Dr Yemi Farounbi has served the country in many capacities, including as Nigeria’s former Ambassador to The Philippines. Ahead of his 80th birthday, he spoke with SAM NWAOKO on a number of issues.
Looking back, it’s racing to 80 years since you’ve been around. How would you say it has been, considering the various eras?
It’s been one long story of hope and failure. One long story of enthusiasm and frustration; one long story of potentialities and challenges… Nigeria offered so much hope but Nigeria been unable to fulfil its hopes. Nigeria offered the blacks and indeed the Africans the lamppost for development and growth. When Nigeria became independent, everybody believed that Nigeria would be the star and perhaps the only star in Africa’s firmament in terms of political stability, in terms of political maturity, in terms of economic growth and development. But here we are – misplaced priorities, missed opportunities and we are, today, unhappy. We had always thought that given the diversity in Nigeria and given the inherent strength capable of harnessing that Nigeria, will challenge any nation in the world in terms of growth and development. But here we are.
I recall that in 1966, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, as the Chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) where I was a student, delivered an eloquent speech on how to use ethnicism as a weapon for development. He said the various ethnic groups in Nigeria had peculiar characteristics that could be tapped into to make Nigeria grow. You could talk of the restlessness, the industry and the never-give-up spirit of the Igbos. Even during the war, you could see the resourcefulness in fabricating the Ogbunigwe. You could see it in the Aba industry: textile and shoes. Nigeria could have been a weapon producer. The Institute of Management and Technology could today have been rivaling the MIT in the US. But did we harness it? No.
There is no ethnic unit that hasn’t a peculiar contribution. That is what Azikiwe was saying. If we harnessed all of that, Nigeria would have been different. But what did we do? We are equalising everybody. We wanted everybody to think alike, we wanted everybody to sleep in the same direction and we were unable to tap into the creativity, the ingenuity and the innovativeness that were characteristic of the times. So we all became lazy. The Igbo man would never beg for money; the Fulani would never beg for money and the Yoruba were not beggars. But today, everybody has been equalized into beggars. They now have to line up for rice, beans and garri and for agbado (corn) of all things! Cassava will grow anywhere in Nigeria and until recently, Nigeria was the largest producer of cassava but now we have to line up for garri!
You saw a young Nigeria as a school boy and young man; later there was disappointment. Now, at your old age, there doesn’t seem to be any reprieve. How do you feel as 80-year-old Nigerian?
I feel very sad and very disappointed. As a youth, going to secondary school, we looked forward to having football matches with Government College, Umuahia, with Edo College, Benin; Hussey College, Warri. We looked forward. In the school I attended in Ado Ekiti, there were students from all over Nigeria. We were from all over, hoping to be the best for Nigeria. When we went to the university you saw the universality in universities. You went to Nsukka, you went to Zaria or you went to Ife, you saw the healthy competition not based on the environment but based on Nigeria as a nation. You even saw foreigners both as teachers and as students. So we were excited. Then as youths, we all struggled for Federal Government scholarships and for foreign scholarships. As a Yoruba man in UNN, I earned the university scholarship on the basis of merit. Nobody called me names. If you did well and your cumulative average score justified it you got it.
Then, of course, we had the political disturbances; we had the setback of the civil war. Associated with the civil war was a succession of political manipulation, maneuvers to make all of us the same. But there were still some merit. As a young university student, I could write a letter to General Gowon. He was a Lieutenant Colonel then as a Commander-in-Chief and I got a reply personally signed by him, in the middle of the civil war. As a Year One student of University of Nigeria, I could come to Race Course in Lagos and ask to see the Minister of Education and I saw him. I am not sure if my president will get it if I send a letter to him, or if I will get a reply. I’m not sure if I book an appointment with the Minister of Education if I will get the opportunity to see him. Things changed, those who are supposed to serve us stopped serving us. They became our lords and masters.
Some people say the rot and decline were as a result of the military incursion in Nigerian politics. You saw it all, including the diarchy under General Abacha when you saw to the emergence of Alhaji Isiaka Adeleke as governor of Osun State. Some believe Nigeria plunged further shortly after this period and totally missed the way. Do you think so too?
Those who studied mathematics say when you are on a straight path and you veer off, the angle of tangent is so narrow, less than one percent. But as you veer off, you’d find that the angle will begin to widen. We missed it very narrowly beginning from the desire of political manipulators to deprive the South and oppress the progressives called UPGA, to deny them of legitimate access to power through the ballot box. This led to ‘Operation Wet e’ which linked with the Middle belt Uprising joined later with the pogrom resulted in the civil war. We started missing it.
Then the military, talk of General Aguiyi Ironsi who was part of the revolution that brought the military found himself in power, not because he wanted power. He didn’t know what to do with power. General Yakubu Gowon found himself in power just because he was the most acceptable northerner, not because he knew what to do with power. He ended up ending the war at a moment that we had tremendous access to money from crude oil. At the end of the civil war, we, Malaysia and Indonesia were at the same level. The three countries were dependent on crude oil for 95 percent of their revenue. Today Malaysia is dependent on crude oil for only 11 percent, not because the quantity of crude oil has reduced but because the economy has grown that crude oil has stopped being the critical thing. What did we do with our own crude oil? We stole it.
Then came Murtala/Obasanjo and their massive retirement. That altered the texture of the civil service. Suddenly the civil servants realised that they were no longer permanent and that somebody could retire them with immediate effect. That changed them from that unseen, humble civil servant into grabbing civil servant who had to steal money massively so as to prepare for tomorrow. Otherwise, what would an Accountant-General of the Federation do with N25billion, what would he be doing with it? Then because of their naivety or misplaced or misplaced priority, Obasanjo/Murtala wanted to compulsorily unify us. They insisted on a constitutional conference where we must not debate what they called exclusive areas, and they imposed presidential system on us. They imposed a centralised federation on us because of what they had seen in the civil war to become one by force. You can’t enforce marriage, you can grow love.
Of course then came Muhammadu Buhari, who also found himself in power after four years of waste by Shehu Shagari. He got kicked out then we started the 10-year transition. That was when the vulgar monetization of the political system started. That was when the citizen no longer had to contribute to political development, but they now look for politicians to give them money. That was when politics became the game for only the rich, no longer something that a poor man can take part in. In Ghana, a university professor had become the president, in Nigeria he cannot. He cannot even have the money to be a councillor. We missed it in those 10 years.
In trying to go from the old breed to the new breed, in trying to create new greed, we complicated the political recruitment system. That is why you now see that the better part of Nigeria was in yesterday. Successively, as we replace governors or presidents, you find out that the performance dwindles; you find out that there is a higher degree of mental poverty being displayed. Take an average speech of Tafawa Balewa, compare it today to the speech of our president, you will see what I am saying. You will see the degradation in the quality, in the content and even in the delivery.
So, when you talk about political recruitment, we started missing it in the long, 10-year transition that never led us anywhere.
After that time we had PDP, AD, APP etc… you were a foundation member of the PDP. Look at the PDP today. What can you see?
In 1999, we were not forming ideologically-based political parties, we were only establishing vote-gathering mechanisms. The PDP was established because we wanted a party that would make it impossible for the military to come back. So, we had an amalgam of Solomon Lar’s SPP, Ekwueme’s PMF; Yar’Adua’s/Isa Kaita’s PDM; Bola Ige’s PCF, Awoniyi’s ANC and those of us who were called ‘the new breed’. There was no ideological relationship amongst all of us except that we were tired of the military and PDP lived up to that.
But when it comes to fashioning out economic ideology or a political direction, there was none. We were committed to power shift and we were committed to equal access to power. Those were not ideological. That will not bring economic or infrastructural development. They were what I would call symptoms of democracy, not the real fruit of democracy.
When the PDP was kicked out, the people who kicked out PDP included CNC, ANPP, ACN, nPDP and a section of APGA. Nothing brought them together except a desire to capture power from PDP. There was nothing ideological.
Is that why they haven’t been able to properly utilise the power they captured because a lot of Nigerians believe that the country has been nose-diving since the APC came to power?
They are absolutely right because they were only interested in the power apparatus, not in what power can do. Oh, PDP has been there for 16 years they must get out, not that they had a better programme. Go and look at Jonathan’s programme. In terms of power generation, it has not been changed since then, it is still that plan we are using. If you look at railway development, it is what Obasanjo started in 2007 that we are still using. It is not that they had a better utilisation approach to our resources. It was just that we also must be there, it is our entitlement. When you have an entitlement approach to political power; when you have a settlement approach to political power, there is more likely to be an abuse of the use of the power. When you take the Democrats or you take the Republicans in the US there are things that you know they will do or will not do. When you take the Labour and the Conservatives in the UK, you could predict what they would do in terms of economy, trade, foreign policy etc. You could predict them. But we have an amalgam that is only interested in power, not what the power could achieve. And that is the serious problem in Nigeria.
Before, the gravitation towards power was on ethnic basis – NCNC, Action Group, NPC, UMBC, NEPU, but now it is just power-seeking and unfortunately Nigerians have been completely pauperised. They have been demonised with poverty that they cannot insist or ask what they want to use the power for.
If I say ‘emilokan’ or it is the turn of the Igbos or it is the turn of the northerners, there is nothing economical or ideological or infrastructurally-developmental in all of that. It is talking of entitlement. That is not the way to govern a country.
Are you saying Nigeria is suffering the consequences of Emilokan ideology?
Of course yes… because we did not ask questions.
We were not allowed to ask questions… there were no debates.
That is part of the problem. Since 1999 that we started this republic, there has been no debate at the presidential level. Obasanjo didn’t debate Falae. Since then, there had been a pattern. It has deprived Nigerians the opportunity of asking the salient questions about what it is they want to do. Leadershipe is about three things: what you want to do for your country; this is where Nigeria is, where are you taking us? Leadership is about competence, when you have defined where you are taking us we ask you: are you competent to do it? So, we look at the statistics. What have you done, what kind of training, exposure or what kind of goodwill. Then, thirdly we look at your character. Are you reliable? Are you dependable? But we didn’t have that opportunity. I recall that one of the billboards of President Buhari in which he said he would not go out of this country for medical treatment. But we saw how many year he spent outside the country on medical tourism. When you ask him he would say he didn’t know about it. So, our presidents became products of advertising agencies rather than products of their own intellect. And that is what we are suffering.
If you are to advise, because we are stuck, how could we wriggle our way out of the quagmire we’ve found ourselves as a country?
I believe that there are a few things we must do urgently. First is that the only good time we talk about in Nigeria was when Awolowo, Azikiwe/Okpara, and Sardauna/Tafawa Balewa were there and it was a function of the structure. You didn’t eat if didn’t work. If you worked, you kept 50 percent of whatever you earned. You gave 20 percent to the centre. You kept 30 percent in a distributable fund in case of emergency for all of us. Today I produce that in State X, you get only 13 percent of it. I destroy the land of South South in exploration of oil, what do they get for it? So, we have to look at the structure.
Second, we have to look at the recruitment. We have to look at the quality of people we are now putting in positions. Is it that there are no quality people in Nigeria? No, there are many but they cannot show up because of the vulgar money that is needed. For you to be a state governor, you will be talking of billions of Naira. How would a Bisi Onabanjo or Segun Osoba emerge or even Anthony Enahoro emerge in a situation like this? They don’t have the money to contest a contemporary vulgar monetization of electoral system. So the good ones run away… We have to revive that in two ways: When a politician wants to contest and he tells you he needs money, ask him what he needs the money for. To bribe the elders in the party, its members, delegates, security, the electoral management agency and so on. That is what he needs money for. If you ask Trump or Kamala Harris what they need money for, it is to advertise, to build billboards, make campaign materials and not to bribe any institution. We have monetised our system for wrong purposes. If we were to divert from such and realise that they are mortgaging their future when they ask politicians for rice or money before election, you will find that the cost of election will come down. When it comes down, you will see that competent people will come. Then you will realise that the only way to fund an election is crowd-funding. How did Obama emerge? It was through donations by Americans $1, $10, $100. Here if you or I want to contest, people will be coming to your house to take money. We do not see that if somebody is good, we should crowd-fund him so that he can get there.
But this kind of recruitment system you talked about doesn’t seem to be anywhere in the Nigerian horizon…?
We will get there. We will get there not because we want to get there but the poverty that has become a common currency in Nigeria, the hunger that has become a common dialect for all of us is what will push us there. We are beginning to realise now that the fact that you use bullion vans to carry money to your house does not translate to competence. We are beginning to see that hunger has no tribal mark nor does it have religious colouration and that it would have been in our better person to crowd-fund a good person. We may not exactly get there in 2027 but I can see us moving in that direction. The circumstances of today, which is the result of the choices we have made, will lead us there. We can now see the product of the succession of choices we have made in Nigeria. Your salary cannot take you home.
You were everywhere in the arts, in theatre, in media production especially the television and so on. Now, at 80, when you look back, which are those things that give you joy?
Honestly, there are too many things for me to thank God for. I always tell people that I am a child of grace. Grace because I’ve been through successes and achievements that are not by my power but by the power of God and the environment that allowed it. How will you explain that a Geologist, who became a Geographer, became a formidable name in Broadcasting? If not that there was opportunity for merit; if not that I could access scholarship, how would I have afforded my fees at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka which was 165 pounds per annum when my father was earning 144 pounds per annum and had not only me to train in school? How would I if we didn’t have an educational system that talked about welfare of the people? How would I have made an Arelu without having to burden myself with borrowing huge sums of money? I made two cinema films, not video, how would I? How would I have created a TSOS if the governor then had not agreed with me to let us create the best television in Africa? Nigerians are so arrogant and proud that they didn’t believe that they were inferior to anybody. That is why ENTV Wastern Nigeria Television Service was “Second to None” even though they used some staff from WNTV/WNBS (Western Nigeria Television/Western Nigeria Broadcasting service) like Yinka Johnson and so on to start off. There was this competition for excellence. Western Nigeria did free education, Eastern Nigeria did; Eastern Nigeria started University of Nigeria as the pioneer independent university in this country at a time the University of Ibadan was a college of the University of London. Western Nigeria said we must have Ife, and the North said we must have Ahmadu Bello. The competition moved Nigeria forward. When I look at those days, I feel excited. Yes, we knew our ethnic nations but the ethnic nations we come from didn’t limit us.
In TSOS, we created something that nobody could believe. We created a news package; we created a programme package – like an Eastern bazaar. So when you tune to TSOS you would find something you needed. We had dedicated people that were taken care of by the system.I recall making the Arelus, the Agbarins, they make me happy. I recall addressing a political rally in Kano where I could not speak Hausa but the people related to me. They didn’t look at me as ‘Ngbati-ngbati’ and we were talking of a Nigeria then. I recall my good friends across the east, the Middle Belt that I met on the political basis as we tried to fashion out a better Nigeria. We haven’t been able to reach there because we made choices and we are now reaping the result of our choices.
We made choices in 1959, if those choices had thrown up an Awolowo or Azikiwe or an alliance of the two, the story of Nigeria would have been different. We made choices in 1964 where the progressives became beggars in their own country. We made choices in 1979, we said the best man needed not to win. We made choices such that the great Odumegwu Ojukwu would say Awolowo the best president Nigeria never had. We talk today about June 12 1993 as the freest and the fairest election in Nigeria that didn’t produce a president. They are products of our choices. We made choices in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, and in 2019 even when it became obvious that in a decent society there shouldn’t have been a second term for 2015 but he had it. So, we are suffering from the outcome of our choices and that overall sometimes takes a lot of joy from the successes one could have talked about.
(Nigerian Tribune)
