…says Nigeria should recalibrate security strategy
A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Segun Sowunmi, has said that it is impossible for Nigeria to become a one-party state, stressing that nations constantly evolve with new ideas. Reacting to the threat by former United States President Donald Trump to invade Nigeria in a bid to combat terrorism, Sowunmi stated that while it could be right for a developed nation to intervene where terrorists are oppressing the people, such interventions must be approached with caution. He spoke in an interview with OLADIPUPO AWOJOBI. Excerpts:
How would you react to the conflicting court judgements on your party’s convention?
There are answers to questions that are political and there are answers that are honest. Let me just give you honest answers. I read the 95 pages of James Justice Omotosho’s judgement and the exparte order given by the judge in Oyo State. I know that the judges have equal jurisdiction, but I don’t think that a judgement that has not been vacated can be subjected to a new judgement.
The leaders will do whatever they want to do, but I know that we will put ourselves at a great peril if we think that the court will allow us to act in that order. The society is not lawless and it cannot be made to become lawless. When there is a judgement the necessary thing to do is to go to the appeal court to vacate it and you have to wait all the way to the Supreme Court and see whether you will get away with it.
The fear is that this is putting the PDP into more problems…
Of course, have you not been hearing that for long. It has been said that this is a very big problem, we will be deceiving ourselves if we say they are victimizing us when the injury is within and we are the only ones that can use ourselves. All our governors are leaving and we have to know that there must be a reason for that.
Do you suspect that the problem of the party is external or that it has to do with what the leaders fail to do?
I do not have time for a continuous repeating of the conspiracy theory and even if it is true that external forces are involved, does that mean that the people that are in the party are not mature enough to know what to do. Even most times, the people making such accusations are the most guilty.
The matter before Justice Omotosho, he made a pronouncement on it and instead of going to the Appeal Court to vacate the judgement, you went into a meeting and claimed that you are suspending some people that have the benefits of the judgement, is that the right reaction. Those people also went ahead to suspend those who suspended them.
You assume that any judgement that does not follow your belief is a perversed judgement, you went to Oyo State to get an exparte, not knowing that going to an equivalent court will not work. I don’t understand, so which one is the federal government’s own in it. Yorubas say that even if they ask you to go and die in a river, won’t you stay near the edge so that they can find your dead body? How long has this crisis been going on. So, I don’t accept that.
We all know what is happening on insecurity in Nigeria and the external forces say they want to come in to assist us, do you think this is the solution to the problem?
Nigeria as a nation must learn how to handle things. The President of the United States of America, Mr Donald Trump, designated Nigeria as a country of particular concern, this is not the first time they would do that. What happened the last time? Why do we think that the content will be different? If the American President says he wants to withdraw aid to the country, should Nigeria be a country that should depend on aid forever? Now the next thing is that there might be intervention to fight insurgents.
Should Nigeria not be interested in ending 25 years old war that started with exaggeration of the Islamic faith? When former president Muhammadu Buhari was there, they were killing people everyday and it has not stopped. They are killing people, but not necessarily because they are Christians or it may be. Until you do the the proper investigations, you may not be sure.
Whether they are killing Christians, Muslims or pagans, the fact is that people are being killed with likely active connivance of some people who we are being cowardly to arrest. How are they getting weapons, who is supplying the money, who is doing the logistics, who are the beneficiaries, and who are their backers? I think it’s important for them to help us, but they should not bypass the government.
The Bola Tinubu government has just been there for a little above two years, but the problem has been with us for a few decades. The diplomatic policy of the current administration is weak. We don’t have the full complement of diplomacy at work, why should they be in government for two years and we don’t have ambassadors. Imagine if there is any hostility between us and our neighbours is that how we will be running helter skelter.
If our military has been overstretched, is this not an opportunity for us to recalibrate, rebuild it and repair it, why can’t we have a new police structure here? The first responder to crimes, whether you call it insurgency or anything is the police. Why should we have a country of almost 240 million people and we will be under-policed? We are the only country all over the world where you see police officers moving around and protecting private citizens. You don’t see it in our neighbouring countries or in the United States of America or other countries. You see police following VIPs and people that have some money.
We have a problem on our hands and the earlier we stopped thinking that others hate us the better. We are the only country that is not at war, but that is fighting war in every region. In the South East, we are dealing with IPOB, in the Northern region and the Middle Belt, we deal with insurgency, in the Southern region, we are dealing with kidnapping, and in the South West, we are dealing with “Omo Onile” and others.
We have a major problem on our hands. Yes, we are a sovereign country, but on the context of the world, the United States has an act signed by former president George Bush to go anywhere where there is any element of insurgency and intervene. We have to watch the body language of every leader; the way Trump talks is not the way (Vladimir) Putin talks, the way Putin talks is not the way they talk in London, the way they talk in London is not the way they talk in France and the way they talk in France is not the way they talk in China. America is our very long ally; of course, we can determine our policy the way we want, but we cannot deny that fact that there is crisis in our country, when it comes to insurgency and that type of thing.
People are saying that this is the best time to have state police in Nigeria, what do you think?
We are due for local government police, state police, regional police to complement federal police. Most countries in the world have something like that, we cannot pretend that we are under policed, how many police do we have? I heard that the president has declared a state of emergency on the training facilities of our security personnel and that’s a good thing. You cannot train them in that kind of place and expect them to perform optimally. You have to pity the President, he has so many issues before him; there is politics, technology, infrastructure, financing, security and others.
There are fears that Nigeria may become a one party state…
How is that possible? The fact is that the current government may win the next election if the opposition is not ready; even if they are ready, they may still win. The problem is that this country is too complex and so many people want to contest, you cannot accommodate them in one party. If the opposition is not ready in 2027, they will lose. But after that, people will still come together.
After President Bola Tinubu must have finished his second term, new people, new thinkers and more people will come together and say what is the future. Nations are not built as if they are final events, they are built as continuous event that will improve as we go along. What the generation of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo did is not what the generation of President Bola Tinubu is doing and what the Tinubu generation is doing is not what the next generation will do, so we need to calm down.
