Jonathan’s victory in 2015 will further divide Nigeria – Hagher

Senator Iyorwuese Hagher is a professor of  theatre arts and former Nigerian ambassador to Mexico and Canada. In this interview with KULA TERSOO,  the PDP stalwart believes if President Goodluck Jonathan contests and eventually wins in 2015, it will leave Nigeria further divided. The Benue-based politician also speaks on the politics of his home-state and calls for the need to streamline the process of selecting the next governor

Clamour for President Goodluck’s return in 2015
It is not everybody in the north that is angry at the possibility of President Goodluck Jonathan re-contesting the presidential elections. Many northerners, including many people in Benue support his re-election bid. I sympathize with Jonathan. Nigeria is a country practicing a form of primitive democracy that is an amalgam and patchwork of contrasting political cultures. Democracy is the expression of the collective wishes of the people who exercise this will through free and fair elections, characterized by one person one vote. The people who are elected through this process represent the people for a specific term, and when the term expires, the people are again expected to vote to renew the mandate or elect others in their place.

In Democracy it is the people that matter. They are the employers of the elected politicians. The president, governors, chairmen, legislators and the hordes of bureaucrats are all employees of the people. But something else is happening here. The elected politicians despise the people. In democracy, there is a contract that the elected officers would protect the people through the rule of law and guarantee civil liberties and rights of the citizens. In Nigeria today, the elected people treat the citizens as their subjects or slaves. The power elite has established a culture of corruption, arrogance and telling lies where it is impossible for common decency to flourish.

President Jonathan had the option to create a counter- culture, but his hands are tied. He is both the president and the leader of the PDP. This oxymoron makes him unable to establish a counter culture. Here is his predicament. The next election should be a referendum on his achievements as president. While he has grown the economy and provided the foundation for a robust physical infrastructure, he has failed to guarantee life and property to all.

More civilian blood has been shed under his watch than any other Nigerian head of State. So far, he has not yet declared his candidature for re-election. If and when he(Jonathan) declares, there will be a battle royal. In the end, he will win. I know he will win, but  it will be a messy win with Nigeria more divided than ever before. My position is that he has a right to contest and I know he will contest. He is a very good man who is badly managed between his unloving critics and uncritical lovers. Nigerian voters have a right to re-elect him or prefer someone else without the heavens falling down.

Benue 2015 governorship
The governorship position in Nigeria is a key to so many things. It is the key for doing so much good but also the key to selfish personal primitive accumulation of riches beyond belief. Everybody in the state should aspire to be governor. It is a position worthy to aspire to. I am therefore not surprised that so many people are aspirants. It is their right. But I personally feel very uncomfortable and feel that we should come up with a particular Benue-centric position of power sharing. We should reflect on our geo-politics and establish a sustainable matrix to share political positions. Politics should not be the preserve of selfishness nor exclusion. We should convoke a meeting of stakeholders and streamline the process of selecting the next governor.

State of  education in Nigeria, Benue
Education in Nigeria is in a bad shape. In Benue state it is again in a particularly very bad shape. Nigerian leaders have made hard choices. These hard choices have unfortunately locked out education out of the engine room of national development. I believe that a country that fails to embrace education is massaging disaster. Education makes it possible for the children of the poor farmer and the King to have a level playing field to develop their destinies. I have watched in disbelief very competent and successful administrators as governors fail to accord education a rightful priority in their overall thrust. We have all it takes to take over the world if Nigeria can go full throttle on education.

Of the developing countries Nigeria has consistently shown lack of political will to fund education. Consistently, Nigeria has given education a very low budgetary allocation. I remember in 1989 when education had the least allocation of only 6.46 %. We suffered a massive brain drain, and our intellectuals voted against the country with their feet and left to help develop other nations in the North Atlantic. Today there is some marked improvement. ASUU has also won a decisive victory for education, but Nigeria’s education budget, of 10.7% is lower than Ghana 31.0% or Cote d’Ivoire 30. Or Uganda or South Africa. If we are the giant of Africa, we should be first  in something not corruption or lies.

The UNESCO recommendation is that nations should budget at least 26%. Educated people escape poverty, they are more obedient; are more democratic and easier to govern. Education is a public good. Actually let’s leave this education matter. I get very emotional for very personal reasons. But for education, I would be a poor farmer at Kasar village a victim of the elements, vectors, pathogens and preyed upon by an unscrupulous political class. I refuse to criticize Governor Suswam’s education policy. If he has failed I have failed. He listens to me whenever I have an important advice to give him. He promised me that the primary schools would resume in another week.

This is excellent. I believe him on this. But education is beyond the governor or the government alone. All of us are stakeholders in how our future generation will be produced. Let us join hands. Let every public servant go back to their alma mater Primary schools once a year to motivate the staff and students there. Let us tackle the systemic rot in the school system and help improve the quality of life of teachers so that we can have highly qualified students applying to study education and join the teaching profession, which is presently loaded with desperados.

On Tiv/Fulani herdsmen
I didn’t keep quiet during the Fulani invasion of Benue this year. I actually predicted this and cried aloud to the whole world in January 2013. When the situation got worse this year, the governor called us together and committees were formed to tackle this Fulani insurgency. The committees have been doing extensive work. I was never made a member of any committee. I was a spiritual and intellectual combatant in the front lines looking towards peace building. The Fulani Tiv war is a complex manifestation of political, economic and environmental stressors. A solution found would have multiplier applications to conflict resolution across Africa wherever there is conflict between the nomads and sedentary farmers. I believe that in order to develop, we need peace. A life without peace is not worth contemplating. This conflict had many surprising elements, so many hidden elements. We all need to get to the bottom of the matter. I am a scholar and statesman. I don’t speak for fashion or to attract attention or for sound bites. Who are these people fighting us? Are they really the same Fulani who are our cousins, or is it Boko Haram wearing another skin? Is there a subtle idea to manufacture Tiv consent in a clandestine vote catching scheme? Whatever the issues involved, it is nonetheless sickening to have pre-colonial primitive ethnic wars being resurrected while the government holds her hands akimbo.

The confab is still on. Nigerians have started smelling a rat that the Confab and its recommendations may not be concluded and taken before the time of election. By this, they reasoned Goodluck Jonathan may seek an extension and find ways of bringing in an interim government. How do you view these permutations and what would you advise?
I have not smelt the rat yet. I believe that the idea of a conference was very good. The members of the conference are highly respected Nigerians. So far, so good. Talking is better than fighting. Disagreeing on the conference floor is better than being disagreeable on the battlefield.

You are known to be a very close friend of Prof. David Iornem. Many wondered why you were (and still is) a chieftain and notable member of the ruling PDP while he remained in the opposition. Now that he has come to join you, may we have the benefit to know your reaction to this?
What a question! Prof Iornem is a man I hold in great esteem. He is a rare breed grassroots politician, a one-man political brigade, a dynamo, a visionary, a social reformer, a compassionate and passionate politician who adds value to life and everything he touches. He combines rare wisdom with extra-ordinary humility. We share together many values and attributes that make up our social and political character. We are age mates, and partners advancing the cause of better management and leadership in Nigeria and the world. We are members of the Nigerian Institute of Management Consultants and the International Council of Management Consultants. He is the Director-General and I am the Trustee representing Africa on the World body. In Makurdi, we have lived as exemplary neighbours for 21 years at high level, without a fence or wall between our homes until very recently. Yet we have a door that joins my plot to his- an open door, which allows our family to interact with each other seamlessly despite our differing political pathways. Both of us are committed in human development, and mentoring, and are devoted to our families in loyalty and accountability. May be this why the late Governor Aper Aku, sought out our advice when he laid the solid foundation for a modern Benue state. But we are different people who hold very strong views, and beliefs. If we were twins we would be non- identical, but with the same DNA. If it were a coin, we would be different sides of the same coin, but we differ, we proudly differ.
Politically, we have often gone our separate ways, and often occupied different political spaces. During the SDP/ NRC contest in the 90’s, Iornem was the chief brain behind the SDP victory nationwide. He was in government and ruling party then and I in the opposition. I had refused very strongly to join the SDP for its attempt to entrench religious politics. I threw in my lot with the opposition party the NRC. At that time; the SDP led us to election with a muslim-muslim presidential ticket. Today, the very idea is abhorrent to the senator, who cites it as one of the reasons he quit the APC. Our political differences were so strong that we went to the polls contesting for the senate seat of Zone A. He won and I lost. I was happy for him.
The minute the results of the elections were announced I was in his house celebrating his victory. I had been a Senator whose mandate was stolen by the Babangida/Buhari coup of 1983. We were now titled politicians who had received our people’s mandate. We are friends. Friends stay friends when they respect each other’s boundaries and differences. Friends stay friends by choice. Good friends are better than brothers or sisters because we make the choice for friendship while siblings are entitled impositions. Since return to democracy in 1999, Professor Iornem has been in opposition and I in the ruling party the PDP. It had been a principled opposition based on core values. Now, he has discovered that it is individuals who make core values of the party and not the alphabet of the party. Individual leaders establish political cultures that can grow democracy or entrench autocracy, arbitrariness or corruption. His shift will benefit the PDP. He is an expert on electoral politics. He is Nigeria’s best authority on rigging and how to stop rigging. Many years ago, he wrote a book titled “How to win elections” which many PDP leaders used as their bible. Many governors and senators across the nation won elections, applying his principles and system expressed in his book “How to win election”. Then, he despised the people who used his ideas to rig elections and become governors and legislators.
Senator Professor Iornem is both a very simple person who is at the same time a complex operator. The PDP will benefit from his coming home. Benue will be richer through his ideas. Nothing has changed between our relationships. He will always be my leader as he also calls me his leader. Bravo, and welcome home, my leader Senator Professor David Iornem.