Today, we bring you the second and concluding part of Gen Isola Williams interview:
Excerpts
Don’t you think we have 10 Dangotes in Nigeria who are not in any productive activities?
That is what I am saying, we need billionaires who are also productive. This is the point, we need billionaires and millionaires who are also productive. Nigerians can be a tough place to do business, this is not the youths’ fault to a large extent because Nigerians are tough employees. What do I mean by that? If you run an establishment in Nigeria, Nigerians will not work as hard like when they work for Indians or Chinese it’s obvious.
Why sir?
That is what experts need to find out, we don’t have that sense of responsibility to duty. So if you see Nigerians working for Indians or foreigners they are different Nigerians .
When they work for other Nigerians they will give some sorts of excuses but have you been responsible enough? It’s just like the way we drove on the road like these motorcycles or tricycles, go and see them drive they give you a sense that Nigerians are irresponsible.
Some of them drive as if they want to commit suicide. Or the danfo drivers.
So to me, there is a lot of work to be done with followership to make Nigerians responsible citizens
most of them are irresponsible. Either as employees or citizens etc.
Sir what do you think we can do to stem the ethno- religious crises in the country like we have Hausa traders clashing with Yoruba traders. the Jukuns and Tivs, Fulani herdsmen fighting farmers how do you think we can approach this?
I think everything boils down mostly to everybody fighting for what to get from the national cake mostly. If you want to get something from the national cake you must play politics and it has become political in Nigeria. What you then call it by any means let me get to that position. If it is through religion or through ethnicity or through anything I’ll do so but under normal circumstances, if your needs are satisfied not your wants, you don’t care but if your basic needs are not met you’ll fight to get your basic needs satisfied.
Religions brings solidarity to fight poverty to a great extent .so you can imagine if all the pastors are like Jesus Christ, would there be any poverty in Nigeria among Christians? The big difference between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is how the Muslims treat the issues of inequality and poverty where it is compulsory for the Muslims to do Zakat. Zakat means helping the poor .The Christian Pentecostals pay tithe. There are some people who don’t ask questions about the tithe they pay so you see the pastor living very well having private jet, it is inexcusable.
And if they are men of conscience you’ll know that is not right because the Pentecostals would build a church where there is no poverty, they cant. I have not seen an Imam in Nigeria with a private jet and I have rarely seen an imam with expensive SUV I have rarely seen one there may be but I have rarely seen one, even if among the southerners where we like to be flamboyant but I have rarely seen one. So we have something to learn from the Muslims in the way they approach inequality. If you go to the mosques everybody sits on the floor, high and low in the church they have special pews for those who are rich.
Perhaps because of muslim/Christian doctrines
That is true. There are so many similarities between the Christians and Muslims why don’t we practice the good ones? Whether you call one God the other one Allah and they are within the same families. In south west there are hardly any family in the southwest without Christian and Muslim and others. Should there be a poor person in your church and you ride an SUV? There are lots of things to learn from the Muslims.
Do you expect anything new from the new cabinet?
To me I am not seeing any technocrat as such within that cabinet and I believe that the people that are back there is for continuity and he believes that he wants to finish what he has started he will set a record because it’s very rare for a President anywhere in the world to bring back ministers he has used.
[11:49 AM, 9/6/2019] Tunde Abatan: To me I am not seeing any technocrat as such within the cabinet and I believe that the people that are there is for continuity and he believes that he wants to finish what he has started he will set a record because it’s very rare for a resident anywhere in the world to bring back ministers he has used for a term, the president has created many precedence. It took him so many months in 2015 to appoint ministers apart from that he believed that Permanent Secretaries (PS) are better than the ministers but I think he has realised its not so and he has seen that PS are not saints like what he was made to believe. And unlike many other presidents we have had he is not street wise, since he left the military and apart from playing politics he was completely out of polity. I have never heard him go and give lecture. Even as president people rarely call him to go and give lecture unlike Obasanjo, Yar’adua, even Jonathan. He lacks that exposure and he lacks what Moghalu called in his book the world view. He said a leader must have a world view and if you don’t have a world view you cannot have a vision of where you want to take your country to. Anyone can have a vision of where they want to take their country to. They promised change when they came in 2015, I have not seen any change. Now they said we are moving to next level. What is your level now? I will be very happy if they give us any surprise. And we know what the problems are, we have enough expert knowledge and experience to be able to tackle the problems whether it is power electricity, health education. In health, take care of the primary health and you have lesser problem.
I would be very happy if they give us a surprise. We know what the politicians are and we have enough expert knowledge, experience to be able to do power or electricity and so on and so forth to give us power ,whether it is in education, whether it is health, it is just to carve out an experience in what is going on in the health sector, take care of the primary health care then there would be less people in the secondary and tertiary level. If you want to lay a foundation for graduates start from the primary school, high school so i think primary level we are not taking care of them to a point and to certain extent we then wonder what the state government and Local Governments are doing but now that they are now taking money directly from Abuja that is their irresponsibility because they are the foundation and I am very happy about that because if a local government chairman does well, he has a good opportunity of becoming a good governor which is what is happening in most countries abroad. But here somebody can come from anywhere to just become a local government chairman or governor. The constitution is the problem. If anybody should want to contest for the local government or governorship the person should be living in that place for at least one or two year, the fundamental things are constitutional, it is the problem.
Do you see this set of National Assembly doing anything different because they have been benefiting from the government since , can they effect any change?
What will happen in such case is that because it is a federal system there are some few things states can do. Can you imagine if all the governors in a meeting say they want a change? The country will change. Most of the national assembly people go there though their governors. The governors are the most selfish people. Even if the National Assembly do their own, what of the state assemblies? Who controls them? The governors dictate and controls them. When the governors go to the National Assembly what do they go there to do? It is like a post retirement situation for them and now before they left their place they make state assembly pass a lot of things for them to make them not to suffer for life for serving eight years. But we should do it differently. They should form a pension scheme for the political office holders, in that pension scheme whether you are a governor or member of the parliament, political appointee you must contribute some money into it and the state will put some money with that money by the time you leave when you are leaving whether they pay it in bulk or you want it monthly if you have served less than five years you will be given in lump sum, if you have served for two terms you will be paid pension throughout your life we can do the same thing so that their future can be guaranteed. That is what should happen.
What do you make of the former Deputy President, Ike Ekweremadu that was assaulted in Germany?
It was not the Igbo people that assaulted him, it was IPOB members. You have two different people. It is just like if you as a Yoruba man was invited somewhere and Oodua people attacked you. Will you say it was the Yoruba people that attacked you? No. OPC does not represent all of us Yoruba?
Sometimes about two years ago when the herdsmen attack started some people attacked the political leaders from the South West for not speaking up about what was going on in Benue then and the South East.
When someone’s house is on fire and you don’t help to put it out one way or the other if the fire continues to grow it could catch up with your house too. If anything is happening in any part of Nigeria that we consider bad, everybody should shout out. We should not wait until it concerns you. That is why I keep telling people that revolution cannot happen in Nigeria. Because people would look at the people or ethnic group starting it and call it ethnic. We should learn our lesson from June 12, everybody voted for Abiola in every village and see what happened afterwards, the military prevented him and everybody followed Abacha and became ministers so the point is that we should have learnt from that Abiola’s case because if people were not looking at it as ethnic thing people should have rallied round June 12. All these ones they are doing now to me don’t mean anything.
Are we now saying non actualization of June 12 is basically ethnic?
There are two things I believe in this country. There can’t be revolution and there can’t be a military coup. These have become very unpopular. The military boys cannot get away with military coup anywhere in the world. You can see the case of Sudan even after killing so many people the people didn’t allow the military to stay.
But do you think Nigeria can break up?
That is the mistake we are making and the people benefiting from the mistake are the governors and the local government chairmen. They are the ones going to Abuja to collect money. Somebody must be in Abuja to coordinate but we are putting too much attention on the coordinator forgetting about the people who are responsible. Where does the money come from? The money comes from Niger Delta where oil comes from. Value Added Tax comes from Lagos mostly where does the rest of the money comes from? From solid minerals. Much of the money goes to people’s pockets specially those in the north, they have been doing that and the governors from the North don’t want that to be part of their resources. that is the point and a major obstacle to the amendment of the constitution but most people don’t know. I challenge anybody, and up till now we have not been able to get solid minerals into the mainstream of revenue generation. Can anybody tell me the percentage of minerals we sell? People are just smuggling it and most of the traditional rulers and politicians know.
You participated in the summit three weeks ago led by General Abdulsalami Abubakar, what was the outcome?
It was not supposed to be a peace summit. I wish I could get the communiqué for you. There can’t be any civil war in Nigeria again. The question to ask is this who is the common enemy that Nigeria would be fighting? Is it Yoruba, Igbo, Efik , Hausa or who? We can say we have Boko Haram as a common enemy because nobody has declared a war on Boko Haram I am not even sure what Boko Haram is fighting for. Buhari even said Boko Haram has been tactically defeated. The bigger a nation the more respect you have than one small country. What influence has Singapore got outside economy? Compare with China, India etc. The bigger you are the better so it’s stupid for anybody to say they want to break up a big country. We have a lot of advantage staying together. Our founding fathers saw that advantage and that is why they created a federal system of government but are we truly running a federal government system? That is why we must go back to the constitution what can solve the problem of the constitution and put it in a federal system people will stop blaming the government .if we are running a federal system how can a people say they don’t have a federal presence in their state? What federal presence are you looking for again? Look at our roads, some will say this is a federal road. where is the no-man’s-land the federal road is passing through? If the state is generating its own revenue why does it need to go to Abuja for money? People are collecting the money they didn’t work for and because you believe we are all Nigerians there must be a commonwealth and until we stop this idea of commonwealth we cannot develop. Which common wealth? People should generate money from their own states.
But don’t you think people that are collecting money from the federation account won’t want Nigeria to return to federal system?
Don’t let anybody deceive you, the south west and south east states governors don’t want restructuring because they collect money. What does Osun State government got? Stop money from Federal Government to Osun State, what have they got? The former governor was making a lot of noise what has he left behind? The present governor is following in his footsteps. Up till now he has not appointed commissioners, so the point is that people just pretend and pretend. If the south west wants why can’t they put pressure on Buhari to accept El-Rufai report? Why are they hiding El-Rufai report, why are they setting up committee if it is not to deceive the people? That is why they are like PDP…… Politikians Deceiving the People.
And some of the northern governors have so much resources to run state, some of them have accepted, what of Lagos with all the revenues the state is generating? Lagos State has the highest debt in this country and most of the roads are bad.
People believe that people like Tinubu that has the ears of the President is refusing to speak on Restructuring probably because of his ambition. Is it true?
If you do restructuring the point is that people cannot blame the Federal Government for their plight. If you look at some of the roads the former governor said its federal roads like the Badagry road, for God’s sake the road to Cotonou that is an international road it is a shame when people come into the country. What is the money for? And many of the things he started he could not complete them and they have debt in Lagos just like the Federal Government. Are they transforming Lagos into anything? Everybody complains about the traffic, it is caused by bad roads.
What do you expect of Tinubu, people are saying he refused to speak up on these issues because of his ambition he does not want to be seen as one rocking the boat…
Again we put too much emphasis on one human being. No. To me he is completely inconsequential. He is entitled to aspire. It doesn’t bother me at all.
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