81 years old Anya
O. Anya, a professor of Zoology knows Nigeria inside out. He has
served in various advisory capacities to the federal government as the
Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria Economic Summit Group and President
of Nigerian Academy of Science. At a time the clamour for Igbo to
produce the president of Nigeria is loudest, he says the Igbo need
paradigm shift not the presidency as offices don’t matter. He also said
the country will not progress unless Nigerians face the reality that the
system is flawed and work towards correcting same. He spoke on other
national issues.
What is your assessment of the state of things in Nigeria today?
I don’t think anybody can pretend any
longer that things are alright in Nigeria and I don’t think anybody can
also pretend that those in charge of things today have done all they
could have done and that they have done it the way it should be done. I
was just looking through some collected papers of mine, and I was going
through the lecture I gave, the advice I gave to President Muhammadu
Buhari in 2015. There were two lectures that I gave, one was the Eni
Njoku Lecture at the University of Lagos, Akoka and the other was the
Emeka Anyaoku Lecture at Port Harcourt. These two lectures addressed
President Muhammadu Buhari directly.
I told him that the challenge before him
was that of national integration and I told him what the priorities have
to be in order to get us where we should be, but the contrary has
happened. The country has never been as divided as we are right now, to
the point that two former Heads of State, former President, Olusegun
Obasanjo and retired Gen. Ibrahim Babangida have written letters telling
the President he has not done well, so there is no point pretending
they were saying something else. The country is in a very bad shape.
Some time ago, Prof Ben Nwabueze alluded to the fact that Nigeria was heading towards a failed state, what do you think?
The primary purpose of government is to
protect lives and property and that is the core of security. Just look
at the last few months the flood of blood in Benue State and just
recently in Zamfara State and when you hear a large number of people
killed, it is mindless murder. People just got up and started killing.
When that happens in a country, it means that security has broken down
and when security breaks down it means there is no government. To that
extent Prof Nwabueze is correct. But let me also say that there are
different criteria for measuring a failed state. There are those who
will say that Nigeria has been a failed state for over the last two
years or more because the various parameters to judge with are not good
enough.
So what are the standard parameters to determine whether Nigeria is a failed state…
(Cuts in) No you see it is a very
technical issue and I don’t want to go into it now, but the important
thing is that no Nigerian is feeling comfortable right now, so that is
one measure. In a functional state, everybody will be happy to go about
their business. Usually, when I travel to the east, I go by road. But
today, even with the fact that I go with escort, I’m still uncertain
because you don’t know what you can meet anywhere and I say anywhere in
Nigeria, there is nowhere that is a safe haven. Look at even Lagos
State, the other time we were talking about Badoo Cult and it is the
same mindless killings.
In the short and long term, how do you suggest Nigeria address these problems?
The important thing will be to embrace
reality that is for President Buhari and the government to realize that
and accept that things are very bad to the point that something has to
be done urgently. We are in an emergency security wise and the present
bunch whether you are talking about the minister of Defence or the
Inspector General of Police, their disposition, the things that have
come out of their mouth in the last weeks suggest that they are not
capable of handling the situation and that it is time to start looking
for other people for the job, people who can face the reality that
things are not normal and are prepared not to pay lip-service but do
something about it. That is where to start in the short term.
In the long term, I think the 2014
national conference, to which I was a delegate, and to that extent I
could say I’m partisan on it, but no other team in Nigeria has looked at
the problems of Nigeria as thoroughly as that national conference,
which is why even now that it is belated the All Progressives Congress
(APC) that initially said it has nothing to do with it has now made a
360 degrees turn and accepted some of the things they said they will not
touch. That is a beginning, build a national consensus and start from
there, start implementing it because it is what will give confidence and
bring us together because that conference was agreed to by all
Nigerians. The only people that were not there were the two delegates
from the APC but all the APC governors sent their representatives and
all the other formations dealing with the APC also sent representatives.
So all these we were not there is just a little minority within the
APC, the greater majority of the APC were there. This greater majority
will flow with the national conference, so we can start from there.
Part of the recommendations of
that conference was state police which is now gaining support, but the
fear of abuse by state governors is still there. How can that be sorted
out?
There are things people can do because
they are allowed to do it and there are also things they cannot do. The
state governors are politicians in a democracy. Look at the national
conference, why are people turning around to embrace it? It is because
the reality has set in that there are things you can no longer do and
get away with. So even the state governors know there are things they
can no longer do. The days of impunity are gone and that is why you have
so much violence because people are fed up to the point that they are
ready to take the laws into their own hands and any governor that steps
beyond a reasonable distance will have problems. It is not enough to say
the state governors will abuse it. People are very short-fused they
react to anything and state governors who try to manipulate it by doing
things that are unpopular will be endangering their own lives. Nigeria
is that turbulent.
How do you think the Igbo have fared under the Buhari-led APC administration?
You can only talk about how you have
fared when you have been given attention. Has the government given any
attention to the Igbo? President Buhari came in with a deliberate policy
of either ignoring the Igbo or doing something in the hope they will
react. But the Igbo have been very wise, uncharacteristically wise and
have endured it. The way the administration is running is an insult to
Nigeria to which the Igbo have contributed a lot. I don’t think the Igbo
have been given any attention not to talk about how they have fared.
There are of course prominent Igbo sons in the APC and in the
government, I sympathize with them. In the jobs they are, they have to
do the best they can but I don’t know anyone of them that is happy.
Whether it is the minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige,
whether it is Okechukwu Emelemah or Ogbonnaya Onu, they will not tell
you the truth about their feelings. I have interacted with all these
people over the years and know them very well. They are reasonable and
responsible people but the situation they found themselves in they
cannot do much.
Why is it that despite the marginalization of the Igbo…
(Cuts in) I don’t like that word.
I mean despite the feeling of being shut
out some Igbo feel the best chance for the region to produce the
president in 2023 is to support a Buhari second term?
What are you doing with Igbo president?
Let’s be real, it is when things are done the way they should be that we
start looking at the future. The way Nigeria is now are we even sure of
2019? As we speak can anybody tell you confidently that he knows what
will happen in 2019? So why don’t we face reality by asking what do we
do to improve the situation of things before we start talking about 2019
that we don’t know whether it will arrive.
I am of the opinion that the Igbo need a
paradigm shift in their thinking. Preoccupation with office whether it
is a minister or whatever has not helped the Igbo and will not. The only
people who benefit from it are the office holders who see to their
personal accomplishments. The Igbo never gained anything as a group. My
paradigm shift is that whatever government that is coming, ignore
whatever offices they are offering and draw a list of things Ndigbo need
to be done in Igbo land for the benefit of the people, whether it is
good roads or railway and negotiate on that basis because people will
look after themselves when these things are in place, in which case you
will not need government offices. It is the private sector that runs the
governments in serious places and their time will come in Nigeria. So
let Ndigbo build capacity. Let’s stop all that nonsense about Igbo
president. When God bless his soul, the late Alex Ekwueme was Vice
President, can we point to anything that Ndigbo benefited? Even in the
recent past, when Senator Pius Anyim was Secretary to the Government of
the Federation (SGF) and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-iweala was Coordinating
Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, two powerful positions
that you could literally say this was the Secretary and the other was
the Prime Minister of Nigeria, what did Ndigbo get? That was the time
we got the least. So let’s stop pretending that office’s matter in
Nigeria because they don’t.
Why is it that Ndigbo has not benefited from Nigeria?
I will not entirely say we have not
benefited. The thing is that we have always created our own environment
and the benefits we got were the ones we created. When you go to Anambra
State today and see the many young millionaires don’t forget that it
was grown from the 20 pounds that were given to every Igbo man after the
civil war and it was done without government help. Government’s
position is really to create an environment where businesses can thrive.
I will give a personal example, I have been near enough to the
government but I have never been in government, I have never held any
major office, but it is for Nigerians to judge whether I have done more
than those that served in government or less.
IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu has been
missing for months now. Is it not time for Igbo leaders to demand his
whereabouts from the federal government?
What is there to demand? When Operation Python Dance went to Abia
State and did what they did, it was in the public space. So why do you
need to hold anybody responsible again? Government naturally is
responsible because when they go and attack a village and some people go
missing they should be held accountable. The army has to tell us the
story of that particular operation. It is when we know the story of that
particular operation that we will find out what happened.Source: The Sun
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