, you give money to the local government, who will the local government respect or defer to? The federal. Because they can collect money straight from the Central Bank and do not need to go through the State. So, if the state wants to mess up, you tell him to go to hell. But reports have it that the local governments have not been able to access their funds; they still get their money through the Joint Accounts, which is controlled by the State governments.
The problems that the states will have really now according to the constitution, apart from the resources, are the roles at each level of government and the roles they will continue to play. In fact, I suggested in that paper that all the states should have constitutions of their own, which will spell out the relationships between the local governments and the state, local governments should have a charter that defines their relationships between the local governments and communities. With this amount of money, the local governments are getting their things done at their levels, so the states do not need to bother.
The same thing with the federal government. The state of federalism, which they are playing, why do you create a development commission in every geo–political zone? What is the job of the state government in terms of development? There are all sorts of federal structures in all the states; you wonder what the states would be doing. If any of the states concentrate on constructing roads in their states, then you wonder what they are doing with the money. More so, they are establishing new universities and are handing them over to the federal government to run. All the development commissions, like the one they created in the North East, because of the Boko Haram. Nobody has seen anything they have done. They are just keeping quiet, and nobody is saying anything. Whether they are being given money or not, I do not know.
No one has heard anything about them after their inauguration. The South West Commission, too, no one has heard anything about it….
Nothing about them. Apart from that, a long time ago, they formed the River Basins Commission, all the Rivers in Nigeria have Basin Commissions, what are they doing? I was telling a Lady Economist in NIIA that we need institutional economists who study how institutions strengthen governance. We create institutions which do not strengthen governance at all. Because they were not created to perform. Nobody is studying that in Nigeria. The things that you need to study have turned out how you can make use in terms of performance. Coming to traditional rulers, the British used our traditional rulers to rule. It was because they were here and could not bring the manpower they need, to run all the office of government and so on. When our people took over, they were not too sure of what to do with traditional rulers. But in the case of South West they had Council of Chiefs, North Council of Chiefs.
The same thing with the South East. They should have the National Council of Chiefs as the Senate, but not with the power of the Senate. What we needed to do was to create the National Council of Chiefs at the State level, which would act as a check and balance to the state governors. The governor will be afraid to do anything that goes against the will of the communities that those Chiefs represent. Because there are so many of them, you bring the paramount rulers to be the Council of Chiefs at the State level. They will approve the bill, but cannot stop any bill. They will also make the governor not sign any bill. They should be in charge of the Customary Courts in their states, especially at their state level. Then, in the North, they should be part of the Sharia Court system.
There is something inconsistent there in the sense that the governors are the ones who approve the enthronement of the traditional rulers and give them the staff of office. As a matter of fact, they are subject to the local government Chairman. A very good example was what happened in Ibadan a few weeks ago, where Governor Seyi Makinde presented the staff of office to the new Olubadan, even after it was obvious that he was the next in line after the demise of the Late Olubadan. For him to be installed, it has to be approved by the governor. How do you come to control or check the governor?
It is the fault of the community. If the Ibadan people go and tell the governor, We do not care about your approval, this is our man, can he stop them? There have been cases where they want to impose on people, they went to Court and they won. I do not blame the people; it is the fault of the people. Secondly, how can they be paying the traditional ruler from the coffers of the state or the local government? They are civil servants. They have become employees of the state.
This makes the governor have a hold on the traditional rulers or direct them to kowtow to the governor’s whim and caprices?
Ibadan people are rich enough to pay their Oba. In any case, Ladoja does not need any salary from the State government. Why should the governor have a hold over him? Like you have said, the governor can depose him because he pays him. But even then, if he tries to remove Ladoja, there will be riots in Ibadan.
The power is still with the people. The National Assembly is looking at tinkering with the time general elections will be held, especially the next one, which is billed for February 2027, but they want it to be held before then, in November 2026, while the swearing-in will still take place on May 29, 2027. They want all electoral matters and litigations to be concluded before the inauguration of the winners. Is this feasible? I think it makes a lot of sense. It does not make any sense at all, like the case of (Monday) Okpebohlo, the man had already taken over, and they were still in Court, and there are so many cases like that.
The governor is already there. Then suddenly, the court removes him. It does not make sense at all. I agree with the National Assembly that everything should be concluded before the winner is sworn in, whether president, state governor or local government chairman, or even the legislators. But the Electoral Acts also stipulate the number of days that the process of election, at least one year before the election starts. Who makes the law? That is why they are called lawmakers. With what we have now, is it feasible? Because November is almost here, and the law is yet to be amended. Also, it will affect the INEC timetable and programme in terms of printing of sensitive electoral materials, which are mostly printed outside the country. The point is that the Bill will be given accelerated treatment as the APC already has the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
